The Windows NT source code is available for free for a long time, and even the latest products sources are available to certain academic institutions.
The source code is licensed under some kind of “Academic License” which I don’t fully understand. However, in short, I have the CD with me, and my friend from the evangelists team tells me that I can copy and redistribute it. The license allows you to modify and change and redistribute the NT source code too – so long as it’s for non-commercial purposes.
Fire me a mail in case you’d like to get your hands on the CD. Ideally you should be contacting your local Microsoft Student Ambassador or Student Partner for this, so that they can ensure you don’t violate any licensing agreements.
In any case, feel free to send across a mail and let’s see where it goes. Or you can directly contact the evangelist – Mohamed Reza (i-moreza@microsoft.com). He can certainly help you in any case.
Besides I’ve sent copies of the CD to some friends in Pune. I can put you in touch with them and you can get the code from them.
A word of caution (all good things come with a catch): A lot of Microsoft-owned IP is contained in that code. So in case you’re ever going to work on a competing product, make sure you don’t reuse parts of that code. Since there are allegations of Microsoft leaving behind backdoors or stuff in code, or that they might be stealing your personal data, this code is made available to ensure that you can feel safe. This code is not meant to be used in your own projects (unless they’re necessarily non-commercial, in which case feel free to play around with it).
On the positive side, the CD contains an excellent book called “Windows Internals” which explains everything there is to know about the Windows Kernel. The author is Jim Alchin. I suggest anyone who has a windows component in his syllabus read this book.
