How the FFC are licensed

In his February 2006 Letter from the Editor,2 Visual Studio Data Program Manger Milind Lele
announced that the FoxPro Foundation Classes for Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP1 were being released
under the terms of a new license called the Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL). According to
Milind:
"Our goal is to encourage developers from the Visual FoxPro community to enhance these class libraries
and distribute these enhancements to their users, or share them with the general Visual FoxPro
community…"
The full text of the Ms-PL can be found on the FFC Source for Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP1 download
page.3 It is also included as FFC_EULA.txt in FFC.zip, the download file for the VFP 9.0 SP2
FFC on the VFPX website.
In part, the Ms-PL states that "Microsoft grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free
copyright license to reproduce the software, prepare derivative works of the software and
distribute the software or any derivative works that you create."
I am not an attorney and what I’m saying here does not constitute legal advice, but it seems clear
from the above that Microsoft has made it possible (and legal) for us as developers to modify and
distribute the FFC in whatever ways we want. As always, the standard caveat applies: if in doubt,
seek the advice of your own legal counsel.

As noted earlier, the FFC are now available for download from the VFPX website. When you
download anything from the VFPX website, you must agree to the terms of the Shared Source
License for VFPX. Whether or not the VFPX license in any way conflicts, restricts, or augments
the FFC EULA would be another question for competent legal counsel.

2 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190242.aspx
3 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=986ED8B1-43F3-4A8E-B4AD-
2CBE5B3BACCD&displaylang=en