Out of Cheese

Chris Hanson says that nobody should go “near” Microsoft’s shared source code. To quote him: “Stay far, far away from any Microsoft source code if you want to have a future in software development.” I have a lot of respect for Chris, but I really have to take issue with this.

Y’see, some of the code he’s talking about is code that I wrote. I’m somewhat inclined to think that I have a future in software development. At least, I hope so. Apple certainly didn’t seem to think that my having worked on a successful shipping product would be a problem in hiring me.

His argument is rather misguided. He twists Microsoft’s dislike for its employees using GPL’d code into some sense that the company is going to sue people who have merely looked at Microsoft’s code. A doesn’t imply B here at all. There’s simply no connection whatsoever.

The problem that many companies (Microsoft isn’t the only one) have with the GPL is that many of its parts are legally vague. The FSF certainly has its views of what the GPL means, but the license has never been tested in court, so there’s no guarantee that the provisions are enforceable in exactly the way the FSF intends. The license may be stronger than the FSF thinks or it might be weaker. Nobody can be sure. That vagueness makes lawyers afraid, and frightened lawyers produce strict policies. If Microsoft employees can’t look at GPL’d code, that’s probably the reason why. (Oh, and Chris, please don’t take the comments of one random Microsoft employee as company policy. You wouldn’t [and shouldn't] take my comments as Apple policy, right?)

None of that has anything to do with the license for code that Microsoft releases under its variety of “shared source” licenses. As with any company, if Microsoft chooses to release source code it can do so under whatever license it wants. In the particular case of Rotor, there’s no nondisclosure agreement that you need to sign before accessing the code and there’s no trade secret protection for the code. The license allows you to use Rotor itself for whatever non-commercial purpose you want. In addition, there’s this very important clause:

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.

In other words (and I’m not a lawyer; get one if you need one), you can read the code without being “contaminated” by some sort of all-knowing evil Microsoftian pixie dust. You can’t copy the code directly, but the same applies to GPL’d code (unless your product is itself GPL’d). And you aren’t granted a license to Microsoft’s patents by virtue of reading the Rotor code, but the same is true for BSD-licensed code.

In short, read the license for any source code you want to read and make sure you understand it. Don’t listen to shrill arguments about licenses that are stated in vague generalities, whether about the GPL, the BSD license, or any of Microsoft’s shared source licenses. And if you’ve read the Rotor code in depth, you understand it, and you’re looking for a job, send me your résumé. Anyone who can understand how a complicated virtual machine works is probably smart enough to have a good future in software development.