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WSJ Reports On MS Using Open Source
Graeme Turnbull writes: "As I was logging out of hotmail (shutup..) this evening, and as the Passport service automatically forwards me to ca.msn.com (knowing I originate from Ca), I noticed the headline 'Microsoft Uses Open-Source Code Despite Denying Use of Such Software.' The story is care of The Wall Street Journal. Due to the somewhat anti-MS tone of the article, I found it strange that this was linked from a MSN site!"
Update: 06/18 by J : Several of our readers have pointed out an interesting allegation this morning at The Register:
MSNBC doctors anti-MS WSJ story. Update: 06/18 by N : And several people @wsj.com have written to me to say that MSNBC picked up an early version of the story for syndication; this early version also appeared in the majority of the print runs for the WSJ. More details about half way down.
Unfortunately, this means that every program ever written includes, er, "code" from /bin/true
and hence is in violation of AT&T copyright...
(Posted as AC so that AT&T's lawyers don't sue my sorry ass for publishing their unpublished proprietary source code)
If you use MS Excell 2k, and put a "saved querry object" in your spreadsheet, such as MS's Stock Data getter thingie, run it, and then follow the link the the legal agreement of using it, you will find that there is a segment within the legal agreement describing the applet's use of gnuplot . Hrmmm....
According to this article on The Register, MSN did indeed alter the article to make it a little less Microsoft-antonistic, but apparently got caught on it and altered it back.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Why is it that people can't understand the difference between the GPL and the BSD licenses? You can attack one without attacking the other, and Microsoft has focused their complaints against the GPL, implying that the BSD license is better.
Furthermore as far as hotmail.com goes. Again, if you read the article that Microsoft has on their site regarding the migration to Windows 2000 they acknowledge the support/mindshare issue.
The support people were used to monitoring the FreeBSD servers. As a result, they installed syslog tools on the Windows 2000 servers(by way of Services for Unix). Microsoft fully admits they still have some FreeBSD machines in house, it's just the main web servers they migrated. They also say in the article that the development machines had been using Windows NT/2k for quite a while beforehand. Initial development had been done on NT, then recompiled on FreeBSD and retested.
According to the article Microsoft migrated the entirety of several thousand web servers running FreeBSD to Windows 2000.
According to the hotmail migration article, not only did switch over to Win2k servers seamlessly, they also increased the number of users they could support on hotmail without buying additional hardware.
Sounds to me like a terrific success for Microsoft, and something just last year open source zealots were claiming they could not do.
I can think of several other projects funded by Microsoft that produce GPL'ed code. Some work on the Mercury language, for example, was funded by them. One of the conditions for the cooperation was that "all the support for the .NET platform in the Mercury system will be available on the same terms as the rest of the Mercury system, i.e. open-source under the GPL or LGPL".
This seems all the more ironic since I understand Craig Mundie to be telling the government not to support GPL'ed development. Is Microsoft itself now going to stop research funding for software under such cancerous licenses?
I've seen a weird trend from /. moderators. Anytime someone makes a good point about or appears to support Microsoft, it gets labels as "Funny".
It's as if such comments were incapable of being "interesting", "informative" or "insightful". TikkaMassala makes a good point, but instead of taking it seriously we label it as "Funny" to avoid the uncomfortable implication that Microsoft has integrity. In a corporation as large as Microsoft, I find it plausable that there are parts within it's walls that retain integrity, but we tend to mock rather than support those who point this out.
Shame on us moderators for this. We should hold outselves to a higher standard.
neo
% more
#!/usr/bin/sh
# Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T
#ident "@(#)clear.sh 1.8 96/10/14 SMI"
# Copyright (c) 1987, 1988 Microsoft Corporation
# All Rights Reserved
# This Module contains Proprietary Information of Microsoft
# Corporation and should be treated as Confidential.
Gosh. And what is this proprietary information, I hear you ask?
# clear the screen with terminfo.
# if an argument is given, print the clear string for that tty type
/usr/bin/tput ${1:+-T$1} clear 2>
exit
Ooh, these 'leet Microsoft programmers....
Baz
Good article. One thing to point out thou, MS is
such a large company, it seems to me a case of
the right hand not knowing what the left hand is
doing.
What I find surprising, after some of their past
mistakes (i.e. DoJ Trial), you'd think they would
be more careful.
Awesome!
People educated in the IBM culture tend to be bureaucrats. Have you ever seen RPG code? It looks like some kind of primitive assembly language, but it's still in use in many shops.
This has not created a high-productivity programming culture. But there is an upside: the work that finally gets produced tends to be of high quality, and IBM AS/400 types are highly intolerant of bugs that would generate shrugs of the shoulder in the Windows world.
I actually tried an AS/400 but got discouraged by the vertical learning curve - you literally have to understand how the whole incredibly complex system fits together before you can write 'Hello World'.
I have a sneaking admiration for people with that kind of patience. But it certainly goes a long way towards explaining why the IBM group was a lot less productive; it's probably cultural, just as higher productivity in Linux versus Windows is.
D
----
It is horrible PR.
No it is not! Do you really thinkg MS's PR is aimed at the slashdot crowd? Or do you think it's aimed at the PHB's who allocate funds for software purchases? Repeat after me:
GEEKS DO NOT CONTROL THE PURSE STRINGS.
MS is a business; their goal is to make money; their advertising is targeted at people who spend money on software. 'Nuff said.
> What I don't understand, is why Microsoft's PR department insists on causing so much controversy.
Because they view it as a life-or-death struggle. (OK, they seem to view everything that way, but they may well be correct this time.)
As many others have pointed out, MS is unlike most other OS vendors in that the OS is their premier product, not something they make so they can sell their expensive hardware. If OSOSes ever replace MSOSes on commodity hardware, MS is toast.
In addition... insert here the oft-repeated explanation that even if OSOSes don't replace MSOSes, MS still has the problem that it requires growth to keep its stock prices up, and OSS is sucking up a big portion of what little uncommitted market still remained to MS for growth.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
See this story over at The Reg.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's been long-standing knowledge that Hotmail runs on FreeBSD. That's what it was built on, and moving it to NT would be (is) a nightmare.
And try to find a TCP/IP stack that *doesn't* have code derived from the BSD stack. Yes, I know it's out there... but BSD stacks are by far the most common. This is not news.
The Register is reporting that MSNBC originally doctored the WSJ and then restored it after they got caught.
The story is here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/19771.html
A move like this would probably hurt Microsoft. It would eliminate a reason for needing to run Windows (which is a big cash cow for them, as they get paid for a Windows license for nearly every PC sold.)
Moreover, I don't think they could control Linux. Perhaps you're thinking they could supply patches to the kernel that would make Office run better than, say KWord or Star Office. However, this would require Linus' agreement. I doubt he'd include such dubious features. They're free, of course, to fork the kernel and make their own distribution, but they would have to distribute their source code and couldn't stop their customers from doing the same.
However, I think you're right that what would help Microsoft (or at least hurt the open source community) would be if they managed to divide and conquer the community. Their recent rantings about open source as "cancer", however, seems to have caused the OS community to close ranks and ignore their differences, as MS paints them all with the same brush.
Perhaps they would consider trying to divide the OS community along OS licenses, but complaining in public about OS licenses is a weak tactic for MS, because it relies on the arcana of the definition of open source. It would be pointless for MS to try to divide the OS community by picking sides in the "which license is better" debate because their PR machine works at the consumer/upper management level. The decision about which license is better takes place at the developer level, and is hardly a topic of interest to the general public. (I.e. typical Windows users.)
Then there's OS-X. While Apple freely embraces OS in the form of BSD and makes no bones about it, as many people have pointed out Windows (NT) is based in part on some BSD code. So MS rantings about OS "cancer" only also alienate them from Mac afficianados as well. This tactic seems to have backfired by (a) causing their otherwise fractioned enemies to find common ground, and (b) exposing their own hypocracy in their use of BSD code.
As many others have pointed out, MS is unlike most other OS vendors in that the OS is their premier product, not something they make so they can sell their expensive hardware. If OSOSes ever replace MSOSes on commodity hardware, MS is toast.
Also, OS dominance has tremendous strategic benefit to Microsoft since it uses it as the base to launch into other markets. While being illegal, of course, this has been MS's main MO for the past decade and it has been extraordinarily successful. If MS loses its OS dominance, it will have a much more difficult time expanding into new markets and dominating old ones. They would be just another player on the field, rather than the owner of the playing field.
Did you read the actual article? Have you been listening to what Microsoft has been saying lately? In case you haven't it goes something like this. GPL=open source, GPL=anti-intllectual property, Open Source= anti-intellectual property, All Open source threatens intellectual property, because if you use any open source, you have to give away all of your IP.
Everybody in the tech community knew that the Win95/NT tcp/ip stack was the BSD stack, everybody in the tech community knew that hotmail was run (until recently) on BSD.
I don't find anything in this to be breaking news, I just find it to be funny.
"Don't use open soruce it's bad." "Shh, don't tell anyone, but all of our most mission critical stuff runs on open source software."
That's the funny part.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
I suspect there's alot more BSD code in MS-Windows[*|NT], but either compressed to hide the UC copyright or licenced more recently without the "obnoxious advertising" BSD clause.
No he did not. Read this paragraph:
[...] The Microsoft spokesman, in acknowledging that fact, said it didn't contradict the company's many recent anti-open-source statements. He said that's because Microsoft's main objection has been to Linux, which has a more restrictive licensing arrangement than FreeBSD. Microsoft, though, hasn't previously suggested that there were benign forms of open-source software, and while singling out Linux for special criticism, has tended to criticize all open-source with the same broad brush.
Right. In the recent anti-GPL FUD, it tried to broaden the attack to all Open Source. Looks like it's backfiring now, especially to the general public who cannot see the nuances between GPL and other open source licenses. Now they read MS is using it themselves...
BTW, it looks to me like MS' campaign is kind of working. A lot of my not-into Linux friends ask me questions lately about the issues of using Linux at their work - the FUD is spreading! I hope it really is countered with articles like this one in the main stream press.
You know that all of those guys in the applications division run linux and bsd at home.
Or at work. There was Linux on plenty of desktops at their support center at Las Colinas. I did support for them for about 6 months, and there was plenty of discussion about Linux, the trial ( I started just after the Jackson's FoF), and what the outcomes would be like.
With all of the FUDmongering that comes out of Redmond, you'd think that Linux would be a four - letter word at Microsoft, but they use the same number of letters there as anywhere else in the English - speaking world.
They were generously unconcerned about what software, what os, and what games we had on our machine. OTOH, there was a huge THOU SHALT NOT USE OPEN -SOURCE TOOLS TO DEVELOP mentality, that probably forced developers to conform to a standard - approved tools list.
/.'ers most common folly is to assume that Linux is for hobbiests and geeks. Look who is contributing to the 2.5 kernel. Oracle, IBM and HP aren't some hobbiest commies. They are big buck drive the dollar home capitalists. Their goal is to make money.
Someone you trust is one of us.
If I ran the zoo...
The "Enterprize" market could fricking care less about some BS slander campaign. F500 companies are *not* run by idiots. There is a reason that the average F500 CIO makes 10 million a year. Those guys go on results. The only market that can be suckered in this fashion frankly is the grassroots crowd. Look at all of the FUD on this site for instance. But, the grassroots crowd doesn't take well to perceived bullying.
Microsoft is responding to the "Dune-Mwadeeb" effect of GNU/Linux/BSD. When facing the jahad, don't fuel the flames by executing the faithful. What Microsoft needs to accomplish, is a truce. They need to court the energy of the open source movement in their favor. How? Port Office to linux. Through a few billion into Gnome or KDE or Wine, or their own fricking desktop, but have it run on Linux. Port Office to Linux and they could help control it. Open Source Internet Explorer for Linux. MS needs to get their hooks into the Linux development like IBM, Oracle and HP are.
Someone you trust is one of us.
What I don't understand, is why Microsoft's PR department insists on causing so much controversy. This anti open source movement only reinforces their draconian reputation. Sun is no better than Microsoft (if they only had Microsoft's monopoly we would be living in the 3rd Reich). But at least Sun's PR actually attempts to soften their image.
Coming out against Open Source is like attacking charitable causes. It is horrible PR.
Microsoft has increased its licencing fees by estimates of 100%. It has dropped negotiations with AOL over issues of content controlling (its browser wars II, Return of the Media). To cover up these clear demonstrations of monopoly abuse, the company has assulted open source???
Someone you trust is one of us.
The article is dumbed down too much to avoid explaining the different licenses. Microsoft also does this in their announcements. Most of Microsoft's arguments against Open Source are against GPLed software. The WSJ doesn't even mention GPL. That's either because they don't know how to explain it in a few paragraphs, or even more likely they don't understand the issues with the different licenses.
Microsoft telling reporters that Hotmail doesn't use any Open Source software is a different issue. Either the Microsoft employee that stated that was horribly informed and should have known to keep his mouth shut, or the quote was taken out of context. Through Hotmail, Microsoft has learned that there are some things that FreeBSD is better at. I'm willing to bet that these issuses are getting a lot of attention by the Win2000/XP development teams. I'm sure that it's a goal of Microsoft's to be able to switch those systems over to Windows in the future. At least they're smart enough to run FreeBSD untill they have a "Microsoft" solution. If they're smart, part of the solution will be to look at the FreeBSD code and learn what they can from it, and since the BSD license allows it even use BSD code to solve the problem if that works for them.
A lot of companies make really stupid decisions for marketing reasons, or because of managment's pride. I've seen really stupid business decisions that were technically unsound made just because a manager was unwilling to change course after an important, high profile decision was made. Someone made the decision to remove FreeBSD from those systems, and that person had to admit that Windows wasn't up to the task.
What else could they have done? They could have gone down the path of Microsoft doing a rush job of patching Windows to fix this problem. You would have ended up with an unstable system for a while, and Hotmail would have lost some customers. Instead, Microsoft swollowed their pride and made a good business decision.
The most significant thing about this article is that it is from the Wall Street Journal. Its the second anti MS article in a week. They called smart tags "dangerous".
The Journal is conservative, it is voice of the establishment. It is also one of the best newspapers in the world.
As the voice of the establishment, the fact that it has gone sour on MS is tremendously significant. It means that Corporate America is turning against them.
Why does this matter? Because, if the "business community" is against MS, then the Bush administration will see them as a political liability.
And what happens to companies that become political liabilities? Well, what happened to ADM? or the tobacco companies? They got hung out to dry.
Wishful thinking? Possibly, but two negative stories in the Journal in a week is one of those red flags only monomania can blind someone to.
The Register has an article on how MNSBC has been doctoring out the details of this story in order to cast M$ is a better light. See it here.
Really? Well. I can think of one ... and its name begins with M.
Microsoft tends to receive quite a bit of bad press in the Free Software community. There is no doubt that Microsoft has released its share of bug ridden software, as has just about every other software company in the history of computing. All of this publicity does little to help the image of Microsoft in any community, much less one as technically demanding as Free Software. Given that image it is no wonder that many of us regard the company as evil and uncaring. We shudder at the costs of their software because we know full well that there are lternatives available that are arguably just as good, but are Free for the taking (and changing if we so choose).
Compared to Free Software Microsoft would probably appear to be evil even to the layman. Our community is composed of volunteers. Our software can be had for the cost of a little bandwidth. In our world you have vast freedom of choice and the source code of our software can even be changed to fit your particular whims, you aren't forced to use whatever some focus group research shows that everyone wants.
Microsoft is hires and retains its programmers with a variety of economic incentives. Obviously everyone receives a regular salary, there are also stock options, 401k payments, insurance subsidies, bonuses, education reimbursements, etc. Further, by choosing to work for Microsoft every employee implicitly (some explicitly in the form of contracts) agrees to the terms set forth by the company for the particular position they hold. Other aspects of the employment 'contract' are equally well defined. Coffee breaks, lunch times, and numerous other details of the work day are set forth in policies that are made public within the company.
Microsoft also takes particular pains to maintain good employee relations, so one can assume that the general happiness of the work force is good. Employees can leave the company any time they choose to pursue other opportunities. An excellent comparison to a system such as this would be a capitalist economy. The incentives to produce are obviously economic in nature, some kind of in cash transfer takes place. Employees agree to provide a service for which the company agrees to provide payment. Overall the system is not skewed in favor of one party or another, some areas favor the employer and some favor the employee. It is as close to the ideal of the perfect freedom as one might be able to find.
It is in this respect that the case could be made that Microsoft, while selling products that are not necessarily better than the alternatives, should be commended. Microsoft provides a non-exploitive means of employment for thousands of people all across the world and in doing so fulfills a social contract that is very valuable indeed. As a country's wealth, and that of its citizens, increases, so does the standard of living. Life expectencies increase due to better health care and sanitation.
The Free Software movement takes an entirely different approach to recruiting programmers. One of the largest repositories of Free Software projects, Sourceforge, shows a vast array of programs. Many of the workers on those projects are volunteers.
It cannot be disputed that the Free Software movement has produced quality products but its sterling reputation for being a good social citizen may not be as well deserved as one would think, considering the fact that in spite of their social contributions Microsoft continues to be viewed as evil. Free Software compensates its programmers not with economic transfers, but with social rewards. A review of the community forums will reveal instances of peer pressure to get programmers to contribute. Quotes like "If you want that feature go code it yourself" can be read quite often. The rewards of working in the Free Software world come not in the form of transfers of any monetary value, but from the admiration of one's peers. This is particularly evident with another visit to the popular Sourceforge, 'Highest Rated Users' and 'Top Project Downloads' graphics are porminently displayed on the front page.
Many would argue that programmers contribute to projects of their own free will, thus there is much more freedom in the community as opposed to our contrasting example. That assertion true, but it ignores the power of social pressures. A worker cannot simply walk away from a project without paying a price. The incentive to being it in the first place was fulfillment of the ego and such a person would not risk drawing any admonishments from the community for failing to fulfill his end of the social contract.
Further inspection of the Free Software movement reveals that the social incentives to contribute extend beyond those who can program as well, the movement has developed a way to take advantage of even the unskilled users. 'Release early release often' means a beta version of your favorite software is not far away. Whether one visits Sourceforge, Slashdot, or virtually any other Free Software website on the day a new Linux kernel is released there will no doubt be hype for it. The idea conveyed by the hype surrounding these releases is you need to have the latest version if you want to keep up! In order to keep the movement running smoothly there has to be continuous recruitment of beta testers.
Considering the social rewards and punishments of the Free Software movement one must wonder what its contribution to the greater welfare of society is. I would hold that we all benefit as a whole from the increase in competition between the two disparaging groups. Despite this there is also a considerable negative component of Free Software: It tends to exploit its workers by shackling them with vast social pressure yet it does nothing to improve their quality of life. Indeed, in courtries where there is widespread use of Free Software (relative to the use of Microsoft alternatives) the standard of living is considerably lower. The fact that shame is used to glean contributions also bears mentioning. A hint of disingenuity can also be found in the assertion that the use of the GPL prevents a person's work from being exploited in the name of corporate profit, companies like Red Hat make millions of dollars every year by providing support for code that originally released free of charge by programmers who were paid nothing.
As I stated in my opening paragraph, I am a loyal supporter of Free Software. I will continue to use it every day of my life. My primary desire in writing this short essay is to ask each of you to critically assess the Free Softwar movement, and give some thought to our predicament before you point an accusing finger in the direction of Microsoft.
Icebox
And if you think they're just "confused" on the topic, there's a bridge in my hometown that I'd love to sell you...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
It's true. Mundie was mostly bashing the GPL, not open source as a whole (not that I think he's running FreeBSD at home...).
In this case the reporter missed that point entirely.
Now if this were the other way around, would it be FUD?
I found the following files in a W98SE with IE automatic update verification enabled:
sgis ddo ekil t'nod i
I came across this page which shows some of Microsoft's Investments over the years. Apart from the fact that Microsoft has never had an original idea for itself, one thing stood out... The have funded Transvirtual's Java Virtual Machine, Kaffe. This software is developed under a GPL license... I wonder if Microsoft had a tough time stooping down to our level just to get a bit of leverage on one of their other compeditors... Sun.
In the gift economy of OS infrastructure the bright light of day is the best assurance of continued future prosperity. Sooner or later MS will figure this out, but no bets from me on whether it will be in time for them to profit from the knowledge.
Like Marijuana, FreeBSD just leads to the Hard Stuff; can leaks about MS dependence on GNU/Linux be far behind? Go GPL!
Please smile. It's funny, not flaimbait.
The truth shall set you free!
#include "apology for jumping to conclusions if I've completely missed something here"
Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.
I'm not sure that the two are related. True BSD is more reliable than windows, but wasn't the Microsoft DNS outage related to a routing problem?
As I recall, some stupid network architect put all their DNS servers on the same subnet. I'm not a big microsoft fan, but to be fair, we all know FreeBSD is better than windows at TCP/IP operations but that wasn't the cause of their DNS outage and shouldn't have been cited as evidence of WIndows' inferiority in the WSJ article. In fact, the DNS outage is evidence only of the fact that Nicrosoft should have hired a smarter network architect.
--CTH
---
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Hey, MS has been using BSD code since the day 1 of Windows NT - a very well known fact. And they never deny it. Besides when MS was "criticizing opensource", the arguments were against the licensing terms of GNU and not open source in general.
I wonder why slashdot editors keep posting this kind of stuff. Just to please some Linux zealots? News for nerds?...hmmm....
¦ ©® ±
From the looks of an old version of perl I have here - They used to support GPL :
C:\users\default>perl -v
This is perl, version 5.001
Unofficial patchlevel 1m.
Copyright 1987-1994, Larry Wall
Win32 port Copyright (c) 1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Developed by hip communications inc.,
http://info.hip.com/info/
Perl for Win32 Build 108
Built Jul 14 1996@19:14:37
Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or the GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5.0 source kit.
Of course, 1995 was a long time ago in internet time!
Somewhat? They call MS barefaced liars, says they don't trust their own software, and furthermore states that their "Open Source is bad for bussiness" bashing, is nonsense (although to be fair they had singled out the GPL).
And that in the Wall Street Journal. Hmmm. What next?
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Maybe they have more integrity than censoring news stories that put their community in a bad light (unlike /. or most US news centres of course).