chanson

Over on .NET Undocumented, Wesner Moise is talking about how Microsoft is providing access to their source code for Rotor (the .NET runtime and C# compiler, and a base library), as well as other source code. I've also heard Microsoft has been pushing Windows NT kernel code on universities for use in hands-on operating systems courses and in research.

Don't go near it. Any of it.

I can't stress this enough.

Stay far, far away from any Microsoft source code if you want to have a future in software development.

In particular, if you're studying computer science, do not work with Windows NT kernel source code. If it's a choice between not seeing Windows source code and not taking an operating systems class, don't take the class. Get Tanenbaum's Minix book instead.

Here's why. (It's what I posted in Wesner's comments, sorry if it scans a little weird right here.)

Except nobody should actually look at Microsoft's Shared (not Open) Source.

Why? Because Microsoft believes in the idea of "contamination." That is, if you see the source code to something, and later implement something else that's similar, Microsoft believes the second implementation is a derivative work of the first. (Or at least could be considered by a court to be.)

Don't believe me? This was discussed by one of Microsoft's own Exchange server developers on the public IETF IMAP mailing list a year or two back. Microsoft has a strict policy against any employees working on or even looking at source code covered by the GNU General Public License for precisely this reason.

And yet, Microsoft is trying to distribute core source code, including operating system source code and source code for their bet-the-company runtime, far and wide. And people deride the GPL for being "viral."

This is the kind of crap that gives people a visceral hate for Microsoft. Mediocre products are nothing compared to systematic efforts to undermine developers' ability to work in their field.

They are likely to be systematic, too. Somebody with some power at Microsoft must know about both their GPL policy and about their Shared Source program, and be able to reconcile it both with their corporate goals and their conscience.

[Updated October 23, 2003, 12:25PM] According to Eric Albert, the Rotor license has a clause specifically saying you aren't contaminated if you use "information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software." He also points out that it's the GPL's vagueness about that which makes lawyers create policies like Microsoft's, and not necessarily an overall belief in the concept of "contamination."