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…'”
ZDNet: Windows CE Open-Source Plan Under Fire
“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…'”