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MS: Use the Source, Luke!
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."
At the recent SIGCSE conference of the ACM MS was there pushing the .NET handing out full copies of it and XP Pro as well as books on C# and things like that. I must admit I saw the add-on to .NET, the Live Wire product I think it's called, as a decent tool to teach non-cs majors an intro to programming course. Then I got home and talked about the product with some colleages and to my disgust one was using it to develop actual software.
It's one thing if a school jumps on board with this, but for the love of pudding, please mention there are other things out there, and what is sometimes just a teaching tool isn't always something for use in industry.
Wheeeee
That's a shame - at my school we are knocking down a wall to expand our sun cluster and we require all programs submitted by students to compile on the suns as that is where we check the homework. All faculty have a sparc in their office and all students are issues prox cards to access the room with the suns.
The room we dream of is some sort of lab where the kids would be allowed to play around with OSes and play with hacking tools - something not allowed to touch our unniversity network, so we'd like to go disjoint.
Wheeeee
First, in what course exactly would an instructor want to say "Well, here's a whole bunch of code from a commercial (or any) project. Study it." I agree it's good to have an example around for some things, but if MS thinks the Universities are going to create a course like "The .NET Code", they're dreaming.
Second, if I did want a large code example, I'd want a good example. I'd want to be able to point to almost any part of the code and say "That's the right way to do it." I've never seen any MS code, but I'm going to idly speculate that you couldn't do that with it. Probably MS isn't shooting for the .NET code being used as a cautionary tale.
They're setting up to kill Open Source in the future... not by winning hearts and minds, but by "contaminating" all those students...
MS Lawyer: "What? Product X functions like MS Y.NET? Obviously you had access to our copyrighted source code!"
Open Source Group: "WTF are you talking about?"
MS Lawyer: "Programmer Joe Collegekid over there, he saw our source in his college class. He obviously used it. Stop producing your software, or you'll lose everything you own! Oh, and give it to use, because we own all the copyrights on it!"
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
While Sun and Microsoft fight it out for the minds of computer science majors, another company has pretty much won the battle when it comes to engineering: MathWorks's Matlab has become the de-facto standard for computing in engineering and some areas of science and applied math. You can't exchange code with many others in the field unless you buy their software. Many research results are built on it and only reproducible using it. Oh, sure, it's cheap as long as you are a student or professor, but once you graduate, expect to pay many thousands of dollars even for a basic license, and many students graduating from top engineering and research labs are largely incapable of programming in anything else. The Matlab success story is a monopolist's dream.
MSNBC has had some articles that have been extremely critical of Microsoft in the past, especially noting Windows bug and during the DOJ trial.
Say what you will about them, but I've always found MSNBC to be QUITE impartial when it comes to reporting on Microsoft. And believe me... whenever I read Microsoft stories on MSNBC, I always have my eyes wide open for signs of bias. Haven't found it yet though- I must say they've done a damn good job in the articles I've seen.
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This is a sad, but true phenomenon. And the root cause of it is not anything that Microsoft did-- it's the takeoff of Java. This is particularly ironic, because many of the Unix machines being tossed were made by Sun.
The strange thing about the Windows migration is that it's not necessary, unnecessarily expensive, and probably counterproductive. Installing Windows partititions in labs provides little benefit to students, whether they're programming in Java or C/C++. What it does allow for is a whole lot more gaming. It costs a lot more to pay for those Windows licenses (or, at least, Windows development tools), and in the end you graduate a class of students who never get comfortable with a shell, with C, or with many Open Source projects (which are a great way to develop programming chops).
None of thost last things need be required as part of a CS education, but they make a major difference in your skill level by the time you get out of school. Being steeped in Linux/BSD, C and X-Windows added a lot to my education.
This is an interesting clause:
That if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software or anyone's use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically.
What does that mean, exactly? So if I create a modified version, patent the modification, Microsoft infringes my patent, I sue Microsoft, then I lose my right to use the software in the first place, therefore... What? Any lawyers out there can interpret this?
...and what happens when they hand these NDAs to 16 and 17 year old freshmen? See Apple Story for context.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan