Microsoft May Go Open Source With Danger
MS Danger
Don’t get too excited though, it looks as if developers wouldn’t stand a chance of actually building anything.
Bloggers are abuzz about the possibility since one claims he received a query from a recruiter looking for a NetBSD developer to work on the Danger Sidekick mobile phone. Microsoft acquired Danger early last year.
As dramatic as the move may sound, Sidekick users would be unlikely to notice, and developers probably wouldn’t have the chance to freely build new applications for the device.
NetBSD is an open-source operating system that works on a variety of devices including computers and phones. However, even though it’s open source, its license doesn’t force Microsoft to open up its own contributions to other developers.
“It would be far, far more revolutionary if Microsoft chose a platform (Linux) that carried some inherited Open Source obligations — such a product might be far more interesting to developers,” said Garrett D’Amore, the developer who received the recruiter query.
Under the BSD license that governs NetBSD, Microsoft would not be required to share back developments based on the code or make its software open to other developers. While NetBSD could be the basis of an open system, D’Amore said he’d be “shocked and amazed if Microsoft was involved in the development of a product which used NetBSD at its core and supported developer access to NetBSD APIs [application programming interfaces],” he said. “It is very possible to build completely closed systems around NetBSD.”
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