Microsoft offers source code to 2,300 parties - 150 say yes

Despite the apparent fervour surrounding software source code only 150 organisations worldwide have taken up Microsoft's offer to share the inner secrets of the Windows operating system.

Under the Shared Source Initiative - launched 18 months ago - big business, academic institutions and third parties get smartcard access to a secure website which holds millions of lines of Windows 2000, XP and .Net server code.

Users get to see 90 per cent of the operating system code, the remaining 10 per cent is made up of intellectual property owned by third parties, cryptographic information and software Microsoft deems company competitive.

Over the last year and a half Microsoft identified 2,300 organisations that would be eligible to take part in the scheme but so far less than seven per cent have shown an interest.

Jason Matusow, shared source manager at Microsoft said: "We have approached many hundreds more, but most have turned us down. Most say 'we are manufacturers, we don't do source code - that's your job', and others say they expect their systems integrators to deal with any source code issues."

He added: "One of the great myths of open source is that everyone wants to look at source code."

A second initiative to open up 45 per cent of the Windows CE source code has proved more successful. So far 120,000 developers have accessed the source code.

Although Microsoft has made APIs (application programming interfaces) and other hooks into its operating system available to third party software vendors since the mid-1980s it has been reluctant to go further. The rise of the open source community - and the success of the Linux operating system in particular - made it revise its approach but there is still a fundamental belief in Redmond that it, not the larger developer community, is the best custodian of Windows.

Tony Lock, senior analyst at Bloor Research, said: "Microsoft is in a win-win situation. If customers aren't interested they've been vindicated. On the other hand if they do get the interest - as they are with Windows CE - they can say 'look, we've addressed customer needs'."

"You've got to question whether a corporation would have anything to gain from having the source code. What are they going to do - read through every line?"

Lock said that while most operating system or application sharing didn't make sense for corporations, the ability to manipulate small portions of code for very specific device applications could be useful. "Linux handles that model quite well as does Windows CE," he said.