I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read James' response to Phil’s Tweet regarding the recently announced open sourcing of parts of the .net code base.

It went like this:

Phil : Remember, "Open Source" is a trademark owned by the OSI. .NET is not open sourced, it’s being shared.

James : I think shared might not be right either, more like shown. I am not sharing my ice cream with you if I just let you look at it. :)

Open Source explained for the Everyman

That might be the simplest explanation of the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL) I’ve ever seen.

If we continue with James' analogy, I suppose that an Open Source version of sharing his ice cream would mean that I could not only look at it, but also have a taste, add some sprinkles, and then pass it on to you so you could do the same.