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Microsoft Shared Source -- With a Twist
chill writes "Microsoft is now willing to share all the source code to WinCE that they don't license from others. This includes the rights to alter the code and sell the altered code! Of course, they want copies of the changes, but the program is FREE." There's another story at Windowsfordevices.com.
This looks like an excellent opportunity for MS to make more money, and spend less on development costs. From the articles it appears that if I modify the code in a really good, general purpose way -- they get a copy of it back for free. They can then incorporate the changes and sell it royality free (to me). But if I sell my modified version, I have to pay royalities per copy.
Whole new twist on outsourcing your development activities to save money.
Seems they didn't listen to themselves
Jeroen
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Microsoft pledges it won't incorporate the changed portions into CE for six months after the modifier begins selling its product. It says it will pay no royalties to such alterers, because "it's of mutual benefit," Mundie said. .....
If it is altered in a generally useful way, such as to work optimally with a particular processor, Mundie said Microsoft expects the alterer to license the new version back to itself (Microsoft), for free, for incorporation into future versions.
So, if you write code to improve Win CE, not only does it become Microsoft's code, but you don't get paid for your work either! Let the Microsoft bashing begin!
This is a business admission that the market share for winCE is, in fact, dropping like a stone. The embedded market uses Linux, which allows the tailoring of capabilities, a general understanding and lots of third party documentation ( like o'Rielly). And, the development platform is congruent to the target platform - increasing productivity.
I would not use WinCE for a design, and I am a hardware engineer, with a real need to keep the costs way down. WinCE was 50 bucks, which is a lot of money in an embedded product.
And, dammit, even being fairly inarticulate in software, I have been able in the past to debug the hardware using linux - even if I had to learn the software tools to do it, on the run, as it were.
Others probably have similar experiences.
This is progress?
they're hoping to use 'free labor' to submit bug fixes :)
and seriously, what the world fixes for free in CE, is probably indicative of a root error in the original code base
Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
that the only way to gain marketshare in the handheld arena is to go open source. There are many well entrenched companies in this area and they are making it difficult for MS to gain marketshare. Windows in desktops is different because they have a monopoly and there is no viable competition(excluding Llinux). MS is relatively a newcomer in the mobile market and one has to keep in mind that WinCE is reduced bloatware unlike Palm or Symbian which are built for mobility from ground up. Samsung was supposed to release a WinCE mobile device but it switched to Symbian. Same case with Sendo which is right now in a legal battle with MS. The tactics of MS is similar to its media player initiative for Linux. It does not hurt MS because it does not get any significant money from media player anyways. Many people have commented on the Dell Axim which is pretty much the cheapest WinCE device you can get and they are not much impressed with it other than the screen. The software is buggy and it just does'nt work as nicely as the Palm's. My .02 $
"What percentage of CE source code is available?"..."as close to 100% as we can make it -- we can't release sources that belong to other companies."
As it's not 100% anyone who wants to re-distribute CE is going to have to fill in the gaps left by the code MS can't pass on.
As soon as they fill those holes, they will have to pass the new code back to MS.
MS can then ditch the pesky dependance on other companies code, which is probably making a dint in each sale.
Question is, are MS obliged to make the code they get back from this program freely available, if so great, if not then they probaly only have to do this for a year or so, wait till all the holes get filled and release a new version of CE where they have 100% of the code royalty free.
Spell checker (c) creative spelling inc. (aka my dyslexic brain)
That is exactly why the right to redistribute derived versions of code is so important.
What happens if you fix a bug or security hole? It seems like you'll have to hand over your fix to Microsoft, which promises not to incorporate it in the next six months. Hee hee.
This isnt necessarily wrong. Say I'm Wesayso, Inc. and my new KickassIII processor is the next big thing for CE machines. Everyone is going to be using them, Dell in the cheapos, Compaq in the iPaqs, etc. etc. It certainly makes sense for me to take the source, optimize CE for it, and make sure that my product is stable, as opposed to letting MS do it themselves and screwing up like they usually do.
Granted, it seems wrong on its face, but MS is right for a change. Wesayso gets as much benefit (an optimized CE version that they make sure is correctly coded) as Microsoft does (free labor).
Although I welcome the (partial) opening of the source code; the open source community needs to take care that it isn't bitten. Think what could happen: The samba team makes a new advance in unpicking a part of the SMB protocol; M$ says ``they only did it because they had access to our source code from WinCE''. There then rages a huge debate that Samba is tainted by proprietary code ...
Making their code more readily available could be a double edged sword.
They first ignored Free Software, later on they attacked it with arrogance, now they are switching from FUD (mainly misleading arguments against free software) to mimicking (we share our source too, you see ? We are open too, really).
I guess from my view the bottomline here is:
If nothing else, Free Software is playing a role on balancing the arrogant power of MS. And I personally think it is doing much more than that ;-)
Read the article - whatever improvements you make you MUST sublicense back to microsoft.
No ownership, no copyright, just a perpetual, nonexclusive sublicense. You can patent your ideas and relicense them to 3rd parties, as long as MS gets a sublicense on your improvements so they can improve WinCE.
Also they state that they will not incorporate said improvements for 6 months after you put them in, therefore you get your 6 month competitive advantage and then MS gets to roll it back into WinCE main.
You think they'd let someone look at it without an NDA? A person who's looked at that code could contaminate anything related they work on -- which is why groups like the XBox on Linux project specifically asked that you not help them if you are a professional XBox developer.
Lets make a pretty similar analogy here.
You are a car manufacturer, and make a new kickass car. Now OPEC gas is not elite enough for this new car of yours, so you make this additive which adds octane to the OPEC gas.
The kiddies that buy your car go to the gas station, and they buy gas which has the additive in it, which they pay more for (or the same considering microsoft isnt going to make it cost MORE for the improved CE), and the money from the gas all goes to the OPEC gas company.
You developed the additive, but do not benefit by the sale of it.
This would not happen outside the monopolistic software industry
[I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
MSFT definitely sees that linux is a major competitor. But since it can't buy it out or, so far, take it to court (win or dry out the assets during court proceedings), it has to see how linux thrives.
One way linux does so well is it's open source. Everyone takes a gander and likes to know what's going under the hood. Some people take the initiative and makes tweaks or enhance the code and submit them to the CVS tree (kind of like a thousand unpaid monkeys).
Microsoft knows this and are willing to open the source to areas that can benefit from an open source project. Of course this only includes portions of the code that won't show any trade secrets or anything promised to be secluded (either by legal law bindings or illegal means... who knows).
This can benefit MSFT, b/c there's always companies out there that see winCE as the only viable option for development. This gives them a bit more control over the product they're developing, a better chance to customize.
That's upsetting. The biggest problem with handheld devices is that whenever a new product line comes along, the manufacturer starts almost from square one again to write the operating system. (Fortunately this is less-so the case with PDAs).
Lots of wasted effort goes into rewriting the same functionality over and over again, and ISVs have to deal with hell to write portable applications. What's that? Java? BREW? Please, that garbage isn't going to encourage innovation on handhelds.
You'll only start seeing real innovation when developers have raw unfettered access to the entire phone, and that's just not feasible until 90% of the phones are running the same platform. Right now all of the manufacturers and providers are getting hardons for how much proprietary pay-by-use junk they can cram into their phones, and in the meanwhile the people with ideas can't see them realized.
These suckers are starting to come with internet access and GPS, coupled with a portable device which can retain state you have bundled some amazing potential, but it's all being retarded by the entire industry's inability to cooperate.
It troubles me that Microsoft of all people is the one that sees this and is trying its damndest to make Windows CE the unified handheld platform, so much so that they're even opening the code to some degree.
I suppose if Windows CE becomes the ubiquitous standard, it paves the way for Linux (or whatever) to be an easy drop in replacement, but it's easier to capture unclaimed marketshare than to fight Microsoft for it...
Advice to vendors: Adopt a standard now -- Linux may be a good one. Don't wait for Microsoft to get its act together, because by the time they come onto your radar it'll be too late.
Time to spout off about things you don't want to understand. OSS BAD NO MATTAR WUT I KNOW OR DON'T KNOW
The real issue as many people have pointed out here before is the "poisoning" of developers. The companies who go with the shared source program are going to be signing up with a contract that will make it nearly impossible for those developers to work on GNU (and potentially other) OSS projects should they want to in the future. In the end, this may not matter since the developer who write for Windows don't typically work on OSS projects. (NOTE that I said 'typically', not 'never')
For all the caring about the "software ecosystem" that Microsoft proports to be doing, they are actually a lot more like the tobacco companies who knew that Nictotine was addictive but put it out there anyway. Microsoft is going to put this out there and wait for people to bite. Then when some of these places decide that they've had enough with the WinCE and want to try a Linux or BSD kernel for their devices, MS will come down hard on them. Worse still... MS might wait and then come down on the projects that the former Shared Source coders contributed to claiming IP infringement. The end restul being that the project is either shut down or set back really seriously.
Un-news
Well I like the fact that microsoft is looking at adopting mozilla like (i think) licences
Microsoft owns the copyright.
You are not allowed to distribute the source.
You must pay royalties to Microsoft for every device incorporating the binary (modified or not).
You can make changes and I think you don't have to give them back to Microsoft. If you want to avoid repatching everything on Microsoft's next release you can hand the changes back to Microsoft for inclusion.
AFAICT it's exactly like "Shared Source" except that you are allowed to compile it and distribute the binaries - but only as part of a hardware device.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
"So, if you write code to improve Win CE, not only does it become Microsoft's code, but you don't get paid for your work either! Let the Microsoft bashing begin!"
How much do the Linux distributors pay you for your contributions?
$0
I don't see the point of this complaint. This program seems to cover every positive aspect attributed to open source. i.e. you have the source, you can contribute changes back to insure they are in the next release, so on and so forth.
From a corporate perspective this all looks good.
This is great from Microsoft's angle, for a few reasons:
A: MS gets goodwill from one of the new-growing areas of programming and computing.
B: MS gets, for free, all enhancements anyone makes to its CE OS.
C: Modified WinCE a go-go. This quite possibly will foster greater acceptance for the OS itself.
D: I'm not sure, but I believe that MS isn't going to have to provide any tech support for modified software.
E: MS gets to dip its toes in the water of shared-source. It's easy to see this as a tentative step in the right direction for better MS operating systems in the future.
Good idea, Microsoft...
*gives Bill Gates a cookie*
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
"Do you honestly believe that Microsoft is doing this to help developers from the goodness of their hearts, and not to gain competitive advantage? Please"
Of course not, nor did he say so. Helping developers gains you competitive advantage. Microsoft has always understood this. If you're writing software for their OS, you're helping to maintain their market position, and you'll find they're really quite nice to you.
Beyond all that has been mentioned already, you have to have a passport account to download the source. Gimme a break!
Do they inherit the copyright to the changes? Can they then release your code as their own? Can they use your code in other products?
It's all in the article. I quote:
(italics mine)
In all I see this as a good thing. They can't beat open source, and are testing the waters with their embeded product. This is a good choice, since embeded development would probably benefit most from having the source available.
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
No it's not as good as the GPL [for us].
... If WinCE systems benefit form this transparency of design - what is the incentive to go to linux (a transparent OS designed for stability) ...(provocative?)
This is a lot better for M$ though (both than GPL and fully closed source) - WinCE is used a lot in embedded systems - what do they need? STABILITY - what's the best way to get this? OPEN SOURCE to allow full transparent interaction with the OS and underlying system.
So, like everything M$, its good for M$, it is not a move towards an open source strategy, it is not a sudden moral rash, it is a move to improve the stability of WinCE systems which will benefit M$.