More open source spin from Microsoft

By Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 18 November 2009 03:03

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft says it will release, under the same open source licence as Apache2, the .NET Micro Framework. There are some riders attached, though.


The Micro Framework is that part of .NET concerned with internet-connected smart devices.

But the TCP/IP stack will not be open-sourced - because, as Peter Galli, who runs Port 25, Microsoft's means of communicating with open source, says , "the TCP/IP stack is third party software that Microsoft licenses from EBSNet, so we do not have the rights to distribute that source code.

"If someone needs to access the source code for the TCP/IP stack, they can contact EBSNet directly."

What use is a framework that caters to internet-connected devices without a TCP/IP stack?

The cryptographic libraries which are part of the Micro Framework will not be opened up either - "they are not included in source code because they are used outside of the scope of the .NET Micro Framework.  Customers who need to have access to the code in the cryptography functions will find that these libraries can be replaced."

The Micro Framework - as indeed the whole of .NET - hasn't exactly been taking the world by storm. Six months ago, Microsoft cut back on the staff involved in it - which means that it is not very high on the company's radar as a "hot" project.

While the company says that it will develop some kind of community around it, the website for this community was only half-built at the time of the announcement.

What better way to get some free development done than to release the code and pretend that it is "great news"? One doubts, however, that many people will be taken in by the spin .