Microsoft Corp. is slashing the number of licenses it will use for its Shared Source Initiative from now on, while at the same time radically shortening and simplifying the text of those licenses.
The move, which will be announced on Wednesday morning at Oscon, the O'Reilly European Open Source Convention in Amsterdam, will see Microsoft cutting back the more than 10 Shared Source licenses that currently exist to only three template, or core, licenses.
It will also have two derivative "Limited" variations of those licenses for use on the Windows platform alone. Full documentation, including the full text of the new licenses, can be found here.
Microsoft will also announce that it is releasing, and making available under these new licenses, eight new Visual Studio 2005 starter kits.
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