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.

Comments

Hmm. First example of it.

[flydpnkrtn]

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"

Re:Hmm. First example of it.

[Super_Z]

AD is LDAP compliant so use can also use nss_ldap to grab user information on Linux system from it

The devil lies in the details. LDAP compliance does not ensure that a product can be used as advertised. The killer lies in the (lack of) implementation of OID matching rules.

Linux and Windows nodes can perform two directional file sharing via standard* CIFS protocol

The fact that this can be done is a credit to the Samba community and definetly not a credit to MS.

With Windows Server 2003 R2, AD can also serve standard NIS, NFS, CUPS and similar UNIX protocols.

Try creating a file with e.g a colon in it on a volume mounted from a WS2003 server. Their NFS implementation is not only half-assed - its a complete bastard to set up. Other companies - like NetApp - has *far* better products. Which only shows that MS just couldn't be bothered with doing a good job compatibility wise.
I also find no mention on the WS2003 server feature page that it can serve anything remotely CUPS'ish. You were probably thinking of IPP?

If you include non standard (but known) protocols in the mix, Windows and Linux machines can also interoperate via DFS (Distributed File Sharing), RPD (Terminal Services), etc.

RDP support on unix hosts should definetly not be credited MS.

The AD compatibility list and its features may look nice on a glossy paper. To be honest - I wouldn't touch it with a long stick. Its a one way street into a long life of MS induced pain - non-compatibilities, forced upgrades, a license policy that you need professional help to understand etc.

Not to mention the happy fact that with AD, MS has a perfect instrument to enforce any diabolic license-policy they can think of - at any point in time they want to. They are in complete control of your core infrastructure.

Weird site, opensourcelegal.org

[Gregory Cox]

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...

"Permissive Licence" doesn't seem awful

[Just Some Guy]

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.