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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."

2 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory MS Paranoia by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  2. Re:Uhh... no by dachshund · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Yeah, I used Unix (not Linux) in programming courses when I was in college, but most colleges now-a-days use Win2K labs and are phasing out their Unix labs (same programming courses in my college are using Visual Studio's version of C++).

    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.