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Microsoft Wants Sit-Down With OSS Advocates
bonch writes "Microsoft is reaching out to the OSS community and wanting a sit-down to discuss how to better to interoperate with them. At a conference sponsored by the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) in Cambridge, Md., Microsoft's Brad Smith extended an olive branch to its competitors, including the OSS community. 'We're going to have to figure out how to build some bridges between the various parts of our industry,' he said. Eric Raymond responds, saying the first steps Microsoft could do are to open their file formats and support open standards."
This is nothing more than a marketing brainwave. Microsoft will never in their right mind help the OSS community, unless the OSS community helps them an exponentially greater amount. MS realises they are fast losing ground to FOSSS, and the lifejackets are out.
Well, I RTFA, and this is one of the most misleading titles I've seen in a long time. Microsoft explicitly states that they think their arsenal of software patents is a fine thing and they aren't willing to give up the right to sue. And if they aren't willing to give that up, what is there to discuss? In addition, there isn't anything that requires discussion. If Microsoft was really interested in wokring with the FOSS community, I'm sure there is somebody in their army of lawyers that could figure out how to write a royalty free non-discriminatory patent license that was compatible with the GPL. There is no need to discuss this with anybody, they can 'just do it'. The fact that they chose instead to have one of their lawyers give a content free, buzzword compliant speech tells us all we need to know about Microsoft's olive branch; the only thing they are interested in using it for is to poke people in the eye with it so they don't notice the sledgehammer they are holding in the other hand.
wasn't that goldfinger?
28 days late.
-- Your friendly neighborhood pedant
It's not?
Here is a first-hand account of Microsoft's earlier effort in London, UK. Look for the great quote from Debian's Philip Hands at the end of the article.
h e_facts/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/ms_mugs_t
Not only that, it was the hero (James Bond) who was strapped to the bench about to be cut in half by Goldfinger's laser thingy.
It was the evil villain bent on world domination who uttered the words you've assigned to OSS. Flip them around and the post is still funny though.
Even more so since later in the movie, Goldfinger gassed all his cooperating partners to death.
Stallman isn't an OSS leader, and he's probably excommunicate you from the church of Stallman for saying that. Stallman is a Free Software (zealot) leader, and as he has stated over and over and over and over and ... that Free Software is not OSS.
--| Richard Stallman on How to Deal with Microsoft |-----
The following is Mirrored from: http://linuxtoday.com/stories/4999.html
Richard Stallman proposes three remedies that would help enable free
software operating systems such as GNU/Linux compete technically while
respecting users' freedom. These three remedies directly address the three
biggest obstacles to development of free operating systems, and to giving
them the capability of running programs written for Windows. They also
directly address the methods Microsoft has said (in the "Halloween
documents") it will use to obstruct free software. It would be most
effective to use all three of these remedies together.
1. Require Microsoft to publish complete documentation of all interfaces
between software components, all communications protocols, and all file
formats. This would block one of Microsoft's favourite tactics: secret and
incompatible interfaces.
To make this requirement really stick, Microsoft should not be allowed to
use a nondisclosure agreement with some other organization to excuse
implementing a secret interface. The rule must be: if they cannot publish
the interface, they cannot release an implementation of it.
It would, however, be acceptable to permit Microsoft to begin
implementation of an interface before the publication of the interface
specifications, provided that they release the specifications
simultaneously with the implementation.
Enforcement of this requirement would not be difficult. If other software
developers complain that the published documentation fails to describe
some aspect of the interface, or how to do a certain job, the court would
direct Microsoft to answer questions about it. Any questions about
interfaces (as distinguished from implementation techniques) would have to
be answered.
Similar terms were included in an agreement between IBM and the European
Community in 1984, settling another antitrust dispute. See
http://www.essential.org/antitrust/ibm/ibm1984ec.h tml.
2. Require Microsoft to use its patents for defense only, in the field of
software. (If they happen to own patents that apply to other fields, those
other fields could be included in this requirement, or they could be
exempt.) This would block the other tactic Microsoft mentioned in the
Halloween documents: using patents to block development of free software.
We should give Microsoft the option of using either self-defense or mutual
defense. Self defense means offering to cross-license all patents at no
charge with anyone who wishes to do so. Mutual defense means licensing all
patents to a pool which anyone can join -- even people who have no patents
of their own. The pool would license all members' patents to all members.
It is crucial to address the issue of patents, because it does no good to
have Microsoft publish an interface, if they have managed to work some
patented wrinkle into it (or into the functionality it gives access to),
such that the rest of us are not allowed to implement it.
3. Require Microsoft not to certify any hardware as working with Microsoft
software, unless the hardware's complete specifications have been
published, so that any programmer can implement software to support the
same hardware.
Secret hardware specifications are not in general Microsoft's doing, but
they are a significant obstacle for the development of the free operating
systems that can provide competition for Windows. To remove this obstacle
would be a great help. If a settlement is negotiated with Microsoft,
including this sort of provision in it is not impossible -- it would be a
matter of negotiation.
This April, Microsoft's Ballmer announced a possible plan to release
source code for some part of
FWIW, Microsoft now provides (free) "Services For Unix" which implements [most of?] the utilities, too. As usual, it is only due to pragmatism. Not sure what else you expect from a publicly held corporation, though. Why ELSE would they implement POSIX? To make their competitors stronger by supporting THEIR standards? Microsoft is a bad guy, but this ain't why.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A repeatable theme in history.
A new founder of a dynasty will eliminate rivals from previous dynasties, so no throne claimant will emerge.
One way of doing this, was to have a banquet, then no one leaves alive.
One such occurance was Mehmet Ali Pasha of Egypt. He was sent by the Ottoman Sultan to Egypt (1805?), after the French Expedition there (1799?). He invited all the Mameluke commanders to a banquet, and then when they were in a passage, soldiers in muskets showered them with bullets. Only one Mameluke survived, after he jumped off the Citadel, his horse taking the shock.
Also, when the Abbasid dynasty replaced the Umayyad dynasty in the early 700, Al Saffah (The Butcher), invited the dignitaries from the Umayyad clan to a banquet, and had them massacred. All who attended were killed. One scion of the Banu Umayya survived, after swimming across a river somewhere in the Levant. He fled to Iberia and established the Umayyad dynasty there.
One other custom was for Ottoman sultans to have their brothers killed as the first act of succession to the throne. This fratricide was to ensure no rivalry will ensue as claimants to the throne would threaten civil war. This system was established after bitter civil wars caused ruin. One such war was between Bayazid II and Cem (late 1400s), both sons of Mehmet the Conqueror.
Anyway, I digressed a lot. I am sure there are lots of other examples, but off the top of my head, the above are the ones that I remember offhand.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Well, kinda. IIS has always been one of Microsoft's worst products. Apache market-share continues to grow at the expense of everyone else.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
This is complete hearsay, but I heard some VMS dudes worked on the NT kernel, so they incremented the letters by one, hence WNT, and thus Windows NT (like HAL is an decrement of IBM).
Like I said, hearsay.
as far as I know, /. isn't open source
./ is open source ... slashcode
I don't see it as being an asshole. He's said the project will stay free and he's committed to finishing it, other than that what could be better for someone who likes .net than to work on the official implementation?
I am trolling
As someone else said, slashdot's CMS (if such it is) is open source, there's a link to the system right there on the sidebar, and it's used by other sites, IIRC plastic.com runs on it or at least did.
I am trolling
The download is free, but I found it a nightmare to install and get running... it had numerous side-effects (unexpected ones), and I never really got it to work right.
And that was only for my XP Pro machine... SFU requires Pro, so for my XP Home (I don't see why all of the XP machines in a household should have to be Pro) machine the free download would first require a $100 (or more?) upgrade....
As for this being some "offering" from Microsoft (it isn't), the literature from Microsoft around this product pretty much couches SFU as a migratory temp-solution, with beaucoups des docs to describe how to migrate and convert apps on the "unix" side to the Windows side. So, rather than being a tool, I see it as a bait and switch. Just my opinion.
This was actually why I quit shortly after Microsoft hired me. The public spin from Microsoft was very much, "Look, we're doing unix!", but behind closed doors the story was completely different. I escalated this all the way to a guy named Larry Kroger who at the time reported to Gates... I was upset, and asked Mr. Kroger about MS' intent with the POSIX subsystem. He pretty much echoed Margaret's stance. I asked, "What do I tell people who ask for support on this subsystem?" .... "Tell them we don't support it."... "What do I tell people who ask what MS' future plans are for the POSIX subsystem?" .... "Tell them we have none."
Before I left there some tried to convince me to stay on the basis that third parties would step in and flesh out the rest of the POSIX "universe". I made a decision to leave ... pretty much based on what I perceived as a gross deception to the technical community and for their own gain...
First, a post on /. doesn't really lend itself to a "thick" slice (this post will hardly be read because of its length!), but as for making MS look as bad as possible, a thicker slice only makes MS look worse. I don't really have to "design" my slice to make MS look bad, they bear that standard well on their own.
Personal grudge? Maybe, but I don't think so. I don't tell lies about Microsoft, but I find their attitude and practices abhorant (sp?), and certain courts later found their behaviors illegal (more than once). Probably closer to a professional grudge.... try as I might I've never quite been able to shake loose the daily cruft I have to wash off by having to deal with the world MS has created (family, friends, work... all in constant need of some technical attention.... ).
I still maintain friendships with MS people. My college roommate works there. I still have lunch with friends there on campus. So, I don't think personal grudge describes it very well.