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).
E-mail Print r 12   · Read More · 37 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/fur
Permalink for comment 337625
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
google_ninja
Member since:
2006-02-05

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.


That is exactly what I was saying. Singularity as it stands is only useful in an academic setting, the license makes it inappropriate for use in any practical way.

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.


MS-PL has a hell of alot of use if you are a .NET developer, which many people are.

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


Yes. Barely anything ever gets productized directly out of MS Research. Things like singularity are created to test out ideas, those ideas are then rolled into products.

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


No it wasn't, but ROTOR was. It was an exercise in implementing .net on a non MS platform.

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


I would not be suprised if the work they did with ROTOR helped them push out a mac version of of the CLR for silverlight.

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.


The DLR/IronRuby/IronPython are obvious exceptions, but I agree in a general way. MS doesn't care about making their competitors lives easier, but they care alot about their developers. From a .net developer point of view, a library licensed under the MS-PL is just as useful and relevant to me as something licensed under the GPL. The MS-PL projects only exist to make life easier for people like me, and the MS-RL projects are a bone for schools to teach using microsoft technologies. Anyone who says anything different is either uninformed or lying to you.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2