Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Releases FlexWiki as Open Source
davemabe writes "Microsoft is apparently releasing its FlexWiki wiki implementation as an open source project. FlexWiki is the software used to run the wikis over at Channel 9. My question is: Is this software as good as the ever-extensible Kwiki implementation?"
Sheesh, RTFA and click on the SF link.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
GPL Incompatible due to patent clauses. Draw your own conclusions...
Does RedHat "Open Source" everything they do? Why yes, actually. I'm not aware of any product they sell that isn't "Open Source".
As it's implemented in ASP.NET, you are recommended to use IIS to host it with best performance. If you are an OSS-oriented, mono + Apache may be an option. Anyway, comparing it to Perl-written Kwiki is nonsense IMHO.
I'm not totoally sold on Microsoft releasing this software as open source. It was written by David Ornstein, who works at Microsoft. While this tool is used internally at Microsoft, and I'm sure MS has the rights to the software too, I just don't think it's fair to David to classify this as a Microsoft Product.
BTW, David's weblog has a bunch of info on FlexWiki being posted to SourceForge.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Depending on where you read, it is released under either the IBM Public License or the Common Public License, which superceded the IPL and which is simular to the LGPL. It is approved by the OSI as an open source license and the FSF as a free software license. However, it is incompatible with the GPL because of some clauses about patent restriction. The FSF is not opposed to these clauses in principle - in fact they are concidering putting something simular in the next version of the GPL. But as things stand now, any IPL or CPL code cannot be combines with GPL code (unless of course, the author dual licenses the code under both).
Personally, I tend to side with the FSF when some software developer invents his own open source license which has not had the same legal scrutany of existing licenses, is incompatible with existing licnenses, causes fragmentation in potential codebases, and then accuses the FSF of being inflexible when they try to help the developer resolve these problems. I mean what is the the FSF foundation expected to do - change thier license according to the whims of every new license that comes around? It is the newcomers that are causeing incompatibility not the FSF.
But the CPL is becoming very popular among business, is a very fair Free Software license, has had the scrutiny of IBM lawyers, and does include some good ideas that are not in the GPL. So I really hope that the FSF makes it a top priority to work on the new version of the GPL which solves the patent-based conflicts with the CPL and other licenses.
I've got copies download of the source code that were hosted on GotDotNet.
This might be Microsoft's implementation of FlexWiki (FlexWiki is a BSD license type, if I remember correctly) but FlexWiki has been available for a while.
My reality check bounced.
I'm one of the Wikipedia team (looking after the database servers mostly) so I can't commment on others but MediaWiki includes these properties which make it interesting: Very widely used and understood (Wikipedia and many other places). Uses normal words, not CamelCase, for links. Supports most human languages (a broad range at Wikipedia places). Current version supports MySQL as the database, next version expected to support PostGreSQL as well. GPL license, PHP (including safe mode PHP) Extreme caching to help scalability (Squid and Memcached for that, also a file-based cache) Supports limited database load sharing in the current version, more later. Wikipedia uses a master and two slaves for normal work, a couple of slaves for backup only. Proved able to scale (so far) to a top 400 web site using 5 Squid caches, 15 web servers. Three machines were enough for top 1200 or so - equipment needs start to rise vey rapidly as you get into the top 1,000. It'll do more, we just haven't proved it in practice yet.
Does everyone realize that his name isn't Clippy? His name is actually Clippit.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
More commentary...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Finally, a good wiki, before the release of this, I couldn't find a wiki if I wanted one *sigh*. MS needs to just buckle down on getting the little jpeg issue under control.
Honestly, if you are looking for wiki software, there is lots of great stuff out...
OpenWiki -- Windows, easy to edit, featureful, fast, good. My favorite.
http://www.openwiki.com/
PHPWiki -- Cross Platform, easy to setup, fast.
http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/
KWiki -- The king of Wiki's!
http://kwiki.org/
Imagine I add code to Apache that contains a patent I hold. Now, I wait a few years for it to become popular, and then start suing left, right and centre).
You can't do that under the GPL. By attempting it, you've given up your rights to distribute the software.
The GPL's wording on this is, IMHO poor. But the subtlety of the wording is very very important, and may provide better protection than the CPL... (which I haven't read)
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. . . ."
The odd part about this is that 1. if you contribute the patented code and don't implicitly grant license to use it, you violate the GPL and are guilty of copyright infringement.
More interesting, and this is where it might beat the CPL (or at least your example), is in situations where somebody notices a patent violation in a GPL'd product which they didn't write, there is absolutely no way they can profit from exploiting the patent while simultaneously allowing the software to be distributed.
This is a double-edged sword, and, IMHO a very sharp one. There's no incentive to persue patents on GPL'd products... except to stop their distribution and hold the author of the patented system guilty of violating the GPL.
Now the patent holder might persue the author punatively, but the copyright holders will probably not care.
The GPL is tricky and subtle.
IANAL of course.
Most excellent post. I've talked to some MS employees and they don't seem to have anything against the concept of open source itself. I feel that the fear of the GPL is purely because of legalities, and probably a bit of misunderstanding as well. It would be terrible from MS's standpoint if some GPL'ed code accidentally made its way into Windows, which results in the open-sourcing of some component they don't want open. And yes, I am confident they do not steal GPL code; it's made very clear internally that such code (and I think other outside code) is unacceptable in Microsoft products because of possible legal issues. Note that I do not mention something like "because GPL sucks ass!" To reiterate, my impression is that it's purely legal with a bit of misunderstanding.
About your example, a similar thing has happened with .NET. The .NET Framework SDK and compilers are freely available, but the Visual Studio.NET IDE is not. Although the VC++ compiler wasn't free in the past, the SDKs for Windows development have been free for as long as I can remember. Actually, I don't know if this is related to what you've said anymore, but it's an interesting example of how Microsoft places closed, $$ functionality on top of a layer of closed but free functionality.