Microsoft Expands Access to Windows Source Code

Brain Stew writes "According to eWeek, MVPs living within thecountries that have signed up with Microsoft's Windows Source code program can now see it for free (limited source code of course). 'Microsoft Corp. has expanded the Source Licensing Program under which its Most Valued Professionals get access to the source code for the Windows operating system. The Redmond, Wash., company said on Monday that all the MVPs within the Microsoft platforms community and living within the 27 eligible countries worldwide will now be able to access Windows source code at no cost. '"

Comments

Very bad move for Microsoft...

[drdreff]

One of the wonders of closed and proprietary code is that you have the freedom to change certain things with impunity. All of the code that they release will be essentially frozed with all of the bugs in place. One of the very things that has kept MS afloat all this time is the painful process of maintinaing (mostly) adequate backwards compatibility. This has lead to much of the bloat and kruft that is within windows today. It takes much longer to make a breaking change to code that others may be depending on. When you make that code visible, you can almost guarantee that there will be dependencies created.

Re:actual source?

[boots@work]

Have a look through a few issues of Microsoft Systems Journal. I haven't read it recently, but a few years ago you would regularly see article introductions like "You may have been wondering how Microsoft application XX did cool feature YY..." It goes on to document an interface not previously publicly mentioned (and says so).

Therefore, from Microsoft's own press organ, we know that there are interfaces which are used by shipping Windows applications before they're publicly documented. Some of these are later revealed in MSJ, but there's no reason to think that they necessarily reveal all of them. At the very least Microsoft apps have a one-cycle lead time on competitors; at most the competitors never find out.

There is no reason to think the API documents an existing one, although there are very many duplicated interfaces on Windows. It might do something not otherwise possible, or might wrap up several existing functions.

But anyhow: why would there *not* be such an interface? Microsoft never promised they would document every aspect of their systems. Clearly it is in there interests for the OS to help their own applications.

Re:Compile It?

[cpghost]

That's exactly the reason why Microsoft offering source code insight to the chinese (or other) government is a joke. As long as they can't compile everything themselves, they can never be sure to have a non-bugged (no pun intended) binary distribution.

Re:Shared source will not work for MS

[black mariah]

You are aware that not even te GPL requires anonymous people to be given the code, right? That the only requirement is that the code be given to whoever binaries are distributed to. Freely available source is not mandatory.