WiX Toolset: Introduce the Open Source Maintenance Fee

Re:WiX Toolset: Introduce the Open Source Maintenance Fee by calibas on Thursday July 24, 2025 @10:44AM (#44671323)

I thought the license was still owned by Microsoft?

https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix?tab=License-1-ov-file#read...

Also, the exact wording is:

"a EULA on binary releases (including those published to GitHub and NuGet.org) requires payment of the Maintenance Fee"

I'm not a lawyer, but doesn't that mean that I can compile the code myself to circumvent the Maintenance Fee, and give the binaries away for free?

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Re:WiX Toolset: Introduce the Open Source Maintenance Fee by jsmith99 on Thursday July 24, 2025 @11:25AM (#44671867)

Yes, the repo readme says the code is open source but the fee is required for using the repo's issues and releases features.

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Re:WiX Toolset: Introduce the Open Source Maintenance Fee by ApolloFortyNine on Thursday July 24, 2025 @03:22PM (#44674927)

I'd be surprised if the github EULA allows you to just attach rules to who can click the releases button.

For issues and discussion, sure that's essentially moderation. But surely you can't make a EULA that says you can't click on a github provided feature unless you agree to some arbitrary third party's rules.

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Re:WiX Toolset: Introduce the Open Source Maintenance Fee by robmensching on Thursday July 24, 2025 @09:10PM (#44678342)

The code is owned by the .NET Foundation (long story) not Microsoft.

> but doesn't that mean that I can compile the code myself to circumvent the Maintenance Fee, and give the binaries away for free?

Yep. Now you are responsible for the ~500K lines of code. Totally allowed by the license. Enjoy your fork! :)

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