Status on The Azure Project

Blog Posts
#1

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The tech team worked hard in getting NEM into a docker for Azure. In case some of you who may not know Azure, it is a Microsoft cloud computing platform and infrastructure. Recently, some months ago, Microsoft opened up Azure for crypto projects to place their solutions there in the cloud repository so that testers are able to download and testbed these initiatives from one location.

We spent a considerable amount of time getting this done. Unfortunately, at the last stage of our submission we were shown the agreement. In the agreement, to put our solution up there, requires us to give away all our rights. This is not quite palatable.

This article has been pretty explicit:

http://bitcoinist.net/microsoft-bullies-open-source-is-the-blockchain-their-next-target/

The agreement which is publicly available for us to peruse by Microsoft, confirms it:

https://cla.microsoft.com/cladoc/microsoft-contribution-license-agreement.pdf

Having given it due consideration and thoughts, we have decided that NEM should be independent. Instead, we are proposing to still put it on Azure as a docker but we pay for it. By paying for it, we are assuming to be a customer of MS instead. In so doing, we are free from losing our rights as well as still prove that we are able to put it on the Azure cloud and allow testers to work on our solution without NEM losing any rights at all.

In short, putting the NEM docker on Azure, in our opinion, is nothing more than making it simpler to install, vis-à-vis via Github. Putting it on Azure also extends our solution to making it available to people who are familiar with the MS service platform.

NEM does not believe that it should lose its rights to anyone, not in the very spirit of how crypto projects are founded upon.

On that basis, NEM would like to announce that it has no intention to get itself listed in Azure for free like the rest of the other projects, unless MS waives that agreement, for which if they are sincere, they should.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://blog.nem.io/status-on-the-azure-project/
#2

Latest here:

#3

Isn’t this an overreaction due to a misinterpretation ? My understanding is that the agreement covers the template contributed, not nem software itself. I didn’t read it in details, but in that case the terms of the agreement seem reasonable.

Please enlighten me

#4

DONT DO IT!

I think the best decision we could ever make is to stay free from Azure.
It appears its a way for Microsoft to gain control of open source projects to their own advantage.
Really surprised ETH are using it.
We dont even need Azure since NEM can already do what Azure is capable of.

#5

The problem is: we don’t know for sure what they mean and what a judge can read out of it.

#6

I don’t think you understand the agreement. Anybody can go into github and submit your project to Microsoft, but the only thing that they’re giving away is the code it’s actually pushed to the MS repository. Not your software.

#7

That is my assumption as well. Though I still think it is a good idea to wait to hear back from Microsoft and a lawyer before we go through with it.

#8

Awesomeness!

#9

I say we wait for Microsoft to Clarify these terms with us.

#10

Can someone clarify this for me: compared to whichever open source licence the NEM code is currently being distributed on, what rights the Azure contract potentially could take from NEM, that are not already being given for free?

Or is this more of a ideological stance against Microsoft’s move to take a position now and benefit from blockchain technologies later?

Does the contract stop any coin devs from later doing the exact same thing with another similar provider (Google, Amazon, etc)?