eWEEK: Open-Source Smoke Screen

“Between public bouts of dissing Linux, Microsoft quietly is
ripping pages from the open-source playbook and taping them to its
own.

“Examples? The most obvious is the shared-source licensing
mechanism. Shared source is no GNU General Public License but does
allow companies to use Windows source code if they agree to
Microsoft’s terms. There are other examples of Microsoft using
open-source strategies.

“Earlier this summer, Microsoft unveiled its ASP .Net Web Matrix
‘community supported’ development tool, aimed at nonprofessional
programmers. While Microsoft would be loath to portray its Web
Matrix development/test process as akin to the open-source way,
Redmond relied on partners to constructively critique daily
builds…”

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