Slashdot Mirror
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."
Just pick a name from the roster of any CS course...
--riney
When these guys came to my campus a couple of weeks ago (CU Boulder) I think the majority of students were more interested in the free XBOX giveaway than the .NET. Although finally having a legit copy of XP Pro was a nice bonus as well :)
Who is John Galt?
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
Their code-sharing initiative is all about winning hearts-and-minds at the university level, where Linux and open-source rule the day
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++).
Sorry to burst your bubble, but lately Linux and open source aren't "ruling" at the university level.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Microsoft trying to talk to students about "the source" is like your dad wanting to "rap" with you about drugs.
Pat
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.
This could prevent some students of getting some jobs in the future.
.NET source code is mandatory for some classes. Now, could a student refuse to take a particular class or ask for an equivalence because of that? If not, it's like if they signed a whole lot of people into non-compete clauses, without much benefit for them! I'm not even talking about Free software here. They could probably prevent you from working for a competitor (Sun, Apple, etc.)
Suppose I enroll in one of those programs where the exposure to
The use of "sponsored" material in classes has always been dangerous, but when it can influence where you can or can't work after you graduate, it's just plain Not a Good Idea (tm).
Actually, I was reading the EULA waiting for the presentation to start, and with the copy of VS .NET it stated that any software you created with the academic version absolutly HAD to port to a MS OS! Talk about locking you in. Sheesh.
Who is John Galt?
Translation: Microsoft hopes professors and students will improve their work, so it can be sold back to them at a grossly inflated price.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
They were called IS students.
This is a bit unsettling.
.net (or something else popular), they have trade schools.
A college or university is not, nor should be a place where flavor of the day propritary platform should be taught. The focus of a college should be to give the student a broad enough understanding of the basic workings of programming and computers that the graduate can have enough background to quickly adapt to any platform.
If you want to focus on something like
===
The Internet is generally stupid
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.
Features
- An implementation of the runtime for the Common Language Infrastructure (ECMA-335) that builds and runs on Windows XP and FreeBSD
- Compilers that work with the Shared Source CLI for C# (ECMA-334) and JScript
- Development tools for working with the Shared Source CLI such as assembler/disassemblers (ilasm, ildasm), a debugger (cordbg), metadata introspection (metainfo), and other utilities
- The Platform Adaptation Layer (PAL) used to port the Shared Source CLI from Windows XP to FreeBSD
- Build environment tools (nmake, build, and others)
- Documentation for the implementation
- Test suites used to verify the implementation
[This is mostly cut & paste from the MSDN page]A few semi-interesting threads have started about this on K5 including this one and this one.
Most University's are adding Windows workstations, but not the servers. You know what students are doing on those Win2k lab PCs?
85%: Microsoft Word (Sure beats tex for the average student)
15%: Telnet to the *nix server to code.
5%: Using in VB for their IS course in GUI design.
They still keep *nix labs for the serious geeks, and they always have SGI labs for the graphics stuff. Occassionally Macs. But the Pcs are there to fill the gap of cheap, nearly disposable clients. The real R&D is still on *nix.
We're not here to supplant anybody else's operating systems or tools in the university, says Microsoft's Rashid.
This definitely belongs in the Most Outrageous Vendor Lie Ever Told? article
Stop Continental Drift! Reunite Gondwanaland!
So, the professors/administrators, who cannot be bothered to do the work of maintaining the campus computer network, come in and say "MS has offered us platinum chains and underwater blowjobs if we teach all courses in the .NET environment, so go ye forth and set it up."
.NET initiative is going to net (ahyuck, I made a funny) are the people in watered-down sorta-computing pre-business-school majors (Information Management, whatever) who don't actually do any programming or use the campus network. These schmucks, god how I despise them, are going to be all about .NET, and perhaps some poor fool is going to end up working for them. However, this is in-no-way going to alleviate MS' problem where the students who can actually code are using some UNIX derivative.
Whereupon the five guys in the basement of the engineering building (all campuses have such a building, with such a basement, with five slashdot readers in it - you know who you are) who actually maintain the campus computers say, depending on the rank of the personage and other political concerns-
1) "Run it by the chair of the department" (who is a crank with a zany axe to grind, 100% guaranteed.) Surprisingly, this works even if it has been run by the chair of the department three times already.
2) "Sir, we would start if we could, but these orders haven't been approved yet." (Have him sign some stuff, making the pompous blowhard think things will be "expedited" with his signature, then throw them away.) This is always the response if the prof. or admin. has officious looking documents with him.
3) "Fuck you, Dan." At a public university.
Regardless of what these five guys SAY, they DO the following set of things: {}.
And the students keep working on SPARCs, b/c the faculty don't have the wherewithal to push through an upgrade of the computers actually used for instruction.
The people that this
Just my $0.02 US ($3.00 Canadian)
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
While I posted above saying its great news that Linux made news by being Microsoft's foil on the front page of the marketing section of the WSJ, I can't help but come to the rather pessimistic conclusion that it doesn't matter one fly fuck what a single administrator says he will or won't do. Bullshit, I call. Unless you're willing to lay down your job(yeah right) you are going to do what you're told to do. If Linux is to be brought mainstream, it will NOT be done by the circle jerk of techies here on slashdot. It will be done by the future stuffed suits of the corporate world. So.....
You want to make a difference while you're in college? Convert two or three business/accounting/marketing majors to Linux. Set them up, provide free support, make them comfortable. Keep up said support. Recruit your geek friends to do the same. Do for the future stuffed shirts what Microsoft does for the present stuffed shirts. If and only if this is possible(no idea if it is) will it be possible for Linux to make REAL progress in infiltrating Microsoft's home world....the working world.
The RIAA has announced a new coursebook for law students "IP theft - a history". The coursebook examines the importance of Intellectual Property and the how the theft of IP threatens the foundations of our society.
Monsanto have announced a new series of videos for Biology undergraduates. Called "The ethics of genetic engineering", the series examines subjects such as how having patented gene sequences allows companies like Monsanto to help feed starving children in the Third World.
Disney-trained lecturers will be visiting art faculties all over the country in the coming weeks. The lecturers will be giving fun and thought provoking demonstrations about how to draw Disney-style characters. Before attending the lectures, students will have to sign a contract which stipulates that any Disney-style characters they draw in the future will be automatically copyright of Disney Corporation. They will also be encouraged to send any characters they draw directly to Disney, and not to show them to anyone else.
Environmental Studies students are all to receive a free study pack from ChevronTexaco Corporation. The study pack includes a text book "The Truth About Global Warming", as well as a t-shirt, stickers, felt pens, a colouring pad and a fridge magnet.
"...finding virgins much more difficult."
I have a hard enough time with this as it is. Damn you Microsoft! DAMN YOU!!!!!
--It's Pimptastic!--
#include "stdio.h"
int main()
{
printf("Hello, Microsoft EULA.\n");
return 1;
}
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
The Mono implementation (http://www.go-mono.com) and yesterday's release (Mono 0.10) does provide pretty much everything that the Shared Source release does.
Get your bits now!
Miguel
From my brief review, it appears that they are primarily concerned with someone selling their code and patent problems. No mention of the GPL, although obviously several provisions in here are incompatible with any decent open source license.
So here it is:
MICROSOFT SHARED SOURCE CLI, C#, AND JSCRIPT LICENSE
This License governs use of the accompanying Software, and your use of the Software constitutes acceptance of this license.
You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, subject to the restrictions in this license. Some purposes which can be non-commercial are teaching, academic research, and personal experimentation. You may also distribute this Software with books or other teaching materials, or publish the Software on websites, that are intended to teach the use of the Software.
You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for commercial purposes. Examples of commercial purposes would be running business operations, licensing, leasing, or selling the Software, or distributing the Software for use with commercial products.
You may modify this Software and distribute the modified Software for non-commercial purposes, however, you may not grant rights to the Software or derivative works that are broader than those provided by this License. For example, you may not distribute modifications of the Software under terms that would permit commercial use, or under terms that purport to require the Software or derivative works to be sublicensed to others.
You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information.
In return, we simply require that you agree:
1. Not to remove any copyright or other notices from the Software.
2. That if you distribute the Software in source or object form, you will include a verbatim copy of this license.
3. That if you distribute derivative works of the Software in source code form you do so only under a license that includes all of the provisions of this License, and if you distribute derivative works of the Software solely in object form you do so only under a license that complies with this License.
4. That if you have modified the Software or created derivative works, and distribute such modifications or derivative works, you will cause the modified files to carry prominent notices so that recipients know that they are not receiving the original Software. Such notices must state: (i) that you have changed the Software; and (ii) the date of any changes.
5. THAT THE SOFTWARE COMES "AS IS", WITH NO WARRANTIES. THIS MEANS NO EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WARRANTY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR ANY WARRANTY OF TITLE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. ALSO, YOU MUST PASS THIS DISCLAIMER ON WHENEVER YOU DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE OR DERIVATIVE WORKS.
6. THAT MICROSOFT WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES RELATED TO THE SOFTWARE OR THIS LICENSE, INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT THE LAW PERMITS, NO MATTER WHAT LEGAL THEORY IT IS BASED ON. ALSO, YOU MUST PASS THIS LIMITATION OF LIABILITY ON WHENEVER YOU DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE OR DERIVATIVE WORKS.
7. 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.
8. That your rights under the License end automatically if you breach it in any way.
9. Microsoft reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this license.
Bleh!
My school is in the process of moving all programming for its CS classes back to Unix. When I asked a professor why, the answer I got was, "Frankly, trying to turn Windows into a decent educational software development platform is about as fun as jumping naked into a pit of rabid wolves."
Having tried to do some homework for advanced classes on the Win2k workstations in the computer labs, I can only agree. . . with the minimal access student accounts get on the workstations, activities as simple as getting third-party libraries to work sometimes have their difficulty ratings upgraded from "routine task" to "black art."
Let's face it, their goal here is a "secret" shared by *every* CS college graduate. Then those graduates are potentially "polluted" from ever participating in Open Source development. Presumably the mechanism would be one or two high-profile court cases, to make an example and scare everyone else.
At least this is the conspiracy theory, which may have some merit.
But look at the flip side... When you start sharing a "secret" that widely, doesn't it start looking like mis-using the work "Kleenex" instead of "Kleenex-brand facial tissue"? The Kleenex trademark was lost that way, and the Windows trademark appears to be lost.
Unless every CS course begins with a legal session, explaining how, "This stuff is *secret*, and will compromise your capability to work on any project Microsoft doesn't like in the future, and they can sue you @$$es off because you've seen it," this looks like a recipe to lose the license terms.
I was once involved in a proprietary memory chip design my company purchased for us to base our design on. Very early on, the lawyers brought the whole team into a room and read the riot act to us, explaining what we could and could not do, based on the "pollution" of looking at that design.
There was also a nifty term called "residual knowledge" that applied then, and applies now.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I would focus on the "derivative works" provisions, which share some of the characteristics MS has characterized as "viral" in the GPL. Query what happens if in a few years, MS files a series of lawsuits claiming that various developers improperly created a "derivative work" of the shared source, without giving proper attribution to MS. Although it would be hard to prove that a particular individual had seen the code, given the uncontrolled access, note that it would be equally difficult for the individual to prove s/he had not seen the code. And MS would likely interpret the "derivative" language along the lines of the "one click ordering" and "hyperlinking" patent holders, claiming that anything using a distributed model was derivative of theirs. So in order to fend off the lawsuit, the developer would have to launch legal attacks on the "viral" part of the license: the derivative works definition is too broad and vague, this similar concept isn't really derivative, free public distribution negates the contractual nature of a license, etc. That is, the developer would have to make the very sort of arguments that MS has publicly proposed against the GPL.
Am I just too too paranoid, or is this rather a clever no-lose situation MS has created? If MS wins one of these lawsuits, it gets to tie up Jane Developer's project for years and then stick its name on it. But if it loses, the loss establishes a legal precedent that will help it launch future attacks on the GPL, the success of which attacks could possibly allow MS to thwart open source projects. And MS accomplishes this with at least superficial protection from accusations that it is wielding improper monopoly power - how can licensing provisions modeled on the GPL be monopolistic? And how can anyone criticize poor MS for lawsuits arising from the open release of their source code, when that's exactly the antitrust punishment the states were seeking?
I'm sure there are a lot more scenarios to explore here, and I don't purport to be a great legal expert on the GPL so I defer to anyone who is. But in any event, I hope that schools do not widely succumb to this until the implications have been thoroughly considered.
No, no, no. This is not a sig.