Microsoft Corp. has stated that the company will open its source code to governments and international organizations worldwide. This move follows various government requests and government announcements of adopting open source strategies, mainly for security and integration reasons. Update: The Register also posted an interesting article regarding this announcement.
There’s bound to be a few thousand catches or so though. 🙂
Read this article about the subject at “The Register”:
http://212.100.234.54/content/4/28869.html
Undoubtably, a decision to open up some of the source for Windows comes from very high up in the company considering that the source code and resulting binaries are Microsoft’s main product.
There must be a lot of pressure on them at the moment to have made them do this. You need only look at the tech news recently to see how many countries are switching their systems over to alternative os’s and you’ll see how much potential money Microsoft is standing to lose from this worldwide shift.
I think that Microsoft’s business model is about to change drastically over the next couple of years and they know this. I want to see what happens.
Thanks FireBase,
I have included the Register article to this news item.
Even if i’m pretty sure most governments already got a hold of the source thru intelligence, microsoft giving away the source code for windows to them is still a risky move for companies and governments that use windows for their systems (specially if connected to the internet). As such code isnt nearly as audited as its opensource alternatives it probably does contain an enormous amount of security holes to exploit.
And even if windows has backdoors set in there purposedly,
they can be removed before shipping such source.
…Windows 95/98/ME, I’d rather Microsoft not release it
to anyone. No one, not even the government, should have
to look at that mess of spaghetti code. Ack.
<theoretical Win9x code>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <BSOD.h>
…
if (openApplications > 2 || (openApplications > 1 &&
any16bitApplications == TRUE)) {
int dice = (rand()%6)+1;
if (dice > 3)
blueScreenOfDeath();
}
…
</theoretical Win9x code>
LOL 🙂
Anyway, as for restrictions, well, there would probably be NDAs, NDAs for these NDAs and NDAs for that NDAs and the NDA for the license itself :-). They probably won’t let anyone that saw the code to build a competing product..
Microsoft cannot prove that the source code they show you is the one from which the software you actually run is compiled from.
Gov’t with source access: “Hi, MS support? We’ve found that we’re not able to build the sources you gave us. Is there somthing missing in the readme?”
MS: “Ha! You’re trying to *build* it? No no. It won’t build.”
Gov’t: “Why not?”
MS: “Well,.. of course, we’ve taken out the portions that you’re surely not interested in. Besides, if you want a binary, I can put you in touch with our sales dept; one moment please while I transfer your call…”
Gov’t: “No. Wait. But…[click]”
—
PR! Do i have to say more? It’s no use for anyone, just because “open-source” is hot, they say like: “Jo people see how trustfull we are! We even share code!!!” I read it as complete FUD
Mr. Billy the McCarty may even up his ass for public, I am not interested. : )
Actually, these are signs that Linux is gaining popularity amoung the governments, so that capitalist MS is getting afraid.
Great news for Linux community!!!!
Its gonna be so covered by NDA’s, licenses and laywers that you cant write another line of code as long as you and your children live.
Nah thanks, I looked the gift horse in the mouth and decided that it had bad breath.
MWN.
If this didn’t work in India what makes them think this will working countries like Japan where they are also shifting to true Open Source platforms ? This smells of PR marketing hype and smoke and mirrors. I am sure that there will be some many limits and rules alone put in place that it will not even be worth the hassle. Not to mention that they might do what jonhG is suggesting and leave important parts out that would render such source code utterly useless.
I believe many governments have put too much blind trust into Microsoft’s solutions in the past. Just some simple security holes can easily allow people (in the know) to retrieve sensitive information.
I doubt that full open source environments would be the solution however. Fully Open Sourced software also allows 3rd party individuals to spot and abuse security holes/faults more easily.
I believe the ideal situation would be, a secure OS being closed sourced, with the *full* sources available only to various 3rd party international and official security specialized inspection teams.
Wonder how many holes, & bugs they will find? I will take bets now.You know someone will leak it to the net.
If I were a government I wouldn’t accept a partial release of source code as being enough. It has to be a complete release and the closed sourced products sold must be from a government approved build.
The more I think about it the more I think open standards and ARB style bodies are the way forward. Microsofts source should be treated as no more than SGI’s OpenGL reference implementation.
>>>If I were a government I wouldn’t accept a partial release of source code as being enough. It has to be a complete release and the closed sourced products sold must be from a government approved build.
If you were a government, then you are some 3rd world dictatorship regime.
Well I’m not a Govt or an International worldwide body so I’ll never get to see this code.
Besides … are they going to let these bodies also contribute code to fix issues with the existing … i think not.
This is just a PR move on MS’s part.
>>>are they going to let these bodies also contribute code to fix issues with the existing … i think not.
There are something like 3 or 4 different programs. Some allow you to look at the code only. Some allow you to contribute code changes. The G7 countries get more access than countries like India and China.
>>>This is just a PR move on MS’s part.
It’s also totally FUD that about how Microsoft has backdoor access to foreign government’s computers.
“It’s also totally FUD that about how Microsoft has backdoor access to foreign government’s computers.”
I wouldn’t risk. : ) Why should I risk national security and waste hard earned money of the people with horrible MS yearly fees while there are a FREE, BETTER, OPEN SOURCE OSes such as BeOS spawns, BSD, Linux around? (I like them in that order.)
MS is a monopolistic capitalistic unethical shit.
IIS has been under shared source for awhile. But why does it have many many times more security problems than Apache? It doesn’t matter whether you are open source or not, if one the designing stage, you forget about the security issue, you are screwed.
I would take the case of open sourced BeOS spawns, is there one that actually boots on its own? Government should choose Linux or BSD just because of rumour site claimed NSA-key is NSA’s backdoor. They should use it because it is better/cheaper/more flexible/etc.
However, there is risks in using Windows in non-US government enviroments. What happens if the government places sanctions on you that makes you use a old version of Windows ridden with security holes? Moving to Linux/BSD at that point would be hard and costly.
Yellowtab’s zetaOS most likely has been able to boot for some time….
http://www.yellowtab.com