internetnews.com: Microsoft Bares CE Source to OEMs
"Aiming to make its Windows CE operating system more attractive to device manufacturers, Microsoft late Wednesday debuted the Windows CE Shared Source Premium Licensing Program (CEP).
"CEP, a program under Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative, qualified OEMs, silicon vendors and systems integrators will have full access to the Windows CE source code, and will additionally have the right to modify that code and commercially distribute those modifications in devices.
"'Premium source code access is vital to enabling our long-standing optimization efforts around Windows CE .NET on the ARM architecture,' said Mike Muller, chief technology officer at ARM, one of the companies that embraced the new program. 'The results enabled by this program directly translate into competitive advantage delivered to the entire ARM partnership. Premium source access, along with out on-site people in Redmond, has increased the effectiveness of our collaboration efforts...'"
"As part of its effort to deal with the threat of open-source software, Microsoft plans to let device makers modify more of the source code of its specialized Windows CE operating system. But some say the company's licensing terms could kill interest in the plan...
"Microsoft played up giving manufacturers access to the operating system's source code--or blueprint--and an opportunity to modify it.
"But analysts placed less significance on the changes than did Microsoft.
"'Manufacturers already had access to the source code and could modify it,' said Paul DeGroot of market researcher Directions on Microsoft. 'There's absolutely nothing new about that...'"
