A group of technology giants that includes CA Technologies Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co., Microsoft Corp., SAP SE and SUSE have signed on to an initiative that aims to promote greater predictability in open-source licensing.

The initiative relates to open-source software licenses, including the GNU General Public License and the GNU Lesser General Public License, which cover numerous important software projects such as the Linux Kernel. The release of GPL version 3 stipulates that distributors of open-source code governed by the license should be given the opportunity to correct errors and mistakes in compliance.

The thinking is that this new approach allows for license compliance to be enforced in a community where “heavy-handed” approaches to enforcement are “out of place,” Red Hat Inc., which leads the initiative, said in a statement.

“The large ecosystems of projects using the GPLv2 and LGPLv2.x licenses will benefit from adoption of this more balanced approach to termination derived from GPLv3,” Red Hat explained in a press release announcing the new license-compliance partners.

The companies have all agreed to adopt something called the “Common Cure Rights Commitment,” which means they will give distributors of noncompliant software time to “cure” or “reinstate” licenses before taking legal action against them.

Microsoft said in a blog post that its commitment means that those who license software under the GPLv2 code will be given “a reasonable period of time to correct license compliance issues.”

Microsoft’s involvement is notable considering it was at one time the leading crusader against open-source software. Back in 2007, Microsoft went public in its opposition to the GPLv3 license, saying it was an effort to “tear down the bridge between proprietary and open-source technology that Microsoft has worked to build with the industry and customers.”

Clearly Microsoft has moved on since it made those statements. In the last few years the company has reversed its stance to become one of the biggest open-source software contributors around. Just last week, for example, the company said it would make its Service Fabric microservices infrastructure platform available on GitHub for anyone to contribute to its development. “We believe it is very much in keeping with the spirit of the open-source community to allow for such ‘cure’ opportunities,” Microsoft said.

The initiative had already secured the support of Facebook Inc., Google LLC and IBM Corp. in November 2017.

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