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Microsoft Flirts with Open Source
Vin Daryl writes "ZDNet reports on Microsoft's love-hate relationship with open-source software." From the article: "The interoperability lab focuses on getting products from open-source ISVs such as JBoss, to work on the Microsoft platform, he said. 'For example, we often collaborate with JBoss, but in certain areas we might compete with them. It's competition and cooperation,' Hilf explained. 'Over time, as you see the open-source marketplace maturing and becoming more commercial, I think you'll see more of that kind of dynamics. It's not something that's unique to Microsoft,' he said, adding that IBM and Oracle also compete, and at the same time, cooperate with open-source vendors. "
And open source slaps Microsoft and throws a drink in its face and tells it in no uncertain terms to keep its grubby mits to itself.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Make sure that Microsoft does slip any rohypnol in your drink while she's flirting with you!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
about the sentence "Microsoft Flirts with Open Source" is that it's like the 5 year old's love:
In the kindergarden little boys try to get the attention of little girls by being rude and abusive towards the little girl.
Now a bit seriously, I'm not saying that MS is like a 5 year old - although you could find a lot of examples like that, but the flirting part doesn't hold up either.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" I think that is the way it goes.
Apparently, Microsoft has purchased all Open Source, and will be selling it for $199 in stores this fall.
This sounds more like a company who's trying to show everyone they aren't anti open source, because they have open source buddies... seems likes people who say they aren't racist just because they have black friends. (see http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/)
Doesn't sound like Microsoft is Open-Sourcing any of its own work, just exercising the freedom others have (unilaterally) granted to them to modify OSS products. But at least it may give the products more legitimacy in the eyes of PHBs.
... no wonder I have zero success with the ladies, I've misunderstood the whole thing. Go figure.
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
"Over time, as you see the open-source marketplace maturing and becoming more commercial"
..
.. help [Microsoft's product teams] understand what attracts developers .. to use Linux in that environment,"
Im what areas are the current Linux offerings less commercial than the MS offerings?
"what we're doing provides value to the [open-source] community."
What exactly of value does the MS Linux lab provide to the Open Source community.
re high-performance computing
"We
I thought you just said that Open Source wasn't really commercial. Yet here we have you copying it. So basically you are cloning a Linux solution while at the same time somehow claiming leadership in that area.
All the MS lab does is produce MS flavoured anti-Linux retoric in a disengenous attempt to steal mindshare in the community. What need do Linux developers have for Microsoft to 'explain' what Open Source is really about. You are merely the chief MS fud spokesman.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Microsoft is welcomed to support cross-platform development (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) so OpenSource developers can easily port their applications to Windows but Microsoft may consider that cross-platform also works in the other direction so commercial vendors are able to port to Linux. Maybe this is a win-win solution for everybody ;-)
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
They're just looking for another TCP/IP stack ;)
http://chimpbox.us
Bullish Machine Tzar
Comment about open source maturing gives me heartburn.
Same feeling I get about pundits all over the web yammering about second generation Open Source, whatever that means. Don't know about anybody else but "second generation Open Source" reminds me more of shareware in the '90s than Open Source of recent memory.
I guess this is the future. Software vendors float out little open source bundles of their software but hold the best functionality back for their commerical products. I'm not sure if that fosters innovation or not, but something doesn't smell right to me. I guess people just got tired of writing software and not getting paid so they hitched their wagons to software companies, and I can understand that.
Then again, maybe this is the way it always was and I'm just starting to take notice. But where commercial interests have started entagling themselves with open source, it should be interesting to see what happens in those projects. When every featureset or new software project needs to be tied to the bottom line, these private interests will start to strangle innovation, and the whole open source community will suffer for it.
I found this claim interesting:
Hilf added that his team has contributed patches to the open-source community, particularly for Samba, which connects Linux machines to Windows networks, the Gaim instant messenger, and the Apache Web server.
Has anyone got any references to support this claim? Were their patches accepted? What did the patches do?
It seems to me that if Microsoft are submitting patches to Free Software projects (Samba is especially interesting), that is a big step forward for them.
Microsoft have open sources a lot of their work, you can even get to look at Windows code if you pay them.
.NET Framework 2.0-January and guess what:
Just the other day I was looking at the Enterprise Library for
Source code. Installing Enterprise Library places source code for the application blocks, configuration console, and QuickStarts into the installation directory. To execute the QuickStarts or the Enterprise Library tools, you must first build the Enterprise Library source code. For instructions about how to build Enterprise Library, see "Building the Enterprise Library" in the documentation.
So Microsoft does do open source, just not the kind of open source most in the FOSS community (including myself) would like to see.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Microsoft wins if JBoss is hosted on a Windows Server and the database backend is SQL Server 2005. They couldn't care less if you're running Java, so long as it's on their server platforms. Would they prefer you to go all the way with .NET? Sure, but they aren't going to piss away customers willing to buy expensive server software just because they prefer different development tools. Same thing with Oracle. Who cares if the box is Linux, the application servers open source as long as the database is Oracle? They aren't going to tell customers, "buy all our products or we're going to go home and pout."
Just a follow up comment - it's the same strategy as the Disney conglomerate: take public domain stories (Snow White, Beauty & Beast, etc), produce an instance of it, then heavily protect your revenue stream with hoards of lawyers going after anybody who even thinks of makes anything that remotely resembles your instance.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
In the kindergarden little boys try to get the attention of little girls by being rude and abusive towards the little girl.
Yeah, but when they get mad they start throwing chairs around. Beware.
If you read through any Slashdot thread involving Microsoft (which seems to end up being about 90% of them in one way or another) you'll find a lot of sentiment (paraphrased) that "Microsoft is evil, eternal, and eternally evil," and, as a corollary, the idea that "Windows has been, is, and will remain FOREVER the dominant operating system for personal computers." Nothing like some worldly, jaded, cynical pronouncements about Everything Forever ;)
;)]
I won't say there's no reason for Microsoft to cling to its current model of software sales for as long as possible -- it's a public, and therefore (by definition) profit-driven company. Investors like stability, and conventional models of making money.
But I believe Microsoft could become the world's largest vendor of open source software (even if wasn't Free software in the RMS sense*), and that surely some wags and possibly some visionaries within the company have been considering what that could mean. * (That's also *possible* but a bigger stretch.)
Microsoft employs several thousand really bright people (and of course some percentage of other people); it has one of the most recognized brand names in the world; it has a packaging and distribution system that gets software moved around the world in little boxes pretty effectively. Point is, Microsoft could move at its own pace to greater inclusion of open source software (as they've famously been happy to use, by using BSD licensed software) without upsetting the balance of the force.
- The Windows operating systems could remain closed, but certain applications get turned into open source projects. For instance, Microsoft Office could be made open source and free for home users, but not licensed for commercial use except through specific (money-costing) license agreements. That's not so very different from how it works now, in that lots of people have "borrowed from work" copies of applicaton software from MS, Adobe, and others -- much easier to enforce expensive license agreements against companies than individuals, both aesthetically and practically. (If AT&T is ignoring their agreement to pay for something that they're using to make money, a lot of people who don't quite *like* Microsoft could understand their pursuing AT&T's agreed-on money; if Grandma Smith next door is using MS Word to tap in her favorite recipes because her nice nephew installed it for her and doesn't realize it isn't a legit copy, that's a lot harder to swallow.)
- The *core* of Windows could be turned into an open source project, while the polished graphical interface remained exclusive to Microsoft as a branding / copyright playground, so few people (relatively speaking) would be interested in using the underlying system without paying Microsoft for the decoration level as well. ["Nahhh, that's impossible!"
- Microsoft could just keep pushing open or semi-open development tools; heck, they could declare Mono the preferred way to develop for Windows, and set up a SourceForge equivalent to encourage new software, proprietary or not, for Windows.
Keep flirting, Microsoft!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
1. Port successful OSS applications to Windows.
2. Exclaim loudly that there's no need to look beyond Windows as it supports both worlds of apps.
3. Using deep pockets and large marketing / propaganda dept, repeat step 2 as much as possible.
4. Profit!
If there are any problems along the way, throw chairs.
Microsoft wouldn't do the above unless they were going to profit from it or damage the competition. Anyone who thinks differently is very naive.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
It's a hedge - rather than saying "Our product is inherently better and will prevail in the end", they're saying "Our product is established; rather than risk becoming irrelevant in shops where Open Source is used, we want to continue to operate and compete even in places where Open Source has proven to be the winner."
Y'know, Microsoft has maintained a set of interoperability tools for UNIX (I forget what it's called, it includes a POSIX environment, can handle NIS/DNS/NFS among others, works kinda crappy but it works) - this going back over five years. I don't care for Redmond's OS at all but let's face it, they've been driving a huge chunk of the IT sector for a long time now. Microsoft actually provides quite a lot of valid solutions to current IT-related problems, and they're demonstrating that they're ready to attempt to provide more solutions. For a price, of course, but even Open Source has a certain price-tag attached to it, eh?
Bottom line - we Linux fanbois (myself included) had best accustom ourselves to the presence of Microsoft Windows-based solutions in the workplace. If Microsoft can develop, price, deliver and support working solutions it's a fair bet that the PHB's of the world will notice and we'll end up working with some of those solutions. It would be best if we collectively were prepared for this, rather than screaming "Evil!" every time a certain Redmond Washington based firm does something.
Of course, the Big Software Corps don't like this, because when those people employ their computer skills for fun, the resulting code collects and aggregates and grows into free versions of things which are sold for big bucks by the Big Corps. Horrors!
The funny thing is that the home computer was originally invented and sold by hobbyists for hobbyists. --It was only later that the big corps came along and provided well-made software, --and we paid them big money for it.
But then came along the internet and Hobbyists began to network. Networking is incredibly powerful, and the internet is a great place to organize and assemble big code projects. --Like a cool hobby convention which is run 24/7, and only a few mouse clicks away. How fantastic!
And just look at how much fire and hot air has been spent by the Big Corps in an effort to quash the people who enjoy coding together. It'd be like if, through some strange twist of economics and social science, a shoe company, like Nike, somehow decided that non-professional basket ball players were a threat to their revenue and started vilifying free sports.
But guess what? There will always be jobs for coders. Free things aren't going to kill the job place. There's always going to be people who need coders to help make their computers go. Games don't code themselves. Every new piece of hardware with a chip in it needs a team of people to make it work. There's always going to be work out there, so the fear factor is totally unnecessary.
Unless, of course, you happen to be Microsoft, which only through a fluke, became as big and powerful as they did. Remember the days when operating systems were on chips and came built into your computer? It's only through a severe perversion of rationality that the world slipped away from the old model of doing things and a couple of guys in Redmond became billionaires.
Things balance out in the end, and we'll all have fun doing it.
Cheers, and have a great day!
-FL
What do I mean?
Why can't Microsoft take one of its pet projects, like Media Player, or Outlook Express, or any other, and turn it into an OSS project. Let the community have at it. There's only so many outcomes:
The community reviews the project's code and either:
--a) Improves it, makes it more efficient, fixes bugs/security holes
--b) Makes suggestions that Microsoft thinks are utter crap
What other outcomes are there? Sure, people might laugh at some of their code, especially if it's really really ugly. What software project's code doesn't become ugly after a bajillion revisions?
Does Microsoft see such an endeavor as stooping to some kind of a new low? C'mon! Or maybe they know that it's not such a bad idea, but they're so afraid of giving up their "trade secrets" that if they went with an OSS attempt that they'd have even less reasons to support their CSS methods?
In the many Slashdot discussions on China and the internet, there's always this great debate between folks that see the internet as a philosophical movement to free the world from government oppression versus others who see it as a technology that, as it matures, needs to conform to the laws of the countries it operates in.
I see a very similar divide within open source. The original open source movement started as a free software/anti-software patent movement supported by an alturistic (and idealistic) global community united by their belief that software should be free and shared. As the open source movement has matured (or devolved), the big boys have stepped in (IBM/Oracle/SUN/HP) and taken over much of the 'real' Linux movement (i.e. enterprise-class), open source is MUCH more about enabling these companies to compete against Microsoft.
These vendors could really care less about the ideals of the open source and shared development except to the extent it destroys its competitors. In a recent talk I attended by IBM, they argued that they embraced open source specifically because it gave them a strong competative advantage and crushed the opposition. In effect, IBM develops high-end software, makes tons of money for 3-4 years, then releases it into open source as soon as their profit margins starts to slide because of new competition. Thus, in effect, they undermine the competition by giving away the software.
Also, open source used to be about open SOURCE. Now 99% of the world sees open source as FREE software and really could care less about the SOURCE part. That's certainly the only part 'real' businesses care about.
So, rather than bashing Microsoft for trying to co-exist with open source, keep in mind that the large companies embracing open source are only doing it for business reasons rather than some philosophical alignment with and belief in the goodness of open source. They could care less about all that crap. And their customers could care less for the most part.
If Microsoft management wants to generate some goodwill, then the management should open-source old versions of Microsoft Windows that are no longer being sold. In this way, people who have the older computers could easily get a copy of the older versions of Windows.
You got it all wrong.
Open sourcing something doesn't mean that you don't charge for it, or that you let people download it.
Open source means that you give the source, in some way.
Making it free software, for example, with a BSD license, would let people who do get the software distribute it, so they can give it to friends, make changes to the software, and share their changes.
What you want is probably freeware. That has nothing to do with source, or freedom, it's about cost. You want microsoft to refrain from charging licenses for old versions of mswindows, and letting them copy it for free.
In fact, thinking about it, not even freeware is needed. The problem you are talking about doesn't even exist. If those people have already paid for their copy of mswindows, they don't need to pay again if they want to reinstall it from a cd they get from a friend or something. Maybe microsoft should let people get remplacement install cds for a small fee, but most people anyway do have some way of getting in touch with the media.