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Microsoft Calls for Truce With GPL and Linux?
An anonymous reader writes to mention an eWeek article discussing Microsoft's efforts to reach out to the open source community. The company is hoping to find a common ground with softare released under the GPL, so that OSS and Microsoft products can interoperate. From the article: "The goal, from both sides, is to meet customer needs, he said, adding, 'This is just the more mature view of the way the world is evolving, and we want to make sure that if customers are choosing Linux or other open-source-based products that we have ways of interoperating and working effectively with that.'" A related article mentions Windows server Expert Jeremy Moskowitzs' call for a truce between the Linux and Windows communities.
A new progression:
Got to give it to Microsoft for not going down easy, at least.
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
The GPL is like a nude beach. It's an agreement that you are no going to wear any clothes on this beach.
Microsoft wants to hang out on that beach but not remove thier clothing.
I can't blame them; but The sunbathers all know that Microsoft is just there to ogle.
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diplomacy is how to say "Nice Doggie" while you look for a really big stick
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
It's designed to spec, the APIs are public and the source code is out there. Step 1) Microsoft freeze and publish their APIs under a GPL compatible license so that existing interop OSS projects such as Samba can polish the last couple of percent into their products. Step 2) Microsoft adapt their software to work with established standards such as PDF, ODF, OpenGL, HTML etc etc etc. Step 3) There is no step 3. OSS stuff *already* interoperates with anything written to open standards, as well as rather a lot of closed standards. I fail to see what more they need to do.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Microsoft, show your intention by opening Windows Networking!
The last time Bill Gates spoke of peace I was a boy. And many Free Software nobles, who would not be slaves, were lured by him under a flag of truce to a barn, where he had them hanged. I was very young, but I remember Gate's notion of peace.
Are you posting from a different dimension?
Open Source Software developers have been working very hard for years to create interoperatibility for working within MS Networks. Just look at OpenLDAP, Samba and a number of other systems that have been written to bring *nix and MS products into a state of being capable of communicating with one another.
Microsoft has had a history of moving the goal posts, for no apparent reason other then to undermine the efforts of the OSS teams working on things like Samba, OpenLDAP and many others.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
So they want to benefit from all the work done for OSS projects without contributing any work back?
Am I missing something?
-Derick
Wine -- Make Windows software work on Linux
Open Office, Cygwin,etc. -- Make Linux software work on Windows.
Samba -- Make Windows servers work with Linux clients
Samba -- Make Linux servers work with Windows clients
VNC,X -- Make Windows terminals work with Linux servers
VNC, Remote Desktop client -- Make Linux terminals work with Windows servers.
All of these are done by open-source developers. So, tell me, what more would you like open-source people to do? And do you see ANYTHING that Microsoft has done?
It is easy to throw blame around if you ignore the facts.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Microsoft provides basic standards supports, though often with proprietary or non-standard "extensions". HTML/CSS, for example. Once could argue RTF was a good effort, though years of binary .DOC make RTF more or less obsolete. Microsoft also conforms to basic internet protocols, TCP/IP, FTP, etc. Very basic support for the most fundamental standards.
Linux (and related software) does all that. Linux also reads and in most cases writes Microsoft's filesystem formats. "mtools" provides a second, user-space support for native microsoft discs. Linux also supports Joliet (Microsoft's cdrom filename extensions). Samba supports Microsoft's file service protocols. These usually come preinstalled on major linux distributions.
Microsoft does NOT provide even read-only support for Linux ext2 filesystems. Microsoft does NOT automatically recognize unix/linux rock ridge cdroms. Microsoft does NOT provide support for mounting NFS file systems. These are all examples of well established protocols in widespread use for over 10 years!
But...
the fact that they're reaching out should be incentive enough for the OSS community to respond in kind
Remember how they "reached out" to Sun regarding Java?
Sure, if "respond in kind" means a bunch of cheap, fluffy talk, and not actually implementing anything, or writing a poor implementation with proprietary "extensions", sure.
But the truth is, almost every documented, and even many poorly or utterly undocumented Microsoft protocols are well supported by Linux and related software.
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From the article:
> It's time for the Windows and Linux communities to drop the religious war and [snip]
There _is_ no "Windows community". It's just a giant company and a lot of customers.
> [snip] until the two communities put aside the whole "religion" issue, said Jeremy
> Moskowitz, a consultant and authority on Windows 2000/2003 Server, Active Directory
> and SMS [snip]
{sigh} There's no "religion issue". There's free software users who write a lot of
code that they want to remain free. It's their work -- and they want it to stay free.
If you don't like the terms, don't use the software. That's it. There's no religion
there. Now, maybe the Microsoft corporation has a "religious issue" -- like, maybe
it's their religion to dominate the software industry and they don't like there
being anyone else supplying software to the world...
Anyhow, this article seems to be mostly shilling for MS. The author tries to trick
the reader into believing the author's presuppositions and also relies pretty heavily
on quotes from this Moskowitz "authority".
> "At the end of the day, both Windows and Linux bring things that are good, and we
> can all get along and we should look at how we can leverage the strength of each
> to the benefit of the other," he said.
Bleh. What garbage. The free software community wants to get along just fine --
they're _giving_ away their work for goodness' sake.