If not a reference manual...would you care for a reference license?

Microsoft used the phrase "reference license" yesterday to refer to the class of license developers would be offered. Microsoft describes such a license in its Shared Source Initiative literature as "a reference-only license that allows licensees to view source code in order to gain a deeper understanding of the inner workings of a Microsoft technology. It does not allow for modification or redistribution. This license is used primarily for technologies such as development libraries."

"Microsoft has been allowing those [licenses] in academia," Swenson stated, "and, as a condition of its settlement with the US government, [with] other competitors, to work with limited portions of its source code for several years now, with little detrimental effect. So, I'm fairly confident that this won't radically alter the server landscape as we know it."

Recent examples of such "development libraries," to translate Microsoft's suddenly legal-ese use of the term, include the File Allocation Table - the company's original hard disk drive logical format - plus the Common Internet File System (CIFS), as well as technologies that would help media player developers interface better with Windows Server, Al Gillen, IDC's research director of system software, pointed out to us.

When Microsoft grants someone a reference license to view its source code, Gillen said, it isn't exactly like being given a link to a download of a colossal plaintext file, or receiving a crate of CDs in the mail. Instead, the company makes select portions viewable through a Web site portal, using Microsoft's own viewing mechanism. Such a method, said Gillen, prevents Windows' secrets from being released into the wild.

"The catch is, having access to the source code of Windows," Gillen remarked, "is in some respects like being told you're going to be given the wiring diagram for a nuclear submarine. I don't know about you, but I have a background in electrical engineering. I'm not so sure I'm qualified to do much with a schematic for a submarine." He added there are probably few developers in the world outside of Microsoft who would be capable of making sense of the Windows code base, even with documentation and guidance.

Since Microsoft has been marketing this program up to now as "Shared Source," suppose the sharing were to at some point become mutual. Could outside developers utilize this program to create applications or services that were of benefit to Windows - that improved the operating system in ways Microsoft hadn't foreseen? Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst for Parks Associates, pondered that option: "One of the bigger criticisms laid against Microsoft," Scherf remarked, "is that its source code is so unwieldy as it is. Obviously, you [Microsoft] are not going to allow programmers and developers to actually streamline that. So are you creating more apps that are going to kludge up the system?"

Answering his own question, Scherf responded, "I think the optimist in me says...it could actually benefit [Microsoft] in the long run to see how real users, or real developers outside of the Microsoft campus, would write some of these applications for it. I think it could be incredibly enlightening to them...But the other question is, does that tax the source code even more, to be able to do that, if Microsoft is still as heavy as it is?"

What concerns IDC's Al Gillen is whether enough developers will have access to the code, under the expanded Microsoft program, for anyone to be able to make use of it, for the benefit of Windows or anyone else. "Under the Shared Source Initiative," Gillen pointed out, "there are a number of things that you have to pass a certain number of criteria or qualifications, to even get into the program." So assuming European regulators accept Microsoft's offer, and the company actually goes through with its licensing program (which it could do anyway), he remarked, "the question becomes, how hard is it going to be to get into the program under this settlement? How broadly available is this going to be, and how are people actually going to be using it? That's something we just don't know today."

If Commissioner Kroes' response this morning is any indication, the answer to Gillen's questions may be somewhat narrow after all.