On the company's Shared Source Initiative Web site, Microsoft on Tuesday posted details of three new licences. Each licence is short and designed to be easy to understand and use, the software giant said.
Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative is a programme to allow third parties, such as other software companies and large customers, to see portions of Microsoft source code. Viewing the code enables other companies to create closer integration with Microsoft products, such as Windows CE, or build new products based on that code.
Until now, Microsoft had more than 10 licences, many of which are specific to products or to the type of audience, such as academics, systems integrators, software developers or government customers.
"As with other individuals and organisations, we too have seen the proliferation of source code licences become problematic," Jason Matusow, the director of Microsoft's Shared Source programme, wrote in a blog on Wednesday. "We had 10+ Shared Source licences, and as more and more product groups sought to use source code releases as a means to work with developer communities, this number was only going to rise further."
Although Microsoft does allow third-parties to view portions of its code, none of the company's shared-source licences are considered open source by the Open Source Initiative.
The three new licenses are:
Microsoft Permissive Licence: Designed primarily for developer-related products, it enables developers to view, modify and redistribute Microsoft source code. Licensees can charge for modifications made to the original source code.
Microsoft Community Licence: Meant for collaborative development projects, this reciprocal licence requires licensees to distribute changes to Microsoft code in source code form. This licence is modelled after the popular Mozilla Public Licence.
Microsoft Reference Licence: the most restrictive licence, it allows people to view but not modify Microsoft code, only for reference purposes.
Open source companies and products are one of the biggest challenges to Microsoft. But the company over the past few years has made efforts to work better with open source products such as Linux and to adopt open source development practices, particularly with developers.
In a statement describing the three new licences, the company indicated that it intends to make more of its products available through its shared-source licences. "These new licences represent a broad spectrum of approaches needed to facilitate an ever-growing rich set of technologies for release," the statement said.
On Tuesday, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2005 Starter Kits, a set of sample applications and templates. With licences under the Microsoft Permissive Licence, the kits provide source code, documentation and the right to modify the code for commercial or non-commercial uses.
In November, Microsoft intends to release version 2.0 of the company's Bluetooth wrapper, which is designed to make it easier to write .Net applications for Bluetooth devices.
