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MS No Cathedral, Open Source No Bazaar?
AlexGr sends us to InternetNews.com for an account of a Microsoft VP demonstrating Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX product running on Ubuntu at AJAXWorld. In his earlier keynote, Brad Abrams had declared that, when it comes to AJAX, Microsoft is not the cathedral and open source isn't really a bazaar. He noted that ASP.NET AJAX is available under Microsoft's permissive license with full source code. "The Web is built on open standards and we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards," Abrams said.
"The Web is built on open standards and we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards," .....and then twist them into a New York hot pretzel, with a dash of moebius strip, then 'reintroduce'.
Never play chicken with a passive aggressive.
at Microsoft or they're hiring stand-up comedians.
This is the company that wanted to decommoditize standards and protocols, yet they come out with the line "The Web is built on open standards and we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards"
So the first example of MS not using the Cathedral model, and they act like this is huge sweeping change? Release the source to Win2K under the permissive license, or help the Samba team figure out the damn protocols for Active Directory authentication, and then maybe we'll talk about "changes" and "open standards"
Here's to the crazy ones
"The Web is built on open standards and we at Microsoft believe that we have to extend those open
;-)
standards," Abrams said.
There, fixed spelling for you.
there are so many ajax enabled frameworks.
most if not all of them aren't even tied to a specific server-side technology -> so more choice.
they point out it's open source? hey of course it is! the major part is in javascript. it's open by design and even if it were possible to scramble, obfuscate and encrypt their code. it would be useless because developers will have the need to extend the widgets to their specific needs at a certain level.
Translation:
MS: We don't suck! Open soure sucks!
As long as this kind of statement is coming from Microsoft drones and spokesrobots instead of independent third parties, it's not interesting; not necessarily because it's automatically a priori untrue, but because they'd make the same statement no matter whether it is or not.
butter the donkey
You are obviously free based on the strength you exhibit.
"MS No Cathedral, Open Source No Bazaar?"
what cathedral ? what bazaar ? what relation does any cathedral and bazaar have, what kind of metaphor is this, and just what the heck does that mean ?
Read radical news here
there were moments where builders would share their knowledge between communities in order to improve the cathedral (or churches, really) building process as a whole and their own personal knowledge and others moments where the builders would keep their knowledge to them in order to get power among the builder society and more wealth.
So basically, the title of ESR essay is the weakest part of it.
We are all churches builders.
and we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards
Enable ? Hardly. Follow ? When PR requires. Open ? Yeah, right.
"Enable those open standards" does this even mean something ?
First they don't do it. Then they do something similar for a second and act as they've always done it and behaved accordingly forever and even act like it's their ground philosophy.
Not that I would care what a company does to ensure a certain future - economical, technical or otherwise - yet there are certain boundaries to arrogance - like in we think you're ignorant enough to eat whatever we serve you for dinner kind of arrogance - that sometimes just blows the hood.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Anyone have any idea what this claptrap means?
Oh right, this is what it's about. You're trying to stop people from using all the open source AJAX implementations out there, and you believe one way to do this is to claim that open source software has no support? As everyone who uses this kind of stuff should know, it's far faster and more responsive to discuss things like this with like-minded people (and/or employees) on a mailing list or forum than wait for a meaningless answer from some dumb witted twit who doesn't understand the software he's been cajoled into providing support for. You're going to fail there, so no, you don't understand how people are using AJAX at all.
Yes, because most of the servers on the web aren't Windows, damn it! Oh sorry, that quote was taken out of context.
Forgive me for being just a tad sceptical, and wondering why this was good enough to make it as a Slashdot news story.
I don't know what to make of the opensourcelegal.org site linked to in the story.
Generally sites talking about open source tend to be keen to advocate the open source philosophy, but the tone of this site is mostly neutral and lacking any overtly expressed opinion. If anything, the page titled Why Open Source? seems more negative than positive.
So perhaps the legal firm running the site is playing up the difficulties and uncertainties surrounding open source as a way of promoting its legal help on the subject? But I can't see anything on the (rather small) site advertising legal services at all. It doesn't really have enough content to get many visits for its news or information. I wonder why it was set up...
If you all Google Slashdot, will it Slashdot Google?
Embrace.
Speaking of standards:
* "Microsoft breaks with standards effort" 03-25-2003
* "Microsoft quits W3C standardisation panel" 03/24/2003
How about a free and open standard in gaming?
* "Microsoft DirectX killing innovation" 03-27-2003
We are from the Government and we are here to help.
We are from Microsoft and we enable Open Standards.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
They are just spreading their filthy proprietary standards to Linux. That is doing as much to "enable open standards" as it is to solve world hunger.
I'm sorry, but this just totally exhibits the pathetic nature of a lot of Slashdot users. Did you even read the articles you searched for? Or were you hell bent on finding some article that revealed Microsoft's reputation of standards non-compliance was based on fact. First of all, dropping out of a guidance group does not mean you don't follow standards. Secondly, W3C was a joke up until not too long ago. Good for them for showing their teeth.
It seems to me you guys would rather have MS as an adversary than welcoming an obvious changing attitude from them.
2003? This is 2007 and that is a lot of time to change your game...
Microsoft has finally decided that the cathedral model of development just isn't working for them anymore, so they've decided to do like the Catholic Church and disseminate their beliefs into every household so that you can be sure to have "MS Guilt" when having any unclean thoughts about OSS.
Come to think of it, their BSA raids on small businesses is kind of like the Inquisition... I guess you could have worse business models than the church. I mean, they are still around after thousands of years and still raking in the money.
1.Embrace.
OK, how about a more recent example then. Such as... OpenXML vs OpenDocument.
I'm sure you can find plenty of articles on slashdot for this one.
Microsoft is first and foremost a marketing company.
They can and will say what ever they need to to get people to buy.
Second in priority is Microsoft is their own legal advisors to advise
themselves, (based on their interpretation of the law - no different
than any other lawyer or law firm) on what they can get away with, what
they can get in trouble for but balanced against what they gain in
breaking the law (do they gain more than they lose - if so then they
see it as a cost of doing business).
Third in priority is the bullying and buy out of the competition. Of
course their legal house is involved in this too.
Forth has become the application submittal for as many patents as
they can get, even stupid stuff that is clearly not patentable. In
the battle against open source this will become combined with the
third priority more and more.
What you don't see in any of the above is genuine innovation.
Microsoft does NOT enable fair play. But they often make claims
in contridiction of what they actually do.
Microsoft has a very long and hard earned reputation of being
dishonest with marketing speak.
But we all know this, those of use that read slashdot.
And slashdot users are not who this markting bull is aimed at.
Or maybe we should thank MS for enabling us to be open?
Why is MS releasing the source code of anything under a permissive license make them any less of a cathedral? Said piece of code was probably still written within MS by MS-paid employees, using a top -down well-organized approach.
And why does that make OSS any less of a bazaar? Eh?
I noticed two main things in that license text:
You can't remove any copyright, patent, or atribution notices. Kind of like the dreaded BSD advertising clause, in that if someone puts "Parts written by 1337 h4xx0rz" in the output of the program, you have to leave it there. Repeat ad nauseum for every contributor that jumps on the bandwagon, and things could get... unaesthetic.
They use almost the exact same patent control system as the GPLv3. If a program contains patented code, you're granted permission to use those patents to execute it. If you sue one of the patent holders for violations of your own patent, that permission is revoked. I think this is called the "please don't eat me, IBM!" clause. Seriously, though, this needs to be pointed out every single time some Microsoft shill attacks the GPLv3. You can dislike v3, but you can't really call it anti-business when the world's largest software vendor implemented parts of it in their own license.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Unzip
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Profit
MS has always seen the web as something to convert away from open standards. Xmlhttprequest was introduced by MS as part of the way to extend and extinguish http. They were surprised when it was used against them, which is why it took them SOOOOOO long to suddenly back it. It was no different when the internet and web were opened to the world. MS had introduced their own internet called MSN that BG wanted to get 1-5 pennies off of ever dollar that was spent. Once he saw the they open internet was killing him, he quickly turned MS against the internet. Same thing is going on with AJAX. MS did not develop it. They simply created 1 protocol as a means to an end, only to find that it worked against them.
The idea of calling MS open is beyond bizarre. It is positively Machiavellian and reminds of me when MS was pushing the idea that THEY developed the internet.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Like a spouse abuser shows love for his wife. There are practically NO open standards that MS products don't pervert or ignore. The marketing offal in the article summary only serves to make MS look even more ridiculous.
PDF support? Nope. SVG? Nada. OpenDocument? Yeah right. PNG? Still haven't gotten it right. CSS? Don't hold your breath. Vorbis, Theora, FLAC, Jabber? Not in your lifetime.
In fact, it seems that all MS cares about is inventing closed file formats and protocols to ensure that there is NEVER interoperability with other products. NTFS, SMB, Exchange ActiveSync, MS Office file formats, MSN Messenger protocol, WMA, WMV, DirectX and ActiveX are a few examples but there many others.
Microsoft is to interoperability like masturbation is to sex.
'we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards'
.. We have been unsuccessful at getting the additional information to add support for Outlook in our MAPI service providers'
'One strategy is to jump on the Java bandwagon and try and take control of the class libraries and runtime'
'Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Lets move on and steal the Java language'
'Outlook will not run propedy on top of GroupWise 5.1 because it uses/expects unknown MAPI calls/parameters. We have asked our normal Microsoft contacts for assistance in getting this to work
'If the application is written in Java, the Microsoft Virtual Machine for Java will be the default VM'
davecb5620@gmail.com
* "Microsoft quits W3C standardisation panel" 03/24/2003
I heard this straight from the MS representative. MS has participated in a lot of these kinds of panels and groups but has quit them because of constant resintance of their efforts, suggestions, what ever. All you can draw your conclusions what this means, of course, and this is Slashdot, so I'm pretty sure what those conclusions are...
You don't know what you don't know.
But have they created an Eclipse plugin for developing with it? This is same old MS... "We'll own the format and hence be the most capable of creating a development environment for it... then they'll have to run Windows to create the most popular content"
This is especially significant in a world where the content consumers are more and more also the content creators.
In addition at the enterprise level: AJAX isn't easy to implement when you're using it for really intense UIs... you need an IDE for this to do it well in a large organization with varying levels of programming experience. MS wants businesses to convert all their old web based or non-web based internal apps to using this stuff (killer app style) and they want to be selling the IT dept. the tools to do so. When your IT dept. runs an OS, they would rather the people they support also run that OS, makes providing 1st level support SO much easier.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
"The components are being licensed under Microsoft's permissive license..."
"To prove his point, Abrams opened up a Virtual PC window where he was running Ubuntu Linux and demonstrated how ASP.NET AJAX could run well on Ubuntu's local server."
Interesting that Microsoft's "permissive license" allows running Linux in a virtual environment with no restrictions, but for a Linux user to run Vista in a virtual environment requires purchase of their most expensive license.
Be Bold! BoldEverything Interactive
'they do something similar for a second .. and even act like it's their ground philosophy'
.. :)
Now that they have figured out that they can't kill open source through the pollution of open standards, they pretend to engage with it so as they can steal back mind share and subvert it from the inside. To the general public MS = computers, so it would odd that advances were happening elsewhere the MS wasn't involved in. Gets Microsoft and Open in the same sentence, get it. Watch out for a joint Open Source company + MS conference. Oh, wait
was Re:MS and standards
davecb5620@gmail.com
if MS was a cathedral, then Ballmer was a cardinal
but we all know (of course), that Ballmer himself is GOD!
therefore MS is not a cathedral, MS is heaven
hence a cathedral is microsofts community (both members)
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
And why does that make OSS any less of a bazaar? Eh?
He doesn't say this particular release makes OSS any less of a bazaar, his statement is that most successful open source software is backed by a corporation, thus blurring the line between cathedral-bazaar. It isn't as much a bazaar as idealists like to think.
Microsoft is outright lying and saying that they embrace open standards. Their true intent is to destroy the open standards in order to dominate the software market share with their proprietary software. Always has been and always will be. Whatever demonstration they did concerning AJAX/.NET recently, I would be vigilant to accept it at face value. I keep on thinking about all those books printed on "Undocumented Windows" application programmer interfaces. I keep on thinking about a company that had a software for doubling the space of the hard drive and then went out of business when MS came out with a similar product. The other instance is Netscape and the way the internet explorer html/javascript were made different deliberately. This is not to mention Sun's java virtual machine and Microsoft's java virtual machine were made different deliberately. I am witness to the politics in business which still supports windows because Microsoft with their under-handed tactics. I recall something about promoting their software and eventually someone may be given a job at Microsoft. I also recall something about the same scenario with other related companies as well.
I do appreciate Mr. Gates donating a great deal of money to all sorts of charities, but behind those seemingly generous gestures I always have the idea there must be something in it for Microsoft in return for those gestures. I can venture to guess all the so-called research money donated towards AIDS will somehow find it's way back into the hands of scientists using Microsoft-only software.
I would love to see transparency/accountability and especially in Canada with regard to this donated money.
The latest Canadian government is very good, but I hope to see more transparency and accountability with them also. The other impact on the donation is how this will affect the politics of open-source software in CANADA. As it stands it's a no-brainer...inaction in Canada means the Microsoft OS will remain the majority OS everywhere in the Canadian government which in turn means $$$ for Microsoft. I wonder what would have been the decision if Mr. Gates had not donated any money to charities/research. Would we be using open-source operating systems today?
Could you imagine all the good it would make if all that $$$ was given to open-source/transparent/accountable medical research? Anyone on the planet could examine and could perhaps contribute to the progress of the research without having to ask. Innovation happens by accident, by necessity, by hacking and best of all by participating in the open-source community.
Have a nice day everyone.
Nothing more need be said.
Everytime a Microsoft individual opens his mouth - in public, on a blog, wherever - he is a LIAR.
Period. End of story.
The Microsoft shills babble about XHTTPRequest as if it's mere existence was the total cause for the AJAX explosion. It's a joke. The whole notion lay fallow until OSS developed it.
There are tons of OSS AJAX toolkits around. Who cares about Microsoft's "permissive license" version?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Given their long history of breaking standards, it is quite hard to believe that they have really changed attitudes in the last month. It is much more probable that this is just another marketing spin from Microsoft, trying to sound like they advocate standards while they in reality are trying to destroy them.
Or even better, Procreate
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
for people in alternate universes? You Insensetive Clod!
We're using both products in the office
One job is a hospital in ASP.NET, C#.NET and Microsoft AJAX and we do other stuff in PHP and different javascript packages available.
In normal Microsoft style.. Want to something generic? Easy. Want something more customized and specific? ahh..
The development time on the Microsoft stuff takes a lot longer, but I am not sure if thats because of learning time or not.
I'm more than a little irritated by this whole AJAX buzz. You want to see who invented AJAX ? Go back a decade. I was using it on my little vanity page, and the code found its way into a few government intranets a friend of mine managed. Lots of other people came up with their own methods for dynamic content. The only difference is we didn't use buzz-happy XML, and we didn't give our Javascripts cute catchy names. It's such a big stupid phenomenon now, with entire books written on this non-topic, and business created specifically around it, while other businesses spend money for it. Someone may have come up with the AJAX moniker, but they certainly didn't pioneer the technique of dynamically requesting content on a as-needed basis. What, you've never seen IFRAME advertising before ? :P
-Billco, Fnarg.com