Microsoft to disclose secret code
By Brier Dudley
Seattle Times technology reporter
In a striking departure from its secretive approach to software development, Microsoft is making some of its prized, secret compiler code available to university researchers as part of an effort to improve its relationship with academia.
Compilers are the equivalent of the transmission in a car. They translate software languages into the digital ones and zeroes understood by computer processors.
Developing compilers is complex and time-consuming so it's unheard of for large private software companies to share the code underlying their compilers, said Craig Chambers, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Washington.
But Microsoft is on a campaign to improve its reputation at universities and in corporate computing centers, where competition from products based on Linux and other collaboratively developed software is growing.
Under pressure from antitrust regulators and foreign governments, Microsoft is also allowing more governments, academic researchers and major customers to view its crown jewels, the Windows source code.
The compiler project, known internally as Phoenix, will be announced this week at Microsoft's third annual "research summit," a gathering of computer scientists from universities around the world that started today.
Some 325 academics are learning about research taking place at the company's 680-employee advanced-research division, which operates like a laboratory and mini-university on the Redmond campus and at facilities in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Cambridge, England. The company plans to increase the division by 10 percent this fiscal year, adding most of the new jobs abroad.
They are also learning how to apply for grants from the company, which spent $4.5 million last year sponsoring university projects.
Chairman Bill Gates said the company's relationship with universities is crucial and that more collaborative projects are planned.
"There's no doubt that the strength of the commercial software industry really comes because of the great work that goes on in the universities," Gates said. "And so we're getting smarter about how we can work together all the time."
Gates announced a new academic advisory board to provide input into the company's security, privacy and reliability efforts, but the Phoenix project was to be announced separately.
"We have an active project we're working on with universities to improve our compilers, compiler technology, working with them to make our code available to them for their work, their experimentation as well," said Rick Rashid, director of Microsoft's research division.
Chambers, the UW professor, would not discuss Phoenix until it is formally announced, but he said such a project could partly replace an effort to collaboratively develop a compiler in the 1990s that dwindled when the federal government cut off its funding.
Among the goals in building better compilers is to improve computing performance and build better programming tools, he said.
Rashid said Microsoft Research already works on numerous collaborative projects with universities, but the company is going further with Phoenix and the advisory board that Gates announced.
"We're trying to make sure we get a lot of perspective from all sides if they're key issues, that at least those issues have been heard through, talked through," he said.
Rashid said Microsoft has always had to come from behind in academia, where people are more familiar with the Unix operating system created by AT&T's Bell Labs than with Microsoft's technology. Microsoft is working to make sure universities "have the tools they need to teach Windows and Visual Studio and our other tools, in addition to using Unix and Java and whatever else they're doing," Rashid said.
The company also wants to broaden the use of its .NET software platform. Gates told academics yesterday that Microsoft is "feeling very good about the direction but it's another four or five years before all the promise of .NET really gets pulled together."
But competition is intense. Computer-science students in general are graduating with more expertise in Sun Microsystem's Java language, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told financial analysts last week, "and we need to get after that in the academic arena."
