Its now known to everyone in the planet that Microsoft have decided to go public with their .NET framework (libraries) source code, which will be available along with VS 2008 + .NET 3.5 release.
For the rest of the world that is not aware of this news, check ScottGu's announcement here:
That said, I keep hearing from several people that MS has made the .NET framework source Open source - i.e. you can make changes, redistribute the changes etc.
The actual fact is (from my reading of the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL)) that MS is making the framework libraries source code viewable to developers. That is all to it!
The sources are not Open Source. They are just available to the developer to view the source code, debug through it, and see how things work/"what is going on in there!" (be it for learning purposes or working with it vis-a-vis their application code ):-)
Note that one cannot make changes, or redistribute the source (with or without any changes) in any form.
For example, I think one cannot even pick a source code file from the bunch, publicly publish it for a discusion by a consortium of developers (across companies). I may be pushing the meaning of the restriction here, but that is what I could read from the restrictive license.
To sum up, MS owns 100% copyrights to the source, and they reserve all rights to it.
So beware of this restriction, and enjoy the source code (once made available), and have a nice debugging experience :-)
- Sundar
