Interestingly, Microsoft's Tarun Anand also speaks on 'Shared Source: Implementation of .NET'. Just a query, how does this concept of 'shared source' compare with GNU/Free Software or Open Source licences?

From: Eben Moglen <moglen(a)columbia.edu> Subject: [CoreTeam]Re: Microsoft Shared Source License and Portable.NET Hi Rhys, The key provision in the license is: You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information. This is pretty clear (they're becoming rather good at drafting "shared source" licenses; I'm beginning to feel stylistically challenged). It means that they don't claim any right to control knowledge you may gain from reading their code, but you can't copy their code or practice any of their patent claims. The patent issue is unaffected by the reading of their code, from our point of view. On the copyright side, our responsibility is the same as it would be under any other circumstances: we must write all our code from scratch, copying nothing contained in their Rotor code. If there is no copying there is no infringement under their license. My advice is to tell people to code where possible from the ECMA standard. Where (which is likely to be everywhere), ECMA is insufficiently descriptive to create interoperable code, it is acceptable to read the source of the Rotor implementation. Notes taken in the course of reading that source should be made in pseudocode, so that programmers do not copy snippets of the Rotor source as aides to their memory. We want every line of code in our projects to have come out of the original invention of one of our coders, having been expressed in his or her own way. Ideas abstracted from the Rotor implementation should always have been put in our programmer's own "words," because copyright protects expressions, not ideas.

But it is bad for programers, who 'share' the source with M$, coz M$ will not permit to *modify*, *improve* or *re-use* the s/w. There is no scope for sharing with your neighbour - you need to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

You, will still have to pay for two copies for using the same piece of s/w in your office and home computers. Even if you have one comp. in the living room and another in the bed room, you still have to pay two license fees.