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."
Ok.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this the beginning or end of windows? (Score:3, Interesting)
Should help Security (Score:3, Interesting)
Will it compile? (Score:5, Interesting)
The question is will it be complete and compile? Don't they have to hide parts of Windows that are licensed from other companies?
Windows will still be distributed as binaries, having this source code does not give any guarantee about what's really running on your system.
Not sure of that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever been annoyed at having to keep a FAT32 neutral-zone on your dual boot system because nobody's yet worked out how to write to NTFS without wrecking everything?
That's the kind of thing this will hopefully lead to. It's all about interoperability. Unfortunately, knowing MS, the terms and conditions will be fricking deadly, and no open-source coder will so much as look at MS code for fear of contaminating themselves legally, so we shouldn't get too optimistic...
Already been done (sort of) (Score:5, Interesting)
For a list of microsoft shared source licencing programs look at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/L
Anyways do not keep your hopes too high. As you can see there are many shared source licenses (some are even like BSD), however Windows is not becoming "Open Source" soon.
Uh... right... so where's that documentation? (Score:3, Interesting)
So they respond with "figure it out yourself. After paying us some cash obviously."
Does anyone actually think this is an acceptable response?
Opening Windows... (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Europe (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Europe (Score:2, Interesting)
Really? On what basis? In terms of pure GDP, Germany is larger. If you prefer GDP per capital I believe Ireland and Norway beat the UK. If you want to talk about salaries I believe three or four countries rank higher. If you want to talk about standard of living about ten European countries rank higher than the UK (according to the Economist, a UK publication). If you want to talk about growth then quite a number of countries rank higher.
I'm not saying that the UK economy is not good, it is, but it is unfortunately common to come across people who think like you in Britain.
And what would the UK economy be like if it wasn't so tied to the USA? Why do you think Blair is Bush's bitch? Read up on the USA economically punishing the UK for its lack of participation in the Vietnam war if you want a taste of what the UK economy would be like if it didn't have the support of the USA...
Re:Should help Security (Score:3, Interesting)
Iff they accept patches. I don't know if their build and release system can handle such a thing right now, this is entirely a different model for them if they adopt it.
Why is it that about 80% of the Microsoft headlines are basically a recital of the Henry Spencer quote -- "Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly."
If MS is to license their source (but not freely of course) and if they were to take patches back from the community, then they are back to Aug 25th, 1991 20:57:08 GMT when Linus sent out the first mail to usenet announcing Linux.
Hopefully, someone will benefit from this change. We Linux weenies have for years. I'm still upset about the only Linux kernel freeze that I got in 1997. However, Donald Becker fixed the bug he introduced in the 3com 509 driver, and all has been good since then.
Hmm....
Brainstorm. How about people sending the patches under an incompatible license to MS. What would they do then?
Re:What a bunch of crap... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:And it will LEAK 24 hours later! (Score:3, Interesting)
However this does bring up a more legite question: "Will Apple have to do the same?" or since darwin is already open source does it matter?
Re:Consequences (Score:2, Interesting)
They would have to prove you copied it. If you were stupid enough to cut and paste their block of code into yours, you will get done. If not, say you already had some code written and just needed to know a few things, you could tweak your code according to what actually happens in the protocol, rather than what microsoft has documented incorrectly. There is a catch, which I will get to below.
We need proper documentation not source code, if something is broken we can point to the manual and have it corrected
Why would microsoft ever do such a thing? Why would MS ever release real documentation?
instead of following the broken implementation in the source only to find it "fixed" in another version of the os and breaking compatibility
Compatibility is a two-edged sword. If they break compatibility, it hurts their users too. Some of them might care, and some of them might be big enough to demand a fix. If Microsoft have to release their updatd source code then that's a win for everyone except microsoft.
Where this might fall down is if MS cheat, and instead of releasing current code release something a few years old and broken, something I believe has already happened once...
Anyway, on to the catch, this from the samba developer's page:
Re:Europe (Score:2, Interesting)
If thats a question, you obviously have no idea exactly just how crooked these figures are. We do all kinds of idiotic things to get the results that get the baby-kissers re-elected:
And all these measures generally remove quite alot of people who are generally included in the fiigures quoted for other countries. Also, if references another countries figures in relation to ours, they will normally pick the worst figures they can find. Generally, they can normally get away with picking figures that are up to 5 years old (the obviously pick the highest) and the ones that include all kinds of weird crap (ie, if there are a set of figures that will factor in an estimate for people that have probably been missed, they will use those).
UK unemployment figures are wildly inaccurate, and i don't think other countries fudge the figures to the extent we do.
Are you sure? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this changes that. Now software companies working on plugsin/whatever for windows will be able to continue working on those things, even after looking at the windows code.
That is a pretty significant change, I think. Previous source offerings were primarily for academic institutions, govt code/assurance audits.
I suppose there have been a few previous Windows source licenses that allowed for product development. Sysinternals, Mainwin, and OpenNT come to mind.. but perhaps these were all US based entities?
Note - i have no specific knowledge of these issues, i am just stating my impression.
Re:What a[n actual] bunch of crap... (Score:3, Interesting)
What if someone uses it to make a better Windows? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are windows becoming a commodity? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Another great move by Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
DEC did the same thing with VMS (Score:3, Interesting)