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!

Comments

Something I noticed...

[queenofthe1ring]

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."

Re:Office..

[kg_o.O]

...or at least give .doc format(s) specifications (if they even exist)

Re:OpenSource IE

[aj50]

That would be great as it's a well known product that is used by lots of people and desperately needs improving. Since it is released freely anyway, MS arn't going to loose any money making it open-source either.

Open sourcing bits of code is all very well

[Xargle]

but I'd rather see them pay more attention to open standards, and "opening" their file formats/protocols.

Re:OpenSource IE

[mAineAc]

Yes,but it is an integral part of the Operatng System. If they open sourced that then it would have to include the the whole ball of wax wouldn't it?

Actually...

[canolecaptain]

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.

These would be: .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.

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. :-)

Re:Microsoft needs to truly contribute to Open Sou

[Samrobb]

They started by creating the CPL, getting it certified, and have now been hiring prominent open source developers to work on CPL.

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.

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...

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.

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... traditionally, with Open Source, the developers receive the source for their project, and any derivative works.

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.

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.

...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