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Microsoft's GPL IPv6 Web Server. Not Really.
So, quite a number of people have submitted this hideously poorly titled story that talks about a GPLed IPv6 Web Server that's on Microsoft.com. A number of people thought it means everything will be GPLed starting this afternoon - it's their research server called Fnord!. Now, please stop submitting it *grin*
I don't think it is a joke. This truely was the name of a GPL webserver written by Brian Morin, who was a student at WPI. I've used Fnord! before. IT was a nifty web server for Windows. But then, Morin got hired by Microsoft and the project seemed to have been abandoned.
It's funny to see a Microsoft domain with completely unformatted text, just plain jane text, no graphics, funny verbage, etc. Everything they do on the web is so incredibly over-produced, it just screams "ad agency", but then you come to this page and it's just black text on a big white blank page. It reminds me of when I first started surfing the internet, and how everything was really content-driven instead of image-driven.
It bowled me over. I was actually excited to see this page, because I'm sure the guys who wrote it (and posted the server) are just as excited. They're working on cutting edge stuff (well, IPv6 is more cutting edge than MY projects) and they're probably having a blast. You don't hear about this often from the MS camp - by the time things make it to their web site, you get the feeling a dozen graphic artists and content managers have put their OK on it, and it's completely sanitized of humor.
I can't help but wonder what's going to happen to these poor guys when some image-driven schmuck from MS catches this page. "What?!? This is our first IPv6 web server, and it's this plain and ugly? It should be jazzy! It should have lots of IE-only controls! And take out that humor! Now hop to it!"
What's your damage, Heather?
It's funny how these things just keep comming back. I always got a kick out of seeing it show up on the Netcraft survey (at least at recently as a year ago.) Anyway I guess a few comments are in order (easy Karma too.)
I wrote Fnord back in my Junior yeah of college (96-97.) Partialy because EWACs (or something like that) was the dominant web server at the time with IIS just comming around with it's magical version 3. Partitialy just to learn how they worked under the covers. The name Fnord was a joke that stuck. The thought of Fnords on the web being served by a Fnord Sever had a certain ring to it. Why GPL? Since part of my goal was understanding how these things work and would work under NT, GPL was as good of a way as any to share my work with others. I ended getting a little help from a couple people in the process. Overall, it was a fun experience I learned a lot from.
The summer of '97 I accepted an internship at Microsoft on the IIS ASP team. In the process I learned a hell of a lot about stuff I didn't know that I didn't know. After that experience, by my own initiative, I ceased to work on Fnord. I considered it ethicaly and perhaps legally wrong. So it laid idle on my homepage at WPI. Around then I got a letter from Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson games asking me to cease and desist using the pyrimid and eye icon. However, by that point there wasn't much to cease and desist doing. Being a fan of his work made it all the more humorous. After graduation I accepted a postion at Microsoft.
After working for Microsoft for about a year, someone from research called me and asked me if they could use Fnord as an example for their IP6 effort. They needed a server example, releasing a subset of IIS was not possible (I suspect size and intellectual property issues) so Fnord fit the bill. Other than saying yes and being glad Fnord still was of some use to someone, I had no other role in MS release it.
Currently, I'm still working for Microsoft in XBox Online.
Hope this sheds some light on how this little inside joke came to be.
Brian Morin
aka
Henry Fnord
or MS has been infiltrated by the Illuminati.
I think the second one is more likely, I can even feel the mind control beams emenating from the NT I'm typing at.
fnord
1. A word used in electronic mail and news messages to tag utterances as surrealist mind-play or humour, especially in connection with Discordianism and elaborate conspiracy theories. "I heard that David Koresh is sharing an apartment in Argentina with Hitler. (Fnord.)" "Where can I fnord get the Principia Discordia from?"
I should ask dictionary.com to include "MS releases a server under the GPL." as an example.
BOSTON SUCKS!
Ok everyone, calm down. Fnord isn't written by MS. The researchers probally choose it because they needed some kind of server application to test out on their IPv6 machine, and adding IPv6 support to IIS isn't pratical for their research and testing. So they found this small open source webserver that they could hack at and get running on IPv6 in a few hours. As required by the GPL, they've released their modifications to the public. Personally, I think it would have been fun if they forced you to download the code via IPv6. Would have given the /. community a reason to setup IPv6.
5 -25-005-20-OS-MS ) and automatically reject the story (since you're motivation for posting this story was "stop fscking submitting it!")
In the grand scheme of things, there really isn't much to see here. It's a Microsoft research/test server running something besides IIS, on IPv6. The webserver is a small, GPLed little server that they made a few patches to. I'm still trying to figure out how the hell this is newsworthy. Did everyone download the fnord code and check them for GPL complience? Don't bother. It's there. The author of the Linux today article obviously has no idea about the orgin of fnord, or the nature of research. Why the hell would IPv6 support get into IIS before their IPv6 stack was ready? Why would a small research team modify IIS to support IPv6? They wouldn't. That's what MS pays the IIS developers to do. Please, use you're grey matter just a little bit.
Why not add a feature to slash that will look for a URL ( in this case http://research.microsoft.com/msripv6/fnord.htm and http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-0
Ok, I think I'm done now.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Of course, Microsoft already include a bunch of GPL'd software with the NT4 Resource Kit, including a horrible old build of Perl, some GNU utilities etc. IIRC these were licensed from MKS. Anyone know whether the W2K Resource Kit comes with similar goodies? Or have MS noticed that everyone who wants a usable Windows system these days gets this stuff (and tons more) from cygwin?
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
You know, I've always thought something like this had to exist at Microsoft.
.Net, ASP), has been doing a lot of great shit. Fast XML parsers. Semi stable windowing OSs. A decent scripting language (or, rather, engine...i write my WSH stuff in Perl or JavaScript). All of these things well documented in MSDN with text files that were obviously not hit with the same marketeering technical writers who tried to sell us on Windows Media 8, the death of the paper clip or the "excitement" of .Net: The Network is the Comput-oh wait, that's not .Net!
You see, I've seen a lot of smart, talented young coders and scientists get recruited by Microsoft. Half of them go in for the huge stock options, their name on a blue MS shirt, and, of course, the booth babes. The other half are misfits and nutjobs who really want to change the world. In fact, that's the reason why I'm not anti-MS...I've known too many good men entering the behemoth to think that it's all fluff and marketeering.
We all like to think of Windows as an underpowered, oversimplified mush...but Microsoft, despite its market crap (XP,
This "Fnord" box is apparently the house of some of these innovators at Micrsoft. The ones taking the ideas that UN*X users come up with and adapting them for the mass market. These are the guys that are going to eventually build the Ipv6 core that us Windows users will have underneath it all in four or five years -- before marketting makes them paint it yellow and cover it with MSIPv6 logos.
Don't hate MS for looking at GPL code...that's what GPL code is for. Hate the marketeers who cover this free code with bumper stickers and sell it back to us at a premium. We're all in a field of flowers, but Microsoft is picking them and selling them to folks who are too lazy to come to the countryside.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
1) This isn't new. I downloaded their IPv6 version of Fnord! 3 months ago, and it's been around longer than that (The oldest version on their FTP server is from 9/2000.)
/pub, /users, and several other directories.
2) This isn't 'hidden', it's linked off the Microsoft Research IPv6 homepage, which in turn is linked off of the Current Research page (Although they want you to register if you go in that way).
3) This isn't Microsoft, the OS maker, it's Microsoft Research, the R&D Lab.
4) Microsoft didn't write Fnord!, it specifically says on their page 'Fnord! is a Windows web server we found on the net and ported to run on our stack.' and 'Fnord! was apparently written by Brian Morin while a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.' The readme.msr goes on to give the URL of the authors website (now defunct) and a URL of a Tucows mirror where the original could still be found when they wrote the readme. (I didn't check if that mirror still works.)
5) Yes, they included the source code in their port. No, it's not for Visual C++. It's actually a Borland C++ 4.5 project, although I believe their binaries are compiled with VC++.
6) Finally, I'd like to point out that there are a lot of other interesting-sounding files available on ftp.research.microsoft.com, from the
-Jade E.
If you look a little longer than your nose you will notice that the fnordserver is written by somebody else but is put on the Microsoft site because it works on W2K.
It isn't Microsoft's software; it's just hosted there.