On Monday, Microsoft released some of its code under an open-source license, and posted it on SourceForge, the open-source code repository. To date, Microsoft has made its source code available under a variety of licensing mechanisms, all under its "shared source" umbrella. But until today, the company had not released code under what is commonly considered a true open-source license.
Microsoft made available an internally developed product called the Windows Installer XML (WiX) to SourceForge. The code is downloadable here. WiX is a toolset for building Windows installation packages from XML source code. It runs on Windows NT and Windows 2000. "We've been learning from open source about the importance of sharing code with developers," said Jason Matusow, manager of Microsoft's shared source initiative. "We know it's important to have a full-spectrum approach" to licensing software under shared source, he added.
News source: eWeek
