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Windows 2000 Source Code Gets (A Few) More Eyes
hansley writes: "Microsoft has extended its source code licensing program. Is it for distributed debugging purposes ? hmm ..." As the article points out, this limited and NDA-ridden disclosure is an expansion, rather than a wholly new idea. And remember, it has "nothing to do" with Linux or other Open Source software.
A very long time, if ever. It's really a ploy by M$ to be able to say to the DoJ that "3rd party individuals" are looking at the code. It also allows them to say, "Look at how confident we are in our code." I could also see them attempting to say something like, "It's open source for the 'big boys'. None of our secrets are out like those "other OSes", but we've got great new minds looking at the code." Meanwhile, those minds think the same way M$ does.
karma is for the weak >)
Second in server shipments for last year is not a niche player. For the average office user it would be just as easy as Windows NT. Since office users have an internal IT helpdesk to help them deal with problems with their workstations and since Linux provides a great deal more crash information than NT, the problem can be diagnosed and fixed for good, rather than the reboot/reinstall and hope method. It isn't ready for the person that can't set the clock on their video, but neither is Windows.
My family often have to ask me to have a look at their PCs and I hate having to recommend a reinstall which, with all the updates required, can take many unnecessary hours. I would quite happily support them on Mandrake and I'm going to see if I can talk my dad into using 8.0 when it comes out, as he finds Windows' crappiness horribly frustrating.
Linux is just the kernel. If you want to make a fair comparison, you need to count the rest of a Linux distribution too, for example XFree86, since Windows is tightly integrated with it's GUI. Is PWS counted as part of Win32? Better add the source for Apache and WU-FTPD as well. Does Notepad count as part of the windows source? Add the count for lines of jove. And so forth... as far as I am aware, the lines-of-code quoted for Windows is for the whole thing, the entire CD distribution.
magnitude (if not two or even three) fewer eyeballs
Many eyes make bugs shallow if they're all qualified and more importantly, if they're all looking. On that metric, a far higher percentage of the people who have the code (MS staff and third parties) are useful "lookers".
It was the Internet that pushed the PC into the mainstream, MS was just a lucky passenger. Netscape were the ones that brought the Internet to the masses and sold all those extra Win95 licenses for Microsoft.
Other superior platforms and OSes existed in the past but Microsoft buried them all with a combination of marketing and anti-competitive practices.
Surely you can't be suggesting that Windows might be fragmented in some way. That is obviously nonsense since Office works on all of them and doesn't even run on Unix. (This is sarcasm BTW)
MS Thinks that opening up a read-only source code view to 'elite' developers is going to solve anything?
This is not a smart move on their part as it's showing weakness in their propretary ways. They are validating the need and necesity of free-speech, not free beer.
Every little move like this is a victory for free-software (speech).
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Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
No shit?
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
It piggy-backs on your original work contract; as an employee, you (might) have the responsibility to be held to all contracts signed by authorized people in your company. Most of the time I've delt with it, has simply been pointed out to me as part of the employee manual.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Through this program? I don't see it. For one, this is just a broading of the existing program; you go to a MS-run secure site, look at the source on MS's machines, and then leave...taking nothing with you but what you learned. The NDA covers what you learned, so even that's not available to be shared.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
More eyes are better for Source than fewer eyes. Even if they don't have all of the eyes to read the code like Open Source stuff does!
Keeping
"NDA-ridden disclosure" ... I love legal speak ... ;-)
...
And as far as I know, Microsoft does not allow anyone to modify the source, let alone distribute patches. So much for the debugging
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
I wonder how long it will be before you will be able to get CDs with the complete source to MS Office, Visual Studio, Win2k, and so on via MSDN. Like how you get binary CDs now.
Five years? Ten years? Never?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
the whole "more eyes are better" concept falls apart when the average intellengence of these eyes are just that... average. I'd rather have a fewer set of eyes where the IQ is higher.. the source code tends to have a better architechure this way.
I guess I'm thinking of the difference between Linux and BSD.
"We estimate this to be about 1,000 firms in the U.S., and not all of them will want the code," ...In fact some people would prefer it was just incinerated.
Do NOT look at this code. Any open source developers would have to be carefull not to go antwhere near this stuff. Next thing you know MS is shutting down open source/free software projects accusing them of "borrowing" from their copyrighted/licenced/patented/NDAed/trade secret and generally loathsome code. BEWARE this is poison!
I. Disclosure of ";"
;'s in our code we will take the following action.
...
You or any party remotely affiliated, or even not affiliated with you may not disclose even 1 character of our code. Should you or said party reveal that we use
1. The first born child of every member of your company must be enslaved to M$oft for use as we see fit.
2. Your company must publish a public retraction of this treason by stating that it could have been a : or perhaps even an = symbol
3. The eyes and voicebox of every employee that has had access or is affiliated with anyone who has access to said code, will be removed.
II. Disclosure of "#include"
You or
~ fact is not dependant upon your belief therein. ~ ~ Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
"How often do we discuss employment contracts and non-competes? The lack of talk on this issue here seems to show that NDAs aren't taken very seriously."
Man, we've had like 3 articles in the last week or so just on NDA, and employee's IP, etc.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Not true. The Samba developers had better be careful, for instance.
MS code (and license) has the Gorgon effect with reguards to GPL code; after you look at it you can't contribute to free code. MS will claim that you stole ideas from them. I think this is some sort of poison pill for GPL code.
So, I think that this is bad for us free coders and good for MS, which makes it even worse for usLater...
KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
Remember back in the day when so many "new" things seemed to be happening with computers? There seemed to be limitless possibilities. The Pentium had just been introduced, graphics were becoming better and better, multimedia capabilities were making their debut, and there were new technologies, programs, program suites and products being produced everywhere. Java, DirectX (or WinG), faster modems, more memory, gotta have DX instead of SX. Everybody didn't *have* to upgrade, they *wanted* to.
.Net might be something, but I would guess its DDE version 37 rather than something truly new.
This was before widespread easy Internet access (remember the ancient Compuserve dialer program?), so browsers weren't particularly important yet, but a thousand companies each seemed to have their "must-buy" technology.
That was about five to seven years ago. Now, outside of Linux, what truly *new* PC technology has emerged or been constructed since? Its just more of the same, and more after that. Pentium IV, Office 11, Windows 95,98,2000, MS Studio 7, and so on. Granted,
But its still a Microsoft product. Can *no other company* produce new technology anymore? Why is Microsoft the only company that seems to be able to produce even new versions of old binaries? Programmers have a staggering amount of information and knowledge and processing/storage power available. Again, besides Linux, where is the PC going?
Now, MS releasing source is probably a good idea, especially for an operating system, but everyone else seems to be just coasting along, still trying to get a couple more dollars out of the old "upgrade-reinstall-upgrade" cycle, and I think Microsoft is doing the same thing. I'm also not sure that releasing the source to their operating system will help the non-activity in PC development either, because of all the agreements everyone has to sign to use it.
I think it would be a lot better for the PC and technology in general if there were something new happening with computers again, or if, perhaps, Linux were to get more generally popular.
They'd have to target it at some poor suckers who don't know what the open source community/movement is all about.
That would be about 98% of corporate america. Most companies do not use Linux because they are afraid of going the non-M$ route. They ask, "Who else has done this and how effective was it for them?!" and they want to hear only big names... and a lot of them.
If M$ came out with a distro, most companies would go with it before they considered Redhat, Mandrake, Caldera, *BSD, or any other distro...
A couple years ago when MS was first looking at Open Source, Steve Ballmer mentioned that Microsoft had done a study suggesting that something like 1-3% of Windows developers wanted source code access. (Back then you had to pretty much be an OEM, Wall St firm, or Fortune 50 client IIRC to get it.) I was intrigued by this at the time, since A) Microsoft had attempted to get hard data on the demand for this and B) that's a lot of developers. Obviously MS is finally responding to that demand, albeit in a go-slow manner.
--LP
1500 copies of Windows 2000 Pro at the going price of US$258 (at CDW this morning) =
US$378000.00
Minus the enterprise licensing discount (prob. about 10%).
If they aren't willing to pay programmers to debug and audit their source, they must not be able to afford it.
I can't believe they would consider asking for people to do this work for free, or ostensibly in exchange for getting an insider's look at the source code. I think this smacks of arrogance and is completely contrary to any kind of community fostering spirit.
I have an idea for what to do with the source they are revealing. I think it should be uploaded to file swapping services, web sites, newsgroups, chat rooms and anywhere else people can think to put it. Conisidering the 'saftey in numbers' lesson of Napster, we can expect that MS will be unable to go after anyone for this illegal distribution of their IP. That might make them think twice about such a self serving program in the future.
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Microsoft has never denied this and always respected the licencing terms of BSD software.
While the number of developers lost to both comercial and free/open operating systems should be low, we might never know the real loss.
If the NDA covers a whole company -- as the last one I had with MS for Win95 did ^ -- simply being an employee might stifle ... well ... inovation.
If so, this is a real 'win-win' for Microsoft in the long run.
How often do we discuss employment contracts and non-competes? The lack of talk on this issue here seems to show that NDAs aren't taken very seriously.
^. Not source.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
It would include an obscene number of proprietary protocols and apis, making it completely incompatible with the rest of the Linux world.
But through shrewd deal-making and corporate IT fear, Microsoft embeds itself into the Linux landscape, causing an irreperable fork in kernel development.
Of course, all they would have to do is put an ugy UI on NT and call it Linux. Most folks would play along.
Be affraid. Be very affraid.
I'm sorry. I've never posted a "I'm bitter because they didn't post it when I submitted it", because I don't really care if they use mine. I do think it's a little ridiculous when I submit it and they post it FIVE DAYS LATER! I remember thinking when I saw it on zdnet, "I'm surprised I haven't seen this on /."
2001-03-08 21:31:22 Microsoft expands open-Window policy (articles,microsoft) (rejected)
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Hmm... Does this seem suspicious to anyone else, having just heard the total pile of poo that spewed forth from the mouth of one Jim Allchin? Just an observation.
This will be a great opportunity for someone to examine their code looking for GPL'ed code.
Wouldn't it be great to find some GPL'ed code in there.... What a can of worms that would be for MS.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Would that be the source of all evil then?
Perhaps it'll be easier to discredit GPL software.
Think of it. You release software under an NDA and lots of licences. Then someone leaks it. After a while, people who had looked at it as teens move into the world. They write some GPL utility.
Now they have to prove that MS code did not influence them! It's like turning the world into a non-cleanroom environment, in order to get rid of opensource software (since they can inspect it easily..).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I think you'll find it here.
Only until Microsoft shut them down for stealing their 'intellectual' property. This argument came up when the Russian hackers had access to Microsoft's servers for a while and didn't do anything (yeah right). No-one from WINE or Samba would touch this code as it would immediately kill their project.
Simple solution: f you are a free coder, don't go anywhere near MS code or NDAs. On the other hand, if you are already immersed in a MS-only world, and are working on MS-only applications, and systems, perhaps this is a good thing for you. I think there is a sufficient differientiation between MS-immersed people and free software coders...there probably isn't all that much overlap there.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I wouldn't touch the Windows 95/95 OSR2/98/ME code. That thing is probably a mess. Old DOS might be fun (back when all a Microsoft OS was a shell). But Windows 2000? Cool.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
How long before this code roams the Net? IM: Microsoft surely is aware that opening their source to large groups of people over whom they have no control, is going to result sooner or later in leakage to the rest of the world.[1] So why do they do it? They must have some kind of devious plan behind this ...
[1] - Surely this is open to discussion, but at this time I'm fairly sure about this.
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Matthijs
If MS was any other company doing this, people wouldn't take notice.
However, as famous and infamous as they are, as disliked as they are by some people in the computing community, they can be sure that plenty of people want to get their eyes on their code. If they allowed more people to see the code they'd have plenty of volunteers.
Thus, by their bad reputation, they ensure heightened curiosity.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I remember a lot of talk from a couple years ago about how they were adding 20 million lines to NT to get W2k, bringing the total up to something like 150 million lines.
/usr/src/linux/ -type f -name *.[ch] -exec wc -l {} \; | awk '{sum+=$1;} END {print sum}'
find
1504406
(I'm not going to claim that was the easiest or fastest way to do that....)
So W2k has two orders of magnitude more code, at least one order of magnitude (if not two or even three) fewer eyeballs and no way to FIX found bugs other than the same old "we'll put it on our list". Yeah, that's productive.
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324006
They're trying to dupe the simple into giving them free services - just like they've screwed over 'hobbyists' many times in the past - "here, try this alpha out, report the bugs to us, now bugger off". Remember, anything anyone contributs to the Msft effort is the property of Msft, all your rights belong to them. Suckers....
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Will developers that see bugs in the syntax report them to Microsoft?
I come from a Unix world myself. However, only lately have I come to realize the vast amount of developer support that Microsoft products enjoy. With the VS tools, there are tons of developers who think MS is the coolest thing since sliced bread and are eager to look at and contribute to the OS.
Will Microsoft take an active roll in using any "suggestions" from programers regarding bugs in future SPs or versions?
I'm pretty sure MS will look at the bug reports it receives. At the risk of sounding banal, I'll say that fixing bugs in software is not just a simple task of someone identifying an "obvious" bug and just fixing it. For about every 10 "obvious" bugs that you fix, you tend to cause one regression which will cost you tons of hours to find, identify and fix. Sometimes (not always) it is just not worth the risk to disturb a relatively stable product for the sake of fixing an obscure scenario.
Will the Windows OS improve as a result of this move, or just applications that run on the OS
Doesn't it lead to the same result? When a crappy driver causes your OS to bluescreen/hang, who do you blame?
Will this lead to some increases in bugs? If an application writer uses undocumented side effects of Windows (that she finds in the source code) and the code changes (SP, new version, etc.), will we see new bugs?
You're just screwing yourself if you're relying on an undocumented feature in the code. There's a reason some features aren't documented (no, and not just to srew the competitors) including that they might not be ready for primetime, have the adequate amount of testing or were pulled because of lack of demand. It would just be sheer stupidity to rely on an undocumented feature for your product.
Mmmm.. Donuts
I'm just full of questions. Anyone care to try and answer?
The most important question (IMHO) is:
Support a few technologists in Washington.