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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."
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).
It's BSD, not GPL. They can do what they want with it.
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that the argument about quality and such of OSS is no longer valid?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?
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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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Funny how the windows vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of Zlib appeared at the same time.
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Try to say "I should get less than some people", it is logically equivalent but somehow much harder to pronounce :-)
It fails horribly in practice, and therefore is a bad theory.
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... 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!
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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
"Sufferin' succotash."
True - there's a difference. But that's not what we're talking about. From Steve Ballmer's Sun Times interview:
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.
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!"
Direct away from face when opening.