[ Thanks to Jason
Greenwood for this link. ]
“Clarifying the details, Microsoft confirmed that developers are
required to license their improvements back to Microsoft for no
royalty, but said this is not as onerous as observers might think,
pointing out that the big names such as ARM, Hitachi, Samsung,
Intel, MIPS and Mitsubishi have signed up to the conditions.“‘Microsoft has been listening to what customers tell us,’ said
Hardy Poppingar, EMEA product manager for embedded products at
Microsoft. ‘With the premium program, they can be more innovative
and differentiate themselves from the competition.’“In a teleconference, Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief technical
officer for Advanced Strategies and Policy, confirmed that the
agreement requires developers to license any derivative code back
to Microsoft for use in future versions of Windows CE. Under this
license, Microsoft would pay no royalty payment to the
developers…”