Microsoft experiments with open source
Published: 06 Apr 2004 17:10 BST
Microsoft published the code for one of its products on an open-source software development Web site late on Monday, departing from its hard-line stance against making the underlying components of its technology available to the general public.
Microsoft revealed the code for its Windows Installer XML (WiX) software, which is a set of tools used to build installation packages for the company's Windows products from XML source code. According to the information posted on the SourceForge site, a resource for open-source collaboration projects, the actual code that Microsoft published supports an environment that software developers can use for creating Windows setup packages.
A company representative was not immediately available for comment.
The software giant made the code available under the Open Source Initiative's Common Public License, which allows an application and source code to be used and modified freely as long as the resulting code is distributed under the same terms. Representative of the founding tenets of the open-source movement, the idea of the CPL is to give the public a set of software that it can freely use, improve and share. The CPL is considered somewhat more flexible than the GNU General Public License, which Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has criticised in the past for its inability to jibe with proprietary software development.
To say that Microsoft has traditionally avoided such public displays of its source code is an understatement. Despite previous initiatives that have allowed various pieces of code to be distributed under what the company calls shared-source licences, the WiX release marks the first time that Microsoft has attempted an unadulterated effort at open source. The company said earlier this year that it was considering a number of products for potential code releases under its Shared Source Initiative, which has been under way for roughly three years.
The company fervently defends the source code for the various versions of its Windows operating system, sharing it only with universities and government agencies that sign agreements not to release the code. While working versions of Microsoft's operating system have occasionally made it onto the Internet, actual source-code leaks have been rare. One of the company's concerns around the airing of its proprietary code is the possibility of increased security breaches in its products, which is an issue that already troubles Microsoft.
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