previously, the dce source was only available under a proprietary license. as of january 12, 2005, it is available under a recognized open source license (lgpl), which permits a broader community to work on the source to expand its features and keep it current. the source may be downloaded over the web. the release consists of about 100 ".tar.gz" files that take up 170 megabytes. (note that they include the postscript of all the documentation, for example.)