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.

Comments

Another Money Making Opportunit

[abcxyz]

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.

Re:Another Money Making Opportunit

[oddjob]

The difference between this program and the GPL is more than just superficial. Under the GPL, all parties are on equal footing, and have equal insentive to share their work. Under microsoft's new plan, they reserve the right to sell your work for a profit without paying for it, but they don't give the same right to you.

Splat!

[JumpingBull]

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.

Cheap way to fill in the holes...

[jmacgill]

"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.

Nothing like the Mozilla license

[XNormal]

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.