Shared Source - Overview

Overview

Shared Source programs allow individuals and organizations to access Microsoft's source code for reference (e.g. when developing complementary systems), for review and auditing from a security perspective (mostly wanted by some large corporations and governments), and for development (academic institutions, OEMs, individual developers).

As part of the framework, Microsoft released 5 licenses for general use. Two of them, Microsoft Public License and Microsoft Reciprocal License, have been approved by the Open Source Initiative as open source licenses and are regarded by the Free Software Foundation as free software licenses. Other Shared Source licenses are proprietary, and thus allow the copyright holder to retain tighter control over the use of their product.

Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative has been imitated by other companies such as RISC OS Open Ltd.

Microsoft also uses specific licenses for some of their products, for example the Shared Source CLI License and the Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Shared Source License.