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What gave me that impression?

"ECLIPSECON, ANAHEIM, CAâ"February 2, 2004â"The Eclipse Board of Stewards today announced"

It was a press release.

Released on 2nd February, 2004.

At ECLIPSECON, which was evidently held in Anaheim.

I'm not disputing the accuracy of your facts. In the post that started this, I said that some folks feel that IBM is too dominant in the Eclipse project.

Mechanik responded with that link, which wasn't what I was thinking of. I was thinking of the recent "we're upset that IBM is thinking about V4, but don't really have much in the way of a cohesive offering ourselves really" debate that was a more recent non-event:
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/03/20/eclipse_e4_timetable/

Basically, IBM is submitting code and ideas, and others were only submitting vague hand-waving gestures. Or at least, that was the impression I got...

*shrugs*

*vaguely waves hands in that direction*

What about "Project Copy Linux"? http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/07/29/sun_projectindiana_oscon/

One reason Vista is a dog on many laptops is because the GDI graphics interface has been redesigned in Vista to be slow http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/12/04/vista_vs_xp_tests/.

The Ruby syntax tree needs an LL(k) parser. This tighly couples the parser to the lexical analyser which makes any it deeply flawed, buggy and unreliable. Add into the mix that ruby is really a dynamic scripting language and you find an explaination for it's unreliablility.

Dr. Dermot Hogan agrees, he said To my mind, the Ruby parser and syntax is fundamentally flawed.

That's why there are not grand scalable performant systems written in Ruby.

James Gosling said of Ruby it ... just generate web pages. But none of them attempt any serious breadth in the application domain and they both have really serious scaling and performance problems.

He was proven right by Derek Sivers said after spending two years trying to rewrite a website in Ruby with Jeremy Kemper that it was Like trying to turn a train into a boat. It's do-able with a lot of glue. But it's damn hard. And certainly makes you ask why you're really doing this. In the end he abandoned Ruby and rewote the system in PHP in 2 Months.

If you want to do Dynamic programming, don't be taken in by the hype; learn Python, Smalltalk or the second choice language Schema.

Relativity has a very robust tool for doing legacy code analysis:
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/08/23/code_eam/
http://www.relativity.com/pages/home.asp
(also sold by IBM ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/websphere/awdtools/atw/library/Analyzing_Programs.pdf)

Visustin is also worth looking at:
http://www.aivosto.com/visustin.html

http://www.fatesoft.com/s2f/

Errrmmmm, has no one considered the idea that he did precisely the job he was paid to do? Linux was becoming very hot in IT when SCO launched the lawsuit. Linux-oriented business cooled off for a while, long enough for Microsoft to suspend vendor drift toward Linux (to some extent). They waved the promises of the glories the turd that is Vista, and the uncertainty of the legal standing of GNU/Linux in front of businesses.

Microsoft launched their FUD campaign around that time, pumping 2 million dollars into SCO by buying licenses. Then Microsoft does that bizarro-world lawsuit thing with Kodak and Sun. MS settles for 2 billion (!) dollars with Sun, Sun turns around and settles with Kodak for 92 million dollars. I believe PJ did some dot-connecting at one point showing that MS was behind a lot of this, in an effort to pump up the notion of "Intellectual Property," strengthening software patents, in particular, through precedent in the courts.

SCO was simply the the blunt instrument wielded by the Canopy Group to distract from the behind-closed-doors stuff. So, in theory, Scott did what he was paid to do.

Disclaimer: I enjoy conspiracy theories involving MS.

This just in:

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/11/06/opensocial_security_risk/

News for nerds.

Microsoft is thrashing because while VISTA gets reamed by reviewers and pissed on by consumers, Open Source operating systems and applications are cleaning up (400 million Firefox downloads).

MS may be changing the focus of the companies they buy out, devour, and make part of their hideous corporate culture.

But they're going to get resistance with Open Source that's not just economic.

Check this quote from Shuttleworth of Canonical, the company that does UBUNTU:

----If Shuttleworth is, in fact, not abusing cute animals, then he's been busy denying Microsoft's advances to sign a Novell/XenSource/Linspire-like intellectual property and collaboration deal.

"They have approached us, but there is just no way we would accept the terms," he said. "Everything suggests those deals were entered into on terms that would be unacceptable to our community and to us."

Shuttleworth urged that it's crucial not "to paint a company as evil." However, he did say that Microsoft has an "extortion habit that simply won't go anymore."

It's Shuttleworth's vast wealth that, in part, lets him ignore Microsoft's overtures. And it's that same wealth which inspired Shuttleworth to take on the languishing Linux desktop in the first place."----

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/07/27/shuttleworth_oscon_ubuntu/page2.html/

That's going to be a tougher nut for MS to crack than merely throwing money at it.

And I have a feeling, backed up by mission statements at Open Source sites, that Shuttleworth's far from alone in that.

No, Bruce, there's no room for litigation here.

There is room for litigation concerning whether the terms of the GPL are enforceable, at least in California.

It's pretty trivial to spoof a source ip. Just ask the folks at DenyHosts. If the attacker could care less about return packets and simply wants to create a lot of traffic (DoS) count on it. You really have to be careful with the data that's returned from tools like this. A lot of times it's useless. He should have scrubbed his IP from the screenshots too, poor bastard. This article would be perfect Diggchow except he never mentioned Apple in the article. Oh well.

There is no shortage of IT workers, especially good ones, but companies make more profit off of young workers and foreign workers they can treat like slaves. See To H1-B or not to H-1B?. And in the minds of many experienced project managers, quality of worker's intelligence and experience are more important than having 10,000 interchangable drones as Google seems to want. See Smart and Gets Things Done.

I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. The people who would benefit from MS opensourcing their code would be the OSS community, not Microsoft. I find that any speech or statement to the press given by the guy who runs MySQL, Marten Mickos, disturbingly suspect since his company would greatly benefit from Microsoft working with the community. I find any project in the OSS community that has components to install with their application that states that you must be licensed with the owning company to install, which is not the project owner, like MySQL or KDE. I find that several prominate OSS projects have been fast and loose with other peoples' products and patents, which makes the community go up in arms when the offened party tries to defend their patent or product. Now, we have seen some abuse of the patent system, for example SCO and excedingly broad patents. Yet, if I come up with a new file compression protocal and the community steals it, I would be very upset and start sueing the large companies behind OSS left and right, because that is theft.

Raymond Chen is also a condescending tool. (Check out Verity Stob's recent article for a good laugh at his expense, or this Joel on Software forumn thread.)

"That's not really fair."

Well, WA-A-AHH! Where's your blanky and baba?

Here is the only way to do it: this article points out the US Air Force's standard: COMPLY OR DON'T CONNECT! That is the way to be, and it should apply to every computer!

To stay out of jail, you have to follow society's standards. To keep your children, you have to comply with child welfare standards. To drive, you need a license saying you know what the driving standards are.

Your piece of shit botnet computer that is costing my business millions of dollars per year needs to be disconnected and burned to the ground, and you jailed, and me paid compensation for my trouble. END OF STORY!!! Comply or don't connect! Stupidity is no excuse.

Comply or don't connect!
Comply or don't connect!
Comply or don't connect!

Brilliant work!

The documentation, as usual does not give a clue as to the real intent of the registry setting.

Interesting article here:
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/03/08/msdn_gloo m/

ODF spec page count: 722.

OpenXML spec page count: 6000 !!

This is already in GPLv2 under Section 7. However this deal "by proxy" is not explicitly covered and Moglen has said this will be rectified in GPLv3.

They patented VB's "IsNot" operator.

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2005/02/22/real_slam s_ms_patent/

Sure this may be in other distros but Microsoft probably already considers those distros as in violation of their patents, now that it's in Suse, when they start raising a stink about this patent, people can have the option to switch to Suse.

Microsoft is being extremely evil and Suse is just playing ball with them. I'm sure the developers at Suse justify this, who can blame them, without Microsoft's money they would be unemployed. But this patch should be looked at as an omen, nothing less. Be careful, this is part of Microsoft's strategy. At this point it's a game of chess for Ballmer to see how he can abuse OSS. At this phase in the game he's planting seeds.

one down, http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/11/07/adobe_fla sh_firefox/ one to go?

"[Take open source.] Open source is not a new technology area. It was a new business model", SB

First RFC April 1969 for the ARPANET. The Open Source Initiative originated in Feb 1998.

"In the last three or four years, we have competed very well by extending our value", SB

"Microsoft has proposed a licencing agreement blatantly tailored to exclude free software from accessing it.", FSF Europe

" RealNetworks .. sued .. Microsoft on antitrust charges .. Our case is based on .. failure to disclose interface information and imposing restrictions on PC makers"

"Open source never goes away as a business model or competitor. We have learned how to compete with open source", SB

"Microsoft is claiming some form of IP rights over .. a total of 130 protocols which Microsoft is offering for license .. Many of the listed protocols are [IETF] RFC to the core TCP/IP v4 and TCP/IP v6 protocol specifications"

"competing with open source will have to be something that's burned bright on the foreheads of our senior people", SB

"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects' entry into the market."

"In the case of open source, we couldn't adopt the business model. We adopted a competitive approach that so far has worked very well", SB

Under NO circumstances lose against Linux"

"Microsoft also indicated there was a lot more money out there and they would clearly rather use Baystar "like" entities to help us get signifigantly more money if we want to grow further or do acquisitions"

"Microsoft and Sun .. announced the antitrust settlement/technology pact between the two on Friday"

"Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) has signed a deal to license SCO Group's Unix intellectual property"

"Microsoft will license the rights to Unix technology from SCO"

"there are cases where software gets monetized through hardware", SB

Like years ago when you bought hardware and the software was included for free.

Do they even have any higher end lines any more? As they've already spun off their development tools to an independent company, I suspect they'll be going down the IBM route of services, services, services but quite what they have to offer, I'm not sure. To be honest, I'm not convinced they'll will be with us as independent company for too much longer.

Shame really, as Delphi rocked.

Demand for trade-secrets to be compromised?

To me, the EU is demanding documentation while it does not spell out exactly what it is looking for, other than the total and complete release of all trade secrets of the Microsoft Corporation.

I respectfully disagree. The EU made it clear that they do not *want* any source-code. They want an API specification: (here I quote from the EU decision of 2004).

To the extent that any of this interface information might be protected by intellectual property in the European Economic Area(6), Microsoft would be entitled to reasonable remuneration. The disclosure order concerns the interface documentation only, and not the Windows source code, as this is not necessary to achieve the development of interoperable products.

(see http://news.com.com/EUs+statement+on+end+of+Micros oft+investigation/2100-1014_3-5178465.html?tag=nl) So: no source code. Furthermore I really don't understand how publishing an API specification would disclose trade secrets.

Unclarity?

And besides, what part of (here I quote from the EU decision of 2004):

As regards interoperability, Microsoft is required, within 120 days, to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers.

(see http://news.com.com/EUs+statement+on+end+of+Micros oft+investigation/2100-1014_3-5178465.html?tag=nl) is hard to understand and what part is unclear? I just don't see it.

A good-faith attempt?

Microsoft has been making a good faith reply to all of the EU demands, which is not a diminuitive task.

Again I have to disagree. Prof. Neil Barrett (proposed as a monitoring trustee by Microsoft itself) characterised the documentation as: "entirely inadequate" (see http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/03/11/eu_ms_res ponse/). I absolutely cannot believe that Microsoft, with all its software engineers, would be incapable of documenting their own communication protocol if they put their mind to it. Or alternatively recognising that they couldn't do it in short order and saying as much.

Microsoft has published significant information regarding APIs and continues to provide resources for integrating third-party software solutions into Windows.

Err ... significant? In what respect? Again I point to the statement by Barrett that the documentation was "entirely inadequate". But it gets better. The commission also quotes from an independent analysis of Microsoft's protocol documentation conducted by Taeus (see http://www.taeus.com/ for general information on this company).

Taeus compared Microsoft's submissions to a car manufacturer selling a car without wheels, handbrake, or steering wheel, and only fitting each begrudgingly after the customer complains. [...] Taeus concluded that what documentation Microsoft had provided was "devoted to obsolete functionality", "self-contradictory" and was written "primarily to maximize volume (page count) while minimizing useful information.".

I feel that the above two statements destroy the theory that that Microsoft made a good-faith attempt at documentation. And as to the meaning of the EU's request being uncle

Just days before the European Commission's next hearing on patent policy that is still being hatched despite the last directive's overwhelming defeat in Parliament, several recent publications discuss developments of the law on Tux' home continent, and successful steps to avert software patents: The huge new book on "The War over Software Patents in the European Union" by the founder of NoSoftwarePatents has just been released for download. If you prefer a few hundred pages less, see the latest issue of the International Journal of Law and Information Technology for a scholarly article.

An interview with Jim Gray, in which he talks about this subject (he apparently helped out the North Carolina group with some of this work): "Deconstructing databases with Jim Gray".

Maybe I'm confused but I thought 2 SEPARATE announcements were recently made by Sun.

1 - It will now be easier to distribute Java with a Linux distro

(see http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/05/05/java_linu x_licensing/)

2 - Sun is planning to open source Java but has not decided on all the details (I presume they're trying to pick the right OSI-approved license)

(see http://news.com.com/Sun+promises+to+open-source+Ja va/2100-7344_3-6072760.html)

Look at the dates in the articles. The "we will open source Java" announcement (#2) was made at JavaOne. The "we'll make it easier to distribute Java" (#1) was made before JavaOne AFAIK.

Hmm. I agree with you about C++/CLI, and I remember how bad standards compliance used to be in earlier versions of Visual C++, but more recent versions of Microsoft's C compiler (since Visual C++ 7) are amongst the most complete compilers as far as standards support goes (couldn't find an authoritative link - sorry). IIRC, MS even hired one of the STL guys to help them in this regard.

See how thrilled Bjarne Stroustrup is about the whole notion: http://public.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq.html#Cpp CLI

Read up on C++/CLI and how MS is going to pollute the C++ language for all of us: http://www.plumhall.com/ecma/BSI-ICT-1-0009-06.pdf and http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/05/05/cplusplus _cli/page2.html (complete with syntax examples of the new language MS wants to call C++)

^ and % are not pointer operators in C++. Call it something else.

why not chose delphi?

Here's a reason not to choose delphi

Another reason is that its not free in any sense of the word.

I'd recommend using Java on eclipse (with the GUI builder if necessary).
Fedora 4 includes an eclipse built on top of a 100% free java stack.

Aside from cost, the reason I wouldn't recommend VB as a starter language is that the syntax is very different than C,C++,C#, Java and many others.

And oh yeah, if you want to teach programming to young children Here's a little IDE I threw together ;)

I think it falls directly in step with IBM's shift in strategy - lower the software cost and generate service based revenues.

I'm sure you're right. All hardware / service companies want to get a bigger share of the available IT budget, money not spent on software is available for the New Toy.

IBM may be too late for the vast majority of developers. The ones that offered their products to develop and learn on are the ones that will find some sort of loyalty.

If DB2 is the superior product, I'm sure the vast majority of developers will be happy to consider it.