Microsoft caused considerable consternation in the open source community over the past month, after unveiling a shake up to the way developers will be able to monetize open source software.
There are many examples of open source software sold in Microsoft’s app store as full-featured commercial applications, ranging from video editing software such as Shotcut, to FTP clients such as WinSCP. But given how easy it is for anyone to reappropriate and repackage open source software as a new standalone product, it appears that Microsoft is trying to put measures in place to prevent such “copycat” imitations from capitalizing on the hard work of the open source community.
However, at the crux of the issue was the specific wording of Microsoft’s new policy, with section 10.8.7 noting that developers must not:
….attempt to profit from open-source or other software that is otherwise generally available for free, nor be priced irrationally high relative to