Microsoft Shared Source Initiative Overview

Shared Source Initiative

Microsoft is sharing source code with customers, partners, governments, and competitors. Source code access improves software transparency, raising levels of trust and increasing flexibility. The Shared Source Initiative also preserves software intellectual property rights that have sustained innovation throughout the software industry for more than a quarter-century.

The Shared Source Initiative is an evolving framework that supports a spectrum of source-licensing programs, each tailored to the specific source-access needs of one or more of these communities. The sharing of Windows� source code fosters technical innovation, promotes industry standards, and enhances the value of software for businesses, individuals, and academic institutions.

• Speeches and Editorial
• FAQs
• Case Studies
• Related Links

Through the Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft advances several important objectives:

• To bolster the freedom and success of customers, partners, researchers, and developers by affording them expanded access to source code.
• To enable Windows users to ensure the integrity and security of their computing environments.
• To enrich the development community by providing the tools to produce outstanding software.
• To improve feedback processes that play a critical role in developing better Microsoft products for business and individual consumers of software.
• To enhance educational opportunities and to cultivate a vigorous software industry of the future by placing technology in the hands of universities throughout the world.
• To preserve the intellectual property rights that historically have fostered unparalleled innovation and growth in the global software industry.

'Move to the Middle'

The software industry often is depicted as irreconcilably divided into mutually exclusive, rival camps of commercial and "open-source" providers. Market forces, however, are rendering this portrayal obsolete. Both models have proven beneficial to the software market, which has determined that they should coexist in healthy competition, and has even driven them to converge.

Traditionally, commercial software developers relied on licenses that protected ownership rights by limiting access to source code, while open-source developers employed licenses that restricted developer control in favor of universal access. The market, however, now requires that they embrace each other's principles, driving adherents of both models toward neutral, hybrid ground.

For many open-source providers, this "move to the middle" is the adoption of certain commercial licensing and business strategies. These developers seek to emulate the success of companies that have attained stability by providing commercial enhancements or services for open-source platforms. They have also learned the lessons of other companies that abandoned early open-source efforts, and of those that proved unable to adapt to market demands and consequently met their demise.

For commercial software providers like Microsoft, this middle ground is represented by programs like the Shared Source Initiative, through which source code is made broadly accessible without forfeiture of intellectual property protections that have served as the linchpin of commercial software innovation for decades.

This migration toward the middle from both sides demonstrates the ability of unfettered market pressure to orchestrate the most suitable system of software development. Ultimately, the demands of software consumers will bring about the most innovative and cost-effective software products and services.

Source Code Available Under the Shared Source Initiative

The various Shared Source licensing programs listed below afford access to all versions, beta releases and service packs for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows CE 3.0, Windows CE .NET�, and the .NET C#/JScript/CLI Implementations.

Shared Source Initiative Licensing Programs

The following table lists the source-code access and use levels for current Shared Source licensing programs. Additional licensing programs will be added to the Shared Source Initiative as they are developed.

Information and Questions

Questions regarding Shared Source programs should be directed to the Shared Source Initiative.