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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.
AFAIK, the original CatB is not so much about open vs closed source, rather than those two models used in open source context - e.g. the original GNU project was more a Cathedral, while Linux was a Bazaar.
This is an (indirect) reference to Eric S. Raymond's seminal paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" (actual essay is here), in which he talks about software development being done in one of two ways, by huge development companies in commercial environments, being similar to the way medieval cathedrals were constructed, versus open-source development in which just about anyone can get involved if they want, and that development is closer to the typical bazaars where anyone can walk up and put up a booth to sell rugs. It is this paper that was basically the cause of Netscape deciding to open-source its browser.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
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?
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
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?
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.
XmlHTTPRequest was first used Outlook Web Access. In one step microsoft took the web from klugey JVM and form based web apps to asynchronous, dynamic, loosely coupled, non-modal web apps. If you even took the slightest amount of time to look it up you'd know this.
Do you enjoy writing fiction and lies?
Microsoft sometimes creates useful things, like once every couple of years. :)
AJAX is certainly one of these (few) things.