Microsoft Agrees to License Windows Source Code 423
msbmsb writes "Stepping away from previous tradition, "Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday it will license its Windows source code to comply with a European Union antitrust ruling." But in an effort to stop the cloning of the OS, developers will still have to pay an unspecified amount for the code. This is an addition to the "12,000 pages of technical documents and 500 hours of free technical support" to those who purchase a license."
Nothing new (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How much? (Score:3, Informative)
These guys [reactos.org] would.
MS has already licensed the code to universities (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft has already licensed Windows source code to over 100 universities, listed here:
http://research.microsoft.com/collaboration/unive
More details:
http://research.microsoft.com/collaboration/unive
Re:Already been done (sort of) (Score:2, Informative)
Isn't there the same problem with this new initiative?
http://www.ossl.nl/opensource.org/advocacy/shared
Re:Not sure of that... (Score:2, Informative)
Or maybe this one. It's the one I use. Works great in XP with SP2 and all other patches applied. The only thing is, if you want to resize the ext2/3 partition (using partition magic) you have to use the applet in the control panel to unmount it first.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:2, Informative)
As I recall it, Microsoft basically incorporated Citrix technology into NT4 for TSE and was going to just shove Citrix in front of the bus, so to speak. Many in the press at the time were calling it a death knell for Citrix even. Citrix managed to negotiate with Microsoft, agreeing to stop selling WinFrame, a fully competitive product, and focus only on MetaFrame, their add-on product. Citrix has managed to survive and flourish; but, make no mistakes, it's not because Microsoft didn't try to cut and run.
The original EU decision from march 2004 (Score:5, Informative)
" "
So, this is not about Microsoft's precious source code or trade secrets *AT ALL*. It is all about interface documentation to ensure interoperability in a heterogeneous computer network (i.e. so that a computer not running Microsoft software can still communicate with the computers that do, e.g. using Samba).
It may be the case that Microsoft's statement from today seems to imply that they are doing something relevant, but it is *NOT* a reply to the original *DEMAND*, which was "just tell us how computers can communicate with computers running MS-Windows".
Source code is not the same as documentation! A meaningful reply to the demand would be a document with the full interface protocol, that's all... no source code necessary.
Re:What a bunch of crap... (Score:2, Informative)
Nice try, but officers of a company are protected by something called the Business Judgement Rule. If an officer decides some action (not trading in EU) is warranted (releasing source code might, in his eyes, jeapordize their product), they cannot be punished just because the shareholders disagree with that action. As long as they acted in Good Faith, they are protected - even if the choice was wrong.
They could be ousted by the shareholds and replaced, but they would not be criminally liable.
Re:Indeed! What a bunch of crap... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, and back in the early 1900s you didn't have to buy Standard Oil either. Sure, the only non-Standard Oil store was 50 miles away, but you had that choice!
The history of Windows (and MS products on it) is remarkably similar. Sure, you can use DR DOS. Oops, for some reason Windows 3.11 won't work with it! We're sure it's their problem though. Use MS-DOS instead. And you can use something other than Excel or Word too... except that those applications don't have the undocumented-yet-supported APIs that let Word/Excel run faster and more stable. Oh, and by the way -- Dell, Gateway? You can sell any operating systems you want. But you'll pay for Windows no matter what. Oh, sure, you don't have to do that -- but then we'll just charge you twice as much per license. That's fair, right?
Methinks you have a short memory for the "actions of Microsoft".
Re:What a bunch of crap... (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong, Microsoft strong-armed OEMs into bundling only Windows throughout the 90s, levying special little fines if they dared offer competing products. So technically superior alternatives like OS/2 and BeOS weren't given a fair chance, and consumers never got to try them out.
Re:Indeed! What a bunch of crap... (Score:3, Informative)
It's not undocumented. There were several books (not by MS of course) that documented the undocumented API calls in Windows 3.0, 3.1, Windows95, and Windows98. The better of them even listed what advantages they had over the documentd calls and which Microsoft programs used them. If something like Word or Excel used them then you could damn well count on them being available in later versions as well, even though they were not officially supported.
Were they super? Generally no... but they did have advantages in ease of use (mostly) or speed (less often). There were a few cases where a single API call replaced a hundred lines or more of convoluted logic to acheive the same thing.
Note that I don't have an issue with undocumented APIs -- they're common in software. And there are reasons you don't expose them, particularly if the API in question is actually a clever hack that may break later on because it takes advantage of unexpected behavior, or a "feature" that you should really get rid of at some point. The issue is that Microsoft's own application division appears to have had access to these calls (and their documentation) when nobody else did. At that point in time Microsoft had a de facto monopoly on the OS (which, realistically, was done in a fair marketplace), but not on application software (they were, at best, in distant second). By leveraging the OS monopoly they were able to create an application software monopoly -- and that's illegal.
Go ahead. Google for "Undocumented Windows API". There's plenty of hard evidence for this "meme".