FlexWiki Shared Source Licensing Program
Wikis are becoming increasingly popular. But what is it?
A definition found on http://www.webopedia.com states the following:
"A collaborative Web site comprises the perpetual collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or modify content that has been placed on the Web site using a browser interface, including the work of previous authors. In contrast, a blog, typically authored by an individual, does not allow visitors to change the original posted material, only add comments to the original content. The term wiki refers to either the Web site or the software used to create the site. Wiki wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian." There are numerous implementations of the Wiki technology available on the Web today.
FlexWiki is a new .NET implementation of the Web-based authoring tool known as Wiki.
FlexWiki is designed to allow multiple teams focused on diverse, but related, projects to work in the same Wiki environment with multiple namespaces. This allows large groups of people to collaborate easily. Additionally, FlexWiki has been augmented with a new, fully integrated, scripting language – WikiTalk. WikiTalk enables content contributors to access .NET framework objects for dynamic content while working within the traditional Wiki environment.
Microsoft has been using FlexWiki in production for the past year on projects such as Channel 9 (http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx). Additionally, many groups inside Microsoft have been using FlexWiki to improve their team collaboration as well as products and services that they build and deliver to our customers and partners.
FlexWiki provides the following benefits:
- Standard editing, quick hyper-linking, and table generation.
- Support for federation and multiple namespaces.
- Full topic search and back link referencing.
- Easy integration with search engines.
- Dynamic content generation using the WikiTalk scripting language.
- Archive functionality for page history and linking to specific historical page versions.
- Really Simple Syndication (RSS), feed aggregation and other forms of notification when a Wiki changes.
- Easy to extend with.NET languages through integration with WikiTalk.
Program Details
The FlexWiki Shared Source toolset provides a way for Windows developers to deliver collaborative Web authoring environments and allows those developers to establish Web-based communities (on their intranets or on the Internet) to enable collaboration on the software they develop.
Components Include
- The FlexWiki dynamic link libraries.
- FlexWiki basic style sheets and images.
- FlexWiki basic Active Server Pages.
Use and Restrictions
- Licensees may read, modify and redistribute the source code for commercial purposes as provided in the license terms.
- For more information and license terms, please see SourceForge.net.
Fulfillment
The Shared Source Code for FlexWiki can be obtained by reviewing and accepting the license terms at SourceForge.net and downloading the source archive.
Customer Commitment
In exchange for obtaining access to these valuable intellectual property assets, licensees must accept and abide by all terms of the license agreement.
Questions
Additional questions regarding the FlexWiki Shared Source Licensing Program may be e-mailed to flwadmin@microsoft.com. Additional questions regarding Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative should be e-mailed to source@microsoft.com.
