Microsoft opens .Net code to academics

by George A. Chidi, Jr.

March 27, 2002 —

Microsoft Corp. will allow academic researchers to view the nuts and bolts of some of the .Net source code the company will use in its wide-ranging initiative to supply applications and services over the Internet, Microsoft announced Wednesday.

More than one million lines of source code for .Net will be made available under Microsoft's "Shared Source" licensing program to academic researchers in university computer-science departments. Shared source is Microsoft's response to the open-source software movement and the growing popularity of the Linux operating system. Open-source software such as Linux typically is developed by programmers collaborating and freely sharing code updates.

Under Microsoft's shared source license, developers have been able to view source code, but not modify it as they can with Linux. The shared-source implementation for .Net and Microsoft's Common Language Infrastructure for academics will run on the Windows XP operating system and the open-source FreeBSD derivative of the Unix operating system.

Windows source code is also available to academics under shared source licensing, allowing noncommercial modification for academic and research purposes.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft's .Net initiative intends to build a common platform for developing Web services and linking business processes together with XML (Extensible Markup Language).

Last month, Microsoft permitted about 150 systems integrators with partnership agreements to have source-code access under the shared-source initiative, ostensibly to aid partners' security analysis, troubleshooting, customization and privacy verification tasks.

Meanwhile, the U.S. judge overseeing the ongoing antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft ordered the company to reveal its well-guarded Windows source code to the nine states and the District of Columbia that are pursuing remedies in the case. Neither Wednesday's announcement nor the February announcement for systems integrators mention the ongoing litigation.

IDG News Service