Microsoft Corp. has expanded the Source Licensing Program under which its Most Valued Professionals get access to the source code for the Windows operating system. The Redmond, Wash., company said on Monday that all the MVPs within the Microsoft platforms community and living within the 27 eligible countries worldwide will now be able to access Windows source code at no cost.
Microsoft Expands Access to Windows Source Code
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I read somewhere that the code they distribute does not compile. Is this true?
I read somewhere that the code they distribute does not compile. Is this true?
That would not surprise me one bit. I’m sure they would just like to limit the use to viewing, and not compiling/using.
it’s nice to know they value some more than others
How do these countries know what Microsoft is releasing really is Microsoft Windows code? They have stressed that open source is an industry risk. Why would they “risk” their best product? To make the nation leaders happy? Microsoft had better come clean real fast!
Don’t they have the right too?
maybe because those countries dont hav reverse engineering laws?
Microsoft: “Please fill out these forms, including your name, your current and past five addresses and phone numbers, the name and current and past two addresses and phone numbers of your closest living relatives, your Social Security number or your country’s equivalent, your driver’s license number, your Microsoft Passport ID and password, and three vials of blood for DNA testing purposes, so that we may better serve you papers notifying you that we are sueing you for copyright infringement for any programs you write for the rest of your life after viewing our code.”
Windows is only a platform, whatever company can control that platform essentially controls the world of computing.
Microsoft products are popular only because of this fact, and are only decent because they had to compete with Apple, and tried their best to show-down the probably trillions in dollars of lawsuits filed against them (most likely only a few hundred billion actually valid).
Microsoft does not make all of their money from Windows, I have read (wish I could find the sources) from reliable sources far in the past that Windows was almost a no-gain sales profit, but naturally really boosts revenues.
Microsoft makes their money through Office, Games, some hardware (which they are ever more rapidly expanding), and other sectors. I’m certain that they probably also rely on corporate investments to help bolster profits. Simle smart business.
Even if Windows is a huge drain on resources (which I’m sure it is not) having control of the platform allows them to write a game that uses secret APIs, or perhaps even extend the existing APIs on the system itself, so as to lower the overhead other game makers have. Limited example, I know, but that is actually the primary basis of most of these huge lawsuits (such as the DOJ’s).
Take it easy, folks. According to Andrew Morton, just 100 salaried developers, paid to work on Linux by their employers, contribute 97% of code into the Linux core.
In total, about 1,000 developers contribute changes to Linux on a regular basis. Use the math: it means 900 people, volunteers, add rest of the code to the core: whopping 3% of it.
Everyone else is allowed to watch but not touch without the permission.
Morton noted that it is rare that a significant change would be submitted from someone who is completely unknown to the core developers.
All in all, other than these 1,000 geeks, the world in large, all its 6-7 billion people, is as active participant in Linux Open Source where you can contribute to the community by submitting your code changes, as in Microsoft Shared Source where you can view but not touch.
No wonder that number of changes submitted by the independent developers working on Linux in their spare is shrinking. Morton said that (except “no wonder”- it’s mine).
Linux is increasingly developed by a small pool of corporate-sponsored developers.
Which means: stop whining about Microsoft, pretty soon it’ll be very hard to find a difference between two camps. May be one will sell you license while other will sell you entitlement– both per CPU for annual fee, but that is as much difference as you can get.
“””
…some hardware (which they are ever more rapidly expanding)…
“””
Which they will need to do so that they can not only meet, but BEAT revenue expectations every quarter. That’s pretty hard for a company that has 90%+ of the desktop market. But if they don’t, the house-of-cards known as stock-options falls, and it’s “Goodnight, Irene.” They’ve already shown they are more than willing to take a loss on one item (X-box) in order to make money on another item (X-box games) and lock-in a market.
The cost is, once you have looked at their code your mind is forever tainted and can not contribute to or participate in any open source projects without risk of being sued by Microsoft.
The cost is, once you have looked at their code your mind is forever tainted and can not contribute to or participate in any open source projects without risk of being sued by Microsoft.
This does not appear to be a problem for the thousands of programmers who have worked and Microsoft and now find themselves employed elsewhere or even – shock, horror – writing Open Source code.
having control of the platform allows them to write a game that uses secret APIs
Support that claim or retract it. You are just throwing darts with your eyes closed.
Well, I don’t know about games, but I used to work creating extensions to Visual Studio .NET in the VSIP program before it became public, and there were many undocumented features (methods, interfaces, etc) on several areas of the environment that I get to know after several months working with support people and that they learned too after talking with VS developers!
I could not say “secret API”, but there are at least undocumented ones …;)
if they do it the way I’ve heard they handle the Government Security Program – look, don’t touch, and you’re only allowed to look at it if you’ve submitted a request to see a specific file, and you’re allowed to look only at that file.
It’s the bad way with Microsoft software, because of MS’s habit of embedding what they want to include regardless of sense, in order to monopolize a given market. So, if you can only see a given file, and that only after grievous bureaucratic harm, there’s very little you can actually do to scrutinize and debug it. You’ve only got the surface. It’s shallow.
And diving into shallow water’s not nice on the neck, or so I’ve heard.