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Open Source: Google aided by Microsoft

By Dick Weisinger

The tech world is abuzz today with the somewhat ironic news that Google’s new browser Chrome is partly built on code that originated in an Open Source project authored by Microsoft.

One of the twenty-four third-party components used in Chrome is Microsoft’s Windows Template Library (WTL). The C++ library has been distributed under MS-PL (the Microsoft Public License) since 2004. It is similar in concept to the Microsoft Foundation CLasses, but it is more lightweight.

The native C++ library allows Chrome to run fast under Windows. Matt Asay points this out as a problem and that because of Chrome’s Windows implementation may make it much harder to try to get it to run on Linux or the Mac.

But Chrome has only been out for weeks. And there are sure to be many more releases to come.

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