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."

Comments

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to get my hands on that DOS 3.3 source. I shall build the mightiest DOS EVER!!!!

Re:Finally!

[elasticwings]

What are you talking about? Everybody knows, it's going to be MS GOLF!!! :P

Re:Finally!

[AKAImBatman]

I think this whole "Shared Source" concept is one of the worst things Microsoft can do. In fact, even responding to Linux as a credible threat is the worst thing they can do. By admitting that Linux is a credible threat, they've convinced the world that Linux might be a product that's useful for something. If they simply continued to carry the tagline of "Linux is older than Windows and has little to show for all that time. We don't consider them a competitor," the big execs with $$$ wouldn't take Linux very seriously. The shared source concept only makes it worse by stating that "There may be something to this Open Source thing."

Re:Finally!

[elasticwings]

Better yet, we can finally have the source to port Clippy to every application.

Re:Finally!

[shigelojoe]

Of course, not everyone is going to listen to Microsoft when Linux is being discussed. Slowly, more and more people are going to catch on that Linux is worth a second look, and Microsoft would look foolish (well, more foolish than usual) if they kept on insisting that there are no pros to using Linux.

One example of how this PR strategy has failed recently is the current situation of the Seattle Mariners. I know, I know, a professional sports analogy; don't worry, this will be painless. Anyway, during the 2000 through 2003 seasons, the Mariners won 60.6% of their games (393 out of 648); by all accounts, this was a very good team. But there were issues mounting behind the scenes. Players were getting older, and money was being wasted on players that had already passed their peak. Regardless, the Mariners front office kept reassuring fans that the team could compete. Sabermetricians (people who study baseball statistics) predicted that old age would end up biting the Mariners in the ass, but fans didn't believe that a team that had done so well recently would do so poorly now. Well, the Mariners are almost halfway through their season, and they have won only 41.4% of their games (29 out of 70). They have the worst record in their division, the second worst record in their league, and the fifth worst record in all of Major League Baseball! Still, the front office denies that there is anything seriously wrong with how the team is being run and maintained. Now the fans *know* that the Mariners are too old to play well, pay too much to crappy players in an attempt to improve their team, and that the front office is going to bullshit their way out of doing anything meaningful. By staying the course and saying that nothing serious is wrong, the Mariners front office is going to lose a lot of business and a lot of respect.

I'm not the kind of guy who would normally give free advice to Microsoft, but sometimes it's better for the emperor to admit that he's not wearing any clothes.

Re:Finally!

[maxbang]

Ha! From the article: "There's more of that on the way," said Microsoft's Stephen Walli...

That's like a fat chick showing you a boob and saying, "There's more where that came from."

Re:Finally!

[AKAImBatman]

Unfortunately, your comparison is lacking. If we we're to draw a true analogy of what Microsoft's stance should have been, then it would be more like the New York Yankees pretending that the Marlins were a complete non-threat. As long as the Marlins don't manage to embarass the Yankees at any point, the Yankees can continue to keep fans from suspecting that the Marlins are getting better. But if the Marlins are doing poor to average and the Yankees started telling the press that the Marlins are their biggest competitor, the Yankees would instantly balloon the credit of a team that no one should be concerned about.

It's not that much different with Microsoft. Microsoft has battled with Unix varients for a very long time, and has always managed to come out on top thanks to "pretty interfaces". Linux is certainly getting better, but many managers dismissed its supporters as biased. The moment Microsoft began a defamation campaign on Linux was the moment that Microsoft-friendly managers began turning their heads. Linux was no longer a toy in their eyes, it was a real product that Microsoft considered a serious threat. And if it was a threat to Microsoft, might it actually be better than Microsoft?

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

The moment Microsoft began a defamation campaign on Linux was the moment that Microsoft-friendly managers began turning their heads

I work in the Microsoft Universe, and I can flatly say that this is false.

Linux Hype has been going on in the IT Press for 5 years now, far longer than MS has done any specific anti-Linux marketing. MS-centric IT Managers have noticed and are taking Linux seriously, especially in application areas where it is very strong (LAMP, Java, and Oracle).

Which is exactly why Microsoft's "Anti-Linux" marketing is really Anti-Oracle, Anti-IBM, and Anti-J2EE marketing in disguse. MS competitors are out there selling this stuff, it's not like it's even possible to ignore.

You will notice that Microsoft is not putting out reports about Desktop Linux, largely because their customer base has no interest in Linux on the desktop.

Re:Finally!

[iabervon]

That worked until other computer giants started pushing Linux. When Microsoft says something's not serious, but IBM spends a billion dollars marketing it, Oracle says it's their preferred platform, and Dell sells it on their big machines, it's pretty clear that Microsoft is failing to understand customer requirements. "Everybody else is talking about Linux, but Microsoft doesn't seem to know anything about it" leads to "Microsoft is not keeping up to date on technology". Of course, if everybody else weren't talking about Linux, Microsoft would have just kept saying nothing about it.

Re:Finally!

[killjoe]

If I remember correctly quickbooks for DOS was the first program to feature something like clippy. If you hesitated too long on a field a little yellow "box" would pop up and give you hints.

How that turned into a talking paper clip only the mind of the most deranged MS programmer knows.

Re:Finally!

[AKAImBatman]

When Microsoft says something's not serious, but IBM spends a billion dollars marketing it, Oracle says it's their preferred platform, and Dell sells it on their big machines, it's pretty clear that Microsoft is failing to understand customer requirements. "Everybody else is talking about Linux, but Microsoft doesn't seem to know anything about it" leads to "Microsoft is not keeping up to date on technology".

Keep in mind that Microsoft was in the perfect position to portray IBM as a mainframe "has-been". They could have easily targetted IBM directly with a campaign stating that IBM is attempting to bring back the days of Big Mainframes. IBM even makes it easy with their special versions of Linux that run on big iron!

Microsoft could then point out that Oracle is also a "has-been" that failed to take the top TPC against SQL-Sever. Thus they're jumping on IBM's bandwagon of selling their products to a small niche market of Linux lovers.

While all of that may be stretching the truth, it would still keep Microsoft from having to say anything about Linux other than "it's a toy created by a bunch of hackers." Thus Microsoft's mistake was in attempting to attack Linux directly as if it were backed by a company. Linux doesn't actually have a company to attack directly, so it was about as effective as bombing Internet nodes. Had they gone focused on Linux's corporate support infrastructure, they could have effectively dismantled Linux's Enterprise attempts without directly killing Linux. (A bit like bombing the internet nodes to Washington DC. Far more focused and effective.)

Re:Finally!

[sumdumass]

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.

Re:Finally!

[ultranova]

I know the install routeen is easier in windows because the entire /ect directory and such is in a structured registry with rules that everyb program has to follow instead of thier own ways of doing it that make linux a pian sometimes.

I've always wondered who came up with the idea of the Windows registry in the first place. It gathers the system and program settings in the same place, making it impossible (to users) to separate the two. In addition, the registry grows like a black rubber sack full of waste food in a hot day, and is about as nice to use - programs typically scatter their settings all around the registry, and because the thing is so large, searching it with regedit is slow. All in all, another amazingly bad idea from people who brought us Edlin.

On the other hand, in Linux, you simply open the text file /etc/programname, and make whatever changes you please. Most Linux config files also contain plentifull help in the form of comments.

I don't quite understand why you think that the config files in Linux are unstructured. They are of the form key = value, and every line that starts with # is a comment. Simple and usable.

As for installation process, I think that writing "apt-get install programname" is about as easy as it can get, and certainly less of a bother than the installation routines in Windows programs, but to each their own...

Just one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Any program MS could open the source to other than Office or Windows is almost completely useless. What would be much better is if they opened the file formats. Then maybe we could have proper .doc readers and writers.

Re:Just one thing

[Kobayashi Maru]

I wouldn't say useless. Being able to see how the program reads and writes a file is much more useful than trying to guess what that program is doing. The open source community has done a good job guessing... imagine how much easier their jobs would be if they could observe the precise behaviour of the actual program.

Re:Just one thing

[Alphanos]

Don't be silly. For instance, we know there are lots of great features in IIS that could be ported to Apache to improve it, like the ability to be automatically exploited! Internet Explorer has similarly advanced code that Mozilla could make use of;).

Re:Just one thing

[tachin]

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?

Re:Just one thing

[DougMelvin]

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.

Re:Just one thing

[kfg]

File formats, codecs and *APIs*.

We don't need to see the code, we just need to know what goes in and what comes out documented. Then we can write our own damned code to do it which will be untainted by MS's code, of little return value to them, and allow us to compete directly.

Which is why you won't see it happen other than under duress.

After that seeing the actual code is just like seeing MS in its underwear, fun to point and giggle for a little while, but after that more and more disquieting and revolting.

KFG

Re:Just one thing

[foidulus]

What would be even better than Microsoft opening up the doc format, they should really participate(with other concerned parties, such as Apple, OO, Sun etc) in creating an open document format(preferably XML). But that would not help microsoft at all, because then they would have to compete solely on tools that would help the user create the best document asap. Which they are capable of doing, but for most users, the little bit of extra help/formatting would not be worth the price point. They are too dependent on the proprietary doc format to sell more copies of office.
Hell, even if they did participate in creating open document standards, they would probably add special proprietary "enhancements". Visual J++ anyone?

Re:Just one thing

[Entropius]

No, they're not right.

The "Americanism" that you refer to (that the GPL supposedly violates) is the belief in individual liberty coupled with civic responsibility--the idea that, if it doesn't infringe on anyone else's personal rights, you have the freedom to do what the hell you want and the duty to use that freedom to benefit society as a whole.

OSS is thus right in line with the original American values. As long as it doesn't mess up anyone else, the KDE developers can do whatever the hell they want with their computers: they choose to write code on them and give me a copy, so I can post this here.

Now there is a trend toward the reliance on the law, on legally-binding agreements and codification, rather than on a shared duty to be benevolent, to make people play nice. Whether this is a good thing or not is a discussion for another time, but it is certain that large organizations--chiefly, corporations and IP-holders--can make greater use of this new reliance on contracts than individuals can.

The GPL is simply a creative rechanneling of this current trend to protect individuals--who would like to protect the altruistic and hackable nature of their products--rather than those who wish to profit from them.

I wish the GPL didn't need to exist--that developers could release software with a statement to the effect of "I'd like this code to remain open and distributed free of charge. Please do me the respect of acknowledging me as the original offer, and of honoring my wishes for this work." But since, in today's climate, people (read: corporations) are bound not by honor and ethics but only by law, the OSS community needs the GPL to *protect* the original American values inherent in open source software.

Re:Just one thing

[1010011010]

You really think the GPL is "Un-American?" That it's "evil?" That it's "communist?"

Wow.

You must think Microsoft's licenses are "totalitarian," or maybe not. Maybe you think they have a god-given right to profit?

People releasing the product of their own labor under the terms of their own choosing (the GPL) is evil? It's unamerican? Should they be forced to work for Microsoft, or only sell their labor and products of their labor under terms approved by you, or Microsoft, etc? Would that be more "american," less "evil" and less "communist?"

Re:Just one thing

[Collestonpie13]

Since when was Communism Un-American? Im moving to cuba...

This is about a viral spread of "shared" code.

[WindBourne]

MS is not doing this because they believe in helping mankind. This is a way to get ppl hooked on the shared source and more importantly, having an ability to sue said programmer down the road, if they move over to GPL code.

Re:This is about a viral spread of "shared" code.

[woodhouse]

This argument sounds familiar somehow. The counter-argument went something like: if you don't like the terms, don't use it.

Re:This is about a viral spread of "shared" code.

[TheFlyingGoat]

Once again, damned if they do, damned if they don't. I don't for one second believe MS is doing this to help anyone but themselves, but do you really think that all of the other companies that open source their software are doing it for mankind either? Companies are in business to make a profit, and although I disagree with a lot of Microsoft's business tactics, I think that this is a move that will not only help them, but may actually prove beneficial for developers too. So what if they open some source to Visio, or MS Money... at least it will probably help people who use those products. If nothing else, MS is saying 'open sourcing software is not a bad thing', which is a big change from what they've been saying for years. I'm just sick of all the flaming of MS for EVERYTHING. Yeah we don't like them, but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Re:This is about a viral spread of "shared" code.

[node 3]

This argument sounds familiar somehow. The counter-argument went something like: if you don't like the terms, don't use it.

The reason people are pointing out the trap in MS's devious "Shared Source Initiative" is that a lot of trusting people won't realize that they don't like the terms (ie: they fall for the trap), and will use it. Unlike your "let the buyer beware" attitude, some people actually don't like the idea of other people being scammed, and will voluntarily do something to help them before it's too late.

Re:This is about a viral spread of "shared" code.

[node 3]

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.

I have the source...

[Wig]

...it's just a bunch of "if-else" loops anyway. Millions. Although, they iterated an array once that and used a "for" loop pretty nicely...

Re:I have the source...

[TheShadowHawk]

What about GOTO's?

Surely there must be at LEAST ONE GOTO!

Re:I have the source...

[Ryu2]

I was a summer intern in the Office group. They do use a lot of gotos, for exiting out of loops for cleanups and such. And before anyone flames them, they should take a look at the Linux kernel which uses gotos frequently for exactly the same thing...

Re:I have the source...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

They do use a lot of gotos, for exiting out of loops for cleanups and such.

It's a hell of a lot nicer than 10 level if statements.

Open Development Process

[SlightOverdose]

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.

developers, developers, developers!

[neon777]

That's what it's all about.

Re:They just want free development

[Reenigne]

Microsoft finally takes a step in the right direction, and you still critisize. Give them them the credit they deserve, it may not be much, but it is better than them raping the world.

Obligatory Admiral Akbar

[Weaselmancer]

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.

Re:Obligatory Admiral Akbar

[Dark Lord Seth]

I'm not old enough to have witnessed the evil juggernaut that was IBM, but I do occasionally hear the elder people talk about days past when IBM would own your soul if one would even look at an IBM compatible piece of junk. There was no greater evil then IBM and it was cursed and spit at.

Now look at IBM, they turned OS into a viable business model and are a nice enough player in the OS world. Who is to say MS can't change into a nice enough OS player? The quality of their software aside, it's a good thing to see they ACKNOWLEDGE OSS to start with.

And, that can be used against them if they claim OSS is a $strRandomNastyLethalDisease. If they do, remind them they use it themselves.

How sweet.

[delta407]

From the article, referring to Munich's choosing open-source software over substantially discounted Microsoft offerings:

"Is that a threat to our business? Well, as much as we didn't get that sale or make that customer happy, yes," he answered. "Is it a threat to our overall business? No. There's lots of customers out there and I would hope that we're making all of them happy so they keep coming back."

I find it interesting that Windows is so widely deployed, yet so few people are truly "in love" with the operating system. You'll find people willing to die for Mac OSX, for OpenBSD, for BeOS, for Amiga, for Gentoo, or for any number of other systems -- but to date, I've never met a single person that was truly satisfied with Windows, much less happy or fanatical about it.

People use Microsoft for a number of reasons, none of them at all related to customer satisfaction. Corporate desktops are assumed to be running Windows with Office unless stated otherwise. Data centers are assumed to be running some Windows server edition, to let the admins use Group Policy and other platform-dependent tools that almost make managing those desktops bearable. People use Microsoft because of their monopoly, and Microsoft exploits this.

And remember, no one got fired for choosing Microsoft.

Re:How sweet.

[mingot]

I find it interesting that Windows is so widely deployed, yet so few people are truly "in love" with the operating system.

Oddly enough, most people only use operating systems to facilitate whatever work it is they happen to be tasked with accomplishing. When it comes to love, passion, etc, these same weird folk usually look towards members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, even) and not penguins, devils, or peices of mealy fruit. Crazy, huh?

Re:How sweet.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know mechanics and carpenters that truly care about their fine tools and are dedicated to certain styles and brands. I know seamstresses who care deeply about their tools.

Why should computer geeks all of a sudden attempt to think in such a utilitarian fashion about their tools. A quality tool that you interact with day to day should be a pleasure to use. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't believe in enjoying life.

If you wait until the 8 hours at work is over to enjoy life you are missing out on a lot.

If the Office source code was released

[stox]

Thousands of open source developers around the world would die as their head's exploded.

We used to have a joke at Bell Labs regarding the source code for the 5ESS. If we ever wanted to eliminate any competition, we would send them a copy of the source, and they would go bankrupt trying to figure it out.

Ahh, you beat me to it

[TiggertheMad]

...Although, the possibilities of porting MS Bob to LINUX are intriguing...

Tcp/Ip stack

[obdulio]

They are going to open the source of their network protocols. The first thing they are opening is the TCP/IP protocols. ;-)

For those who can't see why MS is opening code

[SphericalCrusher]

It's pretty obvious, and the Slashdot post mentioned it also -- to get more developers. The Windows operating system is unique, in sense that it is very user-friendly and everyone's software runs on it. The reason why Microsoft does not port software to other operating systems is common sense -- Windows is nothing without the software that it has, but that rule applies to any other operating systems as well. That's why Microsoft gives away development tools, because they want people to develop code under Microsoft's name... and this is no different. When people take Microsoft's opened source code and change it around, they are only helping Microsoft's opened source code and Microsoft themselves. It's not really about Microsoft making more money directly, but they will get more developers once everyone starts seeing their technique of programming and that will get them money in the long run.

Just my two cents, heh.

Old news.

[Steamhead]

Microsoft opened up lots of it's source last year, lest we forget. :)

Why?

[secondsun]

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.

MS software unfriendly to competing vendors

[craXORjack]

Larkin said the error message has existed for several years, persisting even in the newest Outlook version, even though the problem has been well-documented. Such situations tend to give credence to longstanding assertions that Microsoft makes its software unfriendly to programs from competing vendors.

This is what turned me off to Microsoft years ago. I used to love NT but got SO tired of incompatabilities with software from other vendors and of the misdirection from MS fans who always claimed the problems were with the other vendor. Well common sense tells me that when a microsoft program is released long after the other vendors has been on the market then the problem has to be caused by MS. Am I supposed to believe that the other vendors should have travelled in a time machine to test their software against a MS product that hasn't been written yet? Microsoft lost me as a supporter by cheating and lying about it.

Re:Open vs. Shared?

[gmuslera]

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.

Microsoft's 2 open source projects

[jimbolaya]

For the of you that did RTFA, you may have had the same reaction as I did: The article twice mentions that Microsoft has already open sourced two projects, but neither time mentions what they are.

Well, a bit of Googling turned 'em up: Windows Template Library (WTL) and Windows Installer XML (WiX).

Re:They just want free development

[Anonymous Coward]

A step in the right direction? This? No, this is not a step in the right direction. This is them releasing a bunch of code under a GPL-incompatible (and certainly BSD-incompatible) license. The code is open, certainly, but not free. Which means that while we can possibly submit patches, etc, to Microsoft, we cannot fork it or even use small pieces of it (even if they were written by someone else in the community) in our own code.

The GP was absolutely right: they just want free development. They hope that we will hack their code, but it's still their code. All of it. You can't reuse it. You can't change it. You can't fork it. It's absolutely useless. Even studying it is dangerous: if you looked at their code and then implemented something free (as in freedom) that did the same thing, they could probably claim that you're violating their IP/copyright because your code isn't "cleanroom".

Open source non-free software is very dangerous for the community, because we cannot use it, or be inspired by it -- and yet it's there, like Pandora's box, waiting to be opened. And since so many people confuse open source with free, it isn't long before some well meaning coder takes a bit of their code, edits it, and submits it somewhere else.

They have just forced us to be even more vigilant. Don't you see that we get nothing at all? No rights? No freedom? But they get everything. Our manpower, our mindshare, everything. For nothing.

This is worse than not good. It's evil. A perverse bending of the free software model.

LOTR analogy

[neon777]

This is like Sauron giving rings to all the elvish and dwarven kings in order to enslave them.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

Re:They just want free development

[captain igor]

Still criticize them? Strange, since I've never posted anything criticizing them before (check my comments if you don't believe), perhaps you meant that the internet community in general still criticizes them? No, that still wouldn't make sense since I only posted my own opinion rather than a blanket statement attempting to speak for everyong. Nope, I'm sorry, but I have to call shennanigans on your post. CI

It's not from today

[Matheus Villela]

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?"

Insightful

[Anonymous Coward]

They [Microsoft] are NOT open source friendly.

I was going to make a crack about how obvious this comment was, but you got me thinking about the success of Micro-Soft's marketing campaigns.

Micro-Soft has managed what seemed to me to be an impossible task; turn the obvious security advantages of Open Source into a debate about who has the better security. There are actually people out there convinced that Windows' security is superior due to the success of their marketing, contrary to all reason and evidence.

Micro-Soft have managed to turn TCO into a debate about which is cheaper, Windows or FLOSS, despite the fact that it is blindingly obvious that the cost of Windows is a gazillionfold.

Perhaps your comment is the first of many, as "Micro-Soft supports Open Source" and "Shared Source and Open Source are the same thing" become the new frontiers in their reductio ad absurdem marketing campaigns that seem so successful with the gullible.

Re:Insightful

[Weaselmancer]

Perhaps your comment is the first of many, as "Micro-Soft supports Open Source" and "Shared Source and Open Source are the same thing" become the new frontiers in their reductio ad absurdem marketing campaigns that seem so successful with the gullible.

Agreed, AC. They've tailored the term "shared source" to sound very much like "open source". I assure you I have not swallowed the Kool Aid on this.

Open source is much much different than shared source. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to get the source to Internet Explorer, fix the bugs, and then release it on their own CD. It'd be an expensive way to prove the point that the two are not the same. Consider it a thought experiment, though.

My point was that MS knows that it's open source that will someday sink their boat. There is a motive here that remains to be discovered. Goliath sees David. He knows what's coming.

SCO's attack at least had the possibility to damage open source. The amount of open source people who jumped in to defend open source is proof enough of that. The problem is that SCO's claim simply had no teeth. Now, imagine for a moment if it did. What if Linus had put some foreign IP in the kernel? What then?

And MS knows that. So why not pollute the stream a bit? Loose some code, and see where it turns up over the next 5 or so years? With any luck, it'll turn up somewhere...important. And then MS will pull the same stunt, and heaven help us all. They can afford enough lawyers to where it would make sense to measure them in metric tons.

And that's my point, really. Avoid this code like the plague, folks. Do not look at it. Do not touch it. Do not download it. Do not acknowledge it. Do not give the pack of rabid IP lawyers that will be coming 5 or so years from now any stick to beat us with.

Re:MS is *not* open sourcing anything

[mlk]

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.

What are the extra ground rules in the CPL?

[ya_steve]

From the article:

Microsoft's two existing open-source projects have used a type of open-source license from IBM called the CPL, or common public license, which some companies tend to favor because it clearly delineates some critical ground rules for an open-source technology's use. Analysts say that choice of license shows that Microsoft takes issue not as much with the broader open-source concept as with the GPL, a different type of open-source license used for Linux and other programs.

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:

The Common Public License is incompatible with the GPL because it has various specific requirements that are not in the GPL. For example, it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)

Does anybody have any examples of why a corporation would prefer the CPL to the GPL?

Re:What are the extra ground rules in the CPL?

[QuantumG]

I thought that was blatantly obvious! Corporations actually care about being sued for patent infringement. Therefore they require that anyone contributing code to one of their open source projects must give licenses to use anything of which they have contributed that is patented. The next version of the GPL will probably have the exact same provision.

Change of policy?

[hankaholic]

How is this a change of policy? Let's look at Microsoft's old methods:

1) Embrace new methodology
2) Extend new methodology in a way that locks users into Microsoft products

Let's look at Microsoft's take on "open source":

1) Embrace OSS' idea of providing developers access to source code.

Would anyone care to guess what step #2 will be?

Re:Another angle of attack

[mlk]

WIX & That Other Microsoft One are released under the CPL.

I got my hands on some of it...

[Anonymous Coward]

It goes like this:

void main() {
while (true) {
//
//**Secret Proprietary Microsoft Code Removed**
//
if (rand() % 2)
doCrash();
}
}

Re:They just want free development

[mlk]

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.

Re:Microsoft's 2 open source projects...are CPL

[Anonymous Coward]

As indicated in the article, these sourceforge projects uses the "Common Public License" (CPL).

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

Microsoft's new openness

[rajmobile]

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.

Re:Microsoft's new openness

[andy55]

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.

It was interesting--thanks for sharing the link...

However, this is a good opportunity to consider the differences between being smart/witty/intelligent and being driven, visionary, and willing to work in a project that may not succeed (b/c it's not in backed from the get-go with millions). I can say this b/c I've been exposed to ms developers, startup develops (myself included), and developers somewhere in between. I, personally, am not impressed with devs that don't seek the highest level of excellence in what they create. Most ms devs I've seen are so high in the Microsoft ivory tower that they've lost all sense of reality and priority. They are unconsciously in the mindset that the world revolves around them. Keep in mind this phenomenon isn't a MS thing--it's what happens to celebrities, wealthy people, and powerful people that only spend their time inside their courtyard.

To spare boring details, I've repeatedly witnessed MS teams not fix trivial bugs/issues because of the testing (ie added budget) they'd "need" to do on the changed code (despite that any dev could look at the code and tell the PM that there is *no* risk). *That's* why even the smallest issues and problem tend to go unfixed for so rediculous amounts of time.

Dilution of the Soundbite Market

[darkmeridian]

This will dilute "open-source" when applied to news broadcasts and magazine articles which PHBs rely upon. We could explain the intricate differences between "true" open-source and the Microsoftian "shared-source" licenses. But not in a brief sentence. And not in five seconds.

PHBs will just think "open-source is good trend" and "Microsoft 'does' open-source".

So yeah, this is a good, though Machievelian move, by Microsoft.

"Shared Source" vs. "Open Source"

[bonch]

MS is just attempting to confuse and dilute the term Open Source.

Microsoft calls it "Shared Source" with a completely different license, not the GPL, and somehow they're trying to confuse and dilute another term called "Open Source?" What's so confusing about it? Couldn't be any more confusing than GPL, LGPL, CPL, XPL, BSD, etc.

Seems rather silly. Especially since Microsoft has been sharing their Windows source with universities for years. In fact, it was a Linux machine at a company called Mainsoft that got hacked which resulted in that Windows source leak. But you didn't see that reported here.

Re:They just want free development

[nwbvt]

What the hell is so wrong about the CPL? Its a perfectly good free software license, approved by the Open Source Initiative. A number of good products have come out under it, including Eclipse. You can still use the code, you just can't release it under an incompatible license. Same with the GPL. Where the fuck are you getting this idea that you can't reuse or change it?

Do you have any legitimate reason for disliking the CPL, other than the fact that MS uses it?

Don't be so antagonistic about topics you clearly have no clue about.

Re:COINCIDENCE?!

[FrYGuY101]

It wouldn't surprise me.

IE is pretty much worthless to Microsoft, and always has been. They added it to make Windows better, in the fact that it had a browser for anybody who wanted to use it. Now that it's added, it's kinda like Disk Defragmenter. Sure, they COULD improve it loads... but why? It works. Working on it would bring down the wrath of Anti-trust people (Both cases. It would be 'using their market dominance to suppress other companies'). And in neither case would it bring in a single cent of extra revenue.

If they open sourced IE (And, to continue the analogy, Disk Defragmenter), they would gain a legion of coders who would improve the product, making the overall experience better for the end user, and at a far lower cost to themselves. Sure, it wouldn't bring in more revenue, but it'd make the customers happier...

Re:Excessive Bias

[krumms]

Erm ... Microsoft is a corporation. Corporations exist to make money and only to make money - the more, the better. There is no such thing as a moral obligation in the eyes of a corporation. They don't do things to "be nice". They do things to make money, or to improve their prospects of making money.

So yes, chances are virtually everything they do is devious in one sense or another. But the same goes for IBM, Novell, Sun, ...

Re:Name one

[Glamdrlng]

Name an instance of IIS being automatically exploited. I'll cite you two Apache holes in return.

Name a remotely exploitable apache vulnerability that led to root access and went unpatched for six months. Show me a doctored study where apache claims it's more secure becase of the short time it takes for them to release patches. Show me the voodoo math where apache claims that a vulnerability is not a threat until it's publically disclosed.

piece by piece is interesting... but

[perlchild]

Just which product(s) will be shared source might be of interest to some pundits(I predict IIS being among the first ports on the server side, if it ever happens, simply because there is less server market share to lose there, they're already way behind apache, oracle web server, ibm web server, zeus et al... Windows Media Server is also a candidate, simply because they are licensing it as part of a larger product, but not selling it directly, in a marketspace where the competitors are much more expensive, but offer much more features{real} or are free{apple/darwin streaming server}). On the desktop I have a harder question, is this source thing just an attempt to blindside consumers? They could always say they are open sourcing word viewer after all... Nothing says they have in mind to open the source of a product that actually reads a specific Microsoft format, or that said product has to be unencumbered(patent-wise). Microsoft has always been a master of the "give with one hand take away with the other" I predict more of the same, just where is my only question. Let's not get carried away at least until they have named those products, and listed their intent as regards to data formats et al contained in there.

Why is this important you ask? Well let me put a hypothetical case:

1) you have the source code to office
2) the office file format is encumbered
3) you use the source code to do anything with regards to that file format(read, write, export, clean up, syntax-highlight it doesn't matter)
4) you are in violation of their patent, and can(and likely will) be dragged before a court

It doesn't matter that they opened up their source in this case. Should anyone who hasn't been following, that means that open source benefits end users most when linked to open formats. What this smells like to me, is a PR move related to stock valuation, they announced they would follow the trend, but without naming the products, to gauge the impact on stock price, and they are evaluating which product will be released, based partly on market reactions. If their focus groups say "bad juju" they'll pull up something like ms dos 2.11 or microsoft notepad, and claim they open-sourced it to encourage innovation in the text space
[sarcasm]implying that they are leaders in the text-only field[/sarcasm]

There are a lot of technologies that Microsoft started, like WMI, that would actually benefit from an influx of third party developers, actually, the number of technologies at Microsoft that wouldn't grow with an influx of third parties is actually pretty close to zero.

However, if we want our computing to be unfettered, we have to keep insisting on what's really important, and not be swayed by Microsoft's "No" "No" "Maybe" "Yes but only if you give me the Moon first" routine. The data on our computers, belongs to us, the computers, they also belong to us, the software on it provides a useful service, it is true, but it does NOT grant control to Microsoft over that, and we need to react forcefully to anything that lessens our control over our property.

Re:XML office file formats

[foidulus]

Maybe you should look at this there cowboy. Doesn't look like Microsoft is exactly wanting to be as open as you think...

BSOD

[accidental_1]

Even better, we can find out what all those BSOD messages are.

Should be called Sample Code, not Open Source

[michaeldot]

Sample Code is released to show how to use APIs. It is open source in the sense that you download and modify the source code, but the build isn't useful for distributing in its own right, unlike a TRUE Open Source project.

True Open Source projects tend to be portable between platforms. Many projects on SourceForge can be built on Win32, Linux and Mac OS X.

But what can Windows Template Library (WTL) and Windows Installer XML (WiX) be built on?

My perception is that Microsoft's open source initiatives are simply a means of encouraging use of the Windows platform. They're making available source code to show how certain things can be done, thus giving developers an example of how routines should be written, but also meaning that these "open source" offerings are little more than extended sample code that you expect to get with a Visual Studio install.

Worse than that

[einhverfr]

I worked at Microsoft until sometime last year. I wasn't in a great or glamorous position as a developer or anything. But working there did make me pay attention to the policies to a greater extend than I do now.

A number of us in my department (we joked that it was the "armpit of Microsoft," but I forget who coined that phrase), noticed that Microsoft seemed to be pursuing greatly differnet and conflicting strategies relating to the saturation of the PC market and the threat to revenue that this engenders. On one hadn you had software assurance as an attempt to create a stable income source as PC's live increasingly long lives, and on the other you have .NET which seems to commoditize the OS much like Java....

This is yet more evidence to me that Microsoft is NOT acting in a unified and coherent manner but us taking a shotgun approach out of fear (interestingly, not fear of Linux, but Linux contributes to an already bad situation).

Re:Worse than that

[gujo-odori]

I think that's a pretty good analysis from someone who had an inside view.

In addition to that, in Microsoft's current approaches, besides the confusion you mention, I also see what is reflected in the quote, attribute to Ghandi, that is often seen in taglines: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

I used to be a Windows user all the way. I was first exposed to *nix in 1997 (FreeBSD) and found later that year. By mid-1998 I had chucked Windows and was using Linux exclusively, including being the only person in my shop developing websites on Linux.

In the days when I converted to Linux, we were still in the "first they ignore you" stage. Microsoft was internally aware of Linux, I'm sure, but they never said anything about it publically. One of the first, if not the first, glimpses into what MS privately was thinking about Linux came when The Halloween Document was leaked.

About that time, Microsoft's public position on Linux was getting into the "then they laugh at you" stage. It lasted for a while, but now we are squarely in the "then they fight you" stage. This will go on a while longer, with MS trying various things to crush, or at least slow, the advance of Linux. Unless they find some astonishing legal maneuver and a job on mass quantities of crack, however, it's not likely to help. And we all know what phase comes after "then they fight you." :-)

It is a sign of a certain desperate fear in the face of an unstoppable new disruptive technology that Microsoft is trying to many different things to try and stop it. They don't know what will work, and so far the answer has been "none of it." They ignored Linux. Linux advanced. They laughed at Linux. Linux advanced. Now they are fighting Linux. Hard. And Linux is perhaps advancing faster than ever before.

I think we will see MS engaging in many more examples of fighting fire with fire in the years to come, and 5 years from now Microsoft will probably have released more software under Shared Source, and some under some kind of actual open source license, than any of us would now believe possible. By sharing source and even outright open-sourcing some software, they hope to further stave off the inevitable. It might help a little, in some areas, but far less than they might think. What draws people to Free and Open Source Software is precisely that it is free and open; if it was just shared, nobody would much care about Linux and *BSD; it wouldn't be that much of an improvement on Windows, for many.

Eventually, if Microsoft wants people to keep using Windows, they'll wind up having to open-source most of it, or at the least pretty much give it away. They will probably try giving it away first, since that helped them to crush Netscape (along with a bunch of self-inflicted wounds on Netscape's part). However, it won't help much in this case. When I meet people who've switched from Windows to Linux, cost has most often had little or no bearing on the decision (nor did it in my case). Even among those who considered cost to be an important factor, it was never number one.

What were the top reasons? Security. Speed. Scalability. Then comes longer hardware life cycles. Finally, somewhere after that, people will say "Oh, and it's free. Saved us a bundle on licensing, too." The other reasons figure into cost in a way, too, but they are more on the TCO side of the equation. Operating systems that are faster, more secure, more scalable, and require hardware up less frequently will have a lower TCO, even if the licensing fees are the same. When you factor in that you can get most distributions of Linux essentially free (the cost of a download, some CD-R media, some bandwidth which most people pay a flat rate for anyway) and install it on as many servers and workstations as you want, well, that's just icing on the cake.

MS will fight these rearguard tactics for some time to come, but Linux will arrive at the "Then you win" stage soon enough.

OK, Here's the Latest (Today) IIS Exploit

[MooseByte]

"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.

Consider the source

[HardTronic]

When contemplating such an action one should keep in mind that anything that Microsoft does is pro-monopoly, screw the world encapsulated.

The big picture

[hopethishelps]

There are a lot of naive comments on this news story. Microsoft's goal is to keep, exploit, and extend its monopoly, by whatever means (and exploiting its existing monopoly to extend monopoly power to additional areas is inherently illegal, so Microsoft is a criminal organization). This open-source release is a tactical move. It tells nothing about Microsoft's real goals.
It was probably justified within Microsoft on grounds like the following: (1) it will distract some of the Open Source community, possibly even con them into working for Microsoft unpaid, (2) it will generate some good publicity.

Stephen Walli, Interix, POSIX Subsystem...

[argent]

He used to be the lead guy at Softway Systems, and developed the Interix package that's now the core of Windows Services for UNIX. Interix could also be described as "Microsoft GNU/NT", since it makes extensive use of BSD and GPL source code, including GCC and large chunks of OpenBSD.

He's a smart cookie, and has given multiple presentations at Usenix on Interix. It's based on a modified version of the POSIX subsystem, and runs directly on the NT kernel rather than under the Win32 subsystem.

I wonder if they're considering open-sourcing parts or all of the POSIX subsystem? Heck, even documenting and opening the NT kernel interface without releasing any of the code would be a huge step forward.

I don't think it is just Linux

[einhverfr]

I think that what worries Microsoft more than anything else is the saturation of the PC market. Time was when businesses upgraded their computers (and software) every 2 years. Now the hardware is upgraded every 5 years, and the software maybe every 4.

Microsoft's biggest and most dangerous competitor is, well, legacy Microsoft software. This is the cudgel which could destroy their current business model. And I think that this is what scares Microsoft so much.

You see-- if only half as many people buy Windows (because they already have a version that works for them), then they will have to charge nearly twice as much for each copy or cut way back on research and development. Both strategies force them into a chicken-and-egg cycle where the costs go up, the demand goes down, so the costs go up, so the demand.....

So what to they do?

1) Product activation (to forestall the cycle a little while)
2) Software Assurance (to stabilize their income)
3) .Net to try to get developers to move to the latest and greatest (unfortunately undermining 1 and 2 above).
4) Longhorn DRM to get consumers to move so they can have "must have" content.
5) Outsource technical support to India

Enter Linux. Linux is at best for Microsoft a current distraction from the market problems above but it is important strategically because it prevents Microsoft from using its monopoly power with market impunity. Linux is a small but seriously growing threat, and while it is nowhere near the threat to Microsoft that Windows 98 is, it provides subtle damage because it gives customers a third option (stay where you are, upgrade, or move to Linux). This third option is a major issue for Microsoft and they know that it could eventually be as bad as the first (stay where you are) option. So they are trapped.

Now, I don't believe for a moment that Microsoft will go out of business over this. But they are beginning an extremely difficult transition, and it is anybody's guess what sort of business they will have when they emerge.

An analogy

[Phishcast]

The comparison between "Shared Source" and "Open Source" reminds me of the not-so-subtle difference between "hacker" and "cracker".

The media (amongst others) will pick one and then the two terms become one in the same in the eyes of everyone except the geek sector. We end up looking like we're quibbling over the semantics of two things that most people will consider to be identical. For example, "I can see the code, what's the difference?"