Microsoft Eases "Shared Source" Restrictions 252
An anonymous reader writes "In an effort to help device makers differentiate their products and compete more vigorously with Linux,
Microsoft is eliminating
major restrictions on the use of its "shared source" license for the
Windows CE operating system. The change, which accompanies the impending
full release of Windows CE 5.0, will counter competition from Linux
and is likely to expand Microsoft's slice of the roughly $1B embedded OS
market pie. Specifically, the new version of the Win CE Shared Source
license will, for the first time, enable developers anywhere in the
world to include modified Windows CE code within commercial products
without having to sublicense the modifications back to Microsoft.
Interestingly, the revised Shared Source terms are reminiscent of the BSD open source license, which permits the development of proprietary derivatives that need not be shared with the community, in contrast to the GPL, which obligates developers to make their modifications available to the public."
Re:It's All Sun's Fault (Score:3, Informative)
Jeroen
Re:Inexpensive and competing with Linux? Nah. (Score:5, Informative)
Check it out http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?F
Embedded Visual C++ and Embedded Visual Basic are included the last time I checked.
nothing like BSD (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft and GPL (Score:4, Informative)
article has the GPL part all wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Erm, no. This has been said a billion times, and I suppose it will be said again. The GPL does not require you to give back your changes to the public. It does, however, require you to give the source code to whoever you in turn gave the program too.
Example: If I sell a modified version of the kernel to the Pentagon, I must provide the source to the Pentagon, but no one else. Not even the NSA, or some state gov't, etc etc. It is a very simple concept. (Ingenious when you think about it.)
Sunny Dubey
Re:article has the GPL part all wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Of course you can't make them not give the source to whomever they please. You can ask them nicely not to do it, but they have the right to if they want, under the GPL.
Re:Not just Linux move (Score:3, Informative)
Are you implying that amateurs can't write for WinCE devices? I'll remind you that the development tools are free and widely available.
Re:Inexpensive and competing with Linux? Nah. (Score:1, Informative)
PocketPC 2002 is outdated. They are giving away free development kits for an OS that was released in 2001.
Software written on this platform doesn't always run on the newer one and it certainly doesn't run well or include all the hooks into the advances that were made in the more recent releases.
Re-Read the GPL! (Score:4, Informative)
Thats just plainly wrong, please re-read the GPL! The GPL just obligates to make the source avaliable to every receipient of the binary, and enforces that you cannot change the license.
Thus, if you develop complex modifications for a GPL software, and your customer pays you lots of money for it, nobody is forced to give those modifications to the public.
GPL enpowers the customer, not the public. The customer gets the freedom to modify (or pay someone else to do it) the software, independently from the original vendor.
Re:Inexpensive and competing with Linux? Nah. (Score:3, Informative)
I hate to tell you this but Linux is trying to compete with CE in the PDA market and not doing all that well.
Where Linux is doing well is in the Embeded market for things like Wi-Fi routers and such. The PDA market is on that Linux is not doing well in at all.
Would I like a Linux based PDA? Yep but I have not seen one yet that will work as well as my old Palm does. I can even sync it under Linux.
BTW $995 is not bad for a development system. Take a look at what Troll Tech wants for QT under Windows!
Re:"Interestingly"? (Score:3, Informative)
We have deployed literally HUNDREDS of Intel servers over the past 3 years. We started with Windows and now are almost completely Linux. Windows WAS replacing some *NIX systems, but now it's Linux on IBM blades or 44x series machines.
To be frank, the only reason we have any Windows at all is the ease of development and a slew of undertalented developers who can't write proper Java or C/C++ code. Aside from that we're excusively Linux (with AIX for some of the apps that only scale vertically). We actually looking to convert a .NET business unit to Java within the next 6-9 months (start conversion).
Further, I become mildly enraged over the whole MS/TCO argument. My team is responsible for ~120 servers (Windows/Linux/AIX) which support dev/QA/Performance/New Tech Evaluations, production is another group, of which the vast majority (~90) are Linux. We spend a grossly disproportionate amount of time supporting Windows and AIX although Windows is the worse of the 2.
Anyway, we have a few small Windows projects (which have very mixed results as we have a 24x7 high-transaction shop). A big one coming up, I've voiced my concerns and my plan is to sit back and watch the fireworks when it goes south. My attitude is simply this: It's technology, my only crteria is how efficiently we can manage systems in support of business requirements. If technology 'X' can meet requirements I'm fine with it - rah-rah-rah I'll support it. If it can't then I take issue. AIX is a sporatic PITA whereas Windows has been a constant source of pain. Linux has only been an issue with new kernels on new hardware (duh) and with respect to RedHat VM "improvements".
The short of that rant is that if you evaluate technology solely on the basis of capability and cost, Linux will prove a highly desireable solution. Technical issues and cost (clustered SQLServer and Biztalk are NOT cheap) will start to show up on the MS side of things... AIX, is, well, AIX and is from the same company that brought you OS/2 (which started strong and underwent a truly painful death).
Re:Inexpensive and competing with Linux? Nah. (Score:5, Informative)
eVC++ 4.0 [microsoft.com]
Re:"Interestingly"? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't see Linux encroaching on Windows turf on the desktop-- and, in fact, I see Windows encroaching on Linux/Unix turf on the server side of things. (This frightens me deeply.) It is surprising that MS is scared enough of Linux and the open-source/free software movement to be releasing some of their source code while their market share is still so ridiculously high.
That's because you're talking about desktop and server OSes, and this move has to do with embedded device OSes, where MS doesn't have the same sort of stranglehold. WinCE is targetted at embedded devices and PDAs. The PDA market is really dominated by PalmOS, with WinCE trailing by a significant margin and Linux just getting started. The embedded market is very fragmented, with systems like VxWorks, QNX and DOS holding the largest positions, a zillion proprietary OSes all over the map, and WinCE in a very, very minor role, currently. Linux is probably already a larger player in this market than WinCE and it's growing like mad.
Embedded developers tend to be "bare metal" kinds of guys, who want complete control and complete transparency, partly because they need it but mostly because they have a real understanding of their hardware and get frustrated by "unnecessary" layers of abstraction (sometimes choosing to write their apps on the bare metal with no operating system at all). Linux gives these people the best of all worlds (well, almost*), since they have total transparency and control _and_ nice, powerful tools. They also have a tendency to be anti-Microsoft bigots, so MS has an uphill battle winning developer mindshare. The net of all of this is the MS does have to take radical action if they're going to maintain or grow the WinCE share of the embedded market.
* The "almost" is because Linux is a little on the large side for embedded systems. That's not really a failing of Linux, because Linux is intended to be a Unix work-alike, which was an OS designed for the mainframe/minicomputer space. While the unbelievable growth of hardware capacity has made it possible to put this sort of OS into fairly cheap embedded devices, it still requires the higher end of the embedded space. WinCE is in the same boat on hardware requirements, and may even require a bit more than some of the trimmed-down Linux distros.
Re:M$ adopting Linux features (Score:2, Informative)
Here we go again. No, GNOME and KDE are not linux. Linux is just a kernel and yes you can customize GNOME and KDE to any degree you want. That in not true in MS software unless I pay (more) money for a third party software to do this for me (possibly) without braking anything.
I hope you're not implying that dereferncing NULL pointers is something that happens exclusively at Microsoft. But either way, this happens frequently enough with free software. Check.
What happens even more often enough is these bugs get corrected in free software while perpetuating in proprietary software. So let's see I have a choice to get free software with maybe a few bugs and buy software with a few bugs (and security holes). Hmmm what will it be?
Is ssh good enough for you? Check
Major security holes in ssh didn't lead to the Microsoft related worm/virus/trojan "funfare". They never had and never will.
Now let's have a look at your history [slashdot.org] in
Send Bill my regards!
Re:article has the GPL part all wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps the work can be licensed to all third parties without being available to all third parties; under this interpretation the work would not need to be available to the public. But I would like to see a convincing resolution of this issue.
That's exactly what the GPL says. 2(b) specifies that you have to license it to the world, but doesn't say anything about you having to actually give it to anyone. Section 3 specifies how you go about distributing it, and it gives you three options, saying that you only have to do one of them.
Option 3(a) says that if you hand out source with the binary, you're done, you've satisfied the requirements, you don't have to give it to anyone else. If you choose this option, you do not have to distribute to the public. Of course, whoever you gave it to can give it to someone else, and that someone else already has a license to your code, as required by 2(b), so it may end up published to the public anyway, but _you_ don't have to do it.
If you don't want to hand out source with the binary, then you can use 3(b), which says you have to provide a written offer to give it to _any_ third party. So if you take this option, you are required to distribute it to the public, for three years.
Finally, you can choose 3(c), which says that if you never got source, just a binary and a written offer, you can pass both along to someone else. As long as you're not doing it commercially. No need for public distribution.
Re:Inexpensive and competing with Linux? Nah. (Score:5, Informative)
However, Microsoft's tools are very good, and have classically cut develoment time significantly. We have one guy working in CE.NET doing the work that three guys did for our Palm OS port. Is that worth a one time charge of $995? Sure is.
Still Learning the GPL?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Once again for the slow learners among us: The GPL does not obligate you to make your modifications available to the public. The GPL only requires you to make the source code available to anyone to whom you provide a copy of the derivative work. If, for example, you modify GNU Emacs for your personal use, you do not have to publish your work.
Re:Inexpensive and competing with Linux? Nah. (Score:4, Informative)
PocketPC on the other hand, is an OS for consumer devices. At its core is CE. Besides the basics of program installation and process management, I'm not sure what's different between the two. But they are NOT the same platform, and haven't been since (I think) 2000.
If you were to write a program "for CE devices," your market would be limited to hackers, embedded users and those people who owned the Casio BE 300. If you wrote a program for PocketPC, you'd have a massive market. So if you're a software company looking to expand into the embedded market, your choices are: write a consumer app for Pocket PC, or write a useful utility app for other embedded software companies.
Re:Smart move, actually (Score:3, Informative)
GPL has little to do with the state (read: gov't) ownership of property.
Re:RTFGPL (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still Learning the GPL?!? (Score:3, Informative)
Thank you Mr. Bush for failing to understand again (Score:3, Informative)
Some traits of Socialism and Communism:
-Public or government owns means of production.
-Central committes plan production.
-There is no competition.
-No profit motive in the distribution of goods or services.
Why GPL is not "Communist":
-Individuals can own means of production of GPL software.
-People can own components of software that work with GPL, and they can determine means of production.
-Several (profitable) companies create and utilize GPL software products competitively.
-The pursuit of profit is the reason that corporations like RedHat and Suse distibute their software.
If anything, GPL is more like "Welfare Capitalism", in a sense that you are free to utilize software under the license, and share it, and even profit from it, but there is a system of rules in place that are designed to protect the welfare of its userbase. Those rules are the GPL restrictions that force you to include your modifications, upon request of the purchaser, if you wish to distribute or sell the code. If you don't wish to do this, then write a GPL'd mechanism that glues to your own proprietary code. How is this so restrictive? It's not. How is this like Communism if it allows one to distribute it in a profitable, Capitalist fashion? You probably can't answer that because it's *not* Communism.
Besides... Would it not be ideal to have a system that allows true competition, while allowing nearly equal playing ground for everyone to benefit or profit? Extreme Capitalism does not do this, and is not unlike Socialism or Communism in many ways. GPL software like Linux levels the playing ground. The days when you were locked into a single provider are coming to an end. You now have the choice of purchasing an incredible product from a number of vendors (RedHat/Suse/Novell/Mandrake/Etc). You have the choice of paying for a level of support that fits your needs. You have the choice of making your own product as well, and making a profit from it. Now you tell me what sounds more liberating.
You boneheads who talk about how GPL is similar to Communism don't have a damn clue what either is about. You refuse to accept that software is a changing industry, and the old rules of the dinosaur companies like Microsoft will ultimately be the cause of their toppling. Of course they want you to believe it's Communism, because companies like RedHat are stealing their business (and making money off of it).
It's time for me to get back to programming GPL software for my company.