This morning Microsoft announced that it will be releasing shared

source implementations of the .NET Common Language Infrastructure (CLI),

C# compiler, and ECMAscript compiler for both Windows and FreeBSD.

The license will be considerably more liberal than the shared source

license previously announced for Windows. Availability is expected

in the fourth quarter.

Tim O'Reilly's exclusive interview with Dave Stutz, the group program

manager for the project, has just been published on the O'Reilly

Network, and I thought you would be interested.

Microsoft Plans Shared Source .NET

by David Sims, Tim O'Reilly, Rael Dornfest

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2001/06/27/dotnet.HTML

The shared source license will allow developers to use the .NET CLI,

C# compiler and ECMAscript compiler source code for unlimited

noncommercial use; commercial re-implementations will reportedly not

be tainted by studying the sample source code. "Microsoft is really

serious about establishing .NET and C# as the foundation for the

next generation of web services," said O'Reilly. "While we haven't

actually seen the actual license yet, they are saying that they

believe that making source available on more generous terms than

they've previously offered will help them to do that."