Slashdot Mirror
Windows CE Device Emulator Goes Shared Source
An anonymous reader writes "It seems that Microsoft has released their device emulator for Windows CE under a shared source license making it available to experimentation and teaching. From the article: 'The Device Emulator can be built as a standalone Windows application, or as the default emulator within Visual Studio 2005 running under the Device Emulator Manager, according to Microsoft. A 473 KB compressed file containing the Device Emulator shared source code is available for download' on the Microsoft site."
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/0 7/17/1838240
was posted by timothy....
After stumbling upon a lot of bugs of WinCE on handheld barcode scanner I hope that helps MS Developers make software with less bugs.
Or wait...
...although the license doesn't allow developing a non-MS platform using the emulator, or porting the emulator to a non-MS platform. So all you Linuxy types are shit out of luck! ;)
Still nice to see things become a little more open, I suppose.
Game dev and music blog
... oopsy dupsy! no balls!! :)
I forgot to be anonymous.
Now, if only they would release a free IDE for Windows Mobile. Currently you need Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, which will set you back about $249. And no, Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition do not support Windows Mobile.
whoa deja vu
Walmart's trying to emulate Open Source? No, wait, I mean, Microsoft's trying to emulate MySpace? Sorry, too many articles about too many vile scumbags pretending to be cool in too short a period of time. I'm getting them all mixed up. :)
"All you guys who want to be Windows CE "shared source" developers, line up over here..."
*crickets*
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
...although the license doesn't allow developing a non-MS platform using the emulator, or porting the emulator to a non-MS platform. So all you Linuxy types are shit out of luck! ;)
Not realy. We already have a few nice emulators. ARM emulators. PC emulators and that sort of thing.
Still nice to see things become a little more open, I suppose.
I don't think that it's much of anything. You can only use it for academic purposes. So only people in universities and such are allowed to look at the code. You can probably modify it, but of course you can't use any the code you make for anything beyond this little emulator.
With real open source software if you decide to do something, oh say, write a thesis on some new debugging technic or software development model and you base your work around some free software you'd be able to go out and build your own business or create a new product based off of that code. Quite a few people have made livings off of stuff they started in college.
With this shared source stuff there is a pretty big chance that if you try to do some open source stuff based off of what you learned from hacking around with it that Microsoft will be able to go after you for patent violations or leaking their IP. I suppose that if you make some closed source stuff that is based around Windows CE and helps them sell licenses and such it would make them very happy and they wouldn't bother you.. but if you start developing your own product on somebody else's platform and use what you learned from hacking on Microsoft's code to make open source/free software stuff better at MS's detriment then they'd may go after you if you got to big.
Same old game plan to push a generational business model.
Get a generation interested (read addicted) and then sell up.
Lock in the hardware and software and wait for the developer productivity to pay it all back.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think MS is getting better these days. They released the .Net Framework source code (called ROTOR) under the same license (Shared Source). Though you can't use it commercially, it actually compiles on multiple platforms. Good for students and guys working on alternate implementations, though you cant lift code from it. They also started a new code sharing community called CodePlex.
//HACK-HACKs and //FIXME:BAD-BAD-WAAAH-WAAH code. The .Net codebase is awesome, so it was easier to open. (Not saying thats the only criteria).
Eventually they might open up a lot of platform code, maybe even Windows itself. I still remember BillG saying that way back in 2000, that they might someday. Among other things it will depend on the quality of source code, you really wouldn't want people to see all those
Perhaps, with the new guys sitting on top, people like Ray Ozzie MS might change. Hopefully they "know" that openness is freedom, and freedom will last.
Life is just a conviction.
Perhaps you meant:
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
for (int i = 0; i < argc; i++)
suck(argv[i]);
return(0);
}
Besides, all the ballsucking is already in windows.h
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The above is most likely humour. Slashdot foot icon goes here.
Does this emulator freeze or go wonky every couple of days like real WinCE devices?
Has anyone ever seen a WinCE device that dosn't fall over frequently?
hey released the .Net Framework source code (called ROTOR) under the same license (Shared Source). Though you can't use it commercially, it actually compiles on multiple platforms. Good for students and guys working on alternate implementations, though you cant lift code from it. They also started a new code sharing community called CodePlex.
Unlike, say, Stallman, I have no problem with closed source software; I think closed source software will fail in the long run, but I also think it is perfectly legitimate for companies to attempt to make closed source software their business model.
In contrast, I think "shared source" is sleazy and evil: it's an attempt to entangle students and users in proprietary software licenses and to get people to work for Microsoft for free. Sun has tried to do the same thing with their "community licenses".
If someone offers you source code, don't look at it unless it comes under a genuine open source license; anything else is too risky.
I recently migrated off an HP iPaq 5450 to a Palm LifeDrive, solely because I couldn't deal with data loss. Because it uses DRAM if the device loses all power, data loss. I had a couple of crashes, data loss.
Sure, I got around that by backing up frequently, but still what a drag. I'd keep using the iPaq if it was a little more robust about data.
Now the LifeDrive you ask? Well, it's got it's own set of problems, data loss (knock on my wooden head) not one of them.
I admit I'm nostalgic; nobody has ever matched my Apple Newton (MP2K) or Apple eMate for reliability...
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By the way.... writing "char** argv" is retarded... unless you're coding in D.. but then you'd probably write char[][]...
char **argv, **foobar, **etc;
char** argv, foobar, etc;
Guess which does what?
"char**" is not a datatype.
With the SCO lawsuit dying out, it looks like MSFT needs new ways to entangle FOSS. Hence, firing execs using pure FUD against Linux, and putting on a friendly face on "open interfaces" and placing more source code we're not allowed to use out there. There is a certain class of cretin that will incorporate "shared source" code into an OSS project. The legal departments of large corporations are already terrified of FOSS (from the SCO lawsuit) and will require indemnification and eventually all OSS projects will have to go through rigorous audits to show they contain no code from tainted MSFT source releases. Thanks MSFT, for adding massive code auditing overhead to OSS development!
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
I think that the Slashdot story queue should be made shared source. Maybe that would help prevent these dups.
Shut the fuck up, noob.
When you actually move out from your parents basement and get a real job maintaining code for a living, come back and tell us why it's so retarded again.
Cool, Microsoft just gave me a great VM to build my mailware in. Thanks!
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
The Dreamcast was a windows CE machine, does this mean it'll be easier to emulate in future?
I heard that very few games actually used the windows CE libraries, prefering to use Sega's custom ones, so perhaps this doesn't help much. Anybody know more?
It's a Non-Disclosure Agreement dressed up by marketing. Calling 'shared' source or anything else for that matter won't change that.
You cannot use the emulator on/with/for any non-MS operating systems at all:
So the point of emulating Windows on Windows is what? The restrictions on the emulator seem to prevent any real use. Perhaps it's just to get some code out there so that MS can later go after Samba or other competition. SCO, round II, or something like that.
A strong case has be made elsewhere that the NDAs governing 'shared' source exists mostly to prevent developers from working on any non-MS platforms at all, not just Linux. Even viewing MS' code can taint a developer so that later work can be attacked, not necessarily successfully, in court claiming violation of the NDA.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Actually, "char **" is a datatype, "pointer to pointer to char", and since argv is of type "array of pointer to char", and since an array by name is simply the address of the zeroeth element (i.e. given int x[3], x is by definition == &x[0]), therefore "char **argv" and "char *argv[]" are exactly equivalent.
Here's a little experiment for you:
char *p = "foo1";
char q[] = {'f', 'o', 'o', '2', '\0'};
char *r[] = {"foo3", "foo4", "foo5"};
printf("1 = '%s'\n2 = '%s'\n3 = '%s'\n4 = '%s'\n5 = '%s'\n6 = '%s'\n", p, &p[0], q, &q[0], r[0], &r[1][0]);
Ask your teacher how this works.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
What he meant is, that ** is not part of the 'type' definition in
char** a, b, c;
After the above line, a would have type (char **), but b and c would be of type char - which can be a surprise for novice programmers.
Basically, do it however you like, but put them in separate declarations if you're going to mix pointers and non-pointers.
What??!!
"char **" is the type definition for "a". Yes, the "**" is part of that datatype. It's a pointer type, most emphatically NOT a character type.
"char **a, b, c" is a mixed declaration; simply bad programming, and the perpetrator deserves what happens to him.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
how does that double your pleasure? you still have only one cock.