Microsoft talks about sharing Windows code

By Bruce Meyerson
Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK — Microsoft Corp. plans to give its paying customers more access to the underlying software code for its Windows operating systems, but still rejects the business logic behind Linux and other programming codes that are freely available to all.

	Links:
•	Microsoft
•	Collabnet

"We do recognize ... that people do have legitimate business needs to have access to the source of our products," said Craig Mundie, senior vice president for advanced strategy.

But, he added quickly, "Our goal is to meet the needs of our customers, not to benefit the community at large."

Mundie said a free licensing program for buyers of the Windows 2000 operating system is being expanded from the United States to 12 additional countries. The source code licenses are designed for client companies in any industry that want to develop customized Windows applications to run their businesses.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company is also developing a program for licensing its Windows source code to independent software vendors that want to use it for software development and support.

Other initiatives announced by Mundie would expand access for academic institutions and business partners to the source code for Windows CE, an operating system used to run portable computers and electronic organizers.

The speech left many observers puzzled, as evidenced by two conflicting accounts published early Thursday by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal in advance of Mundie's appearance at New York University's Stern School of Business.

The headline on the Times piece read "Microsoft's Set To Be Top Foe Of Free Code," while The Journal's said "Microsoft To Expand `Shared Source' Program."

Linux proponents played down the significance of Microsoft's moves and Mundie's criticisms.

"There is a limited group of people for whom what they announced today will be a benefit," said Brian Behlendorf, founder and chief technology officer of CollabNet, a company that builds software development tools that help programmers in different locations collaborate.

Even in the capitalist-minded environs of a top business school, the controversial software maker managed to provoke more than a few socialist-sounding sentiments in the question and answer session that followed Mundie's speech.

"That's not true," one student sighed loudly as Mundie stressed a distinction he felt lacking in another student's question.

Mundie, who turned prickly more than once in responding to the questions, railed against the idea that a fully open-source approach could produce even a fraction of the innovation that's been generated by the profit motive of a programming community such as Windows.

"In the open-source movement, there's not much focus on the idea that you have to make money on it," said Mundie, noting that there were 1.35 million programmers in the Windows community who paid $28.2 billion in taxes last year. By contrast, he said, the community of core Linux developers only numbers in the hundreds.

"So you don't have a huge body even in one of the more popular open source environments," he said. "So you have to ask what does that say for the long-term sustainability of that business."

Behlendorf countered that "large companies like IBM, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard have rationalized internally ways to have a combination between (open source) and commercial" software.

"Open source is not a business model. It's a technique, a tool a strategy. It's up to companies to effectively to use that strategy and make money," he said.