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Josh Ledgard On MS's Future Open Source Efforts
prostoalex writes "Josh Ledgard from Microsoft, the developer responsible for open-sourcing WiX and WTL, is looking for opinions on what Microsoft should do next in regards to the open source movement that he himself established within the company. "Would you have interest in working on these types of projects with Microsoft? If not, what could entice you? If so, what would be your motivation?", asks Josh." Update: 08/24 19:04 GMT by T : As Ledgard writes on his site, "I am NOT the person responsible for the WIX/WTL projects. I cite them as examples and am working with people who where responsible for those projects to enable more of the same for the groups I work in." Sorry for the misattribution!
Open source MS Office. :)
Were there any past ones?
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
I remember editing the source for Gorilla.bas
Women. Lots of women. Covered in baby oil, writhing around me as I did the work for Microsoft.
Open Source IE. That's what they should do.
He keeps saying that he wants the users to give him feedback on what MS needs to improve and if people would be willing to contribute to the programming, but no where does the software get mentioned as becoming free, or even discounted, but "improved, repackaged, and resold." This seems more like customer service than "open sourcing."
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
yes, girls read /. too...
If he wants free-as-in-speech contributions, he should dole out some free-as-in-beer. Everyone knows that beer looseneth the tongue.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
how about that nifty thing Microsoft patented? ;)
Oh, yeah: sodu, I immagine great things for that
If not, what could entice you? If so, what would be your motivation?
Eh, a small slice of the profits they make from selling the fruits of my labour would be nice.
Open up the file formats for Word documents so that other programs (e.g. Open Office) can correctly decode the formatting.
RTFFS
Read The F**king First Sentence.
...My own Casino. With BlackJack and Hookers. In fact, forget the BlackJack!
Microsoft has overstayed its welcome. Their past litany of cut-throat misadventures has piss-tainted this sand-box far too many times.
The only thing that would entice me to contribute to their efforts to get even more richer, and even more powerful, is if they were broken up into smaller companies, their mass wealth redistributed, and Windows gets open sourced.
Honestly, not a flame. I've been completely Microsoft-free for 5 years now, I intend to keep it that way
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Basically there are only three points
- To push competitors out of the field by offering their products for free. This is a more agressive version of what MS did with Netscape. SAP and IBM are using this to attack Oracle and MS.
- To establish own standards and push competing approaches out of the way. Stuff like TCP/IP and XML come into mind...
- To grab control of a competitor's standard base by offering free tools for a modified version.
That's the main point of the Eclipse project targeted at SUN.
So, OSS can strenghten/enlarge your own market share greatly but I don't see people making money by OSS directly.No, RMS getting donated money to get a shower doesn't count.
1) Microsoft quit funding "independent" bogus TCO research to discredit OS operating systems. Oh yeah, and call off SCO.
2) Microsoft quit attempting to make all of their file formats dependent upon the OS/software that they write. The data is MINE, and I should be able to use other software to read the data. Commit to open file formats and I'd look a lot more favorably on MS.
3) Microsoft quit using draconian EULAs that make me fear that any contribution I made to a MS effort would be locked away for good once MS got a hold of it.
4) Money. Truckloads of it.
Well, maybe not so much 4, but the first 3 would be a good start.
My problem is that I've got such a bad image of Microsoft after working with their stuff for the past 12 years or so that at the end of the day I'd rather contribute effort to a "real" open source effort than anything funded by Microsoft. I just don't trust them to "do the right thing" with anything that came out of an OSS initiative.
They could stop being evil for a start. Those sessions in the boardroom that end with Bill Gates going "Bwahahahah" really have to stop.
I don't see any point in opensourcing any //Pingo
Microsoft software except for Windows Media Player series 9 with codecs, perhaps also
Windows Media Encoder could be of some interest.
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
What I think is distuurbing that they want to askt this question. Just start the project and see who is interested. If it is interesting, people will jump aboard. If not, people will not.
It almost looks as if they know that the OSS comunity will spit them out and then the can play the underdog.
If people are interested, they can first play the nice guy who allowed the OSS comunity what they wanted and then let it blow up to proove that OSS does not work.
This is a win-win situation for them. So my question to them is, if you think that Open Source is so good, when can we help you with other parts that ARE interesting (and who need to be open by European court desision anyway). If you truly believe the project is interesting, it will create followers. If not, it will die a silent dead, as many projects that were started.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I remember fixing bugs in QBasic Nibbles. There were two notable ones, as I recall: First, if you hit Pause, and your target number was located in the same part of the screen where the Pause box showed up, it wasn't redrawn and basically turned invisible. Second was a UI tweak/bug: they turned off Number Lock, but not until all the screens asking you for... numbers. =b
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
but I'd rather see them pay more attention to open standards, and "opening" their file formats/protocols.
stop telling/teaching developers to code ie only web pages - and while your at just dump ie - it is trash and really servers no purpose but a beehive for spyware, virueses, and trojans. also - how about releasing the patent for the todo list - my wife hates paying everytime she makes a grocery list.
hah, the whole lot should be opened up so that some proper bugfixing and security testing can finally happen, M$ have prooved time and again that they'd rather patch than rework, but if we ever want our weekends to be free from tech support calls from relatives and friends whos spyware ridden pc's won't play nice anymore then some serious code needs to be written.
They'd never do this (opensource the OS) though of course, it would mean everyones suspicions were confirmed - that M$ Windows is infact just one big patch from qdos to winXP and probably LongHorn if that ever arrives too.
but yeah, the only way you could get me to play with any opensource M$ stuff would be if it was the OS itself, anything else i wouldn't waste my time on as the OS is so flakey and bug ridden, why bother developing for it? oh sure 90% of users use it or whatever, but if history teaches us anything its that the majority is usually wrong.
i've implemented a new policy recently, i tell a friend to ditch IE and use firefox after i've rescued their computer from viri/worms/spyware, if after this i catch them using the big blue 'e' to browse the web then i tell them that next time they have a virus/spyware or whatever and they want me to fix it for them i will be charging them for the time as they have not heeded my advice anyway and thats the reason they're in the same situation again is that they learned nothing last time around.
This is what I seem to be reading:
"Wouldn't it be great if you all improved Visual Studio or whatever for us free of charge between releases and then wouldn't it be cool if we kept your improvements and then sell them in our next version of Visual Studio."
I'm not sure that is a standard definition of Open Source Development.
the entire next generation of products:
- revolutionary OS
- corresponding office suite
- browser, media player apps. etc.
should be developed:
1. from scratch
2. open source
3. free as free-as-in-whatever
this revolutionary move should be particulary
targeted for non-desktop (mobile gadgets etc)
wireless broadband platforms.
anything less is next to nothing.
The development and progress in computing and technology in general has been slowed down by
lack of vision and need to squeeze out profits from lame products made for retards. High time to make it up to us.
What would be good would be to see the GPL used to cover the 'open sourcing'. The article clearly envisages developments that are not protected against becoming non-free (is that the same thing as enslaved?)
Don't be evil.
that would be a good start. we'll work out the perk from there. leave your answer on your home page. I'll be in touch.
The browser. We like standards compliant browsers. Switch to or adopt Mozilla technology. This is an anathema of Microsoft's strategy of usurption, but if you want to extend the olive branch, it's got to be attached to something we care about.
Seeing as Microsoft essentially stops developing the browser after it's done with it anyway, it might as well take advantage of the free maintenance costs, continual renewal and compliance adherence inherent to projects like Mozilla/Firefox. Instead of a whole team of Internet Explorer programmers, sponsor some open source programmers, as it feels fit.
Also, incidentally and less idealistically, by involving itself in something like the development of Mozilla, Microsoft could garner some support for proprietary technologies, that would otherwise fall upon deaf ears. Control comes with money. If Microsoft is on the outside, they have no control. The ideals of Mozilla/Firefox right now are precisely aligned against Microsoft's dominance; to curb or curtail that alignment requires involvement.
No, really. I don't think that MS needs to release Office under gpl or anything silly like that. If they really wanted to show that they have changed, they should embrace open standards. Free for any to read, understand and implement. They should make sure that these standards were royalty free, that they could be used equally by any and all developers. They should refrain from later extending these standards with closed code. In short - if they cared they would stop being assholes and fight fair.
Not that I expect it to happen... but it is a nice thought.
Someone needs to
1) sit him down
2) quietly cup their mouth as they bend down to whisper something in his ear
3) then scream at the top of their lungs...
"WE DON'T LIKE, WE NEVER LIKED YOU, AND WE NEVER WILL!!!"
If Microsoft started open source projects, with "real" open source licenses I would be glad to work on them under two conditions. First, the project has to interest me. That's rather obvious that since open source work is volunteer that nobody is going to work on something that doesn't interest them. The second thing is it has to be software I can use. Since I don't run windows there are probably going to be very few MS OSS projects I would work on.
What MS SHOULD do is appeal to all the Windows developers out there. Yes, there are people out there who live in Visual Studio and love windows. They should get these people to fix all the bugs in windows and IE and such. There are people out there, willing and able to do work which the internal MS developers have failed to do multiple times over. Give someone else a try.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
What I would like to work on is fixing some of the 'standards' Microsoft proclaims to abide. It would allow other products to interoperate with MS software and allow fair competition. But hey, somehow I think that MS won't feel happy for these contributions.
This is a replacement signature.
For so many years, Microsoft has brought useless fileformats to complete with those that already exist. Stop trying to innovate and start supporting the open standards. Did we really need BMP? How come PNG is so lamely supported? How about pushing Ogg Vorbis/Theora with your media player?
Feel ready to own one or many Tux Stickers?
software, personally. However, I am incensed when MS takes open software and "extends" it with hidden code to make it unusable. Remember Kerberos?
Contribute what you wish to contribute, but better yet: open your file formats or allow open formats to interoperate with your preferred file formats.
For me that would more than suffice. Note, however, I am not holding my breath in expectation.
Though I would pay attention if they open sourced
What they should try doing is participating with the community rather than trying to harvest/divide it. Ship perl, python, apache... Work with some of these open source projects. Show this isnt headed the direction of mosaic, embraced and extinguished mit licensed works.
Show this isnt just some game. Otherwise, have fun.
MSFT's culture is bankrupt. They have little to bring to the table. Show they are changing their culture, come out and play.
Opensource the API, then you'lll suddenly have a lot more coders working on your system. The way I see it, Microsoft doesn't need to cpmete for customer base any more.
They need to compete for coder base, as we're approaching a time when the system will be sold not on its own merits but on those of the applications it runs. This is already the case in enterprise computing and can only grow.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Hasn't M$FT been filing patents for XML based document structures? I really doubt M$FT will give the keys to the castle or in the case of word formats the keys to the outhouse.
I would enjoy working for Microsoft, and applying my experience and skills towards open source, and platform independance. There are few opportunities for an 8-year UNIX sysadmin at Microsoft, but my experience with UNIX and embedded systems might be quite useful.
Of course, my job applications go unanswered, but I remain optimistic.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I think that MS is missing one crucial market that they could be poised to overtake. The Open Source OS market. Think about it, if MS put out a version of Linux that was easily integrated into Windows networks, offered better security, and was less expensive than Windows, they could control the Linux market AND the Windows market. I'm not a huge fan of MS or anything but I think they're truly missing out on a monopolistic opportunity here. Isn't that what they're famous for anyway? As for what would entice me to work with MS? I would like to see an 8 year old kid punch Bill Gates in the balls. That would be worth a small labor contribution to MS. Definitely. -B
60 percent of the time, my comments are right everytime.
As the recent article from ecommercetimes.com mentioned on Slashdot states, Microsoft makes the majority of it's profits by selling Windows and MS Office. Even though it would slightly knock their O/S sales, I think it would be a worthwhile venture for Microsoft to contribute to WINE so that Linux users could run MS products under Linux. It would be a big boost to the WINE project and Microsoft would get product sales in return.
Because it is the one area where MS completely and utterly destroys Linux and the one are where Linux really needs to grow up.
Course, it won't happen, ever.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
So far MS released source for two bits of technology that is absolutely useless to Linux. How about something useful for a change: doc file format. That would be very useful -- it would allow Open Office to be 100% compatible with MS Office. And you don't even have to release any source, just the specs.
Of course this will never happen because the whole purpose of this "open source" work is so that Microsoft can say "look, I'm supporting these hippies", when in fact what they released has no effect on Microsoft business or Open Source movement.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Simple really.
"Wouldn't it be cool if there was a process whereby passionate Microsoft developers could work officially with engaged members of the community to build these missing features on top of the VS Platform, then these missing features could eventually be included as part of an additional install step as a part of the product? Microsoft wins because Visual Studio gets extended functionality between releases, the community wins because these would be provided for free and more officially supported, approved, and tested by Microsoft. Ideally the license would work such that Microsoft could eventually include these as part of future shipping products and the contributors could take the source and use it for their own purposes commercially."
Sounds a little like the process with Eclipse doesn't it? The difference of course is that with eclipse the core is open source (well everything except java but apparently it's possible to run eclipse with gcj). Why would an active community contribute work to a project which is at its root closed source? I still don't think they get it.
Does anyone else here get the feeling that Microsoft is taking code that they would ordinarily distribute as example code with a product such as VC++ and labeling that code "Open Source" to enhance their image?
The two items cited in the article are: WiX: The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. The toolset supports a command line environment that developers may integrate into their build processes to build MSI and MSM setup packages.
WTL: Windows Template Library (WTL) is a C++ library for developing Windows applications and UI components. It extends ATL (Active Template Library) and provides a set of classes for controls, dialogs, frame windows, GDI objects, and more.
Open Source? Or an attempt to change their image with VC++ sample code?
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Open source doesn't mean free. If you can convince my landlord to take FOSS in lieu of money for rent, then yes, I will work for free.
You can't put a corporation in charge of OSS projects, because the second a corporation sees profit in closing the source they will do so.
So, uh, well, become a non profit organisation. And fire Steve Balmer (he scares my cats).
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Could you tell us any reason why an open source developer should work on an MS project?
After all it is still only MS that profits, not the developer nor the open source community. On the contrary a case could be made that if MS profits it is overall bad for the open source community.
So why should anyone bother to help MS out?
On a not so serious side note, rename wix, it means something similar to wank in german and who takes pride in the words I am a wank developer?
They do. You can license them. Trouble is, once you have, you're bound by quite a number of restrictions One of the POI developers (Jakarta Word/Excel project) recently had to stop, as he'd changed employers to someone who'd licensed the specs: leaving email What would be nice is getting those docs without all the heavy licensing
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
sign all current and future patents to the EFF.
But if this guy is serious and he really does mean it and he really does have any say in the company I got 2 simple opensource projects for him. Samba and OpenOffice. If he wants to prove MS can play nice after all get him to work on these 2 projects and make sure they are compatible whenever MS decides to "rework" their code and "accidently" break compatibilty.
When the next windows version does not break samba, when Microsoft Office opens OpenOffice files and vice versa without problem THEN I will be willing to believe MS can be just another IT company and not the IT company from hell.
At the moment it is like a rapist asking what will help to get him accepted back into society. STOP RAPING!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
One of the major potential benefits of contributing to open-source projects is that, when searching for a future programming job, one can point to one's open-source contributions and say "Here's some of my code, and people are using it." This works especially if one has contributed to a project with prestige - something that a Microsoft-sanctioned project would certainly have in the closed-source corporate world.
However, it can be difficult to pick out the code that one has contributed from a large project and say, "yeah, download this tgz and look at kluge.cpp lines 377-421, that's my code!" So I would propose, as a carrot to your future open-source contributors, that you design a system that keeps a database of who contributed code, how old it is, and maybe some other statistics about it. You could post a summary page for each contributor with browseable links to the code and statistics.
-Ansel.
G=C800:5
.. and handed over to the FSF. Bwahahaha
"/Dread"
I think this fully vindicates RMS's objections to Open software. It can easily be subverted in the manner that MS are doing: they come up with something entirely self-serving and closed and still call it Open Source.
In contrast they couldn't call it Free Software and get away with this crap because Free Software disdanes the pragmatic crap associated with Open Software (eg Linus' famous "Bitkeeper" defence.
And as an aside to the many posters that have made this mistake. Open Software does not equal software that runs on Linux!
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
>Wow, using the dollar sign like that, you know M$FT, is very clever and
>gives your words a lot of credibility *rolls eyes*
Almost as clever as commenting on it for the zillionth time.
this is just a steak thrown to the dogs to distract them long enough for the bad guy to do his stuff.
christ, MS is desperate as hell, aren't they? they're trying everything at the same time, no matter how pathetic.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
labeled the GPL as some form of cancer? I think not!
.doc and .xls formats, then... hell, all of this has been covered a hundered times in a hundred differnet places. Once again, don't you listen?
Look; the GPL is anathema to a company like Microsoft, that exists only to make proprietary products and money from those proprietary products. There is room for that and, if they make a product that is worth the money, they can still make money even competing against "free" open source products.
Have they not been listening to their customers? (rhetorical question: of course they haven't!)
1. Quality must be job 1! Companies cannot afford the continual attacks against Windows. Put aside your arguments that claim Windows is only attacked more because it is more popular and really DO something to make Windows secure by design.
2. Quit this insane struggle to lock customers into Windows only. Quit co-opting existing sufficient standards and then changing them so that Windows no longer works with the rest of the world. If Windows truly IS better, why do you fear working with the rest of the software world?
3. Open up your internal standards; start with the
4. Stop these insane shenanigans with SCO. Just pull the plug. No one was fooled and the resultant bad feelings on the part of future customers will tell with time.
None of this is new. None of this is even rocket science. None of this requires an insane charade that suggests that Microsoft will even think about adopting OSS paradigms (riiiight!).
The fact that such an article would even get any play says that Microsoft knows that the old way is not working anymore. It is time to change the way Microsoft does business, not the way Microsoft develops software!
Open Source IE. That's what they should do.
They can keep it. With friends like IE, who needs enemies? It's a big "STEAL MY COMPUTER" sign on your back.
As an example of what not to do, you mean?
My belief is that this will never happen, because even deep in the bowels of Microsoft they have no complete documentation of the file format. This is the only explanation I have for the lack of compatibility between different platforms, or even different versions, of Word.
I've been a Microsoft avoider (if not basher) for 20 years. But, I think this is a tremendous opportunity for all of us. The only thing I would want to see is a quid pro quo relationship. If Microsoft wants to "bury the hatchet" I'd think a great place for them to start is to open their formats. Once that were accomplished open source developers would naturally support development projects that would benefit both sides. This could be very exciting for us all. (But I am not holding my breath)
When a property developer makes a house, they will often sell the house and the land, but keep ownership of a small strip of land between the house and the street which they license to you.
If you want further access (e.g. for a garage, a second garden path etc.) then they'll happily sell it to you for a huge amount.
Those are called 'ransom strips'. They hold you to ransom for access to your own property by controlling a small strip of land around it.
Microsoft is just open sourcing stuff it has surrounded by ransom strips. The GPL would protect against these tricks, but Microsoft don't use the GPL.
So it's not a real open source effort, its just MS playing its little word, license and patent games.
The problem is, you can't do it. It goes against everything you stand for. You don't get it, you never will. There are no angles to be had, no strategies to follow. Regardless of how well-intentioned this guy at MS may be, he is not the faceless company that has implemented horrendous business practices over the last 20 years. Microsoft, you aren't part of this community, don't pretend like you are. We are a cancer, remember? Piss off.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Read this article, "The magic cauldron" for an excellent explanation why.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
As I'm sure many of you noticed, Microsoft has been making some 'Open Source' pushes as of late. They started by creating the CPL, getting it certified, and have now been hiring prominent open source developers to work on CPL.
For those of you not in the know, the key distinction between CPL and the GPL, is that I can incorporate a CPL'ed project into my code, whole, without contributing back, as long as I don't modify the CPL'ed code. If I do, I have to publish modifications to the CPL code in the same way I would for the GPL.
I'm of the opinion that the CPL has two serious flaws:
First, the transparency. How often have we all seen companies violating the GPL? I can assure you, it's a whole lot more frequent than even we hear about. I've known many Windows developers, who had no clue about, or respect for, the GPL, and would download bits of code from anywhere to incorporate if it made their lives easier. (Often because they didn't understand the task at hand, and they just wanted to get it to work.) It's not normally a matter of policy, but I've definitely seen it knowingly overlooked at companies I've worked for previously.
Right now, if we find a company using GPL'ed source, we have a smoking gun we can use to ensure license compliance. When someone incorporates CPL code, there's no way to prove that they modified it themselves, and so CPL compliance is based entirely on the goodwill of corporations, and we've seen how generous that goodwill is...
Second, there's the free rides. The CPL is designed so that companies can take advantage of the work of open source developers without having to compensate them in any way. With proprietary code, developers receive fiduciary compensation, and, traditionally, with Open Source, the developers receive the source for their project, and any derivative works.
With the CPL, companies get a free ride, which in the end screws the developers out of any benefit of their hard work.
Now, the reason why I bring this all up is that, as mentioned above, Microsoft has been hiring prominent open source developers, having them release their source under the CPL. It is my belief that Microsoft wishes undermine the Open Source movement. They hope to get the CPL to be popular, so that they can freely incorporate works developed by others without having to contribute back. They've hired 'evangelists' to show the benefits of CPL, without showing the downsides. (Because, of course, Microsoft is currently releasing software, and they want us to believe that's not going to change.)
So, in conclusion, Microsoft, what I'd like to see is Microsoft projects released under the GPL as well, so that we can see a benefit to the Open Source movement, not just to you.
So a group could who contributes the code gets to license it however they see fit, and microsoft gets to use it, but what about the rest of us? this sounds like a way to give the illusion microsoft is promoting open source, while just taking code from developers and then distributing free binaries. so where's the source? is that up to the contributers to decide? as a contributer why would i want to "contribute" code to microsoft who has contributeed nothing to me?
oh here, let me help you out megalo-monopoly. thank you for taking my code!
I guess it's just to avoid trademark problems.
Of course, it is open source.
For example, If I make a proprietary, undocumented interpreter, and then released some script that runs on it, like this:
start;
with (inputs) do_wp_stuff;
end;
It could be said that my program was and Open Source word processor.
Open source is a popular term, but it doesn't say much about the usefulness of a project.
I, myself, don't care much about open source projects, but for Free software projects. A free software project is one that you are effectively free to run, copy and modify, not just one that shows the sources.
That is why I believe OSS is a term that, although very popular in slashdot, is not a very informative thing to say about software.
I believe, if you make a win32 software, one requisite for it to be free would be that it runs on wine, or any other free implementation of the libs.
I think they should open source Minesweeper. And possibly Solitare, Spider and FreeCell. I know there are good GPLed implementations of it, but it would be nice to see how Microsoft's ones work.
Miri it is whil Linux ilast...
There are a couple of items that would make me want to use open source Microsoft code - and perhaps even target their platform as a primary with Linux / Solaris secondary.
.net - Languages want to be sheparded, but based on community standards and open. What that means is that any vendor can publish a compiler / runtime according to a published spec, and they won't be sued by the sheparding company if they truely conform to the spec. Heck, I don't even mind paying some bucks for the spec certification (ala Java). There's still plenty of money to be made on advanced IDEs, tools, support, training, etc. The language itself is not a profit center.
:-)
These would be:
Avalon - Honestly, I want an open slick UI to program with. Flash and Shockwave do some pretty slick things in an efficient manner (compared to other mechanisms), and I'd truely like to have an open codebase to do the same things on every platform - in any language I happen to be using. I've seen the transition effects it can handle, and it's pretty decent. Let others help update it, and it will shine far faster, and with less bugs, than you doing it yourself.
These next 2 aren't open source, but just open documentation items.
Document formats - All document formats should be immediately opened so that anyone can read / update them. I know this is one of your bread and butter pieces, but face it, either do that, or Open Office is going to cut your office revenue in half.
Protocols - Open up them all so that true interoperability can exist between Windows / Linux / Unix. Show the strengths of your platform, but atleast allow efficient communication with others.
Doing these four things would go a long way to reducing the "evilness" persona that surrounds Microsoft. Honestly, their UI engineers do a fantastic job of pushing the envelope - even if they get their ideas from sundry locations occassionally.
Just start making software that isn't crap. Who cares How you make it.
BTW, you suck, can't even ask the right question.
mplayer/mencoder is no good for you??
M$ hiring OSS developers and now more solicitation? Sounds like M$ is trying to "embrace and extend" only by acquiring the community developers. The money has got to be a huge lure.
And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the fresh wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be ruined (destroyed).
But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.
And no one after drinking old wine immediately desires new wine, for he says, The old is good or better.
They must :
...
- Give IE source to the world with an OSS licence
- Give the possibility to access the source code of all their programms to everyone (but not OSS)
- Use open standards and make all their closed standards open
- Don't force to buy Windows with a new PC (direcly or not)
If all this is done I will begin to help Microsoft to make a better world,
...responsible for open-sourcing WiX and WTL
Correct me if I am wrong but since the WTL is written primarily in C++ templates then Microsoft had no choice in making in open or closed source. WTL is a collection of header files. You can't make a binary library with that alone.
I think the best thing all developers can do is turn their backs on Microsoft and only target *nix platforms for any new development.
It's best for the client, best for the industry and best for us as professionals in the long run.
Microsoft is untrustworthy and by now is almost irrelevant.
Rather than listen to promises from Microsoft, I prefer to steer any project I am responsible for towards something that will benefit the USERS, not Microsoft.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I would be very interested in seeing notepad opensourced. Infact I would like to contribute to notepad. err... but don't ask me if I don't turn up...
OpenOffice
Mozilla
Samba
wine
Bill, You recognize the need to start winning back trust? Burn the BSA.
Quit trying to befriend your enemy. we don't want to be friends with the likes of you.
Ken
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
Um... visual studio actually has a project type of "Visual Studio Add-in". MS exposes a large amount of the functionality in this project type, and allows you to build tightly integrated plug-ins that modify and extend behavior.
All of your nicer 3rd party tools integrate right into VS. Microsoft has been known to purchase these components for the purpose of releasing them with visual studio. I don't remember for sure, but I think they're doing something with nUnit in visual studio team system.
Either way, point is that visual studio is quite open. You just don't get the source.
so ".doc format" is fully accessible and reusable from your own code, just as it would be if it was "open source".
.doc file from start to finish. This also means we would be able to write our own library to read and write .doc files completely with our own code on any platform because we can see exactly how the original works.
.doc format is not fully accessible and reusable from my own code. I can not legally redistribute any Office COM objects I choose (read the EULA). I also can not execute those COM objects on any platform. If it were open source I could port it myself, even if I'm not allowed to redistribute. So this is not "just as if it were open source." In fact it's not even close no matter which interpretation of the phrase you go by. Don't try to convince people otherwise because those who don't know any better will believe you and confuse the very definition of open source.
Open source means the source is open. We can all see it. This means we would be able to see the code which creates the
The
Developers: We can use your help.
how does MS do it? some guy from the bowels of the corporation comes out and says "say fellas, what would you like to do? anything, it doesn't matter. we don't care what it is. hell, we couldn't care less what happens to the project. just as long as you're all kept busy as little beavers, investing your time and skills in MS products, and not contributing time to real F/OSS projects. so, what'll it be? what MOTIVATES you strange creatures who have principles and actually code for pleasure and don't indenture yourselves to a massive corporation without the slightest concern for the overall computing landscape? how can we ENTICE you away from more worthy projects and toward some harmless time-waster that won't make F/OSS stronger?"
i get the feeling microsoft execs have been seeing this guy hanging around their offices a lot lately.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Of course, something like a dot-MSI maker ain't gonna be as widely useful running under Linux anyway, but even something as apparently silly as that means that someone compiling for MS-Windows using native-to-Linux tools can build an MSI using another native-to-Linux tool and push it across to his FTP server for his MS-Windows-using friends and testers to use.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
First thing you have to remember is that this IS Microsoft. They are NOT going to be giving away their cash cows, so completely forget IE, Office, and Windows. It ISN'T going to happen. Knowing the crowd here, there will be a lot of noise, and very little signal! Now that said there are a couple areas that they could:
.Net development and it is good. Having a tool like that under linux to develop against IIS servers... that would be nice.
:)
Development tools:
If you've ever done work in the Microsoft environment, you'll know that the tools are decent. For those about to flame me, don't bother, you haven't really USED the tools. I use Visual Studio for
SQL Server Tools:
Having a true collection of tools such as the client, and enterprise manager, and Query Analyzer would be a nice thing. Again, this may be a pipe dream as it means they have to play nice with linux users, but it could help connect all those PHP sites to SQL Server!
Outlook/Exchange Protocols: Wow.. this would be the cat's meow... being able to create a client that would connect up to the exchange server. Forget Linux.. I would love to have this under Windows!
Messenger:
Create an native API available to everyone for the basic services. I'm in the telephony world and would love to be able to create a client that is compatible with MSN and then connect to my servers for phone calls!
Windows CE/Pocket PC 2003:
You can forget about the windows pirates here! You buy a pocketpc, you get the OS.. that's the way it goes. So, open up the source, let the masters of kernel tinkering in the world play a bit! This could open the way to many devices guys!
1. The "standard" is the class that represents the document (i.e. the code of it + the generic object serialization code)
Why do it that way? Convenience for the programmer becomes lock in and pain for the user. And no wonder they get corrupted so often.
2. The "standard" changes between versions because the document classes change as new features are added. There is no deliberate policy to "break" things between versions, it is just a side effect.
Oh come now. A beloved, cherished side effect.
3. It is easy to use COM to instantiate Word from your own code and manipulate documents throught the API, so ".doc format" is fully accessible and reusable from your own code, just as it would be if it was "open source".
You have to have Word for that! Yeah, as "easy" as buying Word.
I guess the big question on everyone's mind is what MS's motives are. MS is acting more and more like "Big Brother" every day, it seems. Now they want to "contribute" to the OSS community under the guise of doing us a favor. They'll have to forgive me if I don't say "Thank you!" right away. Hundreds of billions of dollars in assets tell me another story, not to mention their top execs, and their many snarlings against everything open.
If they're going to jump on the OSS bandwagon, the only reason I can think of would be to control it. The government does this all the time. If they want to control an organization, they throw some money at it. If they want to control a country, they throw some money at them. Eventually, the entity becomes so dependent on the income, all the government has to do is say "ok, now you're going to do things our way, or you're going to face sanctions".
MS is already accomplishing this in the commercial arena buy buying a significant number shares of many major corporations (or buying their vendors), and in turn, putting the muscle on them to do things their way.
The less dependent we are on anything MS (or anything that hog-ties it's customers with EULAs the size of an encyclopedia), the better.
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Well, as a starting point it would involve Bill G kneeling down in front of me, unzipping my pants and then opening his mouth really wide.
And then we'll move forward from there...
Preferred form, tick. All modules, debatable - are libraries for your gonzoscript included? Interface definitions, probably not. Scripts, neither here nor there. But your gonzoscript compiler/runtime or interpreter is not "normally distributed" with anyone's "major components", so technically you'd have to distribute that as well. To get a grey area, you'd have to have achieved a reasonable "market" penetration with gonzoscript - some hope of having it decreed "normally distributed
Up to that point, you have an Open Source scripting example for gonzoscript - a trivial one, too - not a distinct Open Source program. Distributing examples with Visual BASIC didn't open source either the examples (go and read the copyrights on them) or VB.
In practical terms, an Open Source program written in VB is like the key to the toilet you get from some service stations, chained to a besser block. Yes, you have the key in your hand, but you're hardly able to pocket it or use it at will. Yes, the program can be argued to be fully Open Source because VB (or at least the runtime) can be reasonably argued to be "normally distributed" with the OS, and within the community of VB-capable platforms it functions as FOSS. But at some level it really is Clayton's FOSS and also at some level practically everybody realises this.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Since all of Microsoft's profit comes from licensing closed source software, I guarantee they will be EXTREMELY careful of who works on open source software within the company. If one of their developers contributes to a GPL'd project and then gets moved to a closed source internal project they need to be absolutely certain he doesn't "contaminate" the closed project with any open code. They also need to watch that no one working on a closed project looks over at the open code for ideas. If GPL code gets discovered within any of their closed software, that software can no longer remain closed until the "offending" code is removed. So if Microsoft actually does play seriously with open source, they will be extremely careful of licensing (hence the CPL and not GPL) and code cross-contamination. While they may still end up with some open source software their development won't be very flexible or too open.
Developers: We can use your help.
I'm sure open-source means 'the source is freely available'
... there's was a very useful stepping stone in that direction, but it is not the destination, and here we see one of the dangers of the "open source" definition vs. that of free software: Microsoft could release software under a license that meets the open source definition, but cripples its usefulness to the open source and free software communities in terms of being incorporated into larger projects ... making the contribution very one-way: open source programmers contributing to Microsoft, while the community in turn gets nothing more than a look-see at the code, but no real, meaningful usage.
This underscores the importance of using clear terminology, and understanding the definitions of both Open Source software, and Free Software (they are not at all the same, though they do overlap in some areas).
"Open source" means that the source is released under a license that has been vetted by the Open Source organization. Such licenses are often less-than-free, imposing in some cases mutually incompatible, and to many fairly onerous, restrictions on its (re)usage and incorporation into other projects. "Open Source" implies source availablility with a modicum of freedom, but that is all.
"Freely" available (implying freedom to make use of the software) more closely implies "free software" according to the Free Software Foundations criteria, which does insure freedom, whether it is *BSD style freedom (maximizes first generation programmer freedom by eliminated protection of freedom for downstream products) or GPL style freedom (reduces first generation programmer freedom slightly with a "share-and-share-alike" provision, while insuring freedom of derivative works in perpetuity). Both are free software which is a far cry from some of the Licenses the open source folks have approved.
I have absolutely nothing against the Open Source folks. Quite the contrary, I have successfully invoked their rhetoric in the gentle nudge of executives from a proprietary mindset to a free software mindset
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"Would you have interest in working on these types of projects with Microsoft?"
"I'd rather cut off my penis with a rusty butter knife!" (Quote from Bottom [fab BBC series])
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
There you go. Naked women, oil within easy reach, what more could you ask? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'm glad that someone at Microsoft is open (no pun intended) to the idea. However, I have a feeling he's walking on a rather lonely road over where he works.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Two years ago you should have refrained from bashing license models and just published your own Linux. People would've cared about licenses just as much as ever (not at all) and all would've been fine. All the norms would've followed suit and still be buying software from MS 'because it's so quality'.
Now it's to late.
Only an all-out embrace of open source and a hard turn from software to service vendor can save MS their monopoly. But that's not going to happen. Balmer hasn't got the guts. He said it himself: "We're suffering from Big Company Syndrome".
There you go.
Bye, bye Mickeysoft. You have a hard time ahead of you.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It sounds to me microsoft wants some of the limelight that OSS has at the moment. One thing though, I wonder why, if "linux can be out proformed by windows"(as they say), why would they even try to consider making some software packets on the linux side? Sounds to me like a conflict of interest. Micro$oft, you'll still be a stingy fat guy in a pool full of angry kids. P.S. How many people think microsoft was the one downloading those projects that many times?... seeing how those P.O.S. software bits they've submitted under the GPL is just that... P.O.S.
I don't begrudge MS making money on Office. I begrudge them making money off of illegally used monopoly power. If they want to open source something, they should open up Longhorn and compete in the application space on merit rather than with their OS monopoly. Then they could put their best people on the Office suite and make each part of it really efficient and useful instead of being the slapped together piecework monstrosity that it is now. For example, if in the distant past you've ever used Frame or Interleaf you'll understand why MS Word is inferior for professional publishing needs. And please just dump Outlook and build something with the all useful bits without all the overhead and insecurity.
Try mine (non-IE users, tell your browser to lie about its ID if you want to see what he sees).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Stop selecting what you're going to open the source on based on what has the least market impact. Stop opening source under licenses that noone would accept. Stop using open source as an advertising gimick rather than development and community way of life. Open source welcomes alternative competing projects while MS does everything in its power to prevent them. You can't just open the source for 'goofy rarely used tool' and expect developers to turn their cheek.
I applaud Josh and what he's trying to do but he's fighting MS's entire business model and as soon their jaunts into open source no longer look profitable, you can bet they'll drop the initiatives like a bad habit.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
How about if Microsoft simply stop bashing Open Source as a tool of {communism|terrorism|antiAmericanism} ?
That and a few other trinkets to let ${FAVOURITEGAME} run anywhere without the WINE crew having to constantly play BlackBox to try and figure out what bizarre new tack MS've taken with their code this month.
Microsoft's problem has always been over control. Billy boy is buying up patents hand over fist for the public good. No? I didn't really think so, either. When I see MS stop doing that and start seriously opening up stuff like DirectX that allows others access to large markets they've fenced off, then I'll start trusting them.
Start trusting, mind you, not bare my soul. They've been screwing the market over for more than a decade, and they won't turn that much corporate inertia on a dime.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I'd love to see Microsoft do one thing in particular (well, two really):
* split the "window manager" part of the GUI into it's own executable
* open source the code for the new exe
Within months there'd be a myriad of different Windows window managers, just as there is in Unix-land. This would also benefit MS by helping users of different GUIs to migrate to Windows more easily.
I find this quote apropos:
"Ever dance with the Devil in the pale moon light?"
-- Jack Nickelson, as The Joker
I think that parts of the ui would be the perfect place for Open Source: Explorer, shell32, user32 etc. There are a lot of people who like all the bells and whistles on their desktop and there are people like me who take away all of the eye-candy and would like to see even more optimized Windows GUI. I think that Explorer is very usable at the moment but the size just seems to be increasing with every new version of Windows.
This is not going to happen. Linus himself already told innumerous times that he thinks this would make unnecessarily hard to change the kernel APIs, and that, notwithstanding the point "2", below, he is not interested in binary compatibility for kernel-space things between versions of the kernel. This is right, and if you did not get it yet, I'll explain it to you: it leads to Big Bad Difficult Bugs, trying to get kernel modules to work in various kernel versions. Many things evolve from one version of the kernel to the next, many assumptions change.
2. and the 'grey' area of binary modules sorted out as well. I dont think it will happen.
This one has already happened, (*) but many people still want to pretend it didn't. Some binary modules are derived works of the kernel, and such, to be distributed at all, they must be distributed under the GPL. Some binary modules are not derived work of the kernel, and as such, they can be distributed under any license that the author seems fit. What determines if a work (in the case, a binary module) is a derived work of another (the kernel) is copyright law.
In the USofA and in Brasil, the copyright law states that a derived work is the result of some non-automated transformation of the original work. USofAn case law established the method of "abstraction, filtration, and comparison" [AFC] to determine derivation of works.
There is a myth, spread by the last paragraph of the "postamble" of the GPL, "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs": I will repeat here the position I have after carefully studying the GPL, copyright law, and case law: the GPL regulates the licensing to derived works of the GPL'd work, but it cannot regulate the licensing of encompassing "anthology" works. Linking does not make a work derived on other work: to see if some work is a derived work, apply the [AFC] method. Some (not all) linking, non-derived, non-GPL'd, works can be even distributed along with a GPL'd work, because they would be covered by the "mere aggregation" clause in the 3rd paragraph of section 2 of the GPL.
And one more funny stuff: the section 6 of the GPL states: This basically means that you can't even clarify the license further than copyright law would restrict the rights of the recipient of your work (**), without rendering it undistributable by others (and even by yourself, if your work is derived from another GPL'd work).
But, OTOH, IANAL and TINLA. But I am a paralegal. IMMV and the others TFFLAs
(*) Google for: "linus torvalds" abstraction filtration comparison binary
(**) Google: "hans reiser" derivative plagiarism
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
This is true of ALL outside code, not just GPL stuff. Many of Microsoft's employees work on code contracted from other companies. They are not allowed to copy that into products not under the contract. It is not that hard and has not scared them away from such contracts. The GPL is no different and no more dangerous.
Any claims about some special "GPL danger" is FUD, no matter who says it. GPL basically means the code is copyrighted. So is every single other piece of code in the world. Deal with it and stop trying to scare people away by making them think the GPL has some dark magical dangerous properties!
I still feel the empirical evidence is the strongest: The lack of compatibility between different platforms and different versions of Word is the proof that there is no usable documentation.
As I'm sure many of you noticed, Microsoft has been making some 'Open Source' pushes as of late. They started by creating the CPL, getting it certified, and have now been hiring prominent open source developers to work on CPL.
Microsoft did not create the CPL, nor were they involved in getting it certified. CPL is a licence that IBM created, though it is true that Microsoft have used it for a couple of recent projects.
If we demand that they change everything first, they won't. It seems, however, that they are willing to take steps, albeit small(or large depending on how you look at it), towards what many slashdotters want, Microsoft to participate in the open source community. We should respond graciously, and warmingly to this idea, so that when it is in place, and we are a part of it, we can start suggesting more changes. They won't leap yet, but they will take that small step, so I think it would be horrible to waste it.
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
They have the source code for lots of COM classes that do that, so the need for docs is not that pressing.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
How about Opening products that MS no longer supports (DOS 6.2, Win 3.1, 3.11, '95, '98). This would allow them a swipe at the Linux customers that use Linux because of its open source qualities. (i.e. self support)
But really, I'd like to see the source for MS Bob.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
I'm no Linux or FOSS fanboy but Microsoft has no credibility due to all the FUD they spread and their reprehensible business practices. Why would I want to work with a company like this? Maybe they'll throw a semi-important project under a BSD type license and assign some sharp technical people to it but even then the inherent evilness of the company is too much to overcome. Am I the only one here that feels this way?
With that said, I don't think Slashdot is the community MS is going after. There are tons of MS developers out there that don't have these moral objections who would give their left nut to work on a MS project.
One more thing... doesn't the fact that they need to entice and motivate people to work with them indicate that something is awry? They shouldn't have to twist any arms if they were doing anything worthwhile.
Right now, if I see a problem anywhere in GNU/Linux during my own work I can decide to fix it no matter where the problem is; it might be Apache, or PHP, or PostgreSQL, or the TCP stack or netfilter or a NIC driver. I may then decide that my fix will be useful to others and submit it to the appropriate porject for inclusion.
I might even decide that there's nothing that does exactly what I want so I'll start a new project.
I believe this attracts many developers to FOSS project. What good will it do if I'm working on a small part of an XML parser for Word if I cannot fix an eventual problem in the "Open document" dialog? I would lose interest very quickly.
P.S. I don't think MS will ever do it.
I'm just waiting for our old pal Bill to release Internet Explorer as open source.
Then there will be lots of new IE exploits.
This must be Microsoft's master plan to prove that open source really is evil!
----
http://www.grinulator.com
Well, with all the lawsuits over lack of proper compensation for the contract employees, wouldn't the open source method be the way to get good/excellent "cheap" help? Of course, they would patent what was done just to get around the GPL. Suchadeal!
They hire the token conservationist with a pet project and put them on TV? MS is a big company and I'm sure Josh is well meaning and all, but I don't see any changes coming soon.
On one hand, MS keeps playing hard and dirty, won't backtrack, won't make amends, won't ask for excuses.
On the other, they developers want to play nice.
A house divided can't stand.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I'll tell you what you should open source, and why it will benefit MS in the long run.
1) Internet Explorer
IE is free anyway, so there's no money to be lost. But what you are losing is marketshare to Mozilla and Opera-based browsers. This is due mainly to the security problems in IE. You could save developer resources AND marketshare by just releasing the source of IE so that it can be fixed/expanded more easily and quickly.
2) Visual Studio
There's nothing that will get developers rallying around your product like allowing them to customize the development tools they have to use every day. In addition, more people could/would write apps for Windows if they didn't have to spend a bunch of money purchasing compilers that they can get for free on Mac/Linux/Unix. You're already dominating on user-level market share. Having free development tools will undoubtedly convert developers, and the universities that are teaching those developers.
3) MSN Messenger
Instant messaging is a hot topic everywhere. AIM obviously dominates the market now, and open source systems like Jabber are starting to take a small foothold in businesses. A quick way for you to crush all of that is to open source your IM client and it's protocols. It's already in use by a lot of people, but it could be in use by a lot more. In addition, you'll likely get a lot of free ports to Mac/Linux/Unix and draw customer-base from there as well. This will give you more ad revenue, and may also lead to people getting MSN internet, hotmail, as well as purchasing your server products.
4) Virtual PC
I know you guys just paid a lot of money for buying it, but the whole purpose of buying it was to get Mac and Linux geeks to start using and relying on Windows apps, wasn't it? By providing it as open source you'll get faster adoption than ever before, which will only increase the number of Windows apps in use by these non-Windows markets.
5) Direct X
This is likely to be the most controversial one internal to MSFT. I know that a lot of people in MSFT believe that the gamer market is the second biggest reason people are holding on to Windows (2nd to MS Office). You're losing that war though. More and more games are being developed to Open GL and other open standards to make them more portable. Giant games like Unreal Tournament, Savage, and America's Army ship with Linux versions these days. And others like Doom 3 and Neverwinter Nights put out Linux versions shortly after their release. In addition, MSFT has become a huge publisher in the gaming market. Releasing Direct X as open source would allow more of your games to be played on more systems, which will increase the profits of that division. In addition, it may help you to hold on to your lead role in the game technology world, instead of losing it to other open standards.
A lot of people fault you for developing your own standards. If you take some of these technologies, and open source them, you can permanently make them become the standard.
Just posted at his blog:
.Net, whatever.
.Net is relatively good, the platform it runs on is just too complex. You could possibly migrate to a free software kernel like Linux, a BSD or even the GNU Hurd, but I doubt it. Making MS .Net a standard could help, but it would need to come with assurances of no aggression with patents or whatever.
.Net) world with the functional programming world.
.Net has a real nice concept with its common type system. But you could both make MS .Net and an RDBMS successor to MS SQL Server much better if you made a sane type system the base of your whole platform, and integrated a D language-accessible TRDBMS compliant with Date's and Darwen's _The Third Manifesto_ at the core. The icing on the cake would be functional programming as a preferred systems programming language, but perhaps that'd be asking too much.
Standards and fundaments.
MS software runs on a too different platform, namely MS Win32; and embodies too bad development and administration practices. You have been improving, but be it the marketing smokescreen or whatever, sometimes it seems you only improve points without ever seeing the picture.
IMNSHO you really missed the boat when you scuttled the planned migration from MS DOS 2.11 or some successor of it to MS Xenix, deciding instead to keep patching MS DOS until it became real-mode MS DOS^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMS OS/2^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMS WNT^H^H^H^H^H^HMS
Now what you can do? Even if MS
MS SQL Server should not only strive for but indeed achieve ISO SQL compliance at least on par with IBM DB2.
Just as good or better would be to freely publish specs of protocols, interfaces and file formats. That would in effect preclude nearly all the antitrust nastiness, and create a level playing field with free software. It would, as a huge bonus, build the bridge with free software, as in enabling you to use more of it - apart from hoarding the BSD IP stack into MS Windows and using the GNU toolchain in MS UIS - and enabling the free software community in using more of your tools and platform.
Now as we are talking about this, why not go to the root of the problem?
One of the main reasons there are so many standards (and non-standards like your proprietary interfaces, protocols and formats) is complexity, and one of the main causes of complexity is lack of power deriving from poor fundamentals. Look at Lisp: one of the three oldest programming languages, it is also one of the simplest and at the same time more powerful. Even C and POSIX, bad as they are, have such longevity compared to MS platforms due to their inherent power.
One way here would be to collaborate with the GNU Hurd, that tries to stabilish a bridge between the POSIX (and why not MS Win32 and
But an even better way would be relational data.
MS SQL Server may be nice enough as far as current SQL products go, bar IBM DB2 and PostgreSQL, and MS
And what would that have to do with free software? Well, it would be such a leapfrog on systems development and deployment that it would stabilish whole new standards. Make them real standards - just as IBM did with ISO SQL -, and you won't really need to give much away to be a good member of the global village.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
It should be easy for teams here at Microsoft to develop extensions to their platforms and potentially pieces of the platforms with customers in an open/transparent fashion.
Does that translate to "We will be glad to take your software, make our proprietary software work with it, but better and in a proprietary fashion, such that the customer won't even know that we are strong-arming your userbase away from the original developers."
The only reason M$ will create open source apps is to try and debunk the Open Source world by dropping code that pushes users to M$ windoze.
They sucessfully killed Java Applets and many other potentially revolutionary efforts with these wolf in sheeps clothing methods.
I for one will never and I mean NEVER use or read their open source code. Just as I never use any of their languages anymore.
M$ would never release any code that is open platform which is the drive of most open source projects.
Time for a new term Open Source and Platform?
As those of us outside the great Redmond Relaity Distortion Field have been saying for years; 3 flavors of windows support does _NOT_ make something "Cross Platform". Release and support C# and .NET directly on the same other platforms Java supports (Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS), and do it at the same time the Windows version comes out. Just like Sun does with Java. Until that happens, .NET and C# wont' be taken seriously as an alternative by the Java community.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Since I have no idea what WiX and WTL are, maybe the next project should be, "tell us what the heck it is you have and why you thought we'd be interested."
This will never happen.
It could.
Developing secure, high quality, tested software is expensive. Just ask Microsoft, who, with all their resources, have trouble doing it.
They'd love to give up writing software if they could retain the revenue they get.
It's possible for them to do it. All it will take is a few years of TCPA hardware-enabled encryption and the use of Microsoft-controlled public keys to make too much of people's documents, music, electronic wallets depend upon access to MS as a "super verisign". They'll be indispensible; they can charge for their role as certification authority and they can give up on trying to upgrade complicated buggy software.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Stop raping, *and* apologize to the victims.
I dont expect MS to cooperate on either Samba or OpenOffice. Both are threats to their hegemony, and therefore ( as they see it, I think ) their revenue stream. You would have no real reason to add another XP box to your network for file storage if you could put up a Linux machine with Samba, and you would have no reason to buy another licence for Office if you could get OpenOffice for free.
emt 377 emt 4
Maybe.
"If not, what could entice you?"
If you worked on some of my open source stuff, or other open source projects that I like.
"If so, what would be your motivation?"
I just want more crap, including software.
You see, Bill, you and I are very much alike. We just have different means of going about our goals.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
They already have made documentation available for their file formats.
That would be very useful -- it would allow Open Office to be 100% compatible with MS Office.
HTML is documented, but Mozilla is still not "100% compatible" with MSIE, in fact no two browsers, not even the open source ones, are "compatible" in the way that you wish office suites to be compatible -- in particular, you are not going to get exactly the same document layout from two different browsers.
You have a number of issues to deal with, including availability of typefaces, font rendering, algorithms that determine when to break a page, when to break a line, what to do with that figure that crosses a page. Then you have embedded and linked documents.
The CPL was not created by Microsoft - as mentioned here, it was created by IBM, and is essentially an updated and generalized version of IBM's original Open Source license, the IBM Public License.
Irrelevant - there's no way to prove that someone has incorporated GPL code into a closed source product, short of obvious indicators like embedded strings, etc. GPL compliance is also "based entirely on the goodwill of corporations". The long and the short of the matter is that a company that's willing to knowingly violate the CPL will probably also be willing to knowingly violate the GPL.
As is the GPL. Neither the CPL nor the GPL are concerned with the origin of software, they're concerned with the distribution of software. They're both designed to ensure that the recipient of a piece of software has access to the source code. That's it. Nothing in either license about compensating the original developers, or having to give back source code to the original developers. Even you recognize this - while it's "traditional" to contribute back changes to an GPL'd project, it's not required. In fact, the FSF considers this kind of requirement onerous enough that they explicitly classify licenses that have this requirement (for example, the Open Public License) as non-free.
...which is bad, why? We're talking about Microsoft's own code, here - it's their choice as to what license they want to release their code under. The CPL is recognized by the OSI. It's acknowledged as a free software license by the FSF, albeit one incompatible with the current GPL because it addresses patent issues that the GPL does not.
In fact, at this point, if there's anyone that's getting a "free ride" off of Microsoft's actions, it's everyone except Microsoft, who now has access to - and can use - Microsoft's CPL software, as is, without any obligation.
Overall, I think this is a positive event. It appears there are OSS advocates (not juse Josh!) within Microsoft who seem to be trying to convince the corporate culture there that OSS is not neccesarily a threat to Microsoft, and they're going about it in a very reasonable way. They selected an existing OSS license instead of coming up with Yet Another License. They released code for a couple of trial projects under this license, and have been following the OSS philosophy of "release early, release often". They've apparently met with enough success with these projects that they feel they have a good reason to actively encourage the release other projects under OSS licenses, and they're asking the community for input on what else to consider releasing
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
'And if you don't like it, then you can choose not to buy the house. Just like you can choose not to use MS products. There's no "ransom" involved in either case.'
You want a driveway to your house? $10,000 to cross my 1 inch strip of land.
You want to edit all those documents you have? That'll be $400 for a license.
The whole point of a ransom strip is it's small enough to be overlooked on the map, the small print talks vaguely about land not owned by the owner. The sting is *after* the purchase, the buyer doesn't know the difference between the ransom strip owned by the developer and the pavement owned by the council or the tenants association.
The solution of course is to explain to everyone what a ransom strip is, how they work, what the trap is and tell them to avoid the trap.
Hence my comment above.
I know that very few people have heard of this, but it was a little program MS made in '95, aimed at kids, that let you make simple movies, using premade actors.
It's 9 years old and still has a community of hundreds of directors. I run a site that stores 1344 movies made with this great little program.
By letting you use premade actors,props, and backgrounds, they shifted the focus on the voices and story. It's basicly a movie prototyping program.
But it still has flaws. It was made right as Direct3D was being released, so it missed the boat. (It's using a software renderer). Some very useful tools were left out (multi-select, texture/model importing, dynamic camera movement) either because they were aiming it at little kids, or because of limitations of the software renderer.
Our community is pretty unknown because you have to own the program to view these movies. With the source we could make a 3dmm2AVI converter and let others view some of the best 3dmm movies without having to buy/download the program. We've got several C++ programs and a dozen VB coders, we could do so much with this program.
It's just sad that one of Microsoft's best programs is almost completely unknown, and the hundreds of great movies made with it suffer for it.
I respond to your sigs
Nothing short of complete software freedom will gain them much interest from the free software community. Who really wants to donate time or money to the people funding SCO and other nightmares? Even if they did free all of their code it's so tortured that it would take years to tame it and bring it up to par.
What do they have that's worth the effort? Who wants a single user, single screen GUI that's mixed up with low level floppy access? All the real rendering stuff belongs to Nvidia and ATI. Who wants Outlook? Word formats have already been decoded by Sun and friends. IE sucks. If M$ put their codebase up on Sourceforge tomorrow, there'd be an initial flurry of interest, but it would mostly be people looking to make migrating away from Windoze easier.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's one thing to open a file and parse it (which open source word processors do) and it's another to render the document. Documenting the format doesn't solve any problems, other word processors already can parse these documents, because the format is documented.
Other word processors are "compatible" with word the same way that MSIE is "compatible" with Mozilla -- every browser can parse HTML just fine, but they all render it differently, and there's not much chance that they will ever render it in exactly the same way, unless everyone agrees to standardise on exactly the same rendering algorithms (for example, Linux would need to ditch freetype and use an "MS compatible" font rendering engine), and also standardise the typefaces.
Trust. That's what Open Source software sells to me. I can not trust Microsoft. If they could find a way to sell genuine, believable trust, then I wouldn't care if their software remained closed source.
When I buy cars, houses, groceries, electricity and other services, I am not faced with the kind of EULA that Microsoft would shove in my face. Microsoft sells from the point of mistrust and I have to buy from them from that standpoint. It's really creepy. It's like buying telephone service and having to sign a paper where I agree I won't make crank calls or stalk people or commit fraud using their services. I'm guilty before I can prove I'm innocent.
It bothers me less and less how much "ease of use" I may be giving up by buying open source. What I gain is an incredible relationship, built on freedom, openness and trust -- with a whole community behind it. You can't buy any of that from One Microsoft Way. The members I've met in their "community" are wallet watchers, not trust builders (i.e. most of them seem to defend Microsoft because it affects their income).
Here's what I want: I want to be able to buy a word processor from my favorite word processor vendor that will interoperate with a spreadsheet from my favorite spreadsheet vendor. This is, more and more, what it's been like to "buy" from open source. I can trust that the KDE camp won't work against, but with the OpenOffice.org camp. It would seem they even have my best interest at heart! Go figure. It's a lot like buying from IBM PC compatible vendors. Everything is compatible!
That's how far Microsoft has to go in opening up. In the end, I don't think it's really about how open your source is. It's about how open you are with the community. "Trustworthy Computing"? Ha! Right. That will happen when they get other, eager contributors -- outside their protective moat -- to jump in and help them (with such a daunting task). That can't happen without trust.
Bottom line: Microsoft needs to quit being such a wormhead [a type of fish that takes over whole ecosystems] and start leaving room for diversity. Then I may begin to trust them again.
Hi, it's Josh. I'm not sure how to submit a correction to slashdot, but I am NOT the person responsible for the WIX/WTL projects. I site them as examples and am working with people who where responsible for those projects to enable more of the same for the groups I work in. It would be great if someone at Slashdot could change the wording here since I really can't take credit for the work the WIX and WTL project leaders have done.
Sheesh...
What else would convince you. This is a strange company which has a mix of the proper ethos (an office) and the wrong one (the OS).
I can't feel sorry that the open source world can do an end run around them. They deserve it. I shudder at the idea of working for a "Reverend Jim" organization. If I wanted to smell the smell of bitter almonds I'll go crush some laurel leaves...
(Ironic Huh. I'm here in the med....).
Anyway, I was about 7 years ahead of those virgins
in terms of localization on my own baby so yah boo
sucks!
Sorry. But the worst irony of mutleysoft is they
*DON"T LISTEN TO THEIR OWN TECHNICAL FOLKS*.
Big secret that...
I have always said this, and it must surely hold bane to why M$ really, dearly protect their source so much - why re-invent the wheel when it's been done on GPL.
Just use it and say nought.
Open Source is a marketing term used by everybody to mean whatever they need it to mean. The only thing all the definitions have in common is access to the source. Maybe I wasn't clear that that was my point.
The GPL is not so much about source as it is about freedom (for the user). GPL is about freedom, not technical advantages. The freedom to use the software, change it, share it, and share your changes.
free software
means free. The only term that means exactly "free as in beer" is Freeware, that meets your description.
If you didn't understand what free software means, you should not assume any restriction, and could use reading the above link, from the Free Software Foundation.
If you looked up the term "free" in the dictionary, the meaning related to cost is the last one that is described, so I can't understand why you would assume that "free" means "no cost" or "for free" instead of "free".
English is an awkward language sometimes, and I am not a native speaker, but anyway I believe "free software" should have an obvious meaning.
On the other hand, if you were just trolling, I think the explanation is necessary anyway, because posts like that are confusing for some people.
http://www.greenfielddevelopment.net/Rightsofacces s.htm
I think there are certain criteria for an MS product to be even considered as a candidate for an open-source product.
1. It has to _not_ have a direct revenue stream. So Windows and Office are out.
2. It can't be a strategic product - why would MS want to open-source a product that they're basing their business on. Too risky.
3. It has to be useful. Sure, they could release Microsoft Bob or any number of products that have died a horrible death. But if it's not useful to people, what's the point?
4. It has to be interesting. This has already been mentioned - to attract developers, developers have to be interested in the end result.
5. It should be something that can really benefit from a lot of extra eyes looking at it. Something that perhaps doesn't already have a dedicated development team within Microsoft.
So my vote would be for something like the Outlook Connector for Notes. OK, maybe it's not so interesting but it's definately useful and is currently offered as a free download add-on to Outlook. There's a lot of functionality there that could be improved but Microsoft doesn't really have a lot on incentive to expend resources on it, apart from potentially winning over current Notes users.
Not that Visual Studio is such a terrible IDE, I just prefer Emacs environment commands shortcuts etc.
And I don't want the interface to be changing incompatiblitly every new release (VisEmacs is not good enough)
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
...nor was he responsible for opensourcing them. He just sites them as good examples of MS opening source.
I think that it was Rob Mensching that was mainly responsible for WiX and I'm not sure who was responsible for WTL.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Typical MS ploy to gradually confuse people into thinking that this is how open source software is supposed to work, They just want to do things their way and they expect that if they keep it up, eventually the open source will be the MS version.
"UPDATE: Welcome Slashdot visitors. I'm not sure how to submit a correction to slashdot, but I am NOT the person responsible for the WIX/WTL projects. I site them as examples and am working with people who where responsible for those projects to enable more of the same for the groups I work in. It would be great if someone at Slashdot could change the wording here since I really can't take credit for the work the WIX and WTL project leaders have done. "
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Enough harm has been done. Every month for the last 5 or so years, billionns go down the drain unnecessarily. The nation (world) needs to get back to work and stop using its time to fiddle with or clean up after defective products...
Fold.
Or drop the pretense of being a software company and play on the area of domain expertise: marketing.
1. Use the GPL or BSD. Take a stand for license uniformity and standardized open source licenses. This is a problem that I think needs addressing and MS could be part of the solution. DO NOT make up new licenses. If I see a license from MS that I don't recognize, I will click "Cancel" because I assume it is another stupid MS EULA in sheep's clothing. Using an existing open source license is like choosing HTML over something proprietary, RSS over Atom, Unicode over CP-whatever, you get the picture. Stick with what's already popular.
2. Drop your ridiculous anti-GPL stance. The GPL is an excellent license, and especially so for companies like Microsoft because it guarantees that you don't have to compete against your on code in the marketplace based on secrets, but based on better service for customers. However the BSD is good too for those MS customers who are still using the closed-source model. Sure, your enemy Linux is GPL'd, but your GPL attacks don't seem to be changing many minds so please drop the facade.
3. I will only act in my best interests, I do not volunteer time on open source projects because I think they are neat or because I'm altruistic. I need access to the code to customize for customers, to interop with other software or programming languages, or as a form of documentation. If I find flaws or shortcomings in the code I will submit them back to MS only to save myself the trouble of doing the same on the next version.
4. Let's get this out in the open: I would not cry if Microsoft went out of business tomorrow (just like MS would not cry if Linux stopped being popular). So I have little interest in "working together" or "coexisting" other squishy language I see in people's blogs, unless it solves customer needs. Just keep that in mind. I don't *want* to help Microsoft, I just realize it's unavoidable.
Obviously it can be a seperate product because it is available for OS X.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Microsoft, if they're really interested in getting involved in open source, should pay attention to some of the things Apple has been doing for the past few years.
Apple hasn't gotten everything right, but they have made a lot of the right moves. They built their system over CMU's Mach kernel, build everything with the GCC toolkit, and bundle a full suite of familiar tools with their products like Perl, Python, Ruby, Apache, Samba, PostgreSQL (it's embedded in their new Apple Remote Desktop), etc. They participate in the right mailing lists, and they generally try to submit useful patches -- even if those patches don't end up being accepted, they're at least putting in an effort to play nicely. They share what they've done with technologies that they either developed in house or adopted before most others, like Rendezvous (or OpenTalk or whatever it is now), Firewire, Bluetooth, 802.11, etc. All of this ends up coming back to them favorably in the long run.
That isn't to say that Microsoft should slavishly copy everything Apple has done, but they should look at how the moves Apple has made have enabled Apple to move farther much more quickly than they could have alone. Once Microsoft understands that, then they can start picking & choosing what they want to open up, what they want to pull in from outside the company, and what they want to leave unchanged. For example, Microsoft probably wouldn't gain anything if they dropped the NT kernel for Mach or Linux, but they might want to consider scrapping the IE engine for KHTML or Gecko if it's really as gnarly as some of the rumors suggest, and a lot of people would appreciate truly open & understandable file formats for Office the way Apple has done with Keynote & XML.
On a different level, the moves Apple has made have encouraged others to bring their offerings to the Mac when they never would have before. Microsoft could do the same. A lot of people would be happy if they deprecated cmd.exe and instead offered up a fully functional bash / ksh / tcsh / zsh shell, complete with all the expected command line tools and system facilities (grep, cron, /etc config files, and so on). If Microsoft made it easy for Linux software developers to port to Windows just by changing GCC's target platform, knowing that autoconf (etc) would work on Windows, they could bring in thousands of developers overnight. Moreover, if they gave away (free beer, but maybe or maybe not free speech) at least a lightweight-but-complete version of their development tools, the way Apple does with XCode, that too would encourage open source developers to start messing around on Windows in a way that they currently do not do.
Microsoft has spent the past 20 years ripping off ideas from Apple. I don't see why they're having such a mental block about doing it again now...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
A partial answer is pretty simple, though, so here goes:
1) The code needs to be released by MS, not by someone working as an employee.
2) The code needs to be released GPL.
3) The code needs to be useful on Linux.
IF those three conditions were met I'd consider working on the code. Possibly. But MS has a pretty bad reputation, so I would check carefully for traps. (E.g., who maintains ownership of the code in case of a disagreement? What kind of agreement are they proposing that I sign to work with their project? Etc.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There is a very simple reason that doc compatibility fails between versions of Word, and it is very simple. It merely serves as a mechanism for FORCE users to pay again to "upgrade" to the latest doc format. Ultimately, that is what you are "upgrading". You are not getting a better wordprocessor when you go from word97 to word2000, not really. You are merely obtaining compatibility with the default doc format of word2000.
New computers come with doze preinstalled, often with word as well. More and more new computers are bought to replace older computers. Soon, many people have new versions of the doc format user/generator (word) and it is designed to not play well with old versions. It ultimately is easier for those holding back to upgrade to the latest doc format user/generator so that when they email you memos in doc format, you can open them up without a hitch rather than having to email them back and requesting that they do a special save and send for you in a previous doc format.
It is ONLY a ploy to drive unnecessary upgrading. Nothing more.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
This post suffer from the +5 limit cap. I think its a +7 post: usefulll, interesting, insightifull...
-Woof woof woof!
The BSD license allows for the same free rides, and it's been around a long, long time. I'm sure there are plenty of other open source licenses that do the same.
Well, IBM has patents on eBXML...
It's looking here like "open source" is the problem that needs a solution.
But no, "open source" is a potential solution to certain problems.
You don't start with the hammer, and say "ok, what can we do with this thing," best start with the task you want to accomplish, and if it seems to need a "hammer" you get one at that point.
Then again, it's been very clear for a long time that Microsoft has no idea what Open Source is about, so I guess this should be no surprise...
It wouldn't make a diffirence, I couldn't go out and register a company called "G00GLE", now could I?
ND
This statement is forty-five characters long.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Along these lines, today MS was granted a patent on SOAP.
I will repeat here the position I have after carefully studying the GPL, copyright law, and case law: the GPL regulates the licensing to derived works of the GPL'd work, but it cannot regulate the licensing of encompassing "anthology" works.
The GPL is a license--i.e., a contract between the licensor and the licensee. Within a few general limitations given by contract law, a license can regulate whatever it wants. The most common thing for a license to do is to regulate the transfer of money from the licensee's pocket into the licensor's pocket.
The GPL happens to regulate what you do with certain other works to which you hold copyright. In particular, if you agree to the GPL for a piece of software to which you don't hold the copyright, you may be forced to accept an obligation of licensing some software to which you hold copyright to others. If you don't want that to happen, you just don't agree to the GPL, but then you also can't use the GPL'ed software.
There is nothing unusual about such agreements and they are certainly valid and enforceable: I give you a limited transferable license for software A if you give me a limited transferable license for software B. Those kinds of agreements exist between many different commercial entities, and if they weren't valid, a lot of companies would be in big trouble.
Once this has occurred and defective management has been replaced, I might believe that trust can be re-earned. This of course excludes the operating system, no single company can in reality ever be trusted with majority control of the os landscape (that was a mistake and under open source it can't be repeated).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
1. you started all wrong: The GPL is a license--i.e., a contract between the licensor and the licensee.
... the point to shrink-wrap or click-thru EULAs is: if you tear the wrapping (or click on this button), it's the equivalent of signing a contract, which is NOT true, because you can ask a person not-legally-consenting (e.g. your 6yo nephew), and then nobody is legally bound to the terms of the EULA.
Repeat after me: a license is not a contract. Ok, now I will repeat after you: it *is*, in some jurisdictions (Brasil is one of them).
Now repeat after me, again: in the U. S. of A., a license is most definitively NOT a contract.
A contract is an agreement between two (or +) consenting parties, on their own volition: a license is an unilateral grant, to whom it may concern.
Under Brazilian law, a software license is called "Computer Program Use License Contract", and is regulated by a different set of laws than ordirnary contracts, and its validity is quite similar of the USofA law style software license.
Under USofAn law, software licenses are waivers of rights protected by USC17 to all parties whom it may concern. BR "use license contracts" are similar, but they are stronger.
In any case, under USC17, when you have a (legally-acquired) copy of some software, you have some rights under the fair use clauses of USC17, under fair use and first buy doctrines: you can use the software; you can make backup(s?); you can erase all your copies and sell these rights to another person; etc.
EULAs, especially of the shrink-wrap kind, are week because they try to subtract rights from the buyer: rights given by USC17 (e.g. the right to transfer the software), rights given by local consumer laws (e.g. the right to sue the software maker for deceitful advertising) etc. etc.
Now, this does not unbind the person from the terms of USC17: you cannot redistribute the software etc. What GPL and other Free Software licenses try to do is: waive the rights that are protected by copyright law, asking for nothing in return.
Wait, I just lied: the GPL (and many other copyleft licenses) ask in return that any derivative work be covered by the same license -- otherwise, in a judo-like fashion, your grant to the original copy is cancelled, so your derivative work is undistributable.
2. The most common thing for a license to do is to regulate the transfer of money from the licensee's pocket into the licensor's pocket. -- no, this is what contracts do; and, as I said before, you must be a legally consenting party to enter a contract.
3. In particular, if you agree to the GPL for a piece of software to which you don't hold the copyright, you may be forced to accept an obligation of licensing some software to which you hold copyright to others. No, no, no.
I'll rephrase it to you: if you agree to the GPL for a piece of software to which you don't hold the copyright, and you want to distribute a derivative work of it, then you are forced to accept the obligation of licensing [a]the copyright you hold in the derivative work [b]to the same people to whom you'll distribute said derivative work [c]under the terms of the GPL.
4. If you don't want that to happen, you just don't agree to the GPL, but then you also can't use the GPL'ed software. Again, rephrasing: if you don't want that to happen, you just don't agree to the GPL, but then you also can't distribute a derivative work of the GPL'd software. Can you use the GPL'd software? HELL YES. You could use it from the moment you put your hands legally on it. Can you make a derivative work -- without accepting the terms of the GPL? NO -- USC17 protects the copyright holders from you doing it, not the GPL.
5. There is nothing unusual about such agreements and they are certainly valid and enforceable: I give you a limited transferable license for software A if you
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I have already said (above), Leandro, why I think it's not going to happen. Notwithstanding the lessons we've being told in the university, I learned that when you change some behaviour in a component *and* you change its interface, too, you have more options to deal with incompatibilities than when you change the behaviour and keep the interface. YMMV...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The AbiWord website used to have some comment to this effect. Can't find it now. I stand by my comments that parsing is not the primary problem -- just being able to parse a document does not even come close to getting it to render identically, and anything less is not generally considered 100% compatible, especially given the formatting demands of todays users. That's why HTML being "documented" has not instantly made all browsers "compatible" (especially by the standards users of word processors demand)
A contract is an agreement between two (or +) consenting parties, on their own volition: a license is an unilateral grant, to whom it may concern.
You are confusing two common usages of the term "license". Yes, a "license" is a unilateral grant of rights. But that unilateral grant of rights is usually done in return for some consideration, under a contractual agreement. That contractual agreement is commonly also called a "license" (or "license agreement"), and it imposes obligations on both parties. Those obligations may be of a monetary nature or they may involve obligations to cross-license your software or they may be something completely different.
What GPL and other Free Software licenses try to do is: waive the rights that are protected by copyright law, asking for nothing in return.
The GPL is not asking you to "waive any rights", nor does it even involve any kind of copyright transfer. The GPL is an agreement by two parties over transferable licenses to software to which each party holds copyright.
but then you also can't distribute a derivative work of the GPL'd software. Can you use the GPL'd software? HELL YES. You could use it from the moment you put your hands legally on it. Can you make a derivative work -- without accepting the terms of the GPL? NO -- USC17 protects the copyright holders from you doing it, not the GPL.
You are bound by the terms of the GPL as soon as you copy the GPL'ed software (i.e., its source or binary form) because without agreeing to the GPL, you would be violating copyright law. But the terms that govern your subsequent behavior are a combination of copyright law and the terms of the GPL. Whether you prepare derivative works has nothing to do with it. In fact, if you violate the terms of the GPL, you rights even to using the GPL'ed software in question terminate.
You are required to license your "derivative works" under the GPL not because of copyright law, but because you entered into a legal agreement that you would do so. In fact, the GPL can (and probably does already) define "derivative works" broader than copyright law. The fact that the notion of "derivative works" in the GPL happens to be close to the copyright notion is convenient but not necessary for the GPL to apply. And in future versions of the GPL, the notion of "derivative works" will probably be broadened further. Probably, the next GPL should avoid the term "derivative works" in order to avoid this confusion.
As I said before, this is all well, as long as you're talking about contracts, formally correct, signed and notarized by legally consenting parties, willing to enter the contract.
Well, you may take the position that license agreements like the GPL are not valid contracts because they aren't signed pieces of paper. If that were the case, then your arguments would be right, in the sense that then only the provisions of copyright apply, but I think that's wishful thinking. The prevailing legal opinion, practice, and assumption seems to be that the terms of EULAs and the GPL are valid and enforceable.
I did not mention what you call "license agreement", except when I talked about contracts. GPL is a license: when you license your work under the GPL, you are especifically waiving certain rights. Some rights that are held by YOU. You are waiving some of those unconditionally and some conditionally. The rights held by you, and waived when you publish something under the GPL are, specifically: monopoly and controlling of copy, modification and distribution of your work and derivative works.
The GPL is not asking you to "waive any rights", nor does it even involve any kind of copyright transfer. The GPL is an agreement by two parties over transferable licenses to software to which each party holds copyright.
Never, NEVER ! The GPL is not an agreement, is a waiver! It's not asking you to do anything, it's a waiver (by the copyright holder) saying: ooooh, I hereby signed XXXX by this instrument -- the GPL -- waive my rights (monopoly on copying, modifying, publishing/distributing this work and derivatives), reserving some recall powers that I will not use provide you do something that was my exclusive rights (copying etc) in the prescribed way. Anyone can do so, even if it's a four-year-old girl, that under no circumstances would be considered a legally consenting party to enter an agreement.
You are required to license your "derivative works" under the GPL not because of copyright law, but because you entered into a legal agreement that you would do so. In fact, the GPL can (and probably does already) define "derivative works" broader than copyright law.
No. Four-year-olds can use GPL'd software, can download and install them from the internet. The GPL uses throughtout its text the expression "works based on the Program", which it defines, in its section #0:
You are bound by the terms of the GPL as soon as you copy the GPL'ed software (i.e., its source or binary form) because without agreeing to the GPL, you would be violating copyright law. But the terms that govern your subsequent behavior are a combination of copyright law and the terms of the GPL. Whether you prepare derivative works has nothing to do with it. In fact, if you violate the terms of the GPL, you rights even to using the GPL'ed software in question terminate.
I will quote the relevant part of the GPL for you (section #0, paragraph 1), as it needs no further comments:
The fact that the notion of "derivative works" in the GPL happens to be close to the copyright notion is convenient but not necessary for the GPL to apply. And in future versions of the GPL, the notion of "derivative works" will probably be broadened further.
This is not true. The notion of derivative works cannot be defined by a license, because, as defined by USC17 and doctrine and caselaw, a license is a waiver of rights, that cannot take away any rights. So, the notion of "wo
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
1. you are trolling.
2. you don't have a clue.
3. you don't respond to specific points of my discourse, but instead cite a part and repeat your argument over and over.
4. you don't cite any sources but your own mind.
5. you did not read the GPL.
6. you did not read USC17.
7. you did not read any caselaw.
8. you did not read any doctrine authors.
9. you did not work for years as a paralegal in a district attorney's office -- I did.
10. (corollary of 9) you were not involved in any copyrights lawsuits, directly or indirectly -- I was, and I did all the research work to lots of copyrights lawsuits, including criminal prosecutions.
11. you are trolling.
Good riddance. Don't bother answering to this post. Answer intelligently, intelligibly and citing good sources to any of my other posts. Google for the terms I gave in the first one. Google for "license is not a contract". Or, if you are not trolling and you are really right, educate me -- give me pointers to every relevant source (especially caselaw).
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
But, I looked your other posts, and I don't really know what your peeve with me is, because all your recent posts -- except those in this thread -- seemed quite reasonable to me.
So, I have to give you the benefit of the doubt. I will start by introducing myself: nice to meet you, my name is Humberto Massa, and I have benn (among other stuff) a developer for the last 16 years. I have a Bachelor degree in Computer Science and the Brazilian equivalent to Law School. No, I have never took the bar exam: because I never wanted to. My real call is being a coder. For the last 16 years, I have had a lot of jobs as a coder and a sysadmin, here in Brasil and in Spain, but I have worked a lot of time as a paralegal in a District Attorney's office. IANAL because I never wanted to be one.
I am a distant contributor to the Debian project, especially the -legal mailing list, because of my formation (is this the right word?) and experience in law.
I think your answer to (9) is derogatory, insultuous, and gratuitous. I have not attacked you -- I was citing the source of a certain knowledge I have, first-hand. You, OTOH, attacked me. IANAL because I'm a coder. I studied law for three years, practiced it for another three, live with a lawyer every single day of my life -- my wife is a District Attorney (not an ADA, a DA, the real thing) for the last 9 years. I still do some para work for her when she is overflowing with work.
And more, this is to say: no, I don't live in a dream world. I live in a world -- more specifically, in a jurisdiction -- where the legally valid and enforceable things are tried in the right place: in court.
Now, I will try to reason with you, point by point. Sorry if my non-native English is insuficient; try to bear with me.
Point "A":
Good. If my problem is not in my facts (and I tried to provide pointers for all of them, if any pointer is missing, I will provide it to you), it's a good start.
Yet you say my problem is in my reasoning and conclusions: but you put some conclusions in your arguments, below, that I have never written. That's the main reason I think we are having some communication problem.
Point "B":
Well, now you are twisting -- in a very lawyer-like fashion :-) -- what I concluded.
/some/ EULA clauses (those related to these copies) are valid.
The GPL is not an unconditional waiver of rights. Exactly the opposite, it's saying: to waive this rights to you, you should comply with the conditions.
But, that's the trick: there is a lot that you can do with some piece of software without infringing the copyrights. And, the part you don't seem to like, the "anti-shareware" part , is: USC17 does not regulate software use, just copy/distribution. Now, there is some caselaw that says: it does regulate the copies you must do to use a software, so that is the reason why
Classic example of unenforceable EULA clause, quite common in a lot of MS software: "thou shall not run this software under another operating system". You can look. MS puts this in their EULA in the hope someone will comply (their lawyers must produce something new every once in a while, too), but there is absolutely no caselaw about this, and I would not trust any possibility of this holding up in an USofAn or EUan court. Ah, and this clause specifically is forbidden by BR law, as is the "don't
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048