Star Singularity RDK 2.0 Initial Release
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 18th Nov 2008 06:45 UTC, submitted by pablo_marx
Microsoft Microsoft has released an initial release of version 2.0 of the Singularity operating system (research development kit, as it likes to call it). Singularity is a microkernel research operating system, where the kernel, drivers, and applications are all written in managed code. Singularity is released under a shared source academic license, and you can do whatever you want with it, except making money (simply put).
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segedunum
Member since:
2005-07-06

the MS-RL is not their open source license, the MS-PL is. The MS-PL has no restrictions on it, and is OSI certified as open source (which is the only real, legal way to say something is open source)

So we've established that Singularity is not available under an open source license, and not available under terms that we would all recognise as open source? We're not interested in the MS-PL here because it has no relevance whatsoever.

Academics are best off using code they can do something with and make something out of, and the current crop of MS-PL projects are somewhat less than stellar so I fail to see what relevance either license has.

The whole "black helicopters" reasoning you are giving is wrong too.

When something is just a bit too close to reality, mention 'black helicopters' ;-).

MS-RL are for things specifically getting released for academic purposes.

Do you think Singularity is merely going to be an academic exercise for Microsoft? :-)

Same deal with project ROTOR

I don't believe .Net was an academic exercise either.

...which was intended to explore ideas that may give their own products a competitive advantage in the future.

How did that work out, considering that Rotor was just a very cut down CLR that no one did anything with?

They don't mind sharing their toys, but at the same time don't want other companies to benefit from their beefy R&D budget.

Hmmmmm. What was that about black helicopters again, because I believe that's pretty much the point? Regardless of whether Microsoft use an open source license or not, don't expect to be able to do much with the code. Inevitably, Microsoft will see you as competition, as a lot of software vendors have found out.

The MS-PL is generally used for code you will have great difficulty getting off Microsoft platforms like Windows and .Net, and the academic license is where the latter is possibly feasible or where they see it as a real risk.

Edited 2008-11-18 18:34 UTC

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