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

deja vu?

[Rixel]

"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'.

Re:deja vu?

[cloricus]

Without a word of a troll I believe my brain stem fell to pieces when I read that.

As a web developer for the last ten years I wonder who they honestly believe they are kidding? No matter what your bias you can clearly see in their current policy that they have no interest in standards and less so in web standards.

Re:deja vu?

[WgT2]

After reading that 'standards' line it makes me see Microsoft as nothing less than a hydra:

• multiple heads
• with multiple mouths
• each able to say its own thing

...but they all share the same heart.

Either there's been a complete sea change....

[jimicus]

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"

Re:Either there's been a complete sea change....

[rucs_hack]

It's an old method. Keep getting soundbites published that discredit the view you don't want, and the lie slowly becomes true.

I'll be willing to bet they never would have made source for ajax available had open source not existed. Once again they lead by following...

And anyway, it's not open source, because I can't take the entire source and produce a rival product using it.

Re:Either there's been a complete sea change....

[Professor_UNIX]

By that logic, GPL isn't open source because I can't take the entire source and sell a rival product using it.

Where did you get that idea? Of course you can take GPL'd code and create a rival product and sell it. You just have to redistribute your changes to the GPL'd code as well so that others may take advantage of it like you did of the original product.

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.

Re:Could someone explain me wth does that mean :

[rfc1394]

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 ?

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.

MS and standards

[l3v1]

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.
 

Open Standards == No one is Using it

[segedunum]

Whenever a Microsoft employee talks about using open standards you can bet it's because no one is using the particular bit of software he's talking about. As soon as a critical mass of people are using it, see the open standards mantra melt away.

"I'm not sure the bazaar analogy works," Abrams said. "Neither cathedral nor bazaar are the same in the AJAX Web space; rather there is a continuum that reaches across space."

Anyone have any idea what this claptrap means?

"In the open source world you can talk to people and get answers," Abrams said. "But we're offering guaranteed support."

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.

"The other reality is that you have work on other platform and can't afford to turn away users that are using Mac or Linux as well."

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.

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...

The Proof Is In The Pudding: Open Source DirectX

[lotusleaf]

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

"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.

Re:In a weird way, it works both ways

[Score Whore]

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?

Re:In a weird way, it works both ways

[init100]

Microsoft sometimes creates useful things, like once every couple of years. :)

AJAX is certainly one of these (few) things.