j4m32 said:
Documentation is fair enough giving Functions and how to call them and use them, from what i read they wanted Source Code to the OS not the Documentation but i haven't read it in detail
Nope, they did
not want the source code, they wanted the
documentation allright.
Compare the situation to the TCP/IP specs (i.e., the protocol that drives the internet), if you will:
Any computer system that wants to do
anything on the internet will have to implement a TCP/IP stack.
So, anyone who wants to develop such a system, and wants to do it reliably, will have to have access to the technical specifications of the TCP/IP communications protocol; some sample source code may help, but if you have nothing but the source code, and have no access to the specifications to which the code was written, you will have an awfully hard time figuring it out!
Similarly, anyone who wants to develop a computer system that can talk to Windows systems
should have access to the communications protocols required to do it. Just the
source code won't cut it.
Microsoft doesn't give out the technical documentation of the protocols, but only the source code--and, then,
only to qualifying organisations that are prepared to pay a
€50,000 (that's
fifty thousand euros) fee! But no-one
wanted the source code; in fact, once you get access to the source code, you are, for all practical purposes,
banned from implementing the protocols in any other system, since Microsoft will then undoubtedly accuse you of copyright infingement--after all, you
read their code, and then ported it into your newly developed system, didn't you? In addition, if you pay them their
€50,000 (and, I'll repeat, that's
fifty thousand euros) fee, you will be obliged to sign a license agreement, and chances are that your rights to use the code will be pretty limited; so if you subsequently dare implement a potentially competing system, you will be accused of violating the terms of the licensing agreement as well.