REDMOND, Wash., March 27, 2002 — Demonstrating continuing commitment to academia, computer science research and the Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of source code for its Shared Source CLI implementation. The Shared Source CLI source code implements the ECMA Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and C# standards. It is available on the Microsoft® Windows® XP and FreeBSD operating systems. By delivering over 1 million lines of source code, the Shared Source CLI implementation will promote programming language innovation and XML Web services research.
“This new initiative from Microsoft is very interesting,”
said Gilles Kahn, scientific director for INRIA.
“The availability of source code provides the academic community with detailed technical information about Microsoft .NET technologies on both Windows and FreeBSD — important platforms for research into programming languages and Web services.”
“The academic community plays a critical role in the software ecosystem as the launching pad for the next generation of developers,”
said Eric Rudder, senior vice president of the Developer Platform and Evangelism Division at Microsoft.
“Academia has delivered many breakthrough innovations through pure research. With the Shared Source CLI implementation, we hope to see great innovation around .NET technology.”
Designed to be used for academic, research, debugging and learning purposes, the Shared Source CLI implementation will run on FreeBSD and Microsoft Windows XP and will be published as source code under Microsofts Shared Source licensing framework. As more organizations and industries make the transition to XML Web services, the Shared Source CLI implementation will make it easier for developers to experiment with programming languages, build interoperable XML Web services and create implementations of the ECMA standards.
“The Shared Source license, while not open source, is a bold experiment for Microsoft,”
said Tim OReilly, founder and president of OReilly & Associates Inc., one of the top computer book publishers in the world.
“It enables the academic community to study the code and share its ideas (even if they cant use it verbatim for commercial use). We need more experiments such as this to understand whats science and whats religion when it comes to the effectiveness of different types of software licensing in spurring innovation.”
The C# and CLI standards are key technologies underlying the multilanguage Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsofts platform for the development and deployment of XML Web services. C#, which is derived from C and C++, provides the worlds first component-oriented language for C and C++ developers. The CLI, a subset of the .NET Framework, includes the runtime capabilities and base class libraries needed to enable other software vendors to build, deploy and run XML Web services.
Microsoft submitted the specifications for C# and CLI to ECMA in October 2000 and collaborated with more than a dozen industry leaders — including Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and Intel Corp. — in C# and CLI technical working groups to complete final specifications. In December 2001 ECMA ratified the specifications, marking a milestone in the industrys standardization efforts around XML Web services and programming language innovation.
The Shared Source CLI implementation is available for download today on the Microsoft Web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/sscli/. In addition, Microsoft is pleased to offer research grants to a limited number of academics who want to make early use of the Shared Source CLI implementation for teaching or research purposes. Details of the grant program, including information on how to apply, are available at http://research.microsoft.com/programs/europe/rotor/default.asp .
More information on Microsofts Shared Source Initiative is available at http://www.microsoft.com/sharedsource/ . More information on .NET is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/ .
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