Commenting on the milestone, Craig Mundie, chief technology officer and senior vice president for advanced strategies and policy at Microsoft, said: "Three years ago Microsoft committed to provide customers and industry partners more background and information with respect to the design and implementation of our products by providing source code access through our Shared Source Initiative. We are continually adding new source code offerings to Shared Source. Crossing the 1-million-participants mark confirms that we're delivering value to the community."
"As a commercial company, our business model is based on selling software, but at the same time, we recognize that source code access can increase the trust some customers place in our company and our products," Mundie added. "Through the Shared Source Initiative, we have found a unique balance that both meets the needs of our customers and protects our most valuable assets."
Microsoft first began sharing Windows source code with academics in 1991, and in 2001 rolled out the Shared Source Initiative as a means to formalize a broader program of source code sharing including development and infrastructure technologies, most of which are licensed to allow developers to see, modify, and redistribute changes to the source code, according to Microsoft. Currently Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows CE 3.0, Windows CE .NET, the C#/CLI Implementations, as well as components of ASP.NET and Visual Studio .NET have source code available through the Shared Source Initiative.
The Windows CE Shared Source Premium Licensing Program (CEP) is available to companies that bring Windows CE-based devices and solutions to market. Launched in April 2003, the CEP is the first Windows CE program under the Shared Source Initiative to offer original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), silicon vendors and systems integrators full access to Windows CE source code. Full access to the source code and rights to modify and ship the code commercially enable licensees to build on top of the rich Windows CE foundation to create new and innovative devices. Shared Source Premium code empowers licensees to optimize and differentiate software and hardware for Windows CE. All licensees can modify the code, and OEMs can now commercially distribute those modifications in Windows CE-based devices.
Microsoft's Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are a diverse group of people from around the world who have demonstrated great expertise in one or more Microsoft products along with a willingness to share their expertise and their experiences with peers. Microsoft says it created the MVP Source Licensing Program as a means to raise the level of self-support from the MVP community and provide a stronger feedback loop from the MVPs to Microsoft.
"The MVP Source Licensing Program benefits the community by giving the MVPs a resource to understand exactly what is happening in Microsoft's source code. Code access is very useful in answering technical questions, some of which would be impossible to do definitively without source access. You can actually see how the code works," commented Phil Webster, a Microsoft MVP and founder of cSwing LLC. "Through the Shared Source Initiative, MVPs are provided access to information that is otherwise hard to obtain."
Additional information about Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative is available
here.
Also refer to the following WindowsForDevices.com special report:
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