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Microsoft Discloses 14,000 Pages of Coding Secrets

Posted by Zonk on from the super-seekrit-secrets dept.

OrochimaruVoldemort writes "In an unexpected move, Microsoft has disclosed 14,000 pages of coding secrets. According to The Register: 'This is Microsoft's latest effort to satisfy anti-trust concerns of the European Union, which is possibly a tougher adversary for the company than Google.' The article mentioned that this will be done in three phases. 'Between now and June it will garner feedback from the developer community. Then, at the end of June, Microsoft will publish the final versions of technical documentation — along with definitive patent licensing terms.' Lets just hope those terms are pro open source."

4 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. stupid summary by moderatorrater · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Lets just hope those terms are pro open source Come on, guys. There's no chance in hell that the licensing terms will be pro open source and we all know it. Can we please stop propagating false hope?
  2. Why is parent flamebait? by WindBourne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MS has NEVER done anything yet that is pro open source. They have gone to great lengths to make sure that something has the appearance of such, but that it would not help. The only question should be, how far ahead is MS thinking? They have always been a pretty good chess player.

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    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  3. Re:WINE by Tatsh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I believe Wine, ReactOS, and MingW are using MSDN and "clean room reverse engineering" to develop (meaning a group writes documentation, another group implements). And they are well making sure that no code in the trees are taken from the leak of the Windows 2000 code a few years ago, and no code is written via direct reverse engineering Windows. This information MIGHT be helpful, but Microsoft is unpredictable when it comes to enforcing its patents and loves them. If I were on any of these teams, I would advise to stay away from this documentation until it is cleared with FSF that the licence is compatible with GPL (which I highly doubt it will be).

  4. Re:Oh come on now ... by Missing_dc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please,

    Improbibility is not required....

    Think business. What better source to find your bugs than the many thousands of angry coders who are not M$ fanbois. Let your hatred consume you Luke, find the flaws in the code..... or rather "Your hatred, a tool, it is. Fix that which is broken, and glory you will find" /yoda voice

    And you suckers ^h^h^h^h guys will do it for FREE!!

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    How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.