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Microsoft Planning on Opening Up More Source

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the take-a-look-at-this dept.

mhh5 writes "It's a bit surprising, but it looks like Microsoft is considering making some of its code open source. Obviously, Microsoft's OS or Office are not going to be opened, and it seems like Microsoft is just trying to get more developers, but it's a interesting change of policy."

5 of 482 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by secondsun · · Score: 4, Informative


    This is purly a business move aimed at PHB's. IBM has made money telling people that Open Source is good and MS is getting in on the right for free.
    It could also be that they are trying to get in on the good side of budding developers. I don't know any other CS majors that use Windows on their main desktop and I know of no CS majors who write their code in Windows. At Georgia Tech everything in class is done in Linux after the first Scheme class. If the future coders don't know Microsoft stuff they won't use it or push it in their jobs.

    --
    There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
  2. Re:Open vs. Shared? by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Informative

    Common Public License, or CPL, from IBM. But is all written in legalese, not sure what will that imply in plain words. At least they are saying that this is an open source license, to make a difference with Shared Source that is definately not.

  3. Microsoft's 2 open source projects by jimbolaya · · Score: 4, Informative
    For the of you that did RTFA, you may have had the same reaction as I did: The article twice mentions that Microsoft has already open sourced two projects, but neither time mentions what they are.

    Well, a bit of Googling turned 'em up: Windows Template Library (WTL) and Windows Installer XML (WiX).

    --

    There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.

  4. Re:Microsoft's 2 open source projects...are CPL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    As indicated in the article, these sourceforge projects uses the "Common Public License" (CPL).

    This led to the question of what is the CPL and how does this differ from other licenses. A little Googling on my part turned up this site that compares the open source licenses.

    The most significant difference between the CPL and the GPL involves the license of derivative works.

    -cmh

  5. OK, Here's the Latest (Today) IIS Exploit by MooseByte · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Name an instance of IIS being automatically exploited. I'll cite you two Apache holes in return."

    Here you go, freshly under investigation, spreading as I type.

    From the article: "Government and industry experts warned late Thursday of a mysterious, large-scale Internet attack against thousands of popular Web sites. The virus-like infection tries to implant hacker software onto the computers of all Web site visitors. [ ... ] The mysterious infection appeared to target at least one recent version of software by Microsoft Corp. to operate Web sites, called its Internet Information Server, popular among businesses and organizations."

    That was fun. Your turn.