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.

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.