Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Puts SourceForge Clone Into Beta
M$ Mole writes "Microsoft is working hard to build their .NET community and has released the beta of an online software project management site. The service being provided is very similar to SF.net, but problems are arising around Microsoft's license, which (originally) granted all rights to the software place on the server to Microsoft. MS has back-pedaled a bit since their 'beta' license and is working on a new, more "acceptable" license."
I can't understand why microsoft isn't taking a more pro-active role to defend the rights of content providers in today's online world. Why shouldn't Microsoft, in exchange for providing a high-reliability service for .NET developers using the Microsoft .NET framework to create dynamic applications, be given some rights in return? I for one hope Microsoft reconsiders this decision, since it could set a nasty precedent for all future providers of online services. Indeed, if there's one problem with Microsoft these days, its that they go too far to address customer desires, no matter how ridiculous.
There should be a law against encouraging VB programmer's to get together.
It's not like Microsoft would ever abuse them, or you. You don't really need to own software do you? Microsoft will license it you at a very reasonable fee, even if you wrote it yourself! And we all know that non Microsoft licnesed software is bad...
Actually, women do outnumber men on the MS campus site in Redmond.
Official figures from MS financial disclosures (earlier this year, they probably haven't changed much) are
Women : 14987
Men : 14854
Other : 2
Isn't it going to be hard to collaberate on closed source projects? :-)
sig
What about Microsoft's MSN messanger crap, and hotmail? Didn't they make the EULA state they own everything that transpires on either network, then remove the clause from the EULA, only to reword it a week later and append it again? Doesn't MS learn from their mistakes? Besides, .net needs to run on XP, so the EULA on XP clearly states they own anything we do on it anyways, so doesn't matter where the EULA applies, be it before or after I submit my code... it's all owned by Microsoft at one point or other...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Anybody else notice that the word "Microsoft" appears in four of today's front-page headlines? And that "Linux" appears on two?
Offtopic, maybe, but maybe somebody should keep an eye on this "Microsoft" company. They seem to be extending their monopoly.
Umm, is it me, or is _everyone_ ripping off the "Got Milk?" campaigns? Can I please see the american dairy farmers association (ADFA) sue M$? Please?!? Microsoft is stealing the "look and feel" of "got milk" adds with "gotdotnet!"
;)
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
GPL: All our code is belong to us.
Oh, you thought it was yours? Nope, it's ours.
Jouster
[evil thought]
I think I'll host a few GPL licensed projects on their servers, and hope MS incorporates the source into their own code base. Then I can sue them for everything they have and take over the world!!
muahahaha
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Wow is this old news day, or what?
/., usually anti-MS news is posted quickly, and the good stuff, like the release of Visual Studio .NET, is ignored.
This controversy erupted nearly a month ago.
A number of us in the Windows community balked at the initial licensing. The lead developer of the GotDotNet workspaces actually joined into the conversation trying to defend the team's lawyers. It appears that the initial licensing was written with a heavy emphasis on CYA, without much thought to whether or not people would agree to it.
Microsoft listened to our arguments, and adjusted the licensing to be friendlier within a day or two. I still think it's rather ridiculous language but it is similar to that found at sourceforge.net and even such places as yahoo, etc. Why lawyers feel they need permission to redistribute stuff that you obviously uploaded with the intent of redistributing is beyond my ability to rationalize.
Anyway, I'm surprised it's taken this long for this to hit
the submitting user grants SourceForge.net the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed, all subject to the terms of any applicable approved license.
( Perpetual?? Does this bind someone to a timeframe that even Disney would drool over? At least it doesn't say "throughout the universe".)
First, I think (NBAL,YU (Not Being A Lawyer, You Understand)) that most open source licenses give users approximately the rights listed there in general - and since they are saying that their rights are still subject to the terms of an "applicable approved license" so I'm not sure (AIAAL (Again I Aint A Lawyer)) that they're claiming that much. And I suspect that a part of that license (reproduce...publish...display...) is really there to cover them in the case that someone puts something on sourceforge and then wants to take it back and then sue sourceforge for having shown it around. (BAISIANNBALA (you figure it out this time)).
I'm still staring at the MS license (interesting that its not clear right up at the top of the gotdotnet site pages that MS is actually gotdotnet) and the "explanations" offered to see if I can figure out what it might actually be saying (BAISIANNBALA). It does look though like you're giving MS a whole lot more power over your work than you're giving sourceforge.
In other news, M$ renamed their project management site to www.got/dotnet.com after the site was heavily /.ed. "The / also represnts the split that /. brought to the site and we're learning from our mistakes", said Miss.Laura Hurlton, M$ spokeswoman who is also a stock photos model...
getSexySig();
I think that you missed my distinction.
I'm not talking about the people at SF or GotDotNet "pulling" any of the code for use on inside projects without distribution. That's fair. I'm refering to "yanking it off the servers because we don't want ANYONE to see it" type of pulled. That's more what I'd be afraid of on the MS site. Even if everything else was clean (no porno, no theft, no IP problems, etc.).
You understand how much temptation there would be to pull a project if it were something like a "free" as in beer Office clone? How long would they allow that to compete with their commercial offerings, especially if it was better.
They could incorporate it...sure, but blocking it's distribution to save the empire, that's another thing completely.
To the best of my knowledge, that's how SF works. All them buzzwords that MS throws around like "best of breed" and "competition" are actually playing out on SF!....that's the arena where the action is.
Oh, and one more jab.....the "Community links" area doesn't even have a link back to Slashdot... How ungratefull, since we've prob. been 95% of their hits today.........
10. VirusPropagator 0.2
9. NewVirusGenerator 0.1.1
8. VirusDetector 0.0.3
7. DRMBreak 4.2
6. AutoUpdateBlocking 3.5
5. GenerateNewLicenseAfterReconfig 4.6
4. PutTheRegistryBackIntoSaneState 2.2
3. RebootForSixthTimeToday 1.6
2. PutOSBackIntoSaneStateAfterItCorruptsOwnFiles 7.8
1. EraseHardDriveInstallRealOS 1.0
Either way it's clear that they have been infected with the open source cancer.
Now they are all communists too! Yea!
War is necrophilia.
I didn't realize that there was a central place where I can host my projects (scripts) and get collaboration on how effective they can be.
A few of my fellow tweens can now help me out in naming my next vir^H^H^Hscript ...
On a serious note, I really hope they host this site with IIS.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
First, that's a very nice, PC pan-ethnic logo they've got there.
.NET?"
Second, I'm not sure that using the phrase "workspace" is the greatest choice. Looking at Metrowerks' package design or the name "Sourceforge" gives you a neat, romanticized image of some code artist beating away on a big piece of iron, forging something new. Its designed to appear attractive to the person doing the work, not his manager -- not MS's strong point. "Workspaces"? Might appeal to the corporate world, but in the hobbyist market, out to write some good code and have fun, I think they're missing the mark.
Third, the terminology is once again corporate: "aply to join a Workspace"..."owner, administrator, and member"
Fourth, the liberal use of "sharing source" (Microsoft's favorite term) rather than "opening source" on the site is quite prominent -- "planning on sharing the source code".
Fifth, more MS-style favorite words -- "integrate" and prominent mention of Visual Studio: "How will Workspaces integrate with Visual Studio
Sixth, why the hell does MS distribute all their documentation in Word format? So they made it in-house...big deal. I don't use Excel to write research papers -- it's the wrong tool. Word, with macro viruses, no font embedding, security issues, large file sizes and import issues with different versions of the software, is a really crummy "publication format". It makes sense in MS-centric workgroups for exchange of documents in progress, but not for final copies.
Seventh, the damn thing is already Slashdotted.
May we never see th
sf.net hosted projects by OS
BeOS (302 projects)
MacOS (1386 projects)
Microsoft (10878 projects)
OS Independent (11647 projects)
OS/2 (72 projects)
Other OS (635 projects)
PDA Systems (420 projects)
POSIX (20179 projects)
Point being there are a considerable amount of
projects coded to win32 on sourceforge, so it's
not like free software doesn't exist on the platform.
I suppose you could look at what MS is doing as
providing an alternative for people who don't
want to be forced into an OSI approved license
as per SF's TOS.
I'll refrain from commenting on the TOS from
MS' dealie, since I haven't read it, except to say
if you have to have terms rammed down your throat, it's better for all parties to get the same deal.
It's usually instructive in situations like this to consider the historical context of the issues. Here's the original 'Open Letter' from Bill Gates to the hobbyist community
The background here is that a lot of people pirated Bill's Altair BASIC program, and Bill wanted to know where good software was going to come from if people didn't get paid for it.
It may not have been legal or ethical for hobbyists to pirate Altair BASIC back in 1976, but very soon thereafter, Free Software gave us an answer and an alternative: share the source, and the software grows even in the absence of monetary incentive. It is immune to the type of 'theft' that Bill was whining about. 26 years later, we have seen that Free Software isn't just surviving, it's thriving.
Now, along comes GotDotNet, which looks suspiciously like an emulation of Open Source practices... except that the AUP includes a few serious distinctions. One is the assignment of certain important rights to Microsoft that basically let them do whatever the hell they please with the sweat of your brow. Here's a quote of (what looks like) the original license from the discussion at Activewin.com: (Link to the full thread)
Note the specific lack of compensation for the original programmer (unless you consider the use of GDN itself to be sufficient recompense, but I'm pretty damn sure that GDN isn't going to be buying your groceries and paying the rent). One must ask - if nobody pays the users of GDN, where will the good software come from? Nothing about GDN sounds like hiring programmers to 'flood the hobby market with good software'. It sounds ripping off the community to serve MS's shareholders (eg, Bill).
So what's the point?
I propose that the fundamental corporate culture of Microsoft embodies Gate's attitude as reflected in the 1976 'Open Letter'. This culture is allergic to piracy, because a consumerist revenue cycle is necessary to improve the software.
The Free Software movement has thoroughly refuted Gate's thesis, by making itself independant of the revenue cycle (and therefore is not harmed by 'piracy' as it is usually understood).
Microsoft's obsolete culture cannot change to adopt Free Software practices - the assumptions that Free Software threaten are the very core of their business. If the company were rebuilt from the ground up on Free principles, the entire culture would have to change - essentially resulting in a totally different company that happens to have the same name.
Since Microsoft cannot adopt free software practices, Microsoft can only regard Free Software as a competing producer of software, taking market share away from them, and therefore, a deadly threat.
Since Microsoft itself regards Free Software as a threat, it seems to follow that nobody else who depends on revenue streams to survive, would ever want to use a system that resembles a Free Software ecology (like GDN), as they would deprive the producer of that stream.
Producers of free software should similarly be suspicious of a system governed by a legal agreement written by someone who considers them to be a deadly enemy.
Therefore, Microsoft's own pseudo-Free intiatives (such as GotDotNet, the Shared Source license, and the Software Choice initiative) are probably (a) Shams that will perpetuate Microsoft's revenue stream at the expense of the rights of members of the community, and/or (b) exceedingly stupid mistakes on Microsoft's part.
In the absence of further evidence (especially since GDN is slashdotted and I can't read the text of the new license), it is impossible to tell to which degree GDN (or any other pseudo-Free effort by Microsoft) will be (a) or (b). In either case, it seems imprudent for users or programmers - whether they produce in open or closed software - to place their trust in these intiatives.
I wonder, as an aside, if Bill himself ever paid anything to the original inventors of BASIC, a pair of researchers at Dartmouth University. So I wonder if Bill's logic reflexively implies that he stole BASIC from Kemeny and Kurtz. Gee. Where will the good ideas come from? Oh, wait academia has been going as a not-for-profit institution for centuries. You may have heard of some of their other 'products' - the theory of universal gravitation, electricty, the rabies vaccine...
http://www.gotdotnet.com/error.aspx?aspxerrorpath= /team/workspaces/faq/Default.aspx
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
[etc]
Wow! Microsoft have two great advertisements for their superiority over other technologies in oen day.
----------------------
Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.
----------------------
Am I the only one getting this error on gotdotnet.com? Past this, I was actually able to look at the message board where they posted the license update. To me, it sounded ridiculous.
First of all, the original terms were totally out of whack. Here's the quote:
By posting Your Stuff, You grant to Microsoft, under all of Your intellectual property and proprietary rights the following worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty free, fully paid up rights: (1) to make, use, copy, modify and create derivative works of Your Stuff; (2) to publicly perform or display, import, broadcast, transmit, distribute, license, offer to sell, and sell, rent, lease, and lend copies of Your Stuff (and derivative works thereof); (3) to sublicense to third parties, including the right to sublicense to further third parties; and (ii) You agree You won't commence any legal action against Microsoft or any Participant or Visitor for exercising any of these rights.
In short, all your base are belong to us!!! Huh? If I do post my project on gotdotnet, I will have to give up all IP rights to anything I create under that project to MS. I have to give them the right to unconditionally modify, redistribute, relicense for a fee, etc. and I won't have any rights to what I create. I have to imagine that someone actually sat down and thought that this was a fair deal! No shit they got a huge backlash from developers. Then there is the modified version of the license:
By posting Your Stuff to a Workspace, You understand and agree that you're giving a license under your intellectual property rights to all authorized users of the Workspace, including the rights to download, copy, modify, distribute and repost. In addition, you're giving Microsoft all the necessary rights to make Your Stuff available as part of the Project.
This has less legalese obviously, but all the details are now gone! There are no clear conditions that I am agreeing to; too generalized which makes me think that it eventually gives more power to MS to work out the details. These include and are not limited to:
- can I use my own license terms for use, distribution, modification, copyright notice?
- am I effectively giving up copyright when I agree to give everyone rights to download, copy, modify, redistribute and repost?
- can any user sublicense my work on their terms with their license for either commercial or non-commercial uses?
- what if there are patents involved? Am I giving up rights to my patents too?
- etc., etc., etc.
My understanding is that as one of the comments said in the reply to the above copyright change notice,
Why don't you just specify that you accept that the other authorized members of the workspaces will be able to work on the stuff in the workspace under the Licence the project owner defines... There is no need to give anybody a special licence... The wks owner tells that his project is under bsd licence for example, then, the only special right I will grant to MS is that I accept that MS will provide my files to others under the licence I defined. what is complicated here ? Why should they require something different ? If MS wants to use the file sin the project thay should also be bound to the defined licence, not the other way...
I think I have an answer why this is not going to happen; because MS is afraid developers will start using GPL for their works. With recent MS stances toward GPL apps, such as licenses that prohibit running or interfacing with GPL apps, I don't think they will allow developers to choose their own license. Rather, MS does want to force their terms on the developers. I am wondering how all this will play out.
he service being provided is very similar to SF.net, but problems are arising around Microsoft's license, which (originally) granted all rights to the software place on the server to
Microsoft.
SourceForge has changed the license terms long ago. Not sure if they got changed back
However: if you host a project on SF you grant SF to use your code for any purpose. Without the need to message you, to contribute or whatever.
Just read point 6 of the license: http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?doc
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
One wonders if there is really a community of MS developers older than 13 years old who would give away thier software anyway.
Tell me about it. I'm searching for some code, mostly asp to do various database tasks including a message board and calendar. I've found several perl/php/linux/free solutions that work perfectly; but unfortunatly I'm restricted to using w2k and php is out because it's free and free!=secure. All the asp stuff I've found both costs money and isn't quite what I need. It's really frustrating, because it means I need to start from scratch in a language that I don't know. Speaking of which I find the MS support/tutorials/documentation on the web to suck. They're not complete, not helpful, and most often out dated. 9 times out of 10 I can't even find a tutorial for what I want to do, when I do; it doesn't do a good job of teaching me. Try the documentation at http://www.php.net - that's so real documentation.
And the last time I checked Sun's JVM does not include an Application Server(ie like ASP.NET).
.NET from a development standpoint.
.NET CLR. Granted installing it is trivial, but when the number of workstations is in excess of a few thousand, this becomes a pretty big headache. Also to take note of is that if you've already got a Java devel squad, why switch to .NET? Learning C# wouldn't take that long, sure, but the entire point of .NET is that you can maintain a heterogenous project composed of different languages. If you're not taking advantage of MSIL (MSIL, bytecode, what's the difference?), then why switch to .NET? Ubiquitous runtime environment? Yeah, Java has that. Plus the JVM is ported to other platforms that .NET is not yet. Even when [if] Mono hits primetime, it will be a while until [if] they get Windows.Forms working. Slower runtime than native compiled code? Yeah, they both got that.
Agreed, but the openness of the language and the Java community allows for others to come up with even better solutions. Downloading the J2SE sdk and Tomcat is cheaper than buying Visual Studio
I agree with your first statement, at my work though, we're all running Win2k with IE 5.5, and certainly no
So while we're talking Java, where's the gain?
--- What
Does anyone have a Passport account I can use? I am supprised to see that no one has posted the slashdot passport account info, like they usually do for the NY Times. I want to create a few projects, but I have heard that having a Passport account is insecure and that it even could be taking the mark of the beast. So, if anyone has one they could share, I would like to add a few projects like:
Windows YP - A lightweight Windows Replacement that only crashes once a week
Winzilla - An IE replacement written entirely in VB (It is very fast)
Inlook - An Outlook replacement that is guarrantied to only have 5 major security holes / month
Ipache - An IIS replacement which is only compatible with Winzilla clients
Thanks.
I work in the .NET & Developer Group at Microsoft UK. For the record, there is no UK version of GotDotNet - this is just someone cybersquatting. Check the whois record at Nominet.uk. There's no need for a UK version of course - this is a worldwide community site.
:-)
Interestingly, I notice that someone's registered slashdot.org.uk...
Tim