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Microsoft Plays Up Open Source
An anonymous reader writes "Recently Microsoft's open source software lab posted PostgreSQL on Windows: A Primer. Postgres is one of the longest running open source databases — it has been around for nearly 11 years. The powerful object-relational database is a direct competitor to other OSS databases, as well as Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. So why is Microsoft promoting it? I get Redmond's interest in boosting anything that runs on Windows as a platform. Is this simply a case of left-hand, right-hand, or is something deeper going on?"
Agreed. Quite often you'll find that a business makes the decision on what application they want to use before they decide upon the operating system. Databases are no different. And if Microsoft can make it any easier for customers to set up OSS databases on their platform, then that will make the secondary decision of which OS to use easier for the customer.
They need to allow Ballmer, Gates and the other senior execs to be able to say "Lookw e're doing stuff with open source, interoperating with competitors" when it's convenient to make that point in their conversations with customers, the press, various governments, and the courts.
But once some business customer tries to use it, MS marketing will make it clear that some member of the SQL Server family would fit their needs so much better.
Version 1 of Postgres was released in 1989. It later evolved into Postgres95 and then PostgreSQL. And it keeps getting better every year!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Anti-Microsoft bandwagon. I'm seriously beginning to wonder if reading Slashdot makes any sense. It seems to be nothing more than a constant bash of Microsoft along with questionable articles about anything non-Microsoft. You claim to be a news source, but when you slant the news all the times you become a propoganda machine and not a news source. There is nothing wrong with sharing information about how to do something. Microsoft is merely showing people how to do something on their operating system. It isn't a consipracy theory, there are no hidden agendas, it is just people sharing information with other people.
Wouldn't know myself. I run it on FreeBSD. I care too much about my servers to put Windows on them. ;)
Nobody has mentioned it yet, so I'll throw in my two cents. Microsoft is not against open source at all, they actively encourage and even use it on occasion (the TCP stack in windows is famously known to be from BSD Unix). They are happy when people write code that they can use.
Where they have the biggest problem is with GPL'd stuff, which they can't use at all. Of course in this particular situation there are other factors involved, but since they have been addressed by others, I will not repeat them here.
Qxe4
If PostgreSQL does not run well on Windows, then (logically enough) the problem lies in that particular build of PostgreSQL. What else would the problem be?
I get a little tired of the "you in the anti MS crowd". ".... but you are right "there are no hidden agendas " at MS; they ARE a convicted (time and again ) criminal who will stop at nothing to have everything their own way and they certainly can't hide THAT agenda. It is not propaganda to continually expose this MFSOB company for all their illegal and underhand ways.
Of course you'd know that if you stopped reading and believing MS press releases about how good they are.
If you don't like reading Slashdot, don't read it. Nobody here is going to be swayed by your crying foul for your beloved MS. As a company they have evils ways and all the thinking populace know it.
MS is boosting Postgre [PG] because they don't want people buying Oracle or IBM's database offerings.
I tend to agree. Oracle is a huge company, and if lots of people used PG instead of Oracle, then it may mean more Windows sales over Unix/Linux sales. Even if they lose a bit of SQL-Server sales, the migration over to Windows may offset that. Perhaps the MS bean-counters calculated that gained Windows sales would offset lost SQL-Server sales. They maybe figure that OSS DB's will eat into *all* commercial DB's anyhow. MS may rather be in the OS biz than the DB biz because of this. I hear PG's SQL syntax is closer to Oracle's than SQL-Server anyhow.
Table-ized A.I.
WOW that's pretty amazing. I have never seen any MS development shop not use SQL server. What's your company?
.Net allows us to hire cheap workforce that can do 'Brains-Free Programming!'.
.Net and Oracle ; we're trying to now change the database to MySQL / Postgres instead. Small broking firms find the database licensing (SQL and Oracle) as expensive as our product. Postgres seems much faster and more suited at first glance.
We aren't an MS development company. We happen to develop and deliver IT solutions to customers mainly in the BFSI segment. Ironically, the biggest cost in s/w development happens to be trained manpower; and using
One of our important offerings for the stock brokers is built around
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I love this response. "Microsoft can make better programs because they use the super-secret ultra-special hidden APIs." Completely false. Though sometimes I wish there were secret hidden APIs that could be used to somehow make programs work better, this seems pretty far-fetched.
Microsoft employees use MSDN for documentation just like everybody else. While it is possible that they have access to better support options than the average developer (i.e. their friends that work on the Windows team can given them advice), there is no secret sauce available. Just elbow grease.
In fact, SQL Server has it worse than non-Microsoft products. Beyond the simple absurdity of "secret APIs", there are also legal restrictions. SQL Server (just like any other non-Windows* MS product) legally must restrict itself to public Windows APIs. As a part of the antitrust restrictions on Microsoft operations, if the API is not documented on MSDN, SQL Server cannot use it. Every other company gets to use whatever Microsoft API they can find, however they can find it. SQL Server has to do everything by the book. Not only that, but the SQL Server team (and the teams behind every other non-Windows program shipped by Microsoft) has to be able to document that they aren't using any undocumented APIs.
On the other hand, SQL Server has it better than other databases. The SQL Server team gets to focus its efforts on a single OS. SQL Server is TIGHT (like this!) with Windows. It has been tuned and re-tuned to work well on Windows. It leverages the Win32 API like no other database on the market. No abstraction layers, no designing to the lowest common denominator, no limitations because "one of the OSes we support can't do that". (Well, not entirely true -- multiple versions of Windows with differing capabilities are supported, but still mostly true.) SQL Server makes use of the Windows OS like probably no other program that has ever been written.
If Microsoft programs ever outshine the competition, it is because they got more effort put into them or were designed better. And when other programs work better than Microsoft's, it is because they got more effort or were designed better. No secret sauce, no secret APIs.
* (Windows components do use internal and undocumented APIs to communicate with other Windows components. That's just abstraction layers at work - every program I can think of uses undocumented APIs to talk to other parts of itself. In any case, only Windows components are allowed to use undocumented Windows APIs.)
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
While that's not money any of us as individuals would sneeze at, I doubt that's the money Microsoft cares about. The big money is surely in support, and Microsoft is leaving that money on the table if it insists, based on foolish pride, that it won't support stuff it didn't develop.
Large companies like Microsoft have little to fear from free software. It provides a rich source of business problems to solve for respectable consulting return. In many ways, the initial production of software is just a loss leader for big companies to get into the consulting game. Free software doesn't threaten that. All it does is limit the ability of the author to gain economically from royalty revenue at levels that would probably matter to them but that almost certainly is too smallfry for a company like Microsoft to even care about.
It seems to me very sad for the producers of useful software to unilaterally and voluntarily economically disempower themselves. The world needs people who can think and develop, and when they don't use that power to put food on the table, they lock themselves into day jobs working for someone else to do so... Worse, the main places to get those day jobs will be the places business wants to buy software support from: stable companies offering longevity and stability... companies like, say, Microsoft. Great.
Personally, I'd rather see a few more "small" millionaires, perhaps starting small and interesting sofwtare houses from royalty revenue, than no royalty revenue going to the code authors and all of industry's money going to the same old big consulting houses, who realize the market will bear the spending of that money and are willing to provide a product that the market can spend it on.
The big companies know they don't have to waste time and money trying uselessly to put the free software producers out of business. They can just use the freeness of the software to reduce their development costs in producing new products--why not do your R&D on someone else's nickel? Then they can make money on cleaning up the mess when the failure to acquire revenue means the talented creators of free-and-should-be-charged-for software software can't scale to support what they've made.
Heck, if the Postgres business really takes off for Microsoft, it could later eliminate a few of its developer jobs and cancel its own SQL product and just let Postgres continue to be developed by people willing to give away their skills rather than charge for them in a legitimate commercial challenge to Microsoft.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer