No, this is not a belated April fool's gag. PCWorld is carrying a report on the availability of the Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset on Sourceforge, under an open source (CPL) license. WiX, as the name suggests lets you build installation packages based on XML sourcefiles. However, a jab at the GPL was inevitable:
The company will continue to release code under various licenses, Matusow says. Microsoft might release code under the Common Public License again, but it has no plans to use the GNU General Public License, under which Linux is distributed. Microsoft has frequently criticized GPL.
"We feel that the GPL presents certain challenges as a commercial software business," Matusow adds.
Let's hope that this is the start of many such initiatives..
- Log in to post comments