RE: Microsoft co-opts open source approach?

From: Josh Cohen (jcohen@avogadro.com)
Date: Mon Mar 19 2001 - 00:53:43 PST


Agree,
  As microsoft is fond of saying, they've been doing
this for years. They've licensed various source code
to schools and other organizations. Maybe I missed
something from skimming the article, but this doesn't
state that the entire code base will be open source,
in which case its hardly that interesting.

One thing that is interesting is that the "OS" is
comprised of about a zillion DLLs. When I worked on
IE/Wininet, I never actually built more than wininet.
So, for example, if they gave the source to wininet
and lets say the .lib files (stubs) for its dependencies,
you could drop a new wininet into NT and have a great
deal of fun.
(Wininet is the HTTP stack in windows for those who
 dont do MSFT)
These days, the kernel is such a small part of what
windows "is", the bulk of the features seem to be
at much higher levels, just like wininet.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Joseph S. Barrera III [mailto:joe@barrera.org]
>Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 07:16
>To: Gary Pupurs
>Cc: FoRK@xent.com
>Subject: Re: Microsoft co-opts open source approach?
>
>
>Doesn't sound very earth-shattering to me, nor does it sound anything
>like a move to open source. Sounds more like DEC's fiche of VMS source.
>The customer can do more of the debugging himself, but the vendor
>always remains firmly in control of the source.
>
>- Joe
>
>Gary Pupurs writes:
>> http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-5067896-0.html:
>> In a major extension of corporate policy, Microsoft has
>quietly started a
>> program to provide selected large enterprise customers with
>copies of the
>> source code for Windows 2000 (Professional, Server, Advanced
>Server and Data
>> Center), Windows XP (released betas) and all related service packs.
>>
>> The standard agreement, which resembles those under which IBM has
>> traditionally made source code of its operating systems
>available, allows
>> customers to consult the Windows source code when debugging their own
>> applications and to better integrate Windows with individual
>corporate
>> environments.
>>
>> However, the agreement does not allow customers to modify or
>customize the
>> code, and Microsoft anticipates that problems or bugs that
>customers may
>> find in Windows will be reported to Microsoft for resolution
>through normal
>> support channels.
>



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