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Microsoft Eases "Shared Source" Restrictions
An anonymous reader writes "In an effort to help device makers differentiate their products and compete more vigorously with Linux,
Microsoft is eliminating
major restrictions on the use of its "shared source" license for the
Windows CE operating system. The change, which accompanies the impending
full release of Windows CE 5.0, will counter competition from Linux
and is likely to expand Microsoft's slice of the roughly $1B embedded OS
market pie. Specifically, the new version of the Win CE Shared Source
license will, for the first time, enable developers anywhere in the
world to include modified Windows CE code within commercial products
without having to sublicense the modifications back to Microsoft.
Interestingly, the revised Shared Source terms are reminiscent of the BSD open source license, which permits the development of proprietary derivatives that need not be shared with the community, in contrast to the GPL, which obligates developers to make their modifications available to the public."
Furthermore, the software development process itself is accomplished with an inexpensive, $995 integrated toolkit which can even be downloaded on a 120-day free-trial basis as part of the Windows CE 5.0 "evaluation edition" before purchasing a license.
While I have never used Linux on a PDA (and probably won't) I can't imagine having the claim that $995 for development fees (after the trial period) is "inexpensive" especially when this is an obvious attempt to compete with Linux in the PDA market.
Doesn't mean anything. To get the benefits of "open source", you have to develop using the methodology, not just slap an "open source" license on it and expect it to magickly get better.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
Competition simply means Microsoft becomes more like the competition. ...more Unixey. ...more open source. ...etc.
However don't forget to read the fine print.
If you look at Microsoft's Shared Source license page, there's a bunch of different programs for different pieces of shared source. link here. These shared sources don't seem to create an open community, because first it's not open, and it's not a community. Open implies free, and it's clear that these sources aren't complete. You're still stuck on Microsoft's teat for the remainder of the OS. And community implies a group of equal collaborative partners. As far as I can tell, the partners are not equal. Microsoft could decide to completely change the APIs one day and leave everybody in the dirt. By missing an open community, they miss the best feature of open source.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Why don't we wait with discussing this until the actual license text is available, so that we can see what the article is talking about?
Maybe, as the "the revised Shared Source terms are reminiscent of the BSD open source license" remark in the article seems to indicate, this is actually a free software / open source license. Maybe there are still some unacceptable strings attached. How are we supposed to think something good or bad about the new license just based on this article which is obviously written by someone who is not very familar with software licenses. (The article says about the GPL that it "obligates developers to make their modifications available to the public." That is incorrect. If you distribute a GPL-licensed program to someone, you have to make sure that the recipient can get the source code. You are however not required to make modifications available to the public. In practice, modifications are very often made available to the public, but this is an important distinction to keep in mind, especially when thinking about privacy issues, and also when thinking about commercial GPL licensing of software packages for the expected number of customers is small).
Under construction: swpat politics overview article
To an individual developer $995 might be a lot of money, but for a software company that's not really all that much.
I don't see your point. In order to develop for CE you have to use their development tools and libraries. When you develop for a Linux based PDA you aren't *TIED* to any specific toolkit.
Sure, you could use QT and pay if they charge (I don't know) but you could also roll your own and end up distributing it for free if you wished.
The problem you and many others make is you look at these software prices through the eyes of an average programmer, coding stuff in his spare time. You have to realize that software like this is not targeted at such a person, but to companies that intend on developing products which are sold for profit. From that perspective, $995 is a drop in the bucket. It's less than the cost of paying a small group programmers for a day's worth of work.
"In an effort to help device makers differentiate their products and compete more vigorously with Linux"
Why do device makers need to compete with Linux? Device makers need to be able to develop software that works on both for the biggest market share.
It's an irony. Microsoft counters the GPL with an even less restrictive license.
Despite the /. summary, the new license isn't really BSD-like. It's certainly a lot more relaxed, but it doesn't let you take the original code and do whatever you want with it. This is all about letting companies ship modified *binary* versions -- there's no way, for example, to make a complete fork.
Were this truly a BSD-style license, it'd be possible to take the code base and dump it wholesale into Wine, or a Wine-CE -- enabling perfect WinCE compatibility on the Zaurus, or even on Linux desktop systems. How much you want to bet that's not possible?
Plus, aren't there still per-copy license fees? Or has Microsoft already done the IE thing and dropped that to compete?
I can't imagine having the claim that $995 for development fees
You don't think that fully supported development kit for 995$ is cheap? It cost less than red hat ES 3. Development tool kits target production environments and 995$ is not a lot of money when it comes down to it. Especially since Windows CE is the thing on PDAs (Linux support is growing but slowly).
I didn't RTFA so this probably has squat to do with anything relevant...
"It is surprising that MS is scared enough of Linux and the open-source/free software movement to be releasing some of their source code while their market share is still so ridiculously high."
Perhaps because they are losing mindshare amongst developers? This affects the long term but in a very dramatic way.
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
...and allowing you to... embed it in things?
Okay, that makes a lot of sense from their perspective, but are we supposed to be impressed by this or something?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
As the owner of the copywrite of their code, they could do this even if they released it under the GPL.
What they would not be able to do if they GPLed a version of thier code is to fold contributions back into thier non-GPL versions.
This way of thinking is very strange. If you're a company, then yes, but if you're an individual it makes no sense at all to count the hypothetical cost of everything you do. For some people like me, $995 is a very significant of money that I'd prefer to spend on a laptop, while a say, month of programming during the summer is not a cost, and maybe a benefit in terms of practice and satisfaction, apart from giving me something to do.
Also, not everybody who can write code has the ability of doing so in an commercial environment. People can perfectly have a completely different way of earning money, and may not wish to do programming professionally to avoid killing their hobby.
And anyway, this is free software we're talking about. I wouldn't write my own toolkit, I'd look at existing ones and choose the one that'd be easier to port to the required architecture.
Artifical barrier to whose entry? Microsoft's goal certainly isn't to deny as many developers as possible from developing on its platforms.
...but $5 says /.ers will still line up to take shots at MS for this move.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.