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Mozilla Developers Invited to Redmond
savio13 writes "Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of its Open Source Software Lab has invited 4 Mozilla developers to spend 4 days with Microsoft's Vista Readiness ISV team. The invite can be found on mozilla.dev.planning and was posted on Saturday (Aug. 19). Schroepfer replied by indicating that Microsoft and the Moz guys are already in contact via email and will follow up on the offer there. This is interesting because Sam posted the offer in a public forum (and indicated that he'd sent a PM, but was posting in case they had an @microsoft.com email filter). Sam also made a point of stating that the Vista ISV Readiness offer is typically only for commercial ISVs."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_trap Seriously, watch out! Pretty soon, we'll have no more coders!
You're all bastards!
Four Mozilla developers missing, story at eleven.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
"If you go to Z'ha'dum, you will die."
Where were you when the voynix came?
Watch out for chairs!
But seriously, I think that Microsoft is trying to get third party OSS browser support for Vista so that they can announce it as a feature. "Look, we have great support for the BEST free browsers out there! We are cool and friendly!" It has become obvious to Microsoft that OSS is not going away and that they need to embrace some of the popular choices in an effort to stem the flow away from Linux, etc. Seems pretty obvious to me.
My humor is probably your flamebait
The Mozilla developers will be carried along a corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort and past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Be amazed at the open source research lab, the award winning cafeteria, the empty lot out back where Microsoft employee Vinnie "The Bonecrusher" Vetallini will explain in intricate detail Microsoft's browser strategy.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
If Vista is written modularly and has a clean, well documented API then why would an application development team need any help from the Vista development team to get their application working on Vista?
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Steve Stites
It's Bill Gates is gaurded by more than just Orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great WGA is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland riddled with fire, ash, and Starbucks coffee, the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand could you do this. It is folley.
My Computer Music Tutorial Videos
Opera was invited to MS recently as well.... http://my.opera.com/dstorey/blog/show.dml/419834
Acute Chair Deceleration to the Head syndrome.
Pretend we're talking a year from now and MS is trying to roll out Vista and the 40% of the population that will be using FF by then balks because FF won't run properly.
Wow - food must taste better where you live too!
Guess what will be on the private plane that flies them to Redmond.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Move Sig. For great justice.
"That's not an operating system..."
This guy's the limit!
Not to get too serious here, but this is a perfect example of a situation where MS can't win. Invite the folks up? "It's a trap! They'll steal your code, kill you, etc." Don't invite them up? "When is MS going to treat OSS developers like any one else, Firefox has many users, they should get the same respect as any other org."
Ah slashdot... can't live with it, pass the beer nuts.
Never. Too much NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome for that. I think one of the other posters is right. FireFox is getting popular and if it doesn't work with Vista (either intentionally or not) they will get tons of complaints ("Vista broke my InternetFox thing", "They are trying to crush FireFox", etc.). FireFox is so popular that they have to make sure it works. The only difference between it and some other program they'll do that for (Sims/Sim 2) is that FireFox is FOSS so we hear about it (where they have done this with Sims/Sims 2 and we don't hear a peep).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
> What if they're thinking anbout replacing the IE render engine with Geko + ActiveX extensions?
Absolutely never ever ever going to happen. Even discounting the IE features that MS wants to keep, even discounting NIH syndrome, Microsoft owns the IE codebase (modulo a few patent trolls). Microsoft doesn't want to put anything in Windows that it can't alter at will. Yes Gecko's open source, but they don't exactly want to fork it and deal with the developer relations donnybrook that would ensue.
As for ActiveX, MS had already removed almost every AX control from its site, leaving only various update managers. And the Eolas debacle has pretty much tilted them all the way toward going 100% DHTML/AJAX for rich content. Underneath, it's still COM controls, sure -- Flash and even the Java "plugin" are actually ActiveX controls -- but anyone still beating on the ActiveX drum is showing they have no imagination with which to update their repertoire of trolling.
Firefox is big and important enough now that some folks at Microsoft want more familiarity, including making sure it doesn't break on Vista, because depending on how it breaks, it can make Vista appear broken itself (or yes, reveal where it actually is broken). The speculation you're reading about "traps" is just the usual grist for the Two-Minute Hate around here.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
This is sad. This comment is not a troll, not a flamebait, just an observation.
Microsoft has taken some serious steps to clean itself up over the last year or so. As a Linux/Apache/PHP/Python/Perl/MySQL/Postgres evangelist, I always root for open source, but I respect Microsoft's omnipresence in the tech world.
That said, it's really sad to see that 98% of the comments here are based on distrust, hatred, and bad jokes. This is a huge move: Microsoft, for once, finally understanding that open source has a place and that NOT working with them spells trouble for them.
So, please people, retire the lame wisecracks. This is one of many times you'll see Microsoft bent by the immense power and will of open source!
Pretend we're talking a year from now and MS is trying to roll out Vista and the 40% of the population that will be using FF by then balks because FF won't run properly.
It may not be a representative sample, but all of the big corporations I have worked at or visited seem wedded to IE. Since corporations are going to be the slow movers on the Vista transition I think it's unlikely to be the explanation. Keep in mind, consumers are going to get Vista shoved down their throats because that's what will come installed on new machines.
The more likely reason is anti-trust. Microsoft is finally getting some serious competition again in the browser arena. Microsoft will have a tough time explaining things if Vista comes out and Firefox, the arch-rival to IE, doesn't work. Microsoft long ago lost the benefit of the doubt with respect to anti-trust regulators.
The benefits far outweigh the costs of helping the Firefox team out for a few days. In other words: CYA.
I just got an email from Microsoft support. This was included:
Please note, since this support request will be handled using Microsoft's e-mail support option, it is highly recommended you set your junk mail settings for the e-mail contact you listed in this case to accept e-mail from Microsoft.com. This will ensure our support e-mail reaches you in a timely m anner and prevent it from being moved to your junk mail folder.
Apparently a lot of people block @microsoft.com entirely.
No sig for you! Come back, one year!
Open source developers were warned to not even look at leaked win2k code as it'd lead to accusations of contamination of FOSS with Microsoft source.
I wonder.......
Now gentlemen if you'll just look at the wall sized plasma screen over there you'll see "IE7 SOURCE CODE!!!!! That's right, IE7 source code! You have been contaminated and must now cease development of your precious Firefox product! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
In my opinion, I think that Microsoft seriously does see the hand-writing on the wall and they do want to do more to ensure that their OS supports the programs that people want to use. Microsoft is going to trumpet their low support costs and ease of managability (think SMS, Group Policy, etc). They are going to trumpet the fact that they are the standard, and they are going to portray any group who doesn't want to work with the standard as being back-asswards and wasting time unnecessarily reinventing the wheel.
On another level, Microsoft is trying to avoid what happened to Novell in the 1990s. Netware was a great operating system but it got to the point where they barely had any third party support. The same thing could happen to Microsoft if enough developers decide that using Microsoft dev tools is a PITA and if enough developers decide that coding to the Microsoft OS is a PITA. The one incentive that Microsoft has left is their market penetration. They can still play the economic card, and that card is, "If you develop for the MS platform, you will have a market share of XX. And by the way, that market is already used to paying out the nose for software, so you stand to make money. Now do you want that, or do you want to go to the OSS world where everyone is doing it on the cheap with razor thin margins?" And if you think about it, that's a very strong position to come from. If you're trying to make money, do you want to go with the company that has already made itself (and numerous third parties) griploads of cash, or do you want to go with the other guys who are trying to redo what Microsoft has already done, but do it "less expensively and better"? I'm of the opinion that unless the OSS world comes out with some killer functionality that operates EXCLUSIVELY outside of Windows, they're never going to win. Given how much Microsoft has been investing in intellectual property, and given how much they have already developed (OS, Office, Exchange, accounting packages, CRM packages... basically all the tools that a business needs to function), it's going to be hard to end-run around the monopoly.
The one ray of hope is "standards" but as we've all seen, Microsoft will just ignore a standard until enough people want to use it. Then they'll offer support for it. You're seeing it now with IE7. For the longest time, MS didn't give two shits. Now enough web devs have complained loudly enough and they're finally getting what they want. IE7 might not nail it, but I'm willing to be IE7 SP3, or IE8 will. The problem with using a standard to fight Microsoft is that standards are very rarely proprietary. And as we've seen with the W3C, even "standards" are often times still works in progress.
embrace, extend, extinguish ...repeat as necessary.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
"... anyone still beating on the ActiveX drum is showing they have no imagination with which to update their repertoire of trolling."
Sorry, but you are quite wrong, either intentionally or by just not thinking this through. You are using one narrow example (microsoft.com's current site practices) and somehow drawing the conclusion that ActiveX is no longer a concern internet-wide. This is totally incorrect.
Here's a quick example. We have a small, (unfortunately) somewhat autonomous group of people here that insist on using Microsoft's products Movie Maker and Producer to push out video of a colloquium that occurs every few weeks during the school year. The web page they end up with makes massive use of ActiveX - which of course means not only that it's IE+Windows only (yes, it claims not to be but it only works on IE+Windows), but also that anyone who uses IE with Active X turned off (e.g. all XP SP2 users) are badgered with popup after popup asking "Do you want to enable scripting?" Eventually many of these folks get tired of the popups and just turn scripting on across the board so they can watch the d*mn video.
If you've read the IT trade press at all, you'll be familiar with interview after interview where CIOs have said "We'd love to move to Firefox, but we've got too much invested in intranet/extranet systems based on ActiveX technology".
ActiveX will continue to be an issue until Microsoft stops selling tools that generate ActiveX-based code and end-products.
#DeleteChrome
One of the 4 Mozilla developers is leading a tour for them, talking causually:
"It's always been a danger, but it looms like a shadow over every-thing we've built here. But things have developed that will ensure security. I've just made a deal that will keep Microsoft out of here forever."
Suddenly, a door in hallway slides open... Horror! ...Bill Gates rises from his seat at the far end of long dining table...
They did that to Netscape devs back in the day, too, albeit in a slightly less obvious way. They'd camp out in the nearest cafes and restaurants around lunch hour and "talk" to Netscape developers, sometimes making them offers they couldn't refuse. Many of those devs were at that point more interested in Ferraris and mansions than in writing code, but MSFT hired them anyway (only to fire when Netscape kicks the bucket).
Expect some folks getting offers in Redmond. Higher ups in IE team are downright stupid if they don't try to hire people away from Mozilla. You kill two birds with one stone - strangle Mozilla and get a good, security minded dev (who will be forced to think a lot less about security at MSFT by an arbitrary, managemen imposed deadline).