| In a major development, Redmond giant Microsoft has yet again inched closer towards open source technology by donating the source code for it's MS-DOS and Word for Windows programs. The source code of MS-DOS versions 1.1 (released in 1982) and 2.0 (released in 1983), as also the code for Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a (released in 1989) is now publicly available via the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Anyone can now download the code from the museum's official web site, however, it must be noted that the code is solely available for non-commercial use subject to a license agreement approval. |  |
Microsoft has achieved its iconic status of becoming a global organisation of 100,000+ employees and almost $43 billion in revenue estimated as of December 2013 on the shoulders of aggressive software licensing practices. However, over the years, it has strived to ensure interoperability with open source projects. The move is clearly aimed at bringing back its lost shine, and a clear strategy to win back its market share marred by a string of open source projects that are increasingly coming into limelight now more than ever.
In a clear attempt to capitalise on the success of the Android platform and draw more users to Microsoft products, Microsoft has earlier released an open source SDK for Office 365. Coming from Microsoft Open Technologies, the company's open source subsidiary, the SDK for Android platform falls under the Apache License, version 2.0. Meanwhile, Microsoft is also eyeing to open source its datacentre reference architectures and join the Facebook-led OCP. It must be noted that OCP aims to do for datacentre hardware what open source did for software.Bill Laing, corporate vice president, cloud & enterprise at Microsoft revealed that enterprise IT incumbent Microsoft will contribute its server specifications that underlie the services: Windows Azure, Office 365, Bing, Skype, etc, deployed from its global datacentres under the plan. “These servers are optimised for Windows Server software and built to handle the enormous availability, scalability and efficiency requirements of Windows Azure, our global cloud platform. They offer dramatic improvements over traditional enterprise server designs: up to 40 per cent server cost savings, 15 per cent power efficiency gains and 50 per cent reduction in deployment and service times,” Bill said. Microsoft’s open source arm: Microsoft Open Technologies will open source code it created for managing hardware operations like power supply, server diagnostics and fan control. Article by Saurabh Singh
