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May 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Longhorn "Reloaded" irks Microsoft
Could a brouhaha result between developers of a revived Longhorn client and Microsoft, which says the project violates its licensing agreement?
A version of the Windows Longhorn client platform has been released as a preview build by developers who continued to develop it even as Microsoft shifted its emphasis to building Windows Vista.
The Longhorn "Reloaded" project features abandoned code from the Longhorn client, said Raymond Preston, an Ireland-based developer who is managing the project hosted at joejoe.org. Although the group has had no source code for Longhorn, it was able to pursue the project anyway.
"We don't really need [source code]. We just know how it works because we decompiled," the Longhorn client, Preston said.
"A lot of this became common knowledge," he said.
Microsoft, however, was not offering encouraging words on Tuesday afternoon.
"Microsoft actively encourages and supports independent developers to take advantage of the features available in our platform to create their own applications and services; however, the Windows end user licensing agreement does not allow users to modify and redistribute our code in this manner," the company said in a statement.
The Reloaded group acknowledges it is not going to build something like Vista and only plans to offer its Longhorn Reloaded code for free. The project is not open-source, however.
The Longhorn revival is being pursued because some have preferred features of it such as its simplified storage and its task bar, Preston said. A first build has had tens of thousands downloads in the past three or four days, according to Preston.
"We never thought it would be this popular," said Preston.
But a blogger in the AeroXperience Web site for Windows Vista developers labeled the project "a waste of time." The AeroXperience forums feature a project called "Retrophase," to bring Longhorn capabilities to Vista.
Posted by Paul Krill on May 29, 2007 04:23 PM
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