Even though Microsoft is making its crown jewels--its Windows source code--more widely available to selected hardware vendors, academic institutions and software vendors, the company is working overtime to distance itself from the open software movement that made such code-sharing a common expectation and standard practice.
"Our choice is to give the customers what they want, and that is standards for interoperability, more than source code," said Craig Mundie, Microsoft senior vice president of advanced technologies.
On Thursday, Mundie addressed an audience of academics, students and press at New York University's Stern School of Business. He was invited by the school to speak on "innovation in the software industry."
Mundie spent a little more than an hour outlining what he called Microsoft's "shared source philosophy." While he acknowledged that open-source software and "commercial" software share some of the same underlying goals and philosophies, during most of his talk he chose to highlight why Microsoft believes the open-source business model is unsound and unsustainable.
During his speech, Mundie said that Microsoft plans to extend over the next few weeks its Windows 2000 customer source-code license agreements to 12 additional countries. He did not name the countries, but did say that they would be ones that had "an intellectual property protection regime."
Microsoft originally launched a program via which it broadened its Windows source license to include Windows 2000 customers last year, and discussed the new program, dubbed the Enterprise Source Licensing Program, in March.
Via the new licensing agreement, Microsoft has more than 1,000 customers who need access to the Windows source code. So far, 100 are evaluating and two dozen have signed up, according to Microsoft officials. Unlike the open-source GNU General Public License, the Windows 2000 customers are not allowed to modify the source themselves.
Microsoft also is developing a program via which ISVs (independent software vendors) will also be granted Windows source licenses, Mundie said. Microsoft plans to launch that program later this year. He said he did not know how many ISVs will be accepted into the program, but it will be those who are supporting Microsoft's .Net "expanded Internet environment" initiatives.
Mundie added that Microsoft plans to extend its OEM source-code license agreements later this year as well. Microsoft plans to add an academic site-license option to its existing Windows CE Platform Builder program.
Microsoft licenses Windows and Windows CE to OEMs already. The company claims that a dozen OEMs currently have access to all or part of the Windows source code. But the goal of the academic site-license option is to allow students and university applications to do more Windows CE development, he said.
