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MS: Use the Source, Luke!

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the look-into-my-palantir dept.

McSpew writes: "The WSJ (via MSNBC) has an article about Microsoft's upcoming push to get universities to use .NET code in programming courses. Their code-sharing initiative is all about winning hearts-and-minds at the university level, where Linux and open-source rule the day. The article does a good job of explaining the issues and why MS may yet fail in spite of their push. I wish the article had discussed the reverse-engineering issues of needing 'virgins' who have never seen the product being reverse-engineered and how MS's newly broad distribution of its code makes finding virgins much more difficult."

5 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. XP and .NET - Not gonna' do' it by ka9dgx · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    Ok... I'm off topic, but this is the place to say it. I've told everyone, consistently, and for a long time now...

    I will not support, learn, tolerate, or any way enable or support either Windows XP or this ".NET" crap. We're a Microsoft shop, using NT and 2000 for servers, and 98 for workstations. We will NOT "upgrade", EVER.

    It does what we want, albeit imperfectly. The new bugs and security holes (and hardware requirements) are more trouble then they are worth.

    --Mike--

    1. Re:XP and .NET - Not gonna' do' it by dzym · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      You could've said the same thing, oh, 10 years ago, and stuck with MS-DOS 6.22. Far less buggy, right?

      And with Word Perfect 5.1, a vendor-supplied custom TCP/IP stack for your NICs, some command-line ftp client, kermit, etc., who needs anything else?

  2. What .NET does so wrong by ka9dgx · · Score: 2, Flamebait

    1. What the heck is it? Every time you turn around, it's something different. I suspect it's just another dressed up version of OLE/ActiveX in a pretty new wrapper.
    2. It's a way to trap everyone into their code. If you start using .NET, you'll be stuck with it, and it's not going to be portable to anything else. There are plenty of ways to write software that don't require you to give your first born male child to Micro$oft, and I'm going to use those instead.
    3. "It's Microsoft, so it's Evil" (TM). They want everyone to use it, so it must be bad. Look at their history of embrace, extend, extinguish. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out it's a Faustian deal, no matter how you do it.
    --Mike--

  3. Re:Street cred... by sean23007 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Yeah... because the "coders" at Microsoft have absolutely no experience with this strange thing we call "the source." .

    --

    Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
  4. Re:All your homework are belong to us. by Chester+K · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Would I be correct that any homework that a student would want to publish after being exposed to the MS source code would be a violation of DMCA?

    No.

    But don't let a little thing like the truth stand in your way. Linux advocacy needs more FUD.

    --

    NO CARRIER