Linux Online - Windows Leak An Experiment in Open Source?

Windows Leak An Experiment in Open Source?


Publication:	InternetNews	Date:	Feb 19 2004

Less than a week after it discovered that parts of its Windows 2000 and NT source code were leaked to the Internet, Microsoft (Quote, Chart) officials are now finding that a kind of grassroots peer review of its code is sprouting among programmers and the merely curious from all points of the globe.

The Redmond, Wash., creator of the Windows operating system is legendary for the tight rein it has held over source code to the operating system that runs on 9 out of 10 computers in the world. Only in recent years, goaded in part by an anti-trust settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001, has the company extended some of its code outside academia and made it available for use by independent software vendors (ISVs). The program, called Shared Source Initiative (SSI), has garnered more than 3,000 development partners in the past three years, according to Microsoft officials.