Microsoft publishes operating system source code

Microsoft has granted interested developers an insight into one of its research projects. The Redmond-based company has published a complete version of its Singularity research operating system on its CodePlex development website. The code is released under a Microsoft Research licence, which allows academic work including redistribution, but forbids commercial use.

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For Microsoft's developers, the Singularity operating system represents a test bed for testing a new system architecture, where the design focus has been on reliability and stability. Because the system has been programmed in C# and is based on a special runtime environment, programs running under it are supposedly immune to buffer overflows and therefore a whole class of security vulnerabilities.

Singularity is not the basis for a future version of Windows, but merely a minimalist system intended as a testbed for exploring new ideas. The downloadable zip archive contains the complete source code, including extensive instructions for compiling the system and booting it under Microsoft's Virtual PC.

(trk)