The Shared Source Initiative makes publicly available the source code for many of Microsoft’s core products, including Windows and Office. And the company’s okay with that.
By Steve Birge

“I know customers are super excited to get access to source,” said Shawn Burke, a director in DevDiv’s .NET Development Platform. “It’s something they’ve wanted for a long time.”

Before you start to worry too much, the company knows about it and, in fact, encourages it. Don’t think the company has gone all open source on you. It’s part of the Shared Source Initiative (SSI), whereby almost anyone – including customers, partners, developers, academics, and governments worldwide – can access and work with actual source code of many Microsoft technologies.

Since 2002, more than 80 technologies have been made available through the SSI, including a set of .NET framework libraries just released for sharing in mid-January. Additionally, more than 600 non-Microsoft technologies have been released under a Shared Source license.
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Jillian Venters

The job title: Technical Editor, Dev Div

What is it that you do here?

I edit help documentation for developers on the Dev Div team, and I’ve been an editor here at Microsoft as a contractor and then full time for about seven years now.

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Alex Turner wants to save your day

The geek in question: Alex Turner

The job title: Program Manager, C#

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