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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."
While we know Microsoft are not going to open source anything critical, one of the things they do seem to be starting to do is make the development process more transparent to the public.
Many Microsoft developers now discuss projects openly on Blogs and Forums, and some projects (i.e. Internet Explorer) now have community sites where the public can interact directly with the development team.
Personally I like this transparent process, and hope it becomes popular within Microsoft. They have some of the best developers in the world and this sort of restructuring could lead to some excellent software being produced.
It's a trap!
...ok, dumb jokes aside, this is probably not as good as it sounds. I'd advise the Wine guys to stay as far away from this code as possible!!
Remember, these are the guys who "recommended" Baystar to SCO. They are NOT open source friendly.
SCO caused Linux a lot of problems with their whole "code pollution" bit. I'll betcha they're planting seeds to do the same thing with their own code base later on down the road.
Stay away from this, folks. FAR away.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The code they open source *now* may be useless, but the trend is interesting, not long ago open source was "evil", "viral", "comunist", "unamerican"...and now they are doing open source?..maybe it's not that bad after all?
To name some programs other than windows and office that are not "almost completely useless":
windows media player
directx
various drivers
IIS
windows scripting host
internet explorer
imagion.. IE with real DOM support
or how about 100,000 volunteers hunting vulnerabilities?
outlook express
visual studio and all it's bits
regclean
microsoft management console
source safe
msn messenger
remeber the desktop toys?
countless more.. but i'm starting to get board with this.. must.. must.. eve..
bye.
Reality is in the mind of the beholder - me 1996
From the article:
I would argue that the GPL has "clearly delinated ground rules", and I'm not sure what extra value is added by the CPL. The FSF licence list gives some hints that the CPL imposes extra requirements:
Does anybody have any examples of why a corporation would prefer the CPL to the GPL?
http://blogs.msdn.com is mesmerising. I can't believe they encourage their developers to post regularly, and that the feeds go out un-edited by management or marketing. Plus, they have anonymous comments enabled.
http://channel9.msdn.com/ is an impressive effort, and shows how far MS is going with their community outreach.
It's scary how much you can learn from blogs.msdn.com. There are a lot of smart people working at MS, but what are they all working on? The quality and thoughtfulness of the posters there indicates that they must have some killer internal projects.
I would agree that they are making more of an anti ibm-oracle-whatever campain as you stated. I do think that there is a side effect and that is giving linux more credit then it already had/has. Wether this is planned or not might be a question not worth asking but it is one of the results. They are bringing more attention to linux as a viable competitor and more shops are taking notice.
I can attest to this myself. I have a client that was/is pro-micrisoft for everything. I wanted for a long time to use a linux on an old box for a internet router so I could have some more control using ssh and the likes. After being told no for several years, suddenly out of the blue I recieved a call saying it might be a good idea to go ahead and do it. Some of the key points of the conversations was, we won't have to worry about viruses on the linux server and it is definatly cheaper then the win2000 server and IIS. It serves the internet to about 40 workstations, hosts the email, scans all messages with a virrus scanner, and spam filter, gives me ftp and ssh access were I didn't really have it before, runs one of the worlds best firwalls (iptables/netfilter) and cost about $1800 less to start up. Also it allows the other win2000 server to be used to alieviate some stress from another server that runs a data store that I wouldn't allow on a box with a direct conection to the internet.
There is now talk about placing another linux box in running a sql server and dumping a couple of data bases into it for a working backup that would survive the next big windows virus/hack attack. This wouldn't have ever been possable without Microsoft and others bringing attention to linux as a competitor (AT least in this shop). My client reviewed these decisions with some asociates in other buisinesses and they are considering doing the same. One of the plusses is there would be limited vendor lockin so other options would be viable when microsoft (or some other windows only app) riases licence fees'. Also the thought of having workable backup solutions that are immune to the same virus/update/whatever bugs is pricless. If somethign hits and takes down the servers, bam a few config changes and everythign is back to normal while the problem is being sorted out. I don't think we would switch entirely to linux there but I also didn't think linux would have been there in the first place.