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Microsoft Planning on Opening Up More Source
mhh5 writes "It's a bit surprising, but it looks like Microsoft is considering making some of its code open source. Obviously, Microsoft's OS or Office are not going to be opened, and it seems like Microsoft is just trying to get more developers, but it's a interesting change of policy."
probably CPL Common Public License
This is purly a business move aimed at PHB's. IBM has made money telling people that Open Source is good and MS is getting in on the right for free.
It could also be that they are trying to get in on the good side of budding developers. I don't know any other CS majors that use Windows on their main desktop and I know of no CS majors who write their code in Windows. At Georgia Tech everything in class is done in Linux after the first Scheme class. If the future coders don't know Microsoft stuff they won't use it or push it in their jobs.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Common Public License, or CPL, from IBM. But is all written in legalese, not sure what will that imply in plain words. At least they are saying that this is an open source license, to make a difference with Shared Source that is definately not.
Well, a bit of Googling turned 'em up: Windows Template Library (WTL) and Windows Installer XML (WiX).
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
but it's a interesting change of policy
This change is not from today, the change started with WIX under the CPL.
Anyway, if you make a CPL program better(and if it's not yours) you can't earn money with this, only if it helps you to make other things, but who created the program can earn money with your code.
The want the media atention and to be the good guys with this things. Them whem someone talk about Microsoft be against open source software they will say: "we released XX softwares under open source licenses, how we can be against our softwares?"
Beep. Wrong.
They have stuff under the CPL, such as WIX.
The SSI is something else, it is aimmed at companys, and includes stuff like WinCE.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
MS has never open sourced a single thing
That's factually inaccurate. MS have open sourced WiX under the CPL, and have even released several GPL tools in the past (mainly modified derivatives of existing GPL software, but it is still actually releasing stuff under the GPL). They also funded the kaffe open source java-like vm (to annoy sun - at the time sun was a greater threat than open source, I guess) and activestate's windows perl work (which had many knock-on benefits to unix perl).
Once again, damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Not quite. It's "Damned if they don't, and damned if they don't", because they haven't done what people think they've done. They haven't Open Sourced *anything*, they've only "Shared Sourced" some stuff.
Thus far MS has used the CPL for its OSS projects.
Which (take a look at the URL) is OpenSource.
The SSI is a different beast.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
This led to the question of what is the CPL and how does this differ from other licenses. A little Googling on my part turned up this site that compares the open source licenses.
The most significant difference between the CPL and the GPL involves the license of derivative works.
-cmh
but to date, I've never met a single person that was truly satisfied with Windows, much less happy or fanatical about it.
No offense, but do you live under a rock? There are some pretty passionate folks that love to develop with tools from Redmond. I don't get it, but I've met plenty of developers that preach the Ways of Windows louder than most.
And remember, no one got fired for choosing Microsoft.
I've known a few people that were canned while trumpeting Microsoft products. Just because Microsoft has such large market share does not mean it's the best for the job, and if I know of a few people that had to find new jobs because they applied company resources based upon sales pitches, then I would guess that the last statement of yours is not exactly on the mark.
If a system sucks but no one cared because Microsoft was used in the solution, then the reliance upon the company with a majority market-share is being used to hide incompetence. That can happen with any OS or technology, but to say that no one is fired for choosing Microsoft does not reflect academic, independent, and corporate solutions that make up the landscape of technical solutions.
I don't know if you're trying to imply that the code is free from that quote. But if you are, you misread it.
Here ya go:
"Recipient" means anyone who receives the Program under this Agreement, including all Contributors.
Now read all of it and let it go.
Of Code And Men
What power?
Microsoft is opening the source to several development tools. These tools have always been free, and the source to compile them is usually available as well. The examples are good and the documentation in and out of the code stellar. The code itself is generally clean (certainly better than your average PHP app) and relatively well designed.
The only difference is, instead of posting the tools as-is with development essentially ending, the tools can be absorbed by a community who can contribute their own changes. Which will no doubt make the tools more useful -- but will not change the experience of the average Windows user in the least.
This does not mean is that Microsoft intends to ever open the source of any of their for-pay applications. Why should they? It's not like offering people the ability to contribute or compile their own version of Windows, Office or SQL Server will bring in any more money, or at least not enough to cover the potential losses. Quite simple, there is NO value to Microsoft in opening the source of these applications as the value to consumers won't cause us to invest further in the company. But to take tools that were already free, and make them COMMUNITY tools based on Microsoft architecture...it's a subtle shift in policy that could mean a lot of positive development for very little Microsoft money.
Is that the power of OSS? To make your customers do all the work and provide each other with better tools? Maybe. But this is nothing new, nor nothing inherent in Open Source. I've been posting code samples on Windows dev lists for ten years, been a part of various programs to document so-called hidden APIs, and spent a good amount of time in #winprog and the like. There's always been a community for creating Windows tools. We've just never thought to insert "dogma" into the equation -- you know, since it's just friggin' programming. Say what you will about Windows programmers...most of the ones I've met are extreme pragmatists who leave their code "religion" at the door. Not like those Java programmers...those guys are the Mormons of computing. Tell me, have you heard that Java is the Way? That god sent us Java 1.0 on a pair of golden floppy discs?
IIS 5 Web Server Compromises
added June 24
US-CERT is aware of new activity affecting compromised web sites running Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) 5 and possibly end-user systems that visit these sites. Compromised sites are appending JavaScript to the bottom of web pages. When executed, this JavaScript attempts to access a file hosted on another server. This file may contain malicious code that can affect the end-user's system. US-CERT is investigating the origin of the IIS 5 compromises and the impact of the code that is downloaded to end-user systems.
Web server administrators running IIS 5 should verify that there is no unusual JavaScript appended to the bottom of pages delivered by their web server.
This activity is another example of why end users must exercise caution when JavaScript is enabled in their web browser. Disabling JavaScript will prevent this activity from affecting an end-user's system, but may also degrade the appearance and functionality of some web sites that rely upon JavaScript. US-CERT recommends that end-users disable JavaScript unless it is absolutely necessary. Users should be aware that any web site, even those that may be trusted by the user, may be affected by this activity and thus contain potentially malicious code.
DirectX contains zlib. Windows has (had?) BSD's TCP/IP stack.
And that's line-by-line copying, not simply influence. All of their software was influenced by pre-existing software, largely GNU or OSS material. The implementation is their disaster though.
Everythinglinux.com.au, selling all things linux related.
:D
Kind of like a Thinkgeek for Australia (and they accept BPAY!)
I swear, if I see another Slashdot comment with "It will be interesting to see"...
"Name an instance of IIS being automatically exploited. I'll cite you two Apache holes in return."
Here you go, freshly under investigation, spreading as I type.
From the article: "Government and industry experts warned late Thursday of a mysterious, large-scale Internet attack against thousands of popular Web sites. The virus-like infection tries to implant hacker software onto the computers of all Web site visitors. [ ... ] The mysterious infection appeared to target at least one recent version of software by Microsoft Corp. to operate Web sites, called its Internet Information Server, popular among businesses and organizations."
That was fun. Your turn.
Windows is most used desktop OS, if you have a whole load of people they are going to have problems, particularly the non-technical ones. If workplaces swithed to Macs or Linux those complaints would not magically go away. People would still lose thier work , machines would still crash. We used to have Macs and PCs on out network, and guess what? They both had about the same amount of issues (actaully the Macs had more, but only becuase the network admin software had problems with them).
Users like to blame screwups on the computers, often they don't uderstand what has happened. We actually used to have Macs at work as well as PCs, before they got removed they were no more reliable or better then the PCs (both worked fine most of the time).
Most non-technical people don't understand their computers, and often have problems becuase of it. Most of them use Windows, so yes when they complain about the computer its about Windows, but that is correlation, not causation. Sticking them on another OS wouldn't help. Except the non-technical home users, they may have an easier time with Macs due to the better hardware integration, but by that standard would be better with Windows than Linux.
As for your statmenet about stability, that is just not true. We have 2000 and XP on the desktops here and it is some much more stable than older versions, crashes are almost unheard of.
Data on servers routinely dissapears? Apart from the fact I've never seen this happen (occastionally, yes on PCs and Unix, and usually turns out to be user related, but routinely, no), what sort of cowboy outfit isn't backing up the data?. You should never be loosing more than a days worth.
I'm not a great Windows fan, it has its problems, but this sort of mindless groupthink Windows bashing ('Windoze' indeed, how witty) is irritating. Worse, it just makes those who push other OS look like irrational MS bashers and doesn't look at Window's real weakness with alternate systems could exploit.
I wouldn't say impossible.
HKEY_Local_Machine = System
HKEY_Current_User = User (or HKEY_Users\
And the registry settings are separate in two files. The user's settings are loaded into memory from the NTUser.Dat file located in the user's Profile folder.
If you wanted to change a specific System setting in the registry for application (lets call it Blah) you go to HKLM\Software\Blah
If you wanted to modify a user setting you would go to HKCU\Software\Blah (or HK_Users\\Software\Blah.
Once there select the appropriate key and change the value to what you need set
It isn't rocket science. Just a different mindset.
However I do agree the registry is big and searching is a pain if you don't know where to look
It would be really great, but the problem is that lots of apps take it as granted that they can use the system tree to store their settings, thus making it a pain to use a Windoze machine without full registry rw access.
It's funny, because the apps that have this kind of stupid behavior are usually M$ apps. Most others work fine.