Open Source Code Finds Way into Microsoft Release

linumax tells us eWeek is reporting that Microsoft, for the first time, has included open source code in the release of one of their products. The Complete Cluster Edition of Windows Server 2003 will be including the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library. From the article: "MPI is key middleware that was designed by a consortia of all the supercomputing vendors in the 1990s to allow the easy portability of code. It abstracts away things like low-latency interconnect, and our focus is making it super easy for ISVs to move their code."

Comments

strings ftp.exe

[cuerty]

What about doing a: $ strings ftp.exe BSD Licensed software it's open source.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't their tcp stack also BSD?

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Anonymous Coward]

what about http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sfu/p roductinfo/features/default.mspx">windows services for unix?

Re:strings ftp.exe

[LurkerXXX]

No. It was circa NT 3.x and maybe 4.0 if I recall. They have since re-written it.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Anonymous Coward]

I did. Windows NT 5.1.2600 (XP) SP1; even examined it with a hex editor, with and without inserted blanks for two-byte character mode. No results.

Also, the # prompt is cooler.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[nmb3000]

Not sure the exact significance, but this is with the file FTP.EXE included with Windows XP in C:\Windows\System32:

[root@aptiva:~]# strings ftp.exe | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.

So... whatever that means :)

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a first post be marked Redundant? What fucking idiot used their mod points for this?

Re:strings ftp.exe

[John Hasler]

> So... whatever that means :)

It means that they are already shipping Open Source software and have been doing so for many years.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[brandanglendenning]

every news item erases past news item post information!!!! the internet has the memory of a goldfish!!!!

Re:strings ftp.exe

[damiam]

It can say something that's already in the summary or the article; or that has been recently posted elsewhere (i.e., if someone came up with a joke about Apple and started posting it in every Apple-related story, it'd be fair to mark it redundant). In this case, however, the mods are most likely smoking crack.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Quila467]

I was curious, so I had to try it. ftp.exe from Windows XP Home SP2 contains no reference to BSD other than this string: Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California. Sounds like BSD to me.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[mhearne]

OK, I just copied ftp.exe from a win2k machine to my Linux machine, ran "strings ftp.exe", and the last line reads:

Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
  All rights reserved.

Didn't Mr. Gates also "borrow" BASIC from Dartmouth College?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC_programming_lan guage

Michael

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Krach42]

Microsoft already has released a product with GPL software in fact.

If you install Services for Unix 3.5 (available free from Microsoft) then it comes with "gcc".

Re:strings ftp.exe

[man_of_mr_e]

You might want to look again, especially at the copyright dates. Then compare them to the first open source release of BSD (Networking Release 1, 1989).

You'll note that the copyrights pre-date the NR1 (which had all the copyrights updated on it), by at least 6 years, which means the code is older than the first open source release, which likely means that the code was licensed from Berkeley directly under a non-open source license.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[man_of_mr_e]

Indeed, but not Open Source BSD. The first open source release of BSD was Networking Release 1, released in 1989 (and had the 1989 copyright on it).

So what does a 1983 copyright tell you?

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Anonymous Coward]

That the "most advanced" operating system in the world uses 22 year old code?

Re:strings ftp.exe

[ebyrob]

Ya, but did your rot13 it all...

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Fred_A]

It has been posted in each and every story about Microsoft and OSS for the past five years.

So in that sense it's redundant (maybe not locally to the story, but site wise)

Re:strings ftp.exe

[laffer1]

Yes, I think they annouced that it will be discontinued in the future though. Services for UNIX is a dead product.

If NCSA Mosaic was ever open source, then Microsoft has shipped that as well. See the about box in IE. :)

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Anonymous Coward]

The Regents of the University of California used to own the BSD copyright (well, I guess technically they still own one). The BSD license used to have an advertising clause, but was otherwise completely free to use for proprietary purposes. It is technically more "open source" than the GPL in that you can do whatever you want with the code and not have to release the source code modifications.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Random832]

So what? It's highly relevant to a story which claims that microsoft is "for the first time" using open-source code.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 'dead' because they are now going to ship it as part of the OS starting with the "R2" release of Windows Server 2003.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[cloudmaster]

XP Pro 2002 SP1:

bash-2.05a$ which ftp.exe
c:\WINNT\system32/ftp.exe
bash-2.05a$ strings `which ftp.exe`
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
  All rights reserved.
bash-2.05a$ uname -a
Windows_NT XhostnameX 5 01 586

They must have forgotten to rewrite the copyright line...

Re:strings ftp.exe

[LurkerXXX]

They didn't forget anything. They are still using the BSD ftp program.

So what? That's not the same thing as the TCP/IP stack. That was what the grandparent asked about, and what I replied had been been rewritten. It's pretty common knowledge they still use other BSD code. Just not for the TCP/IP stack anymore.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[ArsonSmith]

BSD is more like Rape Source software.

Re:strings ftp.exe

[cloudmaster]

Imprecise pronouns. They'll get you every time, expecially when you say "it" in a discussion titled "ftp.exe". :)

Re:strings ftp.exe

[Fred_A]

Agreed. It still gets old after a while though... :)

Wait a minute

[PunkOfLinux]

Isn't microsoft always saying that open-source software is OBVIOUSLY inferior?

Re:Wait a minute

[D-Cypell]

...Not to mention the tool of communism.

Re:Wait a minute

[Osrin]

No - I think they have only ever said that Linux is inferior, and that they don't like the GPL type licenses all that much - that is about as far as their corporate comments have gone.

Re:Wait a minute

[_Sprocket_]

Yep. GPL. A cancer. A looming danger to any commercial enterprise who even uses it. Anything the GPL touches get's absorbed. Yet Microsoft's own Services for Unix has used GPLed software for years. And they've maintained their proprietary licensing and intellectual property. Huh. Odd, that.

Re:Wait a minute

[Dest581]

It's only inferior if Microsoft isn't using it. Then, that particular piece of software becomes better than everything else.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's supposed to be a cancer too.

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

Everyone working for the sake of everyone, right? How is that bad?

Because that really means, "productive people working for the sake of slackers." I'm not equal to everyone else, and have no problem with recognition of the fact. I should get more than most people.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly why it was said that it fails due to human nature.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in the fantasy world inside the minds of Slashdotters.

Re:Wait a minute

[tftp]

Try to say "I should get less than some people", it is logically equivalent but somehow much harder to pronounce :-)

Re:Wait a minute

[techno-vampire]

I'll be the first to admit that in practice, it fails horribly due to human nature, but as a concept, it's great.

It fails horribly in practice, and therefore is a bad theory.

Re:Wait a minute

[Wonko the Sane]

No, if a "great" theory fails in practice then is must be the fault of reality, not the theory.

Re:Wait a minute

[nilknarf]

It's when you add humans that everything goes to hell.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Linux and Windows are shit. That's why I run only HPUX at home and at work.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

"productive people working for the sake of slackers."

You're talking about capitalism right?

They seem the same to me. :)

Re:Wait a minute

[NanoGator]

There's a difference, at least in MS's eyes, between using 'free components' and commercial apps being carbon copied and released for free. I'm not really sure what I think about this. On the one hand, seems like a risky business to develop a product that somebody with a little coding experience can duplicate. On the other hand, it sure takes the fun out of making a garage app (shareware, etc) with the idea of making a few bucks. I'm undecided, but I'm not surprised MS would refer to it as a 'cancer'. I also don't think this illustrates hypocracy on MS's part. Then again, I'm full on karma.

Re:Wait a minute

[Nyago]

Try to say "I should get less than some people", it is logically equivalent but somehow much harder to pronounce :-)

"Some" is not the negation of "most".

Re:Wait a minute

[tftp]

Being pedantic, you need a complement, not a negation.

Re:Wait a minute

[Achromus]

Is "I should get less than only a minority of the people" okay with you?

Re:Wait a minute

[heinousjay]

I have this great theory that you know what the hell you're talking about, but it fails in reality. Where is the fault in this situation?

Re:Wait a minute

[mollymoo]

"productive people working for the sake of slackers."

Oh yes, we all know it's the guys on the factory floor who play golf in the afternoon.

Re:Wait a minute

[Pollardito]

that's why they've already gone ahead and labeled this package a Complete Cluster !#%^

Re:Wait a minute

[Cobralisk]

Don't try to reseat RAM while drunk.

Interesting mental imagery. I wouldn't recommend doing that sober either, there's a reason they call it a RAM. Sounds like a good story though. How did you say you ended up at the zoo?

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

I have absolutely no problem saying I should get less than some other people. Some other people have intrinsically rarer and more valuable talent than me. Of course, the tricky word here is "should". Generally speaking, people are paid exactly what they're worth (by definition), the problem (if there is one) is that some people's perceived worth doesn't match reality. :)

I should also say that I don't care what other people make, and have no illusions that someone making a lot of money has anything to do with what anyone else makes or doesn't make.

Re:Wait a minute

[ScrewMaster]

Not inferior, per se ... just undemocratic, unAmerican, viral, dangerous and a threat to every red-blooded American, his livelihood and his family.

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

Value is not necessrily measured by hours worked, nor calories expended. The guys on the factor floor make peanuts because they are easily replaced, not because anyone is exploiting them.

Re:Wait a minute

[Overly Critical Guy]

People have such a negative image of communism.

Maybe because...oh, you beat me to it:

I'll be the first to admit that in practice, it fails horribly due to human nature

Communism is more head-in-the-clouds theoretical nonsense that doesn't actually work in the real world.

Re:Wait a minute

[jc42]

Isn't microsoft always saying that open-source software is OBVIOUSLY inferior?

They finally woke up to the fact that this makes it perfect for inclusion in MS Windows.

Re:Wait a minute

[d_jedi]

No, if you look closely, most of Microsoft's comments were directed at the GPL in particular (esp. the more colourful comments about it being a cancer, and communist - actually, I think that last one was courtesy of our friend Darl).

The problem with the GPL is that if you use even a few lines of GPL code, you have to release the whole thing under the GPL.. which pretty much kills any commercial work (ie. for profit) on these projects (which some will argue is a good thing).

MPI is licensed BSD, so anyone can use it for anything pretty much.. including inside a closed source program. IMHO, it's much more free (as in freedom) as you don't have the obligation, as you do with the GPL, to release your source code modifications.

Re:Wait a minute

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Same can be said for Capitalism. The result is what we're living now: Some people get rich enough to control the world and thus hinder any advancement others might make.

Re:Wait a minute

[Nutria]

You failed to correctly interpret "great".

The quotes means it's sarcasm.

Re:Wait a minute

[ShieldW0lf]

Communism doesn't fail horribly in practice. It's being successfully used by a large portion of the human race even as we speak.

Most of the venom attached to communism lies in the fact that we have been propagandised to equate communism with dictatorship, when it's actually an economic system that could just as easily be run as a democracy. It doesn't really have much to do with individuals having more "stuff", it has to do with private vs public ownership of the means of production.

Re:Wait a minute

[martalli]

Maybe they're about ready for Windows Vista Community Edition, complete with several ready-to-run programs, such as Office Vista Community Edition You could d/l it all by a bittorrent plugin in IE...

Re:Wait a minute

[Phil06]

The problem with communism is that everyone must agree or it won't work. The practice in recent history has been to have a totalitarian authoritarian goverment that methodically murders, imprisons and otherwise crushes dissent. I'm not against communism as a concept, I'm just against the practice of killing people who disagree with you.

Re:Wait a minute

[tjstork]

Not to burst your bubble, but how does, in the case of software, capitalism actually hinder development? It's pretty straightfoward, if you think you can go and make a better development suite than Visual Studio, go right ahead.

Re:Wait a minute

[Jeff Hornby]

But do you have any problem with the fact that, just maybe, you should get less than most people.

Or, in other words, are you really sure where exactly you belong on the deserve more/less curve?

Re:Wait a minute

[AstroDrabb]

People have such a negative image of communism. I'll be the first to admit that in practice, it fails horribly due to human nature, but as a concept, it's great.

Uh, yeah, every one is equal is a _great_ concept. Why exactly should I spend 8 years in college and then another 2+ years as an intern to be a doctor to get paid the same as some bum who drops out of high school and flips burgers? Why should I spend 8 years in college to study physics to get paid the same as some lazy person who doesn't work and is on welfare? Why should I struggle to start my own business to only get paid the same as... oh wait... I can't own my own business, it is all owned by the "state".

Look at Russia. The nation went down hard because they couldn't compete with a free nation. They had a few smart people, but most of them were under threat to produce. Look at China. They don't even come close to the GDP of the USA. The only thing China has to offer is cheap labor. That cheap labor means that most of the Chinese workers are living in poor standards, especially compared to the USA and most of Europe. China will never be able to totally compete against the USA or the UK when it comes to technology because there is no motivation to excel in communism. People want to excel to get rewards.

I had to study to become a programmer. I have to keep studying to stay current as a programmer so that I have marketable skills. What would be my motivation to put in that work if I were only paid the same as the guy who picks up my trash cans? For me, there would be none.

Communism sucks, it doesn't work, it will never work.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

And aren't OSS'ers always saying that open-source software is OBVIOUSLY superior?

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

See, the problem with your examples is that neither the USSR nor China is truly communistic.

Re:Wait a minute

[AstroDrabb]

The problem with the GPL is that if you use even a few lines of GPL code, you have to release the whole thing under the GPL..

Really? I guess you have never used Windows Services for UNIX? SFU contains GPLed code. Strange. MS has not had to release the entire SFU code base. Wait. Could the whole GPL-cancer crap just be some MS-FUD? I would bet yes. If the FUD MS has said is true, why don't I have access to the whole MS Windows XP code base?

Re:Wait a minute

[mollymoo]

Any system requires enforcement as not everybody will agree, whatever the system. With a capitalist system you need men with guns to stop those who think they have a right to roam the land and hunt and forage to support themselves. You can even shoot trespassers in some particularly unsavoury parts of the capitalist world.

Re:Wait a minute

[Requiem18th]

Bullshit, any communist plan provide a way to force slackers into work, either by use of force, reduction of provisions and/or reduction of respect by peers.

Communism is against hoarding of wealth. No matter what you say, being born in a rich family is not "equal oportunity" compared with someone born from a poor family.

So if you are really greedy, I mean... productive, and you work your ass minning all day to get enough gold that's fine, but you can't inherit it as it would produce unequality (you have to see this from the POV of the decendants: "My father wanted to spend more time with the family so automaticaly I'm worth less?").

Another idea is that you either can not sell certain classes of things or can't sell stuff at all.

You will probably think this is horribly wrong but U.S. law already prohibits you from selling your children, body parts and civil rights. Why? several reasons, partially because, as soon as you can sell something someone will device a way to make you sell it. The less comodity value you have, the less incentive there is to extort, terrorize, blackmail or decive you.

And simply because there are some things that should not be sold, but thats a personal opinion.

Another thing you seem to forget is how we measure value. Let's say you are very productive so you can generate the double amout of wealth than two persons, futher more there are two unemployed persons that perform half as well as you. Who should we employ, you or the other two guys? If the guys get the job the wealth will be split between them. If you get the job the full pay will be given to you.

From the capitalist POV it doesn't matter. Same investment, same return. But if you value human life the two guys will get the job.

What if you are so productive that you can produce as much as 4 people? 12, 50, 500, 1,000 people? Every time, as long as you can be replaced by a larger amount of people they will be preffered.

Indeed you would end up unemployed, you would need people to share the workload to you! And of course that means you will only get a share of the wealth as well, less workload less pay.

By the way unemployment also happens in capitalism. Remember that i said that capitalism wouldn't care whether employing you or the other two guys? Well in practice employing the two guys makes more sense, ever heard of a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Employes (RAIE)?

If you want to get the job you would have to ask for less money, you will be underselling you, so you will be reciving LESS than what you say you are worth. Yay for capitalism.

Also, saying that communism fails in practice implies that it has been tested in practice, but there has still not been any coutry that has implemented the second often omitted part of communism, distribution of political power...

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

And the problem with global capitalism is that if you don't agree, you're screwed all the same. No matter how immoral I think the *implementation* of capitalism is, I have realistically few practical options to avoid being part of it. I can climb on my soapbox and pontificate at length, but unless I convince a large majority of (largely self-centred, in-pursuit-of-money-only) people to change the government (not likely), I'm stuck with it. Not much difference to communism in this regard, I think.

Re:Wait a minute

[deaddrunk]

So you're basically saying that the people who make stuff do no valuable work at all?

Re:Wait a minute

[deaddrunk]

Won't matter if it's better, Microsoft have a bigger marketing budget and even if they don't help themselves to your ideas they'll just FUD you out of existence.

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

I've read my statement like, 10 times, and I can't figure out where you figured I said that.

Re:Wait a minute

[deaddrunk]

You said they were easily replaced thus implying little to no value. People aren't the same as paperclips, they don't come in exactly the same size or shape. Some of the best ideas come from the factory floor (if the boss can be bothered to listen) because those are the guys making the stuff.

Re:Wait a minute

[buffy]

Library vs. code.

It's my understanding that you can link a GPL library w/o the requirement to release your source. If you base your code off of GPL code directly, or include snippets, etc... inside of your code, that's where the requirement kicks in.

So, if you're writing something that you DO want to ensure is free, base if off of GNU hello.c. :)

-buf

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

Yes they are easily replaced, but that doesn't imply they have "no" (as you said) value. Sure, you can get good ideas from the guys from the floor, but again, that doesn't imply that they're hard to replace. Their value is still proportional to how many people can do the job.

If someone is consistently giving good ideas, then if the company is smart, they'll reward that someone because he/she is showing themselves as more valuable than average (assuming it's a non-union shop, if it's a union shop, then you're SOL if you want to be paid for merit). If he or she is underappreciated, then they should find another job.

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

Or, in other words, are you really sure where exactly you belong on the deserve more/less curve?

It doesn't matter where I think I belong, I get exactly what I deserve, no more, no less. As it happens, I get considerably more than average, which I don't feel in the least guilty about, because I earn it. :)

Re:Wait a minute

[_Sprocket_]

There's a difference, at least in MS's eyes, between using 'free components' and commercial apps being carbon copied and released for free.

True - there's a difference. But that's not what we're talking about. From Steve Ballmer's Sun Times interview:

The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source.

Microsoft's executives (Ballmer, Gates, Mundie) had been pushing a rather alarmist interpretation as to what the GPL (and other licenses they labled as "viral") really meant. Meanwhile, Microsoft itself had been making use of GPLed code for years without any of their dire warnings coming true. There's your hypocracy on MS's part.

As far as making carbon-copies of existing applications... that doesn't take the GPL or other so-called "viral" licenses to do this. It could be done just as well with, say, the BSD license which Microsoft seems to favor within the Open Source world. And, of course, it could also be done just as easily with any form of proprietary license. And it has been done - by Microsoft and dozens of others. Welcome to the software industry.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Well...it's being used by a large portion of the world, but I wouldn't say successfully. The two communist bastions left in the world, China and Cuba, just look the other way when capitalism rears its ugly head. As long as there's no big fuss, capitalism thrives in both economies.

And it's much more than ownership of the means of production. Much more.

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

This is wrong on so many levels, and backs up my opinion that economics should be a required course for at least two years of high school. I don't feel like tearing this whole thing apart, so let's just focus on one thing:

Who should we employ, you or the other two guys? If the guys get the job the wealth will be split between them. If you get the job the full pay will be given to you. [...] From the capitalist POV it doesn't matter. Same investment, same return. But if you value human life the two guys will get the job.

This is a fundamental mistake you're making in a lot of your reasoning. You're assuming everything is static and unchanging. Economics is never static -- it's always dynamic, changing in response to various forces.

Which of these is better for a healthy economy? Why, hiring the more efficient person. The reason is because the two less-efficient workers will eventually realize that they are not competing well in the economy, because they're getting passed over for jobs by other people. So the two other workers have an incentive to become more educated, work harder, or even change jobs to something else they do better. So in the end, we get the faster worker, and two others who transform themselves into faster workers.

Of course, not everyone gets clued in as simply as that, but that's what happens on the average in the economy. Why did customer service suck so notoriously in the Soviet Union? Because no one had an incentive to do it better. What difference does it make? You get the same money and same job no matter what attitude you have.

People naturally gravitate to doing the least amount of work that gives the same reward. If you want your economy to be healthy, people have to have incentive to not be slackers.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you give it away for free. Developers will download and try it. If it is better then they will tell others, and they will use it as well. Sure, you may never take the market lead position from MS, but you'll probably get lots and lots of developers using and improving your product.

Re:Wait a minute

[ZSO]

Ever notice that every practice of communism is never the "true" communism? You, sir, need to check your premises. "Dictatorship of the proletariat" always turns out to mean "dictatorship of the man claiming to be the voice of the proleteriat." Call him the leader, der Fuhrer, or il Duce.

There is an odd number of reds on Slashdot. Wonder why.

Re:Wait a minute

[dryeo]

I read a good comment in a book today. "Everyone who works hard should be entitled to a decent life"
Not excellent but all their basic needs met. Of course some people who have something special will have a better then decent life.

Re:Wait a minute

[gordo3000]

so..... you're complaining about capitalism as a theory now. That is capitalism at its core(under the assumptions of not perfect information, where people's perception is what is important). If they actually take your idea, we have patent and copyright protection to fend that off(unless you don't like those, at which point that is no longer a valid complaint).

Re:Wait a minute

[GreyWolf3000]

Not exactly. If you link against GPL'ed code, you must release your code under the terms of the GPL. The LGPL doesn't have this requirement, hence some call it the 'library' GNU Public License, rather than the 'lesser' one.

A collection of binaries that run under the same environment, however, do not need to share the same license, even if one is GPL. As long as they are kept completeley separate, that is.

Re:Wait a minute

[gordo3000]

yep, and they get that much richer because they are that much more valuable in producing real things than the other people. The essense of capitalism is a system that really does weed out the best people.

Re:Wait a minute

[deaddrunk]

Good marketing isn't the same as good capitalism. In pure capitalist theory if you make a better product you're bound to sell more than your competitors. However in the real world the advertising power of your competitor is more important. If that company has a heck of a lot more marketing power at its disposal then in most cases you're pretty much screwed.

Re:Wait a minute

[mqduck]

Ah, you really cut right to it, don't you? I commend you for your clear-sightedness. You demonstrate exactly whats wrong with capitalist society, and every other form of class society. Somehow, the notion that some people are better than other people must prevail for a class system to work. It's not exactly nice to say but you, sir, are doing a service to all who listen.

Some people intrinsicly deserve more than others, because they are better or have a more useful or rare skill. Your clearness of thought ends at one point, though. WHY does that person deserve a better life?

Re:Wait a minute

[KDR_11k]

What we're seeing in the real world isn't even perfect capitalism, it's a mixture of capitalist and socialist ideas. Antitrust laws, for example, curtail capitalism in order to prevent monopolies. Pure capitalism simply postulates that monopolies won't be a problem because monopolies produce worse goods and are easily overthrown by means of competition but capitalism as a theory predates Microsoft and other huge monopolies or oligopolies.

Re:Wait a minute

[KillerLoop]

I'd rather prefer healthy people to a healthy economy.

Re:Wait a minute

[1u3hr]

Generally speaking, people are paid exactly what they're worth (by definition)

By definition of some social Darwinists, perhaps. In a job I had a few years ago I wasn't paid at all for some months. The boss knew I needed the job, so he thought he could get away with paying me late, and late got later every month. Finally I secured another job, and so I could quit and take him to court. Others are less fortunate and are exploited even more. Don't expect market forces to pay anyone what they're worth. Look at the other end where CEOs get multi-millions while they drive companies into bankruptcy. There's a lot more than the actual value your work creates going on, which is why sucking up to your boss produces better results than spending the same effort at being productive in many situations.

Re:Wait a minute

[1u3hr]

The guys on the factor floor make peanuts because they are easily replaced, not because anyone is exploiting them.

Alternatively, I would say the guys on the factor floor are exploited because they are easily replaced. In fact, this is the usual mechanism of exploitation since actual slavery was outlawed.

Re:Wait a minute

[1u3hr]

Communism doesn't fail horribly in practice. It's being successfully used by a large portion of the human race even as we speak.

I guess you're talking about China, as that's the only "large portion" of humanity that professes to be communist. However, since about 1983, China has been communist in name only. It's capitalism all the way now. Just one example: the emergency departments at many Chinese hospitals won't admit patients without a guarantee of payment, and preferably a cash advance.

Re:Wait a minute

[DenDave]

This is funny, why look at what you have in terms of wht the next guy has? You hopelessly end up chasing after the bigger fish! There is always a bigger fish! When are people going to learn to be happy with what they have and who they are. It's funny because I recognize in this debate some aspects of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and there a lot of folks that just ain't getting to the top!

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations : you are full of shit and proud of it .

Re:Wait a minute

[Associate]

Some of the best ideas do come from the floor. But when the lot you work with's main concern is going on break and not the quality of work, it's easy to see why an engineer or manager would so readily ignor any suggestion. Management at my company has implemented a model to guage productivity. Rarely do I ever hear of suggestions to improve or speed up a process by those actually doing the job. They purposly take their time and half ass their work. Their first level managers specifically work them towards the model. Which means the model is severely inaccurate. Even though I work on the floor, I have a low opinion of these people and would likely ignor them myself.

Re:Wait a minute

[1u3hr]

This is funny, why look at what you have in terms of wht the next guy has?

Everybody in the world does. And practically, if "the other guy" makes a lot more, the cost of living -- housing, food, education, transport, etc -- will reflect that, leaving you to "be happy" living a subsistence lifestyle, no hope of retirement, and going to an early grave because you can't afford healthcare.

Re:Wait a minute

[danila]

Actually, as a rule, communism doesn't fail horribly. For example, people in Cuba live much better than their neighbours in Haiti. People in North Korea live better than people in Bangladesh. People in Soviet Union in 1960-1980s lived better than people pretty much everywhere. If you don't beleive me (and chances are you don't), just check historical ratings of human development from the UN. By 1980s Soviet Union was in world top 10 for most of the relevant quality of life indicators. And all that done without colonial exploitation.

If communism had a chance to be implemented in the USA, for example, most of you (excluding Bill Gates, Michael Jackson, George Bush, etc.) would be able to maintain their standards of living, but stop exploiting the third world.

P.S. Just don't rely on American sources too much. Because of the (Cold) War they weren't objective, sadly.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

You will not have healthy people when the doctors don't care about the patients, and when there is not enough money to pay for the healthcare. And that is exactly what communism has done here (I live in eastern Europe), all doctors were paid the same, all hospitals did get the same subsidies, regardless of their achievements in caring for the patients. The result is that the doctors have no incentive to care for the patients, they get the exactly same amount of money regardless. And they still have this attitude, even after we have had capitalism for 15 years, because the healthcare is still free (paid by state) and all doctors still get the same wages. In fact the doctor's wages are one of the lowest in the economy (very unlike doctor's wages in the west) -- cca $700 per month, average salary of all people is cca $500, and that is because public healthcare is one of the last remaining communist "miracles" that we still have.

Re:Wait a minute

[zoeblade]

Try to say "I should get less than some people", it is logically equivalent but somehow much harder to pronounce :-)

No, they should get more. Less is the free equivalent of more, and this person doesn't believe in free software :)

Re:Wait a minute

[jesterzog]

What we're seeing in the real world isn't even perfect capitalism, it's a mixture of capitalist and socialist ideas.

I would have thought that by the same token, it woundn't be too difficult to claim that what we've seen so far in the real world hasn't been perfect communism, either. It's been a mixture of communism and dictatorships.

Re:Wait a minute

[Axoiv]

> Because that really means, "productive people working for the sake of slackers."

Not all software users are software engineers. Some are highly productive in other areas.

Re:Wait a minute

[hemanman]

Communism dosen't work because it is against nature. Howso you might ask, well, every animal has a strong survival instinct, and the specices of animals we belong to are no exception. It's the survival instinct that tells us to grab all we can while we can, because in case of hunger, illness etc. you'll need it. Some people call this natual instinct greed. This instinct is stronger on some people. It is also due to this instinct, that we owe most of our development as a specices, because invention is based on making it easier for yourself, thus better chance of survival. You can see this instinct very much if you watch children play, because they have it very strongly, and have not yet learned to master it. For a civilization to grow, you have to keep your survival instinct in check, or else you're back to the jungle.

So, how can someone in their right minds come up with a system, that disables the very natural survical instinct of the human race and think it will work?!? It is exactly as the parent post said, head-in-the-clouds theoretical nonsense that dosen't actually work in the real world.

But it can be used as a tool to keep survival instinct in check, much like religion was developed for this purpose so that civilization may grow. Communism is just another religion, and proves that no religious system was ment to be a political system, but more guidelines to keep greed at a level where it wouldn't hurt the development of civilization too much.

Pure capitalism the way it is turning in the western world, is hurting the futher development of civilization, and will take us back to the jungle eventually, if nothing is being done.

-H

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why exactly should I spend 8 years in college and then another 2+ years be a doctor to get paid the same as some bum who drops out of high school"

For the good of humanity?
Not a Trekkie, are you...

To pursue your dreams and actually do what you love. To believe in a purpose and to have a mission.
To fear not for your future when your marketable skills become redundant, or too expensive when compared to others.
Money is a great motive to work, but it does have drawbacks.

And on a side note, communism is always authoritarian (it took power by force), what the parents where discussing was socialism, and many democratic western nations have a somewhat socialist structure, nothing wrong with that.

Re:Wait a minute

[fsmunoz]

Hey, you're letting silly things like "ratings of human development" get in the way of things; in this forum people living in trailer parks is a great statement of capitalist victory!

Just to clarify, I was glad to read you post; amidst all the wage-slave mentality ("... I don't care if my coworker can't feed his family, he probably deserves what he gets...") and Cold War hostility it's very refreshing.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Lake Slashdot, where all the women are taken, all
the men are nerds, and all the worker's are above average.

Re:Wait a minute

[tjstork]

And how many ideas of its have we stolen or do you steal?

Consider: Will OpenOffice 2 change its menus to match the new "menuless" version of Office?

Re:Wait a minute

[Fred_A]

Because that really means, "productive people working for the sake of slackers."

Oh, you mean like capitalism ? (or pretty much any other -ism ?)

Re:Wait a minute

[Fred_A]

Who have something special such as ?

Parents with good connections ?
A special skin colour ?
A large bank account provided by their family ?

The ones who actually rise becase of their own merit are few and far between, regardless of the local ideology. Such is the way of our species. The various attemps at implementing -isms have had among other goals to counter this tendency. All have failed so far.

Re:Wait a minute

[Insensitive_Claudio]

Of course I should get less. I'm sitting here surfing Slashdot at 8:03 in the morning. The others are actually working!

Re:Wait a minute

[Taladar]

Why should they tell the management their ideas for improved efficiency? In our current society this is usually paid back in layoffs (which either affect the person with the improvement idea directly or through social pressure from their peers)

Re:Wait a minute

[Anders]

It's my understanding that you can link a GPL library w/o the requirement to release your source.

Your understanding is wrong.

Re:Wait a minute

[poszi]

Your examples are, well, strange. North Korea is orders of magnitute worse than South Korea while they started from similar level. Actually saying that people in North Korea are well (even compared to Bangladesh) is the worst troll ever. There are more examples: East Germany was worse than West Germany. I can also think of a few examples on top of my head of countries that were on limilar level before communism and the ex-communist country is worse: Czechoslovakia and Austra or Poland and Spain.

Re:Wait a minute

[Taladar]

Simple, nobody produces no-support, no-next-versions-necessary software because they want to have something to sell you tomorrow too.

Another example: In the last years almost nobody produces something that lasts much longer than their stated warranty because they want to sell you the next one ASAP.

Re:Wait a minute

[Taladar]

I had to study to become a programmer. I have to keep studying to stay current as a programmer so that I have marketable skills. What would be my motivation to put in that work if I were only paid the same as the guy who picks up my trash cans? For me, there would be none.

Actually in a communist society people like you without any motivation to work other than money would be the ones to pick up the trash cans of those that do their work and learn how to do it better because they are interested in that field. The only problem was/is that we need (and needed when communism was first tested) much more dull jobs than interesting jobs but the more automated our low-qualification jobs get the higher the percentage of interesting jobs.

Re:Wait a minute

[Grab]

Meanwhile, Microsoft itself had been making use of GPLed code for years without any of their dire warnings coming true.

Which code was GPL that MS used?

BSD now, there's plenty of cases where MS have used BSD-licensed code. But I've not heard of any GPL code. And if there had been, I really would have expected to have heard, given the publicity coup that'd be.

Grab.

Re:Wait a minute

[Grab]

If the GPL code is in an EXE file, with data only being passed to other places by standard OS services, then only that EXE file needs to be made available under the GPL. However that puts some serious limits on what you can do with it, and on its efficiency.

If the GPL code is in a DLL though, so that other places call the functions directly, then things are much more efficient. However all the other places that use the DLL must also be GPL. This is the so-called "viral" nature of the GPL (which the LGPL doesn't have). Cygwin is a perfect example of this in action.

Whether you use GPL or LGPL for releasing your libraries depends 100% on your philosophy. If you want to establish a de-facto standard so that everyone can use it, LGPL is what you want (or maybe BSD if you don't care about what happens to it after you've written it). If you only want the ideologically pure to use it, you go GPL. If you want to make money, you only release it with a dollar-cost license.

Grab.

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that GPL or LGPL? People often confuse the two and LGPL allows you to link to a library of LGPL'd code without making your code LGPL'd. GPL on the other hand can only be linked to or included in GPL'd code. Hence the viral nature. That's the description on GNU's own description of the license. No commercial piece can ever touch it. Is this mistaken?

Re:Wait a minute

[Associate]

Because they make a lot of unnecessary work for others. In my specific case, there is plenty of other work to do that gets ignored because it's usually something they don't want to do. Or as it's been expressed to me, something they are above.
Also, it's the improvement of processes that allow us to take on new business and compete in the market. Our company is notorious for closing down plants if they are unprofitable or don't make a sufficient profit. Breaking even is not an option. I know this is a little above the heads of rank and file workers. But that is the reality of business.
I could go on...

Re:Wait a minute

[TuringTest]

Communism dosen't work because it is against nature.

Yeah, tell that to ants.

Re:Wait a minute

[Perl-Pusher]

When are people going to learn to be happy with what they have and who they are. It's funny because I recognize in this debate some aspects of Maslow's hierarchy of needs [wikipedia.org] and there a lot of folks that just ain't getting to the top!

Needs theory is a theory of motivation. The original post was about communism, if the state provides everything and everyone is supposedly equal under the state, then there isn't any motivation to do anything more than the minimum required. I make a hell of alot more than my friends I went to high school with. At 21 they made more me, in school their parents were better off. I'll never get to the absolute top, it's who I'm comparing myself to that changes. I'll never be a Billionare, but I am better off than I ever thought I would be at 21.

I've had ample opportunity to see socialism in practice. I have worked for the federal government as both military and a civilian contractor for nasa for almost 30 years. I've seen people too lazy to even empty their own trash can into the dumpster 25 feet away because 'it's not their responsibility'. I have watched as civil service people claimed in a meeting that the reason a project was behind was because they needed a $5000 piece of software. The government sent them to school on the software, and then when they get the software it never even get's installed correctly because they handed it off to the system admin who didn't travel to Las Vegas to take the class. As a contractor, I have waited for months to get a node on a cluster replaced because the price is too high for a credit card purchase. So the order bounces from desk to desk while they get bids. They could literally fire over half of the civil service people and the effect would be negligeable.

Want to see socialism in action? Just look at Mexico, they have been electing socialist leaders for years. Look what it's brought them.

Re:Wait a minute

[d_jedi]

OTOH, I wonder if GNU/the FSF will accept the "show us the offending code, and we'll remove it" line for GPL violators that they use whenever anyone makes a patent/copyright claim against a "free software" project (most notably SCO)

Re:Wait a minute

[_Sprocket_]

Which code was GPL that MS used?

Services for Unix includes around a dozen GNU utilities, all GPLed (mixed in with BSD tools). More can be found elsewhere in the discussion... or you can google Slashdot for my name - I've posted rather detailed information on this before. :)

Re:Wait a minute

[hemanman]

Are you trying to be funny or are you serious?!?

-H

Re:Wait a minute

[tjstork]

Stuff goes obsolete. As soon as you figure out how to effectively use a tool, you realize ways that piece could be automated, which is what the next version does. Why be stuck doing the same thing over and over again. Don't you get bored?

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

As many other people have explained, Microsoft ships a product called "Services For Unix" which consists of the GNU toolchain (e.g. GCC), some BSD tools, some libraries, a few custom servers / utilities and a lot of documentation. It's intended for outfits where some PHB has decided to "standardise" on Windows and then oops - it turns out that there's a bunch of old Unix software running somewhere. SFU brings that old Unix software onto your new Windows servers, but ensures that Unix is very much a "legacy" system that needs to be phased out.

Anyway, obviously the GNU toolchain is GPL'd, Microsoft acknowledges that on their web site, and they provide all the GPL'd source code on an FTP site including their modifications where appropriate. It's linked from the SFU web pages, mentioned in the documentation etc.

It's no big deal. Microsoft is a big software company. Most big software companies use Free Software, in fact Microsoft is using (and distributing) a lot less than most of them.

It'll be news when Microsoft gets rid of their own toolchain in favour of GCC, or ships a major GPL'd component in their desktop OS or similar.

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

Some people intrinsicly deserve more than others, because they are better or have a more useful or rare skill. Your clearness of thought ends at one point, though. WHY does that person deserve a better life?

Because that person is more valuable. Should a doctor who busts his ass for ten years to become one make the same amount of money as some idiot who never gets a job and sponges off society?

Somehow, the notion that some people are better than other people must prevail for a class system to work.

And here is the fallacy in your thinking. "Class" has nothing to do with anything. Sure, connections between people matter -- someone is who is well connected has an easier time than someone who isn't. But see, that's all ingrained in the notion of "value". Someone has more value to someone else if they're is a personal connection. If you don't have personal connections, then you need to build your value in other ways.

Re:Wait a minute

[japhmi]

I have this great theory that you know what the hell you're talking about, but it fails in reality. Where is the fault in this situation?

Your sense of humor?

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

It wouldn't be a big deal except for Microsoft's dire warnings over what simply using "viral" licensed code will do to your business. It's not using GPLed code that's the issue. It's Microsoft's FUD that's a problem.

Re:Wait a minute

[d34thm0nk3y]

Communism is more head-in-the-clouds theoretical nonsense that doesn't actually work in the real world.

Neither does Capitalism, it just takes longer.

Re:Wait a minute

[d34thm0nk3y]

Uh, yeah, every one is equal is a _great_ concept. Why exactly should I spend 8 years in college and then another 2+ years as an intern to be a doctor to get paid the same as some bum who drops out of high school and flips burgers?

Why exactly should I spend 8 years in college and then another 2+ years as an intern to be a doctor to get paid less than some trust fund baby who lives off Nepotism?

Re:Wait a minute

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Communism is more head-in-the-clouds theoretical nonsense that doesn't actually work in the real world.

That is not exactly true. Communism is superior to capitalism in small economies as it reduces duplication of effort. In larger economies it generally fails because it does not motivate improvement via competition and because the consolidation of effort simplifies totalitarianism unless checked by an outside force.

Capitalism, on the other hand, is ridiculously wasteful in small economies and, leads to a very slow, but unstoppable consolidation of power. It also ends in totalitarianism unless checked by an outside force.

Communism itself is very hard to study, since there are few large examples of it that are not paired with a totalitarian form of government. The ideal economy would probably be a series of communist collectives that competed with one another economically. No one knows what the optimal size for such communes would be. In the U.S. it has traditionally been family or extended family units, which is probably far smaller than is optimal. In the former Soviet Union collectives were broken up by activity, often monopolizing entire industries. They were far larger than is optimal.

I'd like to see something in the middle, but such a system is very hard to form. Power and wealth both tend to consolidate and until we reach a revolutionary point, I don't see any economies willing to share or divide their power for the good of humanity. The U.S. for example has so much wealth and power consolidated into so few hands that the upward mobility which was the hallmark of the American dream has become just that; a dream. The poor don't get rich anymore, and certainly not by working hard and being smart. It is really too bad, because without that motivation, the innovation that has fueled the U.S. as a poster child for financial success as a capitalist country is gone and hard times are ahead for most people.

Re:Wait a minute

[Goose In Orbit]

Serious. Same thing with bees too as I recall.

Re:Wait a minute

[mqduck]

But thats all missing the point. The point is that you confuse economic value with human value. How does having a skill that is more economically valuable make that human deserve a better life?

Re:Wait a minute

[Reality Master 101]

The point is that you confuse economic value with human value. How does having a skill that is more economically valuable make that human deserve a better life?

Well, now you're the one confusing economic value with human value. Everyone has the same intrinsic human value, and that's where the government guarantees certain "inalienable human rights". Everyone is entitled to a better life defined in terms of freedom, equal treatment under the law, etc.

However, a human with better economic value inevitably gets a better life in economic terms. That has nothing to do with someone's value as a human being.

Re:Wait a minute

[c4ffeine]

Minor, but essential correction to that: most people do not want to move to it and are currently thinking in a way that promotes oneself. This means that implementing a Communist government is effectively impossible unless you can somehow manage to make it volunteer-only. It would work admirably well after that, but few people would willingly give up all their stuff. It's just how people have been taught to think. It could probably be changed in a generation or two, but for now, it's like that.

It doesn't fail horribly in practice, it's merely essentially impossible to implement properly at this time. Sounds like a nitpick, but it's important.

Re:Wait a minute

[techno-vampire]

It could probably be changed in a generation or two, but for now, it's like that.

The Soviets spent seventy years trying to change that and didn't succeed. I'm told that the more socialistic kibutzim in Israel survive only because of new adults joining them. When the children grow up they always leave. None of them want to spend the rest of their lives in that type of society. In general, It Just Doesn't Work.

Re:Wait a minute

[CarpetShark]

People have such a negative image of communism. I'll be the first to admit that in practice, it fails horribly due to human nature, but as a concept, it's great.

Well, no. As previously implemented, communism has corruption, but so does capitalism. The USSR competed very admirably with the US on the production of hardware for a long time, considering that capitalism is based on the concept of greed, whereas communism is based on the concept of sharing according to ability and need. The USSR failed because it was in an endless, unproductive war (as they all are), and eventually had it's oil pipelines sabotaged by the US.

Re:Wait a minute

[Ponyegg]

That depends what criteria you are using to asses 'best'.

Re:Wait a minute

[roboteeruk]

This may sound stupid, but how is the GPL *not* viral? If you link your code to GPL'd code, your code becomes GPL'd.

As a former physiologist, I know viral is the wrong word, but the meaning is quite clear.

Of course, the solution is quite simple - If you don't want your code to be open-source, or the GPL's particular interpretation of open source - don't link to GPL'd code!

Re:Wait a minute

[_Sprocket_]

This may sound stupid, but how is the GPL *not* viral? If you link your code to GPL'd code, your code becomes GPL'd.

As a former physiologist, I know viral is the wrong word, but the meaning is quite clear.

Keep in mind we're not discussing development of code here. And that's where the "viral" label is exceptionally deceptive. Microsoft's campaign implied that simple use of what they labled as "viral" licensed software would alter the license of other software owned by that entity. Not so. It might also be worth stressing that the GPL is not a EULA - there is no requirements from the GPL levied on the end user at all (things change if the user becomes a distributer / vendor or developer).

So what if we DO talk about development? You've already noted that use of GPL code is voluntary. GPL code doesn't simply sneak in to a project. It doesn't hop from file to file without the willfull act of human intervention.

Like any software license, the GPL has requirements that must be met (if there were no requirements - it would have no license and be released to the public domain). Microsoft did have an inkling of a good point - people should understand that the GPL (and other licensing schemes) are not public domain code and should be well aware of the licensing terms.

It might be noted that we have seen several cases now where companies failed to comply with the GPL for one reason or another. This did not cause all their own copyrighted works be released under the GPL. Instead, companies had the choice of either pulling their product and removing GPLed components or releasing the appropriate code as required by the GPL. Even at this point, companies still had a choice. If they had used proprietary licensed code under the same situation, they would have had a much simular choice. In any case, the "viral" label fails here too.

One final point - there are plenty of companies who use GPL code in their products. They comply with the terms of the GPL and release the appropriate code. However, those products often include considerable amounts of proprietary code that very legally avoids the requirement of being licensed under the GPL. Again - the "viral" label proves to be misleading.

I can understand the idea of the "viral" label. Heck - it's kind of catchy. But ultimately it's inaccurate and its introduction was designed to mislead rather than provide a catchy way of informing.

Re:Wait a minute

[roboteeruk]

Thanks for clearing that up. That's probably one of the most informative and helpful replies I've ever had here:)

Re:Wait a minute

[advb89]

Well, what is unix though... If you think about it, their just releasing an open sourced wrapper to an open sourced os. Does that not make since??? Oh yeah, and the above is flamebait towards the many Microsoft Supporters on Slashdot!!

Re:Wait a minute

[XnR'rn]

The germanies were the special case. West germany was funded by one side in the cold war, East germany by the other. Both were some kind of showcases for either ideology/side.

The thing is, that East germany represented the contender, while West one was the showcase for the "rest of the world".

Re:Wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the GPL is that if you use even a few lines of GPL code, you have to release the whole thing under the GPL.. which pretty much kills any commercial work (ie. for profit) on these projects (which some will argue is a good thing).

Bullshit... stop spreading around myths. If you just used a few lines of GPL code it wouldn't even trigger the GPL, your usage wouldn't even be considered wrong -- and even if you were worried, a "few lines" would take about an hour (max) to redo under your own license.

The GPL isn't, and never was, about "a few lines". It's about preventing the wholesale lifting of large blocks of code and making them proprietary.

Re:Wait a minute

[WilliamSChips]

Because they deserve it as they are the descendants of CAPITALIZM! (and the typo is deliberate)

first time?

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't they use BSD's TCP/IP stack? I don't see how this is the first time Open Source code made it into an MS product.

Re:first time?

[deafpluckin]

This is an urban legend which probably stems from Microsoft buying Hotmail (which was run entirely on FreeBSD) and the subsequent migration iterations. See this article from someone at Microsoft for explanation, assuming the article from kuro5hin is reliable :).

Re:first time?

[CDMA_Demo]

I think there is some mistake in the posted reply. Microsoft is rumoured to have used BSD's stack when they were developing MS-DOS. There used to be an application called net.exe that is supposed to have used BSD code, but M$ discontinued its use after they developed their own Winsock library.

Re:first time?

[deafpluckin]

The post assumes post-1994 NT.

Re:first time?

[niteice]

AFAIK for NT 3.1 MS bought a commercial TCP/IP stack that happened to be BSD-derived, which was fully legal. TCP/IP was then rewritten and I assume that by NT4 it was all Microsoft code.

Re:first time?

[SoloFlyer2]

Mod Parent Up.. That article is very interesting, Thanks :)

Re:first time?

[PickyH3D]

It could have been right from BSD. BSD has the best and most open license, free. None of this "free as in beer" stuff. No, it is 100% free, with no strings attached.

Re:first time?

[tgl]

Of course it's not the first time. Check the credits for Internet Explorer sometime --- last I heard they were still using libjpeg, same as they have been since about 1994.

Microsoft loves open source, as long as it's the kind they can use without giving anything back to the community. So, BSD = good, GPL = bad, in their eyes.

Re:first time?

[GigsVT]

Microsoft is rumoured to have used BSD's stack

It's not a rumor, you can see the copyright notice in some of the utilities.

MS uses at a minimum: libpng, zlib, BSD-derived TCP/IP, GPL utils in SFU, Ogg..

Probably more.

This isn't just rumors, these are confirmed things. The reporter that wrote this story really dropped the ball.

Re:first time?

[unapersson]

Yup, so free you can't fix bugs in code running on your own machine because it's a closed derivative that belongs to someone else. That's the freedom the GPL represents, the freedom of the user, rather than the original developers. It all depends on whose freedom you consider more important and why all the trolling about how the BSD license is 100% free unlike the GPL is pointless and dishonest.

It's also why the licenses can and do co-exist quite happily and why neither is likely to disappear in a hurry. No matter how much you might want that.

Re:first time?

[owlstead]

No, you don't understand. The fact that the hosts file is in an /etc/ folder is *purely* coincidence.

Of course there is O/S code in TCP/IP. They didn't want that internet thingy in the first place, and then they came to the very late conclusion that they were loosing that particular war.

In "hasta la vista", they will have a new TCP/IP stack it's rumoured. Which is a good thing since it will have hooks for various programs (read: virusscanners and firewalls). Which is a heck of a lot better than the stupid hacks they are using now.

Anyway, this is what I managed to pick up in my spare time.

Re:first time?

[PickyH3D]

It's also why the licenses can and do co-exist quite happily and why neither is likely to disappear in a hurry.

You do not seem so happy about BSD licenses.

Open Invitation

[Doc Ruby]

Practically all MS source code is, of course, proprietary, closed, hidden, unknown to the public (and to most Microsofties). So who knows how much "open source code" has "found its way" into MS releases? We can say with more confidence that Microsoft has opened source included in this release, an unusual act for the proprietary giant. Of course, they got the tech, and probably much code, from the "1990s supercomputer consortium". So they might be obligated, "morally" if not legally, to release that source. Whatever's pushing them to open their code, I hope this works out for them, and therefore for us. So eventually "MSOSS" is not unfamiliar, but redundant.

Re:Open Invitation

[Osrin]

Over 1m developers and 40+ governments can give you some measure of it... they all have access to the Windows and Office source under Microsoft's shared source program I believe.

Re:Open Invitation

[einhverfr]

I don't think Microsoft should be morally required to release the code. But then I actually think that this version of Windows is a bit of a boondoggle. After all, who in his right mind wants to run Windows as a HPC platform? Sure there is argument about the desktop but the HPC market? Aside from the inevitable "Imagine a beowulf cluster of BSOD's" jokes, it just doesn't make sense. Windows is way too fat for this kind of work. It uses up way too many resources on your computing nodes. Why on earth would you want to use it?

The next question is if you can imagine a beowulf cluster of Microsoft licenses.....

Re:Open Invitation

[Doc Ruby]

The reason I put "moral" in quotes in my post was because MS is a corporation, to which "moralit" does not apply in any sense of the word. But the people at MS might have a "moral" (in the philosophical and legal, not religious, sense) obligation, if they were given the source under conditions that they rerelease it (GPL style). Or maybe the morality is just the more diluted version, where they're counting on members of that community for relationships into which to sell more MS SW, including HPC platforms.

Remember that HPC networks have non-HPC ("LPC"?) workstations and servers at their edges. Having MS messagepassing SW that interoperates with custom HPC messaging SW on the standard HPC messaging protocols/formats requires MS open the messagepassing source, or it won't be adopted. Maybe MS won't eventually run "Windows" on an SP2. But the more it can integrate with that SP2's network apps, the more MS can sell the SP2 facility, whether it's appropriate or not. It's encouraging that MS is accepting the necessity of opening source to offer interop, or even accepting interop at all. Usually its that proprietary "embrace and extend" BS, which they seem to have judged less adequate in this market. Let's hope they continue to see the light. If their SW were open, and better, their monopoly wouldn't hurt so much, and might just become a serious competitor inspiring discipline among competitors in the market.

Re:Open Invitation

[Anonymous Coward]

who knows how much "open source code" has "found its way" into MS releases

Posting as AC to protect the guilty.

Several times I have found GPL licensed code in the proprietary system I am paid to work on. I pointed it out to management (who did understand the issue) and suggested BSD licensed alternatives.

So I am sure it happens all over the place, but more often because the person who puts the code there doesn't understand the GPL.

One junior programmer told me that this part of the GPL...

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

...means that you can use GPL code for anything at all as long as you don't change it. Don't ask me why. That's just what he thinks.

Re:Open Invitation

[WindBourne]

Not really. First off, I seriously doubt that 1 million developers are actually accessing the "shared source". MS is almost certainly counting every CS/CIS/MIS/EE/ME/MATH/PHYSICS/etc student at a school that they have pushed their vision on, and I doubt that even a fraction of them are looking at the code. Next, of those that are working on shared source, few, if any, are doing any OSS work esp. GPL code. Finally, I doubt that MS would put code that is known to be OSS in the kernel with the original code. That is, it will not have the same name, the same loops, the exact same logic.

Re:Open Invitation

[Doc Ruby]

Regardless of whether they're caught now, any violating act committed will always have been committed - they can't "take it back". So later, when lexical analysis decompilers can match binaries to source with 99.999% probability, despite obfuscating precompilation remixers, they'll risk getting caught. "Submarine GPL" actions might rake in many millions of dollars - the longer it takes to catch them, the higher the bill.

Re:Open Invitation

[drsmithy]

That is, it will not have the same name, the same loops, the exact same logic.

So, in other words, it wouldn't actually be the same code at all ?

Re:Open Invitation

[AstroDrabb]

Some students get access to a _small_ part of the Windows OS source code at some schools. The amount of code they get to see under the "shared" source stuff is very small. Governments (even the US govt.) don't even get access to 100% of the MS OS source code through the "shared" source initiative. MS is proprietary and they don't give up their code not matter what the MS-Marketing-Machine tries to say. End of story.

Re:Open Invitation

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Microsoft source is proprietary and is not available to the general public--but it *is* available. Many universities have access to Microsoft source code and have for many years.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Li censing/default.mspx

Having had access to the source for the past several years, I can tell you that there is almost no chance that it contains code violating any open source license (I have not looked at 100% of the code, so I can't be 100% certain).

Re:Open Invitation

[Bert64]

Not to mention the mandatory gui, wasting your resources multiplied by the number of nodes you have..
But now that you mention it.. there is one windows based cluster in the top500 list, it consists of about 640 dual 2.8ghz dell poweredge 2650 machines..
About 100 places above it, is a redhat 7.1 based cluster running on 600 dual 2.8ghz dell poweredge 2650 machines..
The windows cluster is only there, because microsoft paid a LOT of money to build it.. I doubt anyone will build a windows based cluster unless microsoft pays for it, especially considering the performance difference between linux on the same hardware.

Re:Open Invitation

[dedazo]

So who knows how much "open source code" has "found its way" into MS releases?

You don't have to guess - a lot of it was leaked a few years ago. The zealots descended on it like vultures, salivating at the thought of finding "all that GPL code" in Windows.

It's been a couple of years and I expect at least someone already went through the whole thing. The silence was deafening, I think.

Ah, but because the leaked code was mostly userspace stuff (IE, the shell, etc.) then maybe "all that GPL code" is actually in the kernel. Yes, that's where it must be. All that GPL code. In the kernel.

And so on.

Re:Open Invitation

[Anonymous Coward]

Please remove your head from your ass.

Modern versions of Windows (of which oyu clearly know nothing) run just fine without any GUI or even totally headless. Windows Server 2003 will not start a GUI unless you tell it to. Windows Cluster Editions will run headlessly with no problem (doesnt even need a graphics card or local harddisk).

That said, I prefer Linux because Windows is F***ing expensive.

Re:Open Invitation

[Doc Ruby]

Right, that's how all the bugs in Windows were fixed by the community the past few years, now that we have the source code. Not.

The kernel is, in fact, huge. And the amount that was leaked (last year, I recall) was just a small percentage. And we don't know who leaked it, or if, in fact, it really was the actual code Windows is compiled from. For all we know, it could be a plant: fake code, cleaned of any "stolen" GPL (or other open-source licensed) code. Leaked disinformation to discredit exactly the suspicion that MS code contains open source, violating a license.

That's the problem with the proprietary code. Until it's open, and can be compiled by anyone, there's no way to prove that it contains only "cleanroom" code, to abuse a metaphor. And given Microsoft's extensive history of cheating every chance they get to control or ignore evidence, suspicions are well founded. Not to mention the likelihood of one of their myriad acquisitions having "stolen" source, turning it proprietary against its license, before it got rolled into the other MS codebase. Without open source, even MS doesn't have the "due diligence" to check lineage as extensively as does the community as a whole. Even if MS doesn't know, it still might "know that it doesn't know", and need to keep the source closed to mitigate the risk of getting caught.

Re:Open Invitation

[Doc Ruby]

And you haven't looked at 100% of the code in the world that's covered by the GPL and other open-source licenses. So how can you be so certain that the code you're looking at is "original"? Of course you can't. And even 100% of the source available to be examined is far from 100% of "Microsoft's source code", like all of Office and SQL Server, for example.

Your Anonymous Coward post further undermines any credibility. Nice try, Bill.

Re:Open Invitation

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree
I would laugh so hard if the code for WinXP was eventually released and it all turned out to be BSD code plus the explorer interface

Re:Open Invitation

[Bert64]

How?
I would like to run 2003 headless here..

Re:Open Invitation

[dedazo]

For all we know, it could be a plant

Wow, and here I thought I could hear the black helicopters in the distance.

Re:Open Invitation

[Doc Ruby]

They don't make helicopters in black.

uh?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Windows has included open source code for a long time. And not just C:\windows\system32\ftp.exe (run strings to that file), why is then that several microsoft products haven been affected by zlib vulnerabilities, uh? Just read the fu***** license, it's all there.

Re:uh?

[moosesocks]

zlib isn't open source in the traditional sense.

zlib is simply released with no strings attached whatsoever. only catch is that the author's not responsible for anything that happens with it.

most people equate OSS with the GPL or a BSD-style license. zlib is released more or less without any license at all. It's a few lines that make it VERY VERY CLEAR that the authors don't care what the hell you do with it as long as they're not implicated

    This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
    warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
    arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
  including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
  freely, subject to the following restrictions:
 
  1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
    claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
    in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
    appreciated but is not required.
  2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
    misrepresented as being the original software.
  3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.

Re:uh?

[jellomizer]

Well it is still open source. It is just has less restrictions then other licenses. Just because it doesn't give some odd political statement it doesn't make it any less Open Source.

Re:uh?

[Bogtha]

zlib isn't open source in the traditional sense.

zlib is simply released with no strings attached whatsoever. only catch is that the author's not responsible for anything that happens with it.

Er, that is "open source in the traditional sense".

zlib is released more or less without any license at all.

That's obviously not true. Licenses aren't ethereal things that can sort-of-but-not-really exist. They are either there or they aren't. zlib certainly has a license, and you must abide by it if you want permission to copy it.

It's a few lines that make it VERY VERY CLEAR that the authors don't care what the hell you do with it as long as they're not implicated

In other words, it's fundamentally the same as the BSD license. For example, FreeBSD:

For the simply curious, the license can be summarized like this.

• Do not claim that you wrote this.
• Do not sue us if it breaks.

The idea that somehow the "right" or "traditional" form of open-source is the GPL is a myth propogated by some misinformed Slashdotters and bears no resemblance to the truth.

Re:uh?

[John Hasler]

> zlib isn't open source in the traditional sense.
> zlib is simply released with no strings attached
> whatsoever.

That is Open Source. It is also Free Software. The zlib license is also not significantly different from the BSD license (and it does "attach strings").

> most people equate OSS with the GPL or a
> BSD-style license.

"Most people" are wrong.

Re:uh?

[ScrewMaster]

"Most people" are wrong.

Some things never change.

Re:uh?

[xenocide2]

I donno what BSD license you're thinking of, but what you've posted is basically BSD liscence, though slightly more complex and restrictive. There's several forms of the BSD, but my understanding is that the advertising clause was removed, so most people refer to BSD to mean basically "here's source code. you may use it for whatever you like, however you like. the end."

I'm not a lawyer, but if I can't understand the license as a programmer, you've probably failed in a critical part of opening the source to your code.

Re:uh?

[VenTatsu]

So the Berkly licence qualifies as an open licence? Well then take a look at winsock.h, it's been a part of Windows since atleast 95.

/* WINSOCK.H--definitions to be used with the WINSOCK.DLL
* Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
*
* This header file corresponds to version 1.1 of the Windows Sockets specification.
*
* This file includes parts which are Copyright (c) 1982-1986 Regents
* of the University of California. All rights reserved. The
* Berkeley Software License Agreement specifies the terms and
* conditions for redistribution.
*
*/

Re:uh?

[shutdown -p now]

Quoted license is pretty much new-style BSDL, almost word for word.

Re:uh?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

The GPL is neither "right" nor "traditional", but rather is copyleft, and revolutionary.

Re:uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could have just linked to the zlib licence at the website for the... Open Source Initiative.

Have you seen the MIT or Boost Software License? They have even fewer restrictions. I think the BSD license is actually less restrive than the zlib license...

Re:uh?

[randyflood]

That is perhaps because people keep talking about Open Source software when they ought to be talking about Free (as in Freedom as opposed to beer) software...

Re:uh?

[cswiger2005]

zlib isn't open source in the traditional sense.

zlib is open source. The zlib license is closely related to the classic BSD-style license, and was one of the earlier licenses approved by the Open Source Initiative, which lists the zlib license here:

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/zlib-license.ph p

The Zlib license is also "free" according to the FSF, and is GPL-compatible:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#G PLCompatibleLicenses

zlib is simply released with no strings attached whatsoever. only catch is that the author's not responsible for anything that happens with it.

This is roughly correct; the Zlib license is a simple permissive license.

most people equate OSS with the GPL or a BSD-style license.

Most people should equate "Open Source Software" with "being compliant with the Open Source Definition (OSD)", see link above.

This being said, the OSD itself is derived from some people at Debian Linux who came up with the "Debian Free Software Guidelines", to help their project figure out which licenses were compatible with their goals. The first four licenses considered as such were the GPL, LGPL, BSD, and MIT/X11 licenses.

zlib is released more or less without any license at all. It's a few lines that make it VERY VERY CLEAR that the authors don't care what the hell you do with it as long as they're not implicated

This is quite wrong: zlib is released under a simple, clear, permissive license.
That is not the same thing as "without any license at all".

-Chuck

Re:In other news...

[TubeSteak]

I get the feeling that this is all somehow a devious trick.
:tinfoil hat on:

Not the First

[bheer]

There was the NT 3.x TCP/IP stack, but that's less relevant because MS bought a 3rd party stack and bolted it to the OS (funny how /.-ers obsess about FTP.EXE when the whole darn stack was BSD-derived).

Then there was SFU, which actually shipped GNU tools, and MS even distributed source for the GNU tools they modified.

Re:Not the First

[beforewisdom]

I was going to mention how this isn't the first time Microsoft has used open source code, but you beat me to mentioned their use of BSD in their NT sockets.

Re:Not the First

[Anonymous Coward]

There was the NT 3.x TCP/IP stack, but that's less relevant because MS bought a 3rd party stack and bolted it to the OS (funny how /.-ers obsess about FTP.EXE when the whole darn stack was BSD-derived).

are there any links to this? does anyone have any proof that this happened? i hate microsoft as much as the next guy, but this has to be the millionth time i've read this accusation not accompanied by any proof.

i'm not saying it's out of the question for microsoft to have done it, but i've just never read a single piece of supporting evidence for it.

Re:Not the First

[Anonymous Coward]

What, proof that they used a third party TCP/IP stack? Ask just about any NT-3.x-era dev ... it's not a secret.

Re:In other news...

[someguy456]

In addition, minesweeper has been replaced with a full version of 3dlab's Duke Nukem Forever...

Not the first time

[Sycraft-fu]

If you get Services for UNIX (a free download now) you'll find it contains some GPL software, and notes this fact.

Also depends on what you mean by "open source" Microsoft has used a lot of BSD code, they just don't release the modifications since they are not required to. However even GPL code they've used some of, and they you can get the source (for what it's worth, it's just things like bash).

Re:Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't most of it BSD licensed, OpenBSD in particular. @ undeadly.org: http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=200 30927090008

Re:Not the first time

[Sycraft-fu]

Most of it is, Microsoft likes the BSD license. Some people don't consider that open source though, since though the source is open it isn't REQUIRED to be open. YOu can take it, and sell a commercial closed source product with it and that's fine.

MS does have some GPL code with SFU, however, and they will give you a copy if you want. Most of it they didn't make hardly any changes to though.

Re:Not the first time

[mov_eax_eax]

Services for Unix provide python?, rsh/ssh?, nfs client and server?, fortran compilers?, automake autoconf?. java? because the last time i installed mpi, these were the requirements.

Re:Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people don't consider that open source though, since though the source is open it isn't REQUIRED to be open

Some people think the world is flat.

Some people think we didn't land on the moon.

Some people think Area 51 holds alien corpses and the spaceships they arrived in.

Fact is, the Open Source Initiative says that BSDish licences are open source, the FSF says that BSDish licences are Free, SourceForge offers the BSD as one of their licences, Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman both consider the BSD license open source or Free respectively, and there's not a link on the first page of Google results for "open source definition" that conflicts with the BSD.

In other words, the people who say that BSDish licenses aren't open are full of crap. They aren't "copyleft" licenses, but that doesn't keep them from being open.

Re:Not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people don't consider that open source though, since though the source is open it isn't REQUIRED to be open

Who are these people you allude to? Most think it is open, but not copyleft. If only copyleft license are open, there would be little open source software (not even LGPLed software would count, as they are weakly copyleft).

It is Free by GNU's standards & Open by OSI and DFSG standards.

Re:Not the first time

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

If you get Services for UNIX (a free download now)

Yeah, you get it here: http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe

Re:Not the first time

[UtucXul]

Services for Unix provide python?, rsh/ssh?, nfs client and server?, fortran compilers?, automake autoconf?. java? because the last time i installed mpi, these were the requirements.

Actually, I don't think any of those are required for mpi (at least not for lam or mpich). Not sure about python since I don't use it, but it is always installed. Fortran is a compile time option (which for some strange reason is turned off by default in the Gentoo package). nfs isn't strictly needed. You just need some way for all processes to share a filesystem or files. And automake and company are only needed to compile mpi. java is no needed (not even sure if it is supported).

All that said, I can't imagine why anyone would want to do parallel computing on Windows (except maybe to prove that you code is totally cross platform even to crippled platforms).

Re:Not the first time

[mov_eax_eax]

Not sure about python since I don't use it, but it is always installed
python IS required for mpiexec and mpd, NFS is required, unless you copy your executables around in every node manually, and not use any Parallel-IO capability.
Java is needed for Jumpshot-4, a graphical utility that shows profiling data.
in your debunking points you don't say a word about ssh, why?.

Re:Not the first time

[UtucXul]

python IS required for mpiexec and mpd, NFS is required, unless you copy your executables around in every node manually, and not use any Parallel-IO capability. Java is needed for Jumpshot-4, a graphical utility that shows profiling data. in your debunking points you don't say a word about ssh, why?.

I really meant it as just providing a little correction since I use mpi (lam specifically) every day, not a debunking.
I didn't mention ssh because I forgot to. But it isn't a requirement. You can use rsh/telnet. You would be nuts to do so, but you still can. Same with the nfs thing. You can do without it. It doesn't make sense, but you can.
And you may need java for a specific profiling tool, but you do not need it for mpi. I am of course interested in Jumpshot-4 now that I've heard about it. Of course probably just like all the other cool tools it won't work with my fortran 77 code.

Re:Not the first time

[mov_eax_eax]

i used MPICH2 for my thesis (simulation of fluids by lattice boltzmann method, c++, ch_p4) if you are interested i can send it to you :-) .
Jumpshot is nice, you must compile MPICH with mpe enabled (the right flags are really tricky).
-----
I'm really concerned about this windows 2003 cluster thing, they are going to make an incompatible version, they are NOT going to use SSH, or rsh since process managament is completly different, and a lot of things will broke. sure we differ in our views about minimum specs of mpi, but we agree about the broken windows-mpi thing.

Re:Not the first time

[UtucXul]

i used MPICH2 for my thesis (simulation of fluids by lattice boltzmann method, c++, ch_p4) if you are interested i can send it to you :-) . Jumpshot is nice, you must compile MPICH with mpe enabled (the right flags are really tricky).

I'm definitely going to check out jumpshot, but since I pretty much have to use lam-mpi (I've had strange trouble with mpich on our beowulf), I fear it may not work for me. I'm actually doing my thesis on hydro sims of galaxy clusters using a F77 code. Now for shameless promotion, the code is Zeus-MP.

I'm really concerned about this windows 2003 cluster thing, they are going to make an incompatible version, they are NOT going to use SSH, or rsh since process managament is completly different, and a lot of things will broke. sure we differ in our views about minimum specs of mpi, but we agree about the broken windows-mpi thing.

I could not agree more. We've been lucky so far in the parallel/high performance computing world that Microsoft (or anyone else for that matter) hasn't tried to come and take over any standards we rely on. I really hope this isn't the beginning of the end of that.

Re:Not the first time

[mov_eax_eax]

which is the size of your cluster?. because i'm just a poor student, my cluster only had 3 nodes.

Re:Not the first time

[UtucXul]

which is the size of your cluster?. because i'm just a poor student, my cluster only had 3 nodes.

I'm a poor grad student myself, but luckily, my department has a pretty nice cluster. We just got 13 new dual opterons bringing our cluster up to 29 dual processor nodes. There are a bunch of people using it, but I've used more hours than anyone :) (83367.00 cpu hours total so far, and my thesis isn't anywhere near done).

old news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this posted on OSnews days ago?
And yes open source is greatly inferior to microsofts "shared" source, as you know sharing is better.

Re:old news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this posted on OSnews days ago?

And what the hell does that have to do with anything? People complain about the content on /. and always complain about "old news". This is a fucking discussion board for discussion of things. Most things discussed here come from other sources, sometimes the same thing may get discussed here twice in the form of a duplicate. Wether or not OS news had it the other day is not relavent. It was brought to /. to discuss it. You are an idiot and if you think the purpose of /. is a 0 day news headline site. I don't think /. has any reporters on the payroll.

Re:old news?

[ischorr]

Yeah! This site isn't about "News"! It's "Discussions for Nerds. Stuff that matters"!

Re:old news?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you really think this site generates news? With the exception of ask /., Almost 100% of the topics and headlines come from OTHER sites. I'm sorry you did not realize that. Using your mentality, what time frame do you consider acceptable for slashdot to discuss a topic and where do you suggest the topics come from? It is really cool to sit back and bitch about something and play arm chair quarterback like the rest of the herd. Why don't you take your turn and throw out some suggestions on how you would make it better for everyone. There is a huge difference between the people that complain about "high taxes" and those that try to come up with an acceptable solution.

few questions.

[xWastedMindx]

If they are in fact using open source, and depending on which liscence said software has, how does this affect the commercial distribution of their Software? Does/Would MS have to provide said source code of the OSS in conjunction with their proprietary software?

Re:few questions.

[moonbender]

I assume that when saying open source you actually mean GPL'd software. Microsoft would have to provide source code to the GPL'd software they ship and to any other software that is considered a derivative work, such as a fork of a GPL project. Microsoft would not have to provide the source code to any software that is shipped along but not based on the GPL'd software.

So if Microsoft decided to fork The GIMP into Microsoft Imagevendor CS and ship it along with Windows, they'd have to release the MS Imagevendor CS code, but certainly not the Windows source.

Question

[Comatose51]

Anyone know anything about MPI? How is it different from other middleware like TIBCO? If it is better and does something similar I might bring it to my CIO's attention.

Re:Question

[hoka]

I've done only initial programming in MPI for a distributed systems course I took, so keep that in mind. What I think MPI is big for is how popular it is. MPI is a very open standard, has been adopted for a long time, and is used in quite a few research projects because some implementations are heavily optimized. Some of the bonuses of MPI include the ability to make groupings and do group-messages (with all sorts of abilities to combine/redirect group messages), blocking/nonblocking sending receiving (standard really), and its pretty easy to program in. It took me about two days to get a good feel for it and start designing some built-in features the hard way for the assignment, and it worked very well.

You should also note that Wikipedia calls it the "de facto standard", which I agree with (at least from a research pov).

Re:Question

[nick this]

Dunno about Tibco. I looked at the Tibco web site, and it looked like they were in the business of synergizing world-class next-generation paradigms using xml for b2b J2EE c# managed ejb something-or-others. Frankly, I couldn't tell what it was they did.

In any case, MPI is almost certainly not it. MPI isn't about synergizing or XML or b2b or any crap like that. MPI is a frameworks for coordinating multiple machines or processes in performing distributed algorithms.

Those beowolf clusters you've heard so much about? They are running MPI.

Re:Question

[Raul654]

My rearch group does work with MPI and other C supercomputing extensions (like OMP). I've never heard of TIBCO, so I cannot really compare the two.

As I remember it, MPI is more explicit (you explictely tell it where to do fork-join operations), whereas OMP is more transparent (you set up fork-joins at loops, for example, and specify private vs shared variables and OMP takes care of the rest). As usual, YMMV.

Re:Question

[leerpm]

MPI is not middleware in the same sense that TIBCO is. It is for much lower-level systems/hardware interfacing stuff.

Re:Question

[CouchP]

TIBCO, according to my readings of "Enterprise Integration Patterns" (Hohpe-Woolf) is more akin to BizTalk and at a much higher level.

Re:Question

[brsmith4]

I've done quite a bit of MPI programming using the MPICH and MPICH2 implementations. MPI itself is nothing more than a specification that addresses issues with sharing memory between processors, whether they are in the same 'box' or connected through some fabric like Ethernet or some of the high-speed interconnects.

The specification is focused mainly on the syntax of the API to make Fortran, C, C++, and Java (?Not sure if Java is actually part of the spec yet) codes compile and operate smoothly across different MPI implementations like MPICH or LAM, to name a couple (I've never run into an MPI implementation, personally, that has screwed with the standard. All my codes have always compiled and functioned cleanly across multiple implementations (after extensive debugging, of course ;-) ).

MPICH and MPICH2 provide many different "drivers" to allow its use over 100Mb/GigE ethernet (ch_p4), Myrinet (provided by Myricom, ch_gm), Infiniband, ccNUMA or NUMA-like systems (ch_shmem, or lock-free ch_shmemlf), and drivers for globus systems.

With interconnect fabrics like ethernet and low-latency Myrinet and IB, Message passing typically involves passing actual data between hosts across this fabric and the ch_p4, ch_gm drivers handle this transparently (this part of the setup, selecting the driver, is a function of your Administrator and not the developer). On large memory SMPs, MPI may pass addresses or references rather than the actual data, taking advantage of the fact that the hardware is designed to allow any single CPU to address any region of memory rather than flooding the memory bus with unnecessary transactions.

Take parallel video rendering for example, where we might be simply gzipping each frame... on a cluster-style interconnect, each host must have a copy of the frame it is operating on so it must be passed along the interconnect to the host before work is done (or it can be read by each host from the original file, if that file is shared across the cluster or copied to each node. This becomes very I/O bound and suffers from the slowness of hard disks). On an SMP, a pointer to the beginning of that array may be passed to the thread or process trying to do the work, while the segment of that video is stored in RAM.

Being able to share memory in such a way allows fine-grained calculations like very-large-matrix operations over slower interconnects AND SMPs (though your performance on the slower interconnects will suffer because of the bandwidth or latencies induced by the interconnect).

As well, MPICH at least, provides excellent support for debugging parallel applications through the mpirun_dbg.* commands. It uses your favorite debuggers whether they be gdb, ddd, dbx, or totalview.

MPI in a nut shell, provides for the easy creation of multiple process threads and facilitates the sharing of data between each thread to enable parallel processing regardless of how your CPUs and memory are connected. Don't know anything about TIBCO though, nor have I ever heard of it... Sorry if this was too much or too little info. I'm not really aware of the average /.er's experience with such things.

Re:Question

[brsmith4]

Those beowolf[sic.] clusters you've heard so much about? They are running MPI.

They could be utilizing PVM... PVM: Parallel Virtual Machine

Re:Question

[fitten]

MPI means Message Passing Interface. MPI1.x has no provisions for forking/joining/threading or anything like that. It's mostly sends/receives some collective operations (broadcast, scatter, gather, etc), and communictor building functions. MPI-2 added support for threading (among other things).

MPI is explicit in that you will explicitly call an MPI library function when you want to send/receive data between parallel processes.

OMP is more about threading, which isn't the same thing as message passing.

Re:Question

[sych]

Great info, thankyou.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean by "link"? Such a term has a very specific meaning.

Re:Question

[joib]

They could be utilizing PVM... PVM: Parallel Virtual Machine


In principle yes. Practically speaking, PVM is dead, or at the very least dying fast. Except for running some legacy code, nobody is using it anymore.

Re:Question

[brsmith4]

I was just being a jerk, trying to tear apart your generalization ;) Yeah, for all intents and practical purposes, PVM is very dead. Most all parallel apps these days are using MPI.

Re:Question

[joib]

My generalization, huh? I wasn't the one saying that beowulf clusters run MPI.

Including this post, I have posted only two comments to this thread. And the other comment I posted was the comment saying PVM is dying. Well, whatever, it's not like it matters anyway. ;-)

Re:Question

[d_jedi]

As I understand it, no. If you link to the GPL program, you are forced to release it under the GPL.. hence the program you originally link to could not be licensed under the LGPL.

Re:Question

[brsmith4]

Relax man... I didn't bother to compare the UIDs of the parent and you, my mistake. Not your generalization... cool.

Re:Question

[44BSD]

Is this a harbinger of an upcoming M$ attempt to take market share away from real computers doing number-crunching in engineering settings?

Hmmm....

Re:Question

[nick this]

and you are right... but all generalizations fall apart when applied to specific instances. But as a generalization goes, I think it was a reasonable one. And you clearly know it, but points anyway for being pedantic. :)

Besides, if the parent didn't already know the difference between some kind of xml/soap middleware and MPI, I wasn't going to write a thesis to explain it.

Perhaps I should have stuck with "No, it's not the same." :)

Cheers.

Nope, not the first time

[hoovs]

Ralph Giles of Xiph.org did an interview, where if I remember correctly he said that Microsoft, or rather Bungie, which Microsoft owns, used Ogg in Halo 2 and Speex in Xbox Live.

Re:Nope, not the first time

[NetRAVEN5000]

Actually, I remember reading that ALL (or maybe it was most of?) Xbox games use Ogg. And I know for a FACT that the PC version of Halo uses Ogg - I remember looking through the files and seeing a bunch of .ogg files. I think they also said it somewhere with the copyright info.

I wonder what would've happened with the Xbox if Bungie had released Halo for PS2 like they originally planned?

Re:Nope, not the first time

[JorDan Clock]

I wonder what would've happened with the Xbox if Bungie had released Halo for PS2 like they originally planned?

What? Nooo... Halo was originally in development for the Mac. Where did you hear that it was ever planned to go on the PS2? Besides, the Xbox barely handled it, why would the PS2 do much better (at the time, atleast.).

Re:Nope, not the first time

[NetRAVEN5000]

"Where did you hear that it was ever planned to go on the PS2?"

Can't remember where I heard it originally, but it does say it here.

Maybe the PS2 wouldn't have done a much better job than the Xbox, but they were going to release it for PS2.

Re:Nope, not the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

The Xbox barely had the graphics power to run halo, ps2 would have been a misserable failure for it as they would have had to remove so much just to get a reasonable framerate.

Re:Nope, not the first time

[spectecjr]

Ralph Giles of Xiph.org did an interview, where if I remember correctly he said that Microsoft, or rather Bungie, which Microsoft owns, used Ogg in Halo 2 and Speex in Xbox Live.

That'd be rather odd, given that the XDK uses WMA 8 64kbps variable encoding as standard.

MPI is how MS Implemented...

[Anonymous Coward]

...2003's HDBSOD or Highly-Distributed Blue Screen of Death.

With previous cluster technologies, when a single server would blue screen, the cluster remained online, but with HDBSOD, the entire cluster blue screens, ensuring timely, highly-reliable, redundant creation of crash dumps.

Re:MPI is how MS Implemented...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent, "flamebait."

Re:MPI is how MS Implemented...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It's funny, but frankly, I have never had stability problems (or BSODs) with Windows NT/2000/XP unless I had the wrong driver or bad hardware.

Re:MPI is how MS Implemented...

[Armadni General]

Please join my movement to overwhelm all the typical, unjustified, "Windows sucks!" arguments contained in the halls of Slashdot.

Re:MPI is how MS Implemented...

[rm69990]

Leave it to Slashdot crew (syblings and nephews of this post) to get oh so offended at a funny joke. Despite it being a false representation it was funny, so try not get your panties in a bunch, mmmkay?

Re:MPI is how MS Implemented...

[Anonymous Coward]

just wait to look the windows mpi stack, basically, from the faq, if one node is down, the entire cluster is down.

Re:MPI is how MS Implemented...

[ScrewMaster]

How about modding the parent "funny" as he intended his post to be.

Re:MPI is how MS Implemented...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Windows sucks for other reasons. :)

Don't get me wrong, I've had some issues with Windows, but I have other issues with Linux, and yet other issues with OS X. I am keeping all three OSs around because I think each one has a niche. While all three can more or less perform the same general types of tasks, each one has strong points making it better for particular tasks that the otherss won't do as well.

Re:MPI is how MS Implemented...

[pair-a-noyd]

Ask, and ye shall receive.

hurrah for free open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Free for a limited time only,all you need to do is spend $5000 on a per processor operating system (minumum order 10 units) and we will give you, absolutely free 1 THOUSAND lines of computer code for you to use in any way you like ! imagine that

operators are standing by for your call, dont delay for this fabulous offer

Re:In other news...

[pete6677]

Last I heard, Microsoft just filed for a patent on the idea of open source software. Hey, it wouldn't be much more absurd than some of their other recent patents.

Open source

[Ahzraei]

Open source? Interesting innovation on microsoft's part ... maybe they should patent it.

Re:Open source

[sabre307]

Shhhhhhhhhh, don't say that so loud, they might hear you. Then Stallman and the rest of the people at the FSF will have to pay royalties to M$ everytime they use the term FOSS. Anyway, it's obvious they've been stealing code from the OSS front for years. Is it just me, or did anyone else notice that after Firefox hit it big, the next version of IE put a yellow bar across the top of the screen when it blocked a popup, and when it needs a plugin? Right down to the button on the right side you can click to make changes. Things that make you go hmmmmm!!!

Re:Open source

[Bachus9000]

If my memory serves me correctly, IE6 SP2 was released before the particular version of Firefox that first included the "yellow bar". Nice try, though. :)

Next they do...

[Yaa 101]

Next they do is wait for KDE to have all functions envisioned to Vista, copy it, extend it and run...

Completely inaccurate

[ankhcraft]

The claim that this is the first time that Microsoft has included open source code in one of their products is completely inaccurate. Winsock is a BSD sockets derivative, and includes BSD code. I believe current versions of Windows have some code under the MIT license as well, but I could be wrong.

RTFA

[TubeSteak]

I, like you, originally posted before reading the article. Now that i've read the article, i'll quote the relevant reasons why MS went the OS route.

"The interesting thing is that we are already starting to see results. ISVs are coming back and saying that they just have to recompile and relink, and their applications just work. So we are trying to make it as easy as possible for them to be able to run their code in a Windows environment," Faenov said."

Highlight: their applications just work... because of OSS

It would have been extremely costly and complex for Microsoft to develop an alternative to the MPI technology, which "is a complex piece of software that would take years to develop," Faenov said.

Translation: It was cheap (free) and convenient

There would also have been a compatibility issue. "Standards are standards, but they don't specify everything. It's the implementation that usually defines that, and so this has been the reference implementation and most ISVs have tested with it, and it gave us a level of assurance that we will be able to meet the needs and reduce the costs for ISVs," he said.

Translation: Microsoft coulnd't enter the market and create their own proprietary standard.

Re:RTFA

[Doc Ruby]

I don't know about all that "RTFA" stuff you're talking about. Sure, the article talks about some constructive reasons MS opened this source. And about some factors that forced their hand, some of which are actually at odds with current embattled MS positions on OSS and open standards/formats. But we just don't know what other obligations also might have forced their hand. Just because the article doesn't say they got source code to republish under some kind of obligation doesn't mean that isn't the case.

But it is encouraging that some "OSS realities" are finally being not only accepted by MS in their rhetoric, but also apparently in their actions.

Re:RTFA

[TubeSteak]

Sure, the article talks about some constructive reasons MS opened this source.

The code in question was under a BSD license.
MS did not choose to open the source... It wasn't an option.

Just because the article doesn't say they got source code to republish under some kind of obligation doesn't mean that isn't the case.

I'm not 100% sure what you're saying, but are you sure you RTFA?

Re:RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? The BSD license makes no demands other than posting a copyright notice. Thats why we have BSD vs GPL license flamewars all the time.

Re:RTFA

[Doc Ruby]

As the other reply to your post makes clear, BSD license does not require opening source. As for whether I read the article, I'll never tell :). My comments speak for themselves.

TCP/IP stack

[willCode4Beer.com]

Isn't their tcp/ip layer also from BSD?

Re:TCP/IP stack

[Stevyn]

I believe they obtained a special license to use it how they wish. So it's not an example of stealing code under the BSD license.

Re:TCP/IP stack

[joebutton]

> I believe they obtained a special license to use
> it how they wish. So it's not an example of
> stealing code under the BSD license.

The special license *is* the BSD license. It pretty much says you're allowed to do what you want with the code, including putting it in your evil and bloated OS.

Re:TCP/IP stack

[bsd_usr]

You moron, how can you steal what's free? The BSD license is meant for BSD licensed software to be *used* with few strings attatched.

Re:TCP/IP stack

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it was... IN WINDOWS 9X. NT has its own stack.

Re:TCP/IP stack

[nacturation]

So it's not an example of stealing code under the BSD license.

No, but this is such an example.

Re:TCP/IP stack

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh well. Thankfully, open source to open source isn't anywhere near as bad as open source to commercial.

The Complete Cluster Edition?

[dtungsten]

Well, at least they're being honest.

Re:The Complete Cluster Edition?

[bheer]

Heh. It's actually the Compute Cluster Edition, but spelling and Slashdot go together like mercury and water...

Re:The Complete Cluster Edition?

[Anonymous Coward]

Naturally, you mean "The Complete Cluster FSCK Edition".

Re:The Complete Cluster Edition?

[Anonymous Coward]

nice link, it shows how fucked is the microsoft way. 64 bit only nodes?, active directory required?, wtf means "Windows-compatible MPI stacks". the sad thing is that some stupid people will buy this shit.

Re:The Complete Cluster Edition?

[dtungsten]

Somehow, that makes it even funnier. :D

Re:The Complete Cluster Edition?

[dtungsten]

Yeah, that's the implication.

Re:In other news...

[P. Rodriguez]

Even if it was, this move is great hope for the open-source community. Many people will see that the IT industry is going the direction of open standards, open specifications, and open-source code; more people will get to appreciate the advantages attached to it.

Even if it were a devious trick, does it matter?

You Bastard

[TubeSteak]

I actually got my hopes up for a few seconds.
My first thought was: What! How could they have released it without me knowing!

Then I went to the website and read what 3dlabs has to say: Coming "When it's done" from 3D Realms for the PC.

Damn You.
I've been waiting for that game for 10 years now.

Re:You Bastard

[siplus]

"Damn You.
I've been waiting for that game for 10 years now."

Hmm... should tell you something, eh? :-p

Ummm... BSD TCP Stack along with FTP / Telnet

[Eol1]

Maybe I am wrong here but didn't M$ orginally use BSD's tcp stack, ftp, and telnet applications. Last I checked BSD was OSS.

Re:Ummm... BSD TCP Stack along with FTP / Telnet

[robnauta]

You're only the 10th person to say this. To summarize the other responses, current BSD is open source. The first open source BSD was networking release 1 (NR1) from 1989. Microsoft's BSD code is from 1983, which means they bought a licence before it went open source.

Re:Ummm... BSD TCP Stack along with FTP / Telnet

[cswiger2005]

The version you're talking about is what the bsd-family-tree document calls "4.3BSD NET/1", which is between "4.3BSD Tahoe" and "4.3BSD Reno".

The earliest version of BSD software under an open source license dates back to approximately 1977, although only small parts of the total Unix system were under that license, most of it was under the AT&T license (BSD started forking from the "Sixth Edition (V6)").

If you want to talk about the first complete operating system release which was not encumbered by the AT&T/USL/SCO license, you'd have to look to "4.4BSD Lite" circa 1993?, from which FreeBSD 2.0, NetBSD 1.0, and BSD/OS 2.0 were derived. OpenBSD and Rhapsody/MacOS X then followed up from a second release of the un-encumbered BSD sources (called "4.4BSD Lite2").

Consult the file /usr/share/misc/bsd-family-tree, or Google for it if you don't happen to be running a BSD Unix.

I saw this coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Like we didn't see this coming. It's the start of the Microsoft cycle; [Embrace, extend, extinguish].

Not the First, but a first.

[pallmall1]

This will be the first time MS will so openly apply it's embrace, extend, extinguish method to steal open source. FTA:

Microsoft is working with Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory operated by the University of Chicago, and has taken its MPICH2 reference implementation, which most ISVs have tested their code against, and optimized it for performance and security. --bold added.

And, also FTA:

Asked by eWEEK what Microsoft will give back to the open-source community for the MPI component, which is licensed under the BSD and not the GNU General Public License (GPL), Faenov said all fixes will be given back, while "we'll probably give the changes back as well." --bold added.

Probably? This is probably just MS stealing again.

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[Bitsy Boffin]

It's BSD, not GPL. They can do what they want with it.

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[cortana]

You might want to write to the University of Chicago to tell them that their code was stolen. Presumably they are wondering where all their copies went, and now that the culprit has been identified they will want them back!

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[pallmall1]

I said stealing, not stolen. And MS didn't develop the embrace, extend, extinguish tactic just for the University of Chicago. That said, the University of Chicago might want a cut of the revenue from the proprietary version of MPICH2. Do you think they'll call it MPICH2# ?

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[cortana]

Oh, I'm sorry. So your use of the present tense means that Microsoft are currently in the process of downloading and deleting MPICH from the UoC's servers? ;)

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[pallmall1]

No, no. I would say MS is currently in the process of extending it. If MS holds true to form, there will not (from their point of view) be any need to delete MPICH from any servers, as it will not work on future *improved* versions of Windows Server (version here) Complete Clusterf*ck Edition. Clusterf*ck will use MS MPICH2#®. That will be the extinguish stage.

Microsoft has done this before; why should anyone believe they aren't doing it now?

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[EvanED]

That said, the University of Chicago might want a cut of the revenue from the proprietary version of MPICH2.

If so, then they need to learn to read. They released their software under a BSDish license. It's well known that one of the consequences of this is that it would be able to be incorporated into a proprietary product. MS has even done it before.

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[jizmonkey]

Probably? This is probably just MS stealing again.

A proud graduate of the RIAA School of Law, eh? You know not every tort is "stealing," and given that Microsoft is actually going to comply with the contract, there isn't even a tort here. Move along...

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[pallmall1]

You know not every tort is "stealing," and given that Microsoft is actually going to comply with the contract, there isn't even a tort here.

We'll see if MS MPICH2#® (or whatever MS may call it if they stick with their normal behavior patterns) contains the proper copyrights.

But hey, if some people here want to trust Microsoft, go ahead. We can all rest assured that next year at this time MS users will be wrestling with the latest patch, license, and *upgrade* issues, just like they are now. Once again, IT managers will have to explain why the software that was finally starting to operate reliably and become useful has to be replaced at great expense. That's a fact, and you don't need a law degree to see it. MPICH2 is just another item at an early stage in the MS lock-in pipeline.

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[emidln]

Dude, chill out. Someone attempted to tell you that copyright infringement is not physical theft. It's partially a joke, partially a play on your words.

Re:Not the First, but a first.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they can't use it legally without giving proper credit and claim it's their code.

Right Hand/ Left Hand

[PAPPP]

I get the feeling Microsoft is a little schizophrenic about OSS whenever I see this sort of thing. Aside from the (frequently pointedout) inclusing of BSD networking components, Microsfot has a couple other dealings with the OSS community that didnt invovle bashing. One of the stranger things I've come across has to be Allegance, a MMO-like space sim that Microsoft Open Souced after it tanked commercially. Appaerntly people still play it.

Re:Right Hand/ Left Hand

[mOdQuArK!]

Hmm, I wonder how hard it would be to get running on a console?

Re:Right Hand/ Left Hand

[Lehk228]

Allegance is fun as hell, i played it at a LAN party once and it was cool, requires good teamwork though

Re:Right Hand/ Left Hand

[Russ Nelson]

If you can't use it commercially, then it's not Open Source. A more accurate description is "Source Available" software. You can get the source, but you have limited use of it.
-russ

Re:Right Hand/ Left Hand

[John Hasler]

I get the feeling Microsoft is a little schizophrenic about OSS whenever I see this sort of thing.

Microsoft tries (with, unfortunately, some success) to equate "Open Source" with "GPL". BSD licensed software is, of course, both Open Source and Free Software.

Re:Right Hand/ Left Hand

[RLiegh]

I think it would be a little disengenous to call it "open source". from the web site:

* The Allegiance source code is for education and research purposes, not for commercial use.

BSD License

[saterdaies]

Microsoft has always said that it has no problem with the BSD license (which is what this code is under). They've even suggested it for people looking to develop open-source projects. It's not like the code got in there without their knowledge and now they're going to have to open source windows.

Hmm. . .formulates a plot.

Re:BSD License

[wk633]

In fact, they used the BSD Unix TCP/IP stack a LONG time ago.

MPI is an interface

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many different implementation of particular interface (MPICH, OpenMPI, LAM, FTMPI, etc). There are also many vendor implementations of it which may, or may not be based on open source ones. If MS opts to implement their own version of it, would you still consider this as open source code?

Re:MPI is an interface

[ScrewMaster]

No, then it becomes, at best, an open protocol.

Re:MPI is an interface

[Anonymous Coward]

nope, he had it right - it's a standard interface to various library implementatinos that handle the requested operations (initialization, communication, so on). Heck, the underlying library-and-support details can be pretty different - simple example, what parameters does mpirun take?

Unless you want to argue that, say, OpenGL is an "open protocol" too.

Re:MPI is an interface

[fitten]

Yes, it is an interface standard. Open protocols are defined so that different implementations of the protocol can still interact with each other. There's no such requirement for different MPI implementations (in fact, very few MPI implementations will interact with any other MPI implementation). It's just an interface definition so that you can write portable code. For example, I can write a program using MPI on my cluster of x86s and then recompile on a Cray for better performance.

One observation ...

[gstoddart]

Does the licence of the OSS software allow for distribution in this context?

If yes, then what is the big deal?

If no, then somsone needs to slap their pee-pee's.

Re:One observation ...

[Anonymous Coward]

> If no, then somsone needs to slap their pee-pee's.

Are you always this immature, or only on slashdot?

Re:One observation ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the licence of the OSS software allow for distribution in this context?

This is the software that Microsoft funded Argonne National Labs to produce some years ago so I'm pretty sure there's something in the licensing that will allow Microsoft to use it how they want.

Does this mean....

[zappepcs]

that the argument about quality and such of OSS is no longer valid? If MS keeps using F/OSS, doesn't that actually validate the quality and value of F/OSS?

The more F/OSS code that is included in MS products, the more they take on the RedHat business model? Or am I just not seeing things the right way?

Re:Does this mean....

[dedazo]

Microsoft has never had any problems with BSD-licensed code. It's the GPL with its viral all-or-nothing social agenda that they dislike.

Re:Does this mean....

[John Hasler]

You're not seeing things the right way. The only Open Source they use in their mainline products is under the BSD or similar. It's a on-way function: code goes in but no code comes out.

Re:Does this mean....

[aurb]

No, this means they are releasing Windows 2003 under the GPL.

Really for the first time?

[cortana]

I'm sure I remember a LUGRadio interview with someone from Xiph who said that DirectX (or was it Xbox Live, or both?) uses the Speex codec to compress voice data for in-game chat.

Oh, here we go: Halo 2 and Xbox Live use Ogg codecs.

Re:In other news...

[JohnnyBigodes]

That would be 3D Realms

BSD? In other news... (HUGE DUPE?)

[ImaLamer]

Open Source Code Finds Way into Apple Release

(From February/March of 2001)

linumax tells us eWeek is reporting that Apple, for the first time, has included open source code in the release of one of their products. The 10.0 version of Macintosh Operating System will be including the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) UNIX derivative. From the article: 'BSD is a key operating system that was designed by a consortia of university students in the 1970s to allow the easy portability of information through "internet" protocol stacks. It abstracts away things like sockets, and our focus is making it super easy for users to get some use out their computers.'

It's a joke! Smile!

Re:BSD? In other news... (HUGE DUPE?)

[fimbulvetr]

Yes, but the question is - will MS contribute all its changes back, preferabbly documented and in a easy to discern format? It'd be nice to see one giant corporations follow the true spirit of open source and actually due something useful with it, because Apple sure isn't.
Maybe one well be able to grep "@microsoft.com" out of some changelogs:)???

Re:BSD? In other news... (HUGE DUPE?)

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

Asked by eWEEK what Microsoft will give back to the open-source community for the MPI component, which is licensed under the BSD and not the GNU General Public License (GPL), Faenov said all fixes will be given back, while "we'll probably give the changes back as well."

It must be nice having people not only read for you, but actually comprehend for you, too.

Re:BSD? In other news... (HUGE DUPE?)

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I'm sure glad someone is reading and comprehending it for me, it sure leaves plenty of extra time for you and me to sit around and bitch.

Re:BSD? In other news... (HUGE DUPE?)

[Angostura]

So you're saying that the BSD licenses aren't in the true nature of open source? You're saying that that the GPL is the only permissible license?

  I think someone is confusing open source with free software.

Re:BSD? In other news... (HUGE DUPE?)

[cswiger2005]

Did Steve Jobs run over your pet, or is there a reason you're flaming Apple for their position with open source?

I mean, if you want to criticise Apple, by all means, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to do so...but claiming that Microsoft is "following the true spirit of open source" more than Apple is obviously nonsense.

If you want to deal with some facts, try asking the Apache folks whether Apple has been contributing changes and bugfixes back to apache.org in return for shipping the Apache webserver with OS X. Or talk to Larry Wall and the Perl folks. Or talk to the gcc folks about the compiler changes in gcc-4.0 which Apple worked on to improve PPC (in specific)/64-bit (in general) codegen.

And before I get typecast as an Apple fanboy, let me point out that Sun has done at least as much as Apple in terms of working with open source projects, as well as making huge contributions before the notion of "Open Source" even existed.

Never mind OpenSolaris 10, for all that FreeBSD and other projects are interested in Sun's kernel microbenchmarks and the dtrace kernel/process tracing capabilities to improve upon truss and ktrace, you can go all the way back to RPC, XDR, NFS, NIS, and other common Unix capabilities which Sun shared with the world via open standards and the RFC process, many years (or even a decade or so) before Linux or even the GPL itself was written.

Hey, I can criticise Sun too: see the Java license. But Java itself was a lot more open until Microsoft started playing the enhance, break compatibility game-- Sun had clear provocation and reason for making Java more restrictive, even if I disagree with the approach they took.

Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be noted WMP10 uses the OGG libraries. OSS usage by MS is nothing new.

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be noted that you're full of crap. I work on the WMP team and there's NO OGG source in there at all.

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

it should also be noted that you are full of shit for not including support for vorbis. asshole.

So tell me, do I have this correct?

[3seas]

Microsoft calls OSS viral. They then pursue obtaining anti-virus software...

Now this.... Does this mean Microsofts anti-virus software ain't worth a crap, or does it mean the problem is in a faulty (lacking integrity) mindset at MS? Or both?

Re:So tell me, do I have this correct?

[rm69990]

Are you trying to be funny? I'm really trying to figure out what in the hell you are talking about...

Re:So tell me, do I have this correct?

[WarForge]

Microsoft calls OSS viral

You have it wrong. Microsoft has said that they consider the GPL viral, not OSS in general and have used BSD-licensed code plenty of times in the past as well as releasing a few things from their software repository under open source licenses.

Re:So tell me, do I have this correct?

[leenks]

Microsoft calls OSS viral.

I thought they called the GPL viral (which is a perfectly valid description). Open Source is not just the GPL, and existed long before the GPL. They then pursue obtaining anti-virus software... Now this.... Does this mean Microsofts anti-virus software ain't worth a crap, or does it mean the problem is in a faulty (lacking integrity) mindset at MS? Or both?

Was this meant to be funny? "Viral" applied to licences as against malware means something quite different..

Re:So tell me, do I have this correct?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm...

I think da original post is funny.

Posting anon. cause I gonna admit I be just a typical dumb Windows user dat belivs anythin microsoft says, cause I can listen only half of it.

don't understnd how license can be virus, though I dunk mine in a tall scotch, to kill da virus, just in case... but me smart, don't DUI.

Is it true dat MS invented Halloween?
How day come up with empty head horseman?

dat like referance to us dumb abusable users?

get it, got it, go with it!

Re:So tell me, do I have this correct?

[3seas]

From a company that has used Licensing and discount agreements to suppress competition....Hmmm.. from a company that are leaders in marketing hype... hmmm... from a company that has had numerious anti-trust cases against them....and being found guilty..

Yeah, I'd imagine anything that effectively counters that bully methodology would have to be preceived as something bad to the bully. bit flipping the connotation of viral would be what? Unstoppable counter measures...

Viral to what? Seems enough of the right parties are taking it up that the term viral is in fact just a connotation from teh POV of the bully. Who, BTW has even tried to come off as the little guy, like uh excuse me.... little as being the richest man in the world at one point?????

NO! I'm perfectly aware of the connoitation "viral" being attached to GPL by MS, and not OSS in general....

So how does it feel to get back at you some of the BS you have put out?

Trust me! MS called OSS viral..... When it suites them...

Seeing those not liking put on them. what they put on others. Now thats Funny!

Re:In other news...

[JohnnyBigodes]

Actually... that would be 3D Realms. Sorry :)

Hmm. . .

[NetRAVEN5000]

Funny how MS called it a "cancer" yet it played a crucial part with their TCP/IP stack - and now in their "Complete Cluster Edition" of Win Server 2k3. . . guess we're just better when it comes to networking and clusters. . . It appears to me that open-source has been quite the opposite of a cancer - instead of hindering MS, it actually helped them out.

Re:Hmm. . .

[softweyr]

Microsoft didn't call open source software a cancer, it called the GPL a cancer. As opposed to the other half of the open source world, which considers it viral.

Re:Hmm. . .

[ScrewMaster]

Seems to me you can carry these bioanalogies just so far.

Re:Hmm. . .

[NetRAVEN5000]

Why? Because it requires you to leave reference to the original writers of the code? Or because if you modify it you have to make the modifications GPL, too? Neither of these is a good reason.

Re:Hmm. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

no because if you spend large amounts of money after basing your work on something that came from GPL then you lose all rights to your current work as you must give up the code to your derived work. MS has never had an issue with OSS such as BSD, it is just the viral nature of the GPL which incidently a lot of OSS people don't like either.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, I didn't notice that until I had already submitted :(

Re:For that matter...

[Salo2112]

IIRC, they purchased their stack from a company called Spyder, which based their implementation on the BSD stack. So, yes, and no. :)

Not news. MS has used Zlib for years

[Billly Gates]

Funny how the windows vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of Zlib appeared at the same time.

IP stack

[nurb432]

Last i heard that was (legally ) taken from BSD.

hmm, well

[SQLz]

We know at least one thing about Windows 2003 cluster edition will be secure.

In related news

[SQLz]

Microsoft submits a patent for a library specification for message passing proposed as a standard by a broad-based committee of vendors, implementers and users.

Its a BSD License

[Nit Picker]

At least that's the way I read the FA. No big deal.

what implementation

[oudzeeman]

OK, so I didn't RTFA, but MPI is just a standard. There are open and closed source implementations of said standard. They can include a MPI library, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are including open source software.

Re:what implementation

[oudzeeman]

OK, I read TFA and they are using an open source implementation of MPI2 (MPICH2). Maybe the summary should have mentioned that... but I guess unless you're a cluster guy like me it doesn't really matter which MPI they used.

I was going to moderate...

[oPless]

... but I think I better post instead :o)

Ignoring the BSD tcp/ip stack (which practically every OS uses some version thereof) and the ftp/telnet apps, and SFU (MKS utils and Interix subsystems)

M$ Doesn't dislike Open Source, they just don't like the GPL and its viral nature. I happen to agree to that too. Every newbie seems to release (or at least seemed to a few years ago, when they made their statement) their favourite program to the world under the GPL.

Previously these programmers would have released the code as shareware or public domain. But I've seen folk release 'trivial' (or just plain shite) software as GPL which I find laughable.

Anyway I'll stop there before I start foaming at the mouth. Nurse! Medication Please!

mmmmm nurse!

Re:I was going to moderate...

[Anonymous Coward]

So...the "BSD tcp/ip stack...and the ftp/telnet apps, and SFU (MKS utils and Interix subsystems)" are "trivial" as well?

How about a preembtible kernel? A full office suite?.

Jeez. I'd love to see some of the stuff you've coded if this stuff is trivial.

zlib is open source.

[Nailer]

The traditional sense of Open Source is the Open Source Definition, much in the same way that the traditional sense of Free Software is software that provides the FSFs list of essential freedoms.

zlib meets all the points in the Open Source definition and can therefore be called Open Source. So can any public domain software.

Re:zlib is open source.

[mrchaotica]

So can any public domain software.

Not really. In 100 years or so, the copyright may start to expire on some proprietary software. At that point it'll be public domain, but will still be closed-source because only the binary will be available.

Incidentally, this is why all software should be open source (but not necessarily Free): because the point of copyright is so that the public can make derivative works, which can't happen without the source code.

Re:zlib is open source.

[Nailer]

You're right. I meant to say any public domain source code, not software.

Inconceivable

[pbailey]

Doesn't Microsoft think that Open Source undermines the whole capitalist way of doing business in America, and that it will cost the economy billions of dollars that should rightfully go to proprietary software vendors (read Microsoft).

Oh, the hipocracy!

Re:Inconceivable

[Anonymous Coward]

No.
Microsoft said that "Free (as in freedom) Software"
undermines blah blah blah.

What MS said about GPLed software has nothing to do with them including open source software, and anyone flaming them because of this is simply an uninformed idiot.

stolen?

[willCode4Beer.com]

I wasn't suggesting they stole anything (how can you steal free software anyway?). I seem to remember reading a MS license that mentioned that it contained contained software from berkley.
I'm sure some folks more knowledgable than myself might clarify.

Re:stolen?

[MarsLander]

how can you steal free software anyway?

This is just another example of the poor analogy that is "intellectual property". Really, software is licensed. So the question is, have they complied with the license's terms? If they have, fine.

The idea that you can "steal" free software might seem ridiculous because you already have it, and are allowed to copy it for no money. But violating the license terms is still a copyright violation.

Theft of intellectualy property is just a disingenuous idea.

It will also include an open infiniband stack

[soldack]

It will include OpenIB for Windows. See:
http://windows.openib.org/. It uses a BSD style license.

The IB folks are getting more MPI bandwidth than any interconnect out there. The latency is also very good.

By the way, MPI is not the first RDMA technology Windows has had. WinSock Direct has allowed user space RDMA through a sockets interface for some time.

Open Sores

[LaughingCoder]

Finally Microsoft admits it -- Windows has Open Sores.

Umm...not the first time

[rdean400]

Their TCP stack is well-known to have BSD code in it. I doubt their Services For Unix is entirely a from-scratch item, also.

Re:Umm...not the first time

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

At one time, TCP stack was heavily BSD, they since rewrote it, I think when NT 4.0 came out.

A lot of the command line net tools are still BSD though....

cygwin-1.5$: grep 'Regents of the University of California' *.exe
Binary file finger.exe matches
Binary file ftp.exe matches
Binary file nslookup.exe matches
Binary file rcp.exe matches
Binary file rsh.exe matches

SOAP, X.500

[SumDog]

Microsoft has always embrased open standards. They "embrace and extend." They have DHCP servers...sure some old versions of Windows don't obtain DHCP leases correctly, but they've been patches and fixes here and there and everything seems to work.

ActiveDirectry is a standard X.500 protocol...with a couple of interesting extras which the Samba team is still trying to work with.

SOAP, well to be honest I never liked SOAP...or XML, but Microsoft uses it and it sorta works with other SOAP implementations...sorta. (I tried using a .NET client to communicate with nuSOAP for PHP about a year ago...worked fine unless you wanted to send an array).

The fact is with any open standard, you're gonna have problems with getting the implementations correct between ever device, OS and embedded that implements it. But back to the point, I RTFA and, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like they're just supporting another open standard like they've done so many times before. How is their support of MPI different than how they support SOAP via the .NET Framework?

SumDog

Re:SOAP, X.500

[Nomad37]

The difference, as someone from UChicago pointed out in the article, is that rather than trying to reimplement a standard (with all the concommitant problems you point out) MS is taking the reference implementation already done by the uni lab and extending it...

Some of you may have concerns about embrace/extend, I know I do :o)

Re:SOAP, X.500

[Creepy Crawler]

---SOAP, well to be honest I never liked SOAP

Woah, by your smell, I can surely tell! I do prefer DETERGENT myself.

j/k :-)

Re:SOAP, X.500

[Anubis350]

just for the record, having just fixed our win2k3 domain controller, I can say with confidence active directory is a true PITA and POS. It's like they said "let's take something neat and cool and make it ugly and painful!". Grrr.. exploring moving to a osx server box with OD as I type this.

No It isn't

[hackwrench]

I should get more than most people can be true when no one should get more than you, I should get less than some people cannot

Re:In other news...

[Foofoobar]

Well my Fedora desktop has a flying pig screensaver. So I guess you're right :)

I smell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawsuits!!! (and some sweaty guy yelling "Developers developers developers!)

Geez guys, come on (-2: Redundant)

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, I can't believe I'm the first to mention the TCP stack...

hehehe... this isnt the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe me.. THIS IS NOT the first time open source code has made its way into M$ products. I worked with one of the primary developers of an open source packet scrubber (I won't name the actual packet scrubber, as he would like to remain anonymous). The developer stumbled accross a decent size chunk of his code in the windowsXP SP2 firewall.

So, no this isn't the first time. Its the just the first time they have made it public knowledge.

Re:hehehe... this isnt the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

Um.. if he has an open source project with his name already out there, why does it matter?

"Um hey guys, I have this open source software but I cant tell you about it becuase I dont want you to know who I am".

Re:hehehe... this isnt the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great. Proof? Why should I believe you?

MS Dynamics AX is open sourced

[Anonymous Coward]

Formaly known as Microsoft Axapta is open sourced,the application with full development envoirement (We can say that almost 99% of the code is open). Actually it is goes to the other MBS product line, Microsoft Business Solution unit (ERP). Microsoft seems to committed to keep open the source code of their buiness application because their belive in the flexibility of the implementation. If you know the Axapta community you can find very similarity to the Open source community exchanging ideas, developments etc. KEEP in mind! MS will continue this practice to overcome the other big players in the ERP market (SAP, Oracle etc.)

I think it's called...

[mattyohe]

Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition.

link

MPICH2? What interests me...

[jd]

...is WHY they would choose the version of MPI that is regarded as a great reference edition but not that good for serious work. MPICH2 does not support shared libraries under Microsoft's C compiler or under Windows (MPICH2's docs) or external data representations. Their version of ROMIO also hangs when using MPI threads.

(Also, MPICH sucks when used with multiple devices - you have to compile it with the device(s) you're using, and can only configure it for one device type at a time. So if you're planning on using a mix of Infiniband, Globus and Ethernet, forget it. It won't work.)

Probably the best MPI library out there is Open MPI, which supports the MPI2 standard, supports MPI threads and progress threads, is much more optimizable for different platforms and was developed by groups ranging from Los Alamos Laboratories (yes, the nuke place) and the LAM/MPI development team.

Ok, you have a choice between two implementations. One is slow, has a poor release cycle and has been forked numerous times (MPICH, MPICH2, MP-MPICH, Globus MPICH, GAMMA MPICH and MVICH are all forks off the same code-base). The other is partially written in assembler, is developed by a broad consortium of MPI experts and is unlikely to fork as the maintainers are really good about integrating new code. Which would you pick?

I am also concerned about Microsoft's history of "Embrace and Extend' - are they planning on breaking the MPI-2 specifications for their own purposes? I can't see any value in them doing so, but I don't see any value in 'Embrace and Extend' anyway.

mpi is an interface

[Anonymous Coward]

MPI is an interface. It's not software or code. MPICH/LAM/IRIX MPI/AIX MPI are the actual implementations, which can be done in whatever way you like. Even some of the MPI functions themselves are somewhat ill-defined at times in the spec.

MS is including their own implmentation of the MPI INTERFACE which means all the software (a lot of it) that has been written over the years for clusters using the MPI interface will also run on the MS cluster product.

Re: Public domain

[Jamesday]

You might remember that it's possible to dedicate software to the public domain prior to the expiration of a copyright term, including at the time it's created. Such software is the most readily reusable form of open source there is, since it is compatible with public domain works as well as all open source licenses.

So does...

[TheNetAvenger]

So does this mean they are cool like Apple now for using Open Source technology in a product they sell?

Can we start applauding them like we do Apple and put them on the same pedestal?

Are they are new heroes now, just like we made Apple when they started using Free Open Source technology instead of developing their own versions?

(PS the Flamebait Mod should be added to this post automatically) :)

Re:So does...

[Anonymous Coward]

"(PS the Flamebait Mod should be added to this post automatically) :)"

Don't you love the predictability about slashdot ? Watch this thread everybody is whinning about "they call it viral and cancer" but they seem to think that the GPL license is the only opensource equivalent that exists. Everybody that reminds them that they called the GPL viral and as a cancer, not opensource has en will be modded down.

Oh yes it's only microsoft that spreads fud... .

desperate

[Lasos]

wow microsoft is obviously getting desprate. first w/ all the advertising for their products no to go soo high to actually give up their stand point that bill gates has held since his college days. and actually use open source software... amazing thank u god for linux and unix

Define "productive people"

[SolitaryMan]

productive people working for the sake of slackers.

I always thought that really productive people are working for the sake of their work, just because they like it. No money issues involved.

You don't have to call them out on it... sheesh!

[St. Arbirix]

It's like you finally convince one of your friends to come hang out at a nudist beach and then you point at their genitalia and laugh.

So maybe they're warming up to the idea. That's cool. We don't have to make them uncomfortable.

Send them a beer and say "Bully for you!" :-)

Re: Public domain

[mrchaotica]

Yeah, but who dedicates binaries to the public domain without donating the source code also? I only mentioned expiring copyright because I figured that the vast majority of binary-only public domain would have become so involuntarily.

And you're right that public domain software is the most readily reusable there is, but only if you have the source code.

Ye o'fool

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, too bad you chose to submit your response to the deameanor of Satan and allow the demons to post on your behalf, rather than post to Slashdot by the grace of Jesus H. Taco and under the wings of the not-so-flying Arch Angel CowboyNeal.

<dictation>
Ahhhhhhhhhh...
</dictation>

nothing new

[idlake]

Microsoft has included open source software in lots of their releases. Some key functionality in Windows is derived from open source software. Often, they like to take the software, modify it to make it incompatible with the rest of the world, and then release the result as a product; they instantly get the open source functionality while at the same time threatening to replace the open standard.

That's why Microsoft (and Sun and Apple, for that matter) love BSD and MIT licenses so much: it gives them complete freedom to take advantage of other people's work.

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.
They can take advantage of PAST work, bugs and all.
They rarely get the full story, or maintain it. They should really take the code, because they can, and then pay the author or another hot shot money to concentrate on or audit the code, and report bugs. Take zlib, or the stack - it would be a good idea to thow some money into the pot, something some programmers understand.

Apple being one of the exceptions. Imagine the glee MS could get by buying particular linux code audits by respected individuals, results timed to be released at launch times - oh wait what a shocking idea.

Re:nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Your response is incoherent ramblings.

In fact, Microsoft and Apple and Sun all have taken BSD code, and maintained it internally for years, merging back improvements from the public development tree.

GPL utils?

[Some Random Username]

The SFU utils are the openbsd userland, which is not GPL. Run strings on the binaries, the copyright notice is pretty obvious.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you, from a proprietary program, link to an LGPL program, which in turn links to a GPL program, and not have to release your code? Just curious.

Complete Cluster Edition of Windows Server 2003

[Ripping Silk]

Complete Cluster ...... Am I the only one that finds this funny ??? LOL

VRML Viewer

[welshie]

the Microsoft VRML viewer plug-in for Internet Explorer, back in 1995-1996 (can't remember precisely) supported gzip compression, and I distinctly remember seeing a GPL relating to the gzip code on the click-through installer.

HE's RIGHT!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL!!!

WHOAHAHAHA!!!

Read this guy's journal!

He needs more than the rest!!

squeel piggy, the open source steam roller is comin at ya!

Exactly who's being assimilated now, Ms. Borg?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly who's being assimilated now, Ms. Borg? Hm? THe only too-bad thing is, it doesn't happen the other way.

In other words, they're not zealots

[Moraelin]

The "problem" is that they're not schizophrenic, but that Slashdot and the gang try to squeeze it (and the rest of the world) in some categories that just don't fit. So MS, like pretty much other real world company, just falls somewhere in between. And then we proclaim them schizophrenic, because it beats admitting that our artificial categories are what's wrong.

Some nerds seem to need to see the world as some Star Wars parody, where everyone is either our sworn ally for life or our sworn enemy. Knights in shiny armour versus evil sorcerers. And where everything happens for something that's not just political agenda, but really religious dogma. Super-villains that don't just want to take over the world, but above all to prove once and for all that their own dogma (e.g., the Sith Codex) is better than your dogma (e.g., the Jedi Codex.)

MS isn't schizophrenic, or not any more than any other corporation. It's just not playing by those rules. The real world as a whole isn't.

MS (just like IBM, Apple, Sun, etc) isn't out to make a political point about IP, it's out there to make money. By whatever means they can. Stuff like IP is just a tool, not an end by itself. And dogmas are just stuff you put in a PR release, not something you pour all your corporate resources and go on a crusade to convert the heathens. Again, it's just a tool.

And like any tool, they use a different one when that fits better. The real world doesn't pledge allegiance to a tool, nor divide itself in zealots of the Sacred Hammer vs zealots of the Holy Screwdriver vs zealots of the One True Saw.

MS uses OSS, even GPL'ed software, when it suits its needs. It even published its own sources when that looked like a good idea. (The MFC sources are just about as free or non-free as Sun's Java sources, and were so long before Java or Allegiance.) And it damns OSS when that suits its needs better.

The same applies to any other major company. IBM, Sun, Novell, take your pick. They all flipped between trying to lock you in in some areas, and trying to look like the champions of OSS in others, and various other shades in between, depending on which looked like it would serve their interests betetr. (E.g., if you think IBM really is the champion of OSS and GPL, ask them about the sources to WebSphere or MQSeries some day. See if you can get those under the GPL.) Sun even had several bipolar years of flipping like a yoyo between "we love OSS and Linux dearly" and "Linux is teh suck! Die! Die! Die!" within the same day.

So basically that's all there is to it about MS: it's not that they're schizophrenics about these dogmas, it's that they're really atheists there. They couldn't care less about either dogma, they just go with what makes them money.

MS probably wouldn't even have a problem with GPL as such, if it weren't under attack on that front. It's not just that Linux is a direct competitor, it's that Linux and the GPL have become the battle banner of the anti-MS alliance. So MS fights back with its own press releases and bogus "independent" studies.

PHP SOAP works with .NET

[N8F8]

Wrote a Web Service in PHP using the native SOAP interface and a friend sitting next to me on another machine consumed in with a .NET client with no problems for Arrays or other SOAP types. I do find it a little flaky that I have to define a Record and Recordset just to pass an associative array. It would also be nice if the buit in SOAP server generated WSDLs for you. NuSAOP can, so you can cheat and copy the NuSOAP WSDL to use with SOAP statically.

Premature Optimization Is The Root Of All Evil

[Moraelin]

I keep hearing about how Windows is bloated and used this huge heap of your resources, but have you actually thought about it? It uses... what resources?

CPU perchance? Well, close any background processes you installed yourself and wouldn't run on a server (e.g., SETI, Folding@home, Steam, WinAmp, etc) hit CTRL-ALT-DEL and look at the CPUI usage. Hmm. It's 0%, isn't it?

Memory? You do realize that we're talking C code, right? All those GUI libraries, if you don't use them, they'll either not even be loaded, or get swapped back to disk within seconds. All that code to draw menus and combo boxes and whatnot, isn't even in memory at all, when Windows is sitting at the login screen and running your server software as a process.

HDD? Well, a HPC cluster could boot off the network, if you don't want to waste local HDD space, so there you go.

So exactly what valuable resources does that GUI use? No, seriously.

All this talk of Windows bloat just reminds me of the "premature optimization is the root of all evil" quote I've put in the subject. You're trying to "optimize" somthing (here: resource usage) without measuring first. How do you even know you have a problem or what's the impact of your optimization, then? How do you know if it's even an optimization at all? How do you know if putting your efforts into something else wouldn't make a bigger difference?

Here's an idea for you: if we're talking HPC, the performance of thread implementation and of that MPI implementation will make a _far_ bigger performance impact than those GUI libraries. Those 0% background services will make just that: 0% difference, but an overhead in passing the messages around can kick performance right in the pants.

Re:Premature Optimization Is The Root Of All Evil

[Doc Ruby]

Maybe your Zen Windows supercomputer is "HPC" when nothing is running. But when an app makes system calls, it's calling "LPC" Microsoft code. So much of the IO subsystem also winds through the GUI, because the architecture is so spaghetti, that it gets bogged down. Then there are the system services that start up. And the bloated DLLs that load big chunks in and out of memory for one function call, and which don't flush quickly enough due to lackadaisical garbage collection. And of course so much of that is unpredictible, and untuneable, since the source that executes those scenarios is secret, and can't be optimized. "Premature" optimization is the only kind available for Windows, usually in the form of "use another OS instead".

Really, don't you think there'd be more than just one Windows HPC entry in the "Top 500", ones that weren't bought onto the list by Microsoft? Why is the same HW running Linux so much "H'er PC"? The industry is extremely competitive, as is the MS attempt to enter it. Why hasn't MS been successful in cracking it yet, if WIndows is so HPC? And why does my desktop run so much faster with Debian precompiled binaries than when I boot it into Windows?

MPI vs PVM

[Anonymous Coward]

I hated MPI and loved PVM. My postgrad supervisor the opposite. Will MPIs adoption by MS kill PVM or was it already dead... It was a long time ago I last looked at that kinda stuff or had access to a supercomputer... I think I liked PVM 'cause you could run it a mixed environment of different OSes ...

Hooray !

[TractorBarry]

Well at least that's one bit of the O/S that should work properly (unless they've "improved" it of course ;)

Nothing new

[MemoryDragon]

Some code in Windows has its origins in BSD, Hotmail was running BSD for years, Lucene.Net is in some Microsoft products, and probably some other apache stuff as well.

Nothing wrong with that

[Barryke]

Nothing wrong with that, the author intends/allows usage like this.
Whats the fuss about?

Well they released it

[TarryTops]

coz MS cluster software has sucked for years so they hope that some bloke finally fixes it!

so which top 10 was it

[TheConfusedOne]

for "most of your own citizens murdered by government?"

Just go look at East Germany today and you can see how well they were doing in the 1980's.

Correction

[Smallphish]

The original post should read "Compute Cluster", not "Complete Cluster"

I agree

[DogDude]

I should get less than some people

Absolutely I should. I want to work less, and get by with less. I certainly don't deserve free software just because some college kids were too naive to protect themselves. I'm not a bastard. I'm not going to take advantage of them.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

At least you're attempting to be subtle with your licking the ass of Microsoft, "...the largest, most well-respected, most stable company in the entire industry (and possibly the country)."

Jesus, DogFucker, you're a retard. I guess some inmates must enjoy tossing the salad. I'd say it's stupid, but then again you're an "an experienced IT person" who can't figure out how to keep Linux running...

Something's missing ...

[ubrgeek]

"Complete Cluster Edition of Windows Server 2003" - I think they forgot a word ...

the name isnt right without....

[Anonymous Coward]

The Complete Cluster Fuck Edition of Windows Server 2003

In response to your sig...

[JetScootr]

Another word for "thesaurus" is "omnipendium".
Look it up, but use an unabridged dictionary. It's not in the litty bitty "college" editions.

Hotmail uses BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that in addition to those others, MS' Hotmail still runs on BSD. In all the years since the purchase, MS has not been able to use their own products due to inability to handle the load or even to scale.

Desperate

[Dust'-_-'Worm]

Oh! please Microsoft could not figure or steal anything better so now big deal getting open source under account!

MS would exist without open source

[Anonymous Coward]

When you consider basic was passed around freely and MS has built an entire empire on basic and visual basic, MS owes their existence to Open source ideals. Not open source specifically, but the idea of sharing knowledge.

without samples implementation of basic, how long would it have taken for MS to invent their own basic like language. Once any company gets big, they have to speak out against sharing knowledge. Openness and sharing often is seen as a threat to large companies. though some companies use it as a means to compete.

Bullshit

[Moraelin]

"ut when an app makes system calls, it's calling "LPC" Microsoft code. So much of the IO subsystem also winds through the GUI, because the architecture is so spaghetti, that it gets bogged down."

Bullshit. You may notice that Windows is divided into portions like Kernel.exe (core functions like, yes, file IO) and GDI.exe (graphics stuff). Claiming that a file IO operation goes through the GDI at any point, or that there'd be some spaghetti code that spans more than one executable, just shows me that you have no clue what you're talking about.

"Then there are the system services that start up."

As opposed to the services that Linux starts up, eh? I see easily three times as many processes when I do a "top" on this machine than on my Windows gaming machine. So you're doing... what? Getting all self-righteous anti-MS for doing... the exact same things that Linux is doing? I mean, heh.

Here's some free, complimentary clue: just because a process is loaded, it doesn't mean it's actually running all the time.

"And the bloated DLLs that load big chunks in and out of memory for one function call, and which don't flush quickly enough due to lackadaisical garbage collection"

Even skipping over the fact that it's just ignorant FUD pulled out of the ass, it _still_ would be completely off the mark.

Here's some more free complimentary clue: paging in Windows happens in 4k pages, same as in Linux. Because that's the page size supported by the physical hardware. And even _if_ DLLs were bloated and stayed in memory when unused -- heck, even _if_ no unloading even existed at all -- you'd get one of those unused 4k pages swapped out to disk as soon as you need it. Exactly the same as in Linux.

So again, it just tells me you have no clue what you're talking about.

""Premature" optimization is the only kind available for Windows, usually in the form of "use another OS instead"."

Tell you what: I'll take that more seriously when it's based on some actual facts, not on FUD pulled out of the ass like above. There are good reasons to choose Unix instead of Windows or viceversa, but such falsehoods pulled out of a zealot's imagination aren't it.

"Really, don't you think there'd be more than just one Windows HPC entry in the "Top 500", ones that weren't bought onto the list by Microsoft? Why is the same HW running Linux so much "H'er PC"? The industry is extremely competitive, as is the MS attempt to enter it. Why hasn't MS been successful in cracking it yet, if WIndows is so HPC?"

1. Sure as heck not because of the GUI which isn't even _used_ at the time.

2. It's a strawman anyway. If you took the time to read what you're answering to before letting it rip with the canned FUD, you'll notice that I never claimed that Windows was necessarily the best HPC choice. I've even listed two other things which may make or break a HPC implementation, Windows or otherwise.

_All_ I've said was that having a GUI makes 0% difference in Windows and all that "bloat" isn't even costing you any CPU cycles or RAM. The same applies not only to Windows, btw, but also to Linux, Solaris, AIX, MacOS, and generally any OS that has at least half a clue. Having X and the GUI libraries installed on your Solaris server costs you no performance either. Until someone actually logs into it and uses some graphical programs, all that GUI "bloat" has exactly 0% impact on performance.

So either answer to _that_, or spare me the straw-men.

Re:Bullshit

[Doc Ruby]

You can't cut the GUI out of Windows for HPC apps. You can do that with Linux. End of your free bitchslapping. You want to masturbate over your Windows slavery and Linuxphobia, find someone else. Start your pitch to them with whatever excuse you create for the dearth of Windows in the HPC lists.

Re:Bullshit

[einhverfr]

Bullshit. You may notice that Windows is divided into portions like Kernel.exe (core functions like, yes, file IO) and GDI.exe (graphics stuff). Claiming that a file IO operation goes through the GDI at any point, or that there'd be some spaghetti code that spans more than one executable, just shows me that you have no clue what you're talking about.

Ok. I see your case. If we skip the entire Win32 subsystem, make all our calls via the POSIX subsystem, etc. then we can achieve similar performance. This effectively means running Windows as a substandard varient of UNIX or Linux. But in that case, I repeat my statement: Imagine a beowulf cluster of Windows Licenses.....

The point is that although it is *possible* to cut out the Win32 subsystem, doing so provides very little benefit. In fact, to my knowledge, you can't even do any sort of IPC between subsystems, so unless you really want to run Microsoft Word on the same computer you are also using as an HPC node, it doesn't make any sense to do this... But then the system requirements for running Win32 apps on Windows would make this more or less of a doomed exersize.

So again, why would one want to use Windows as an HPC system when Linux is so much better at it and costs so much less?

Great legacy product (cough)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as everyone is moving from MPI to UPC (Unified Parallel C) or CAF (Co-Array Fortran) or to one of the HPCS languages, they decided to add MPI in. Really it looks like MS means to be able to run *legacy* applications with this move. Granted you can do it cheaper with a linux cluster... or more expensive but faster with a real supercomputer.

Not if you give it away for free.

[falconwolf]

Developers will download and try it. If it is better then they will tell others, and they will use it as well. Sure, you may never take the market lead position from MS, but you'll probably get lots and lots of developers using and improving your product.

And if you're giving it away free how are you eating, is someone giving you food for free?

Falcon

is communism better than capitalism?

[falconwolf]

Actually, as a rule, communism doesn't fail horribly. For example, people in Cuba live much better than their neighbours in Haiti. People in North Korea live better than people in Bangladesh. People in Soviet Union in 1960-1980s lived better than people pretty much everywhere. If you don't beleive me (and chances are you don't), just check historical ratings of human development from the UN. By 1980s Soviet Union was in world top 10 for most of the relevant quality of life indicators. And all that done without colonial exploitation.

Yeap, communism was so much better in the Soviet Union than capitalism is in the US. This explains why the Soviet Union collapsed and the former nations of the SU are going to capitalist while the US still exists then.

NOT!!!

Falcon

Actually the US isn't capitalist, instead it has the Corporate Aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of.

capitalism leads to the jungle?

[falconwolf]

Pure capitalism the way it is turning in the western world, is hurting the futher development of civilization, and will take us back to the jungle eventually, if nothing is being done.

Sorry but we don't have pure capitalism as envisioned by Adam Smith, or Thomas Paine especially as in Adam's book "The Wealth of Nations".

Falcon

Communism dosen't work because it is against natu

[falconwolf]

Yeah, tell that to ants.

Ants already "know" this, ants have their own castes:

All ant societies are divided into three castes: queens that found new colonies and thereafter function as egg-laying machines; winged males that take nuptial flight once with a queen, fertilizing her for life, then die; runt sterile females that lead tirelessly neuter lives that perform a variety of tasks. Some act as nurses, some as housekeepers, while others act as hunters and soldiers.

Falcon

Same thing with bees too as I recall.

[falconwolf]

Just as with ants, bees have their own castes and hierarchies and don't "know" communism.

Falcon

duplication and competition

[falconwolf]

Communism is superior to capitalism in small economies as it reduces duplication of effort. In larger economies it generally fails because it does not motivate improvement via competition and because the consolidation of effort simplifies totalitarianism unless checked by an outside force.

How ca competition exist without "duplication of effort"?

I don't see any economies willing to share or divide their power for the good of humanity

I see some and am a member of two, Lakewinds Coop and The Wedge Coop. There are something like 7 coops in the region I live in, each supports local businesses as well as small and organic farmers. Each also gives aide to local nonprofits whether in education, working with the environment, or with those working to help the poor.

Falcon

Re:duplication and competition

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

How ca competition exist without "duplication of effort"?

It is a trade-off. The more competition you have, the more effort is duplicated. The more resources are combined and shared to reduce unnecessary duplication the less competition. For example, Everyone living in a house, but each building and using their own bath tub is wasteful. Their is no reason multiple people cannot share one bathtub. In doing so, however, there is no testing of multiple bath tubs and thus the "best" tub design will not necessarily be identified.

I see some and am a member of two.

I think you mistake the intended meaning of my statement. In many countries the wealth and power has greatly consolidated. Less than one percent of the population controlling 50% of the resources. It is very, very rare for the money and resources controlled by that small percentage to again be equitably distributed among the general populace. As a result the creation of communes that control a significant amount of resources to appear is very small. Small communes exist and benefit the members, but I doubt any single commune will ever control 1% of the resources in the U.S. and I would be flabbergasted if 50 different communes ever controlled 1% each.

security?

[falconwolf]

Any system requires enforcement as not everybody will agree, whatever the system. With a capitalist system you need men with guns to stop those who think they have a right to roam the land and hunt and forage to support themselves. You can even shoot trespassers in some particularly unsavoury parts of the capitalist world.

And this doesn't, er didn't, happen in the Soviet Union or in China? I don't know if they do it now but China used to bill the family of someone they executed for the cost of the bullet. Yes some in some places people are allowed to protect themselves while other places don't allow it. A friends father as a sign in the windows next to his front door with a smoking gun saying "Anyone found here at might will be found here in the morning." And he means business. If someone breaks into his home he is ready and willing to defend his family and their property.

Falcon

Re:security?

[mollymoo]

And this doesn't, er didn't, happen in the Soviet Union or in China?

Dude, you should put me in touch with your weed dealer. Judging by your short-term memory you must be getting some seriously good shit.

I'll repeat the first sentence for you: "Any system requires enforcement as not everybody will agree, whatever the system."

Re:security?

[falconwolf]

I'll repeat the first sentence for you: "Any system requires enforcement as not everybody will agree, whatever the system."

Yes you did say that however right after that you say "With a capitalist system you need men with guns" which implies communist systems don't need this otherwise you wouldn't of singled out a capitalist system as needing guns. That's not a matter of short term memory it's a matter of logic.

Falcon

Re:security?

[mollymoo]

I implied nothing, you infered something. If you read the previous post you'd realise why I used the use of force in a capitalist system as an example - it was a counter-example to the use of force in communist systems. It went something like this:

John Doe: Communist systems must use force as not everyone agrees.
Me: Every system must use force as not everyone agress. <Example of use of force in capitalism. />
You: Duh huh! Communist systems use force too!
Me: You must have missed something, let me make it clear.
You: I am a fucktard.

percentage of population that controls wealth

[falconwolf]

I think you mistake the intended meaning of my statement. In many countries the wealth and power has greatly consolidated. Less than one percent of the population controlling 50% of the resources. It is very, very rare for the money and resources controlled by that small percentage to again be equitably distributed among the general populace. As a result the creation of communes that control a significant amount of resources to appear is very small. Small communes exist and benefit the members, but I doubt any single commune will ever control 1% of the resources in the U.S. and I would be flabbergasted if 50 different communes ever controlled 1% each.

Unfortunately this is too true but in many cases only 1% or so of a given population owns or controls most of the wealth is because the wealthy buy off the politicans and have laws favoring them enforced. But that's not capitalism or free trade, which is what capitalism is about. Instead it's more of a corporate aristocracy.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson, 1814

Falcon

The only thing China has to offer is cheap labor.

[falconwolf]

That cheap labor means that most of the Chinese workers are living in poor standards

As compared to US workers, yes Chinese workers have lower living standards, but those who work in the factories of products for export have higher living standards than those who don't. The same in India. And because they make more than typical Chinese or Indians they can and do invest and spend more which means employment for other increases as well. This wouldn't be possible if they were communists, neither country is communists. While there's only one party in China, the Communist Party, they allow private ownership though it's restricted and don't have a communist economic system. China even has some stockmarkets or exchanges, China Stock Market, Shanghai Stock Exchange, The Stock Market of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission.

Now I'm not saying all, I used to know some who were homeless and living on the streets, but many poor in the US and Europe still have better lives than many Chinese and Indians.

As for the rest of your post I pretty much agree, capitalism works, even if what we have is really a corporate aristocracy, and allows people to improve their lives.

Falcon

You: I am a fucktard.

[falconwolf]

Now it's you who's implying or infering I said something as I never said nor implied the above.

Falcon