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[ossig] MS expands WinCE 5.0 'shared' source licence
Microsoft will begin shipping the latest version of Windows CE, version
5.0, on 9 July, the company said today.
And in a bid to better position its embedded OS against open source
alternatives - "eliminate many of the barriers to entry found in
traditional embedded development", as Microsoft puts it - the software
behemoth said it will expand the terms of its WinCE source-code sharing
licence programme.
The new licence will allow all developers to ship commercial products
derived from changes they have made to the WinCE source code and -
crucially - keep their code to themselves.
Essentially, Microsoft is offering a 'cake and eat it too' alternative to
the GPL, which mandates that code derived from source material issued
under the licence must likewise be made available to all and sundry. This
kind of enforced sharing has caused concern among some manufacturers who
would like to use an open source OS, like Linux, as the basis for future
products but are wary of releasing their own version of the software back
to the open source community and to their competitors.
Microsoft's WinCE 5.0 "shared source" licence allows them an alternative
option: to leverage shared source code, but keep the results proprietary.
"We believe that the ability to ship commercial derivatives, with no
obligation to share customisations, will greatly appeal to device makers -
all of whom want to maintain the rights to their competitive advantage,"
said Ya-Qin Zhang, corporate VP of Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices
Division.
Not that this is a great innovation of Microsoft's part - the FreeBSD
licence has essentially done this sort of thing for years, recognising
that not every line of source code a developer comes up with has a place
in the public domain.
And Microsoft still requires anyone wanting to ship WinCE-derived code
commercially to buy a run-time licence before they do so.
[dinesh's note: dont need to pay runtime fees for BSD licensed code]
WinCE 5.0's formal release follows the shipment of a Technology Preview
Kit in March 2004. Previously known by its codename, 'Macallan', version
5.0 run on a "dramatically increased" range of processors, including ARM,
MIPS, x86 and SuperH platforms - though that doesn't necessarily mean
future Windows Mobile offerings will. In addition, Microsoft is touting
improved security and multimedia features.
The OS will ship with the maximum level of security enabled, forcing OEMs
to reduce the level of protection on a design-by-design basis, rather than
encouraging them to raise it if they think it necessary. The real-time OS
will also feature Windows Error Reporting, enabling devices to report
glitches to the manufacturer, for a faster turnaround of bug-fixes, which
can be delivered across the network.
WinCE 5.0 will also feature Direct3D Mobile, a COM-based version of
Windows XP's DirectX multimedia API. Direct3D will work with Wireless MMX,
the Pentium-derived multimedia instructions Intel is building into its
latest XScale CPU, the PXA270. It is also expected to offer DirectDraw for
2D graphics and DirectShow for camera and video digitisation support,
which will be included in the Windows Mobile product line.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/ms_windows_ce_5/
Regards, /\_/\ "All dogs go to heaven."
dinesh@alphaque.com (0 0) http://www.alphaque.com/
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