Microsoft Launches OSS Site, Submits License For Approval

prostoalex writes "Microsoft has launched a site dedicated to collaboration between Microsoft and open source community. The site helps developers, IT administrators, and IT buyers find out what Microsoft's product offerings are, and read articles about open source such as 'Open Source Provider Sees Sales Doubling After Moving Solutions to the Windows Platform.'" Relatedly, CNet has the news that the company has submitted its shared-sources license to the OSI for approval.

Comments

RUN AWAY!!

[Divebus]

Do like Microsoft does with standards... run away as far as possible as fast as you can.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[snoyberg]

So, I'll take it as a given that no one reading this would ever consider contributing code to M$ "OSS" sites. So then the only other use for us would be to utilize their code in our products. I would recommend considering the following:

• Are we guaranteed that the code is patent-free and will always be open for continued use?
• Does their shared-source license allow easy mixing with other FLOSS code, eg GPL and BSD licenses?
• Is there another, more well-established solution to the problem their code is solving?
• And considering the "stability" of M$ products, do we even trust the code to do what they claims

For me, it would be more trouble than it's worth to use M$ code in any of my projects.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Ed Avis]

* Are we guaranteed that the code is patent-free and will always be open for continued use?

You are not guaranteed that with any other free software program. In fact, it's almost guaranteed that it does infringe software patents (both those existing now, and those that will be granted in the future).

* Does their shared-source license allow easy mixing with other FLOSS code, eg GPL and BSD licenses?

The GPL doesn't allow easy mixing with code under any other licence, so this seems a little unfair - but yes, practically speaking it may be a problem. Mixing with MIT-style or new-style BSD code is usually unproblematic since you can just relicense that code to match the fussier licence.

* Is there another, more well-established solution to the problem their code is solving?

Almost all free software projects fail this test.

* And considering the "stability" of M$ products, do we even trust the code to do what they claims

The whole point is that you can read the code for yourself, so you don't have to trust anyone.

I think a better list of things to consider is whether you have freedom to (1) use, (2) share, and (3) change the software. If you can do all those then it's free software, no matter which company it came from. There's no reason to hold Microsoft-written code to a different standard to other code. If it's free it's free.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[snoyberg]

* Are we guaranteed that the code is patent-free and will always be open for continued use?

You are not guaranteed that with any other free software program. In fact, it's almost guaranteed that it does infringe software patents (both those existing now, and those that will be granted in the future).

Let me rephrase: Are we guaranteed that Microsoft won't claim that it has patented the code after we start using it?

* Does their shared-source license allow easy mixing with other FLOSS code, eg GPL and BSD licenses?

The GPL doesn't allow easy mixing with code under any other licence, so this seems a little unfair - but yes, practically speaking it may be a problem. Mixing with MIT-style or new-style BSD code is usually unproblematic since you can just relicense that code to match the fussier licence.

Using GPLed code under an M$ would almost certainly be problematic. I was talking about the other way. It's a lot easier to make OSS code GPLed than GPLed code go to a different license (aka, impossible).

* Is there another, more well-established solution to the problem their code is solving?

Almost all free software projects fail this test.

What does that mean? Most FLOSS software reinvents the wheel? True. But if you're looking to use someone else's code, why start at Microsoft?

* And considering the "stability" of M$ products, do we even trust the code to do what they claims

The whole point is that you can read the code for yourself, so you don't have to trust anyone.

It's possible to do so, but debugging something that's as buggy as I believe M$ code to be is probably a bigger undertaking than writing from scratch.

I think a better list of things to consider is whether you have freedom to (1) use, (2) share, and (3) change the software. If you can do all those then it's free software, no matter which company it came from. There's no reason to hold Microsoft-written code to a different standard to other code. If it's free it's free.

But there is reason to be more suspicious of M$ code for the reasons I mentioned. If I knew for a fact that ABC's OSS code had the flaws I refer to, I wouldn't use it either. I just don't trust Microsoft.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[HermMunster]

There's as much chance as a snowball's chance in hell of Microsoft getting much support from OSS. Utter incompetence is involved in their attempt to embrace and extinguish campaign.

Really, they have Ballmer yelling extortion attempts at every Linux user and they have some maverick manager or programmer, that while in Asia, claiming that 2007 is the year of the death of OSS.

These people are not only distorted, they are crazy foolish.

Microsoft needs to just understand that OSS will sooner or later out develop them. They need to also understand that everyone is on guard like a farmer with a shotgun protecting their daughters from the Microsoft Bible salesmen.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[HermMunster]

Utterly false. No Linux code violates other's IP. Period! Stop spreading FUD. There's no violation until a court of law states there is. As far as I can recall there hasn't been a single OSS product that was taken to court and lost a case of IP infringement. On the other hand OSS has been taken to court and become the victor, and as far as I recall nearly 100% of Microsoft's IP related cases resulted in them loosing in a court of law, some for very serious money, including near multi-billion judgements.

So, don't go off claiming something that is absolutely untrue and that has never ever been proven in any court.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you.
Its a shame that some posters here use the same "logic" that MS uses.

Stop helping MS by repeating stupid claims.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[jacksonj04]

Just because it hasn't been proven doesn't mean it has been disproven.

The chances are there is some code somewhere buried in a piece of OSS (I don't care if it's Linux or not, SourceForge alone has 153,954 OSS projects as I write this) which violates somebody's IP, somewhere in the world. Large companies like, say, Microsoft make mistakes in including IP they don't own and I'm damn sure that there is code under an open licence somewhere which does the same.

All you can state as a fact is that as far as you can recall there hasn't been a single OSS product taken to a US court which lost a case of IP infringement, meaning it wasn't proved that code infringing specific IP was in that product.

Don't go off claiming that OSS is pure and flawless, because it damn well isn't. The concept is great, don't get me wrong. I've seen fantastic pieces of software come out of open source, a fair amount of which I use daily. But don't claim that which you can't prove.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[ozphx]

libavcodec

Probably the most wretched hive of scum and villany.... ;)

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[marcello_dl]

>> * Are we guaranteed that the code is patent-free and will always be open for continued use?

>You are not guaranteed that with any other free software program.

But a submarine patent is not in the interest of a free software developer (severe loss of face) while M$ would benefit greatly from embracing and extinguishing FOSS.

Besides WTF are you accepting so passively? If a patent ends up implemented in OSS one should prove the implementation has been stolen or the patent should have expired/not have been awarded in the first place. You are accepting a DISEASED status quo as normal, jeez! We've always been at war with eastasia.

> In fact, it's almost guaranteed
>that it does infringe software patents (both those existing now, and those that will be granted in
>the future).

It is almost guaranteed commercial software infringes patents belonging to someone else. In fact with commercial software they sell you protection. One big mob of companies faking some fight between themselves. Well i can't tell somebody to rebel, it's your money. But you're paying an unfair tax. Get back to copyright and let people charge for superior commercial software, not for the right to use the double linked list.

>> * Does their shared-source license allow easy mixing with other FLOSS code, eg GPL and BSD licenses?

>The GPL doesn't allow easy mixing with code under any other licence.

It doesn't when the result wouldn't be free. Fair enough for me, it's the whole point of it. People don't choose the GPL to interoperate with any other friggin' licence. They choose it because they want their stuff to stay friggin' free. Want to deal with OSS from Microsoft? while you're at it why not learn about christian theology in Saudi Arabia. It's less risky.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[mrsteveman1]

There are actually some things Microsoft could open source that would be useful, for instance the newest version of whatever system they are working on, like SMB2. Those systems would be useful but i highly doubt Microsoft would ever open source anything important.

Nothing they do, ever, will lead me to believe they are moving away from the destroy competition game.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

IP Theft in the Linux Kernel

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[MightyMartian]

The chances are there is some code somewhere buried in a piece of OSS (I don't care if it's Linux or not, SourceForge alone has 153,954 OSS projects as I write this) which violates somebody's IP, somewhere in the world. Large companies like, say, Microsoft make mistakes in including IP they don't own and I'm damn sure that there is code under an open licence somewhere which does the same.

I think it would be all but impossible to develop any nontrivial software that didn't violate at least one software patent. It sure looks like it's damn near impossible to make sure that such violations don't exist, with the pathetically awful state of the patent system.

The fact is that if Microsoft could kill Linux with all these wonderful patents it would have already. Just because something violates a patent doesn't mean that the patent should even exist at all.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[HiThere]

Remember that Open Source isn't the same as Free Software. And that open source is something still else...and can easily be "look but don't touch".

Given that MS is asking OSI to approve their license I'd guess that it's not like the olde open source libraries that used to be provided...where the library was distributed, perhaps, along with a compiler, but you weren't permitted to use it with any other compiler.

OTOH: This license was written by lawyers and proposed by MS. I'm not going to trust it until years have passed, and then only after a succession of lawyers have found it harmless. (IANAL, so I'm not going to trust my interpretation of something MS had a lawyer write for them, even though I'm allowed to read it, unlike their EULAs, where you must purchase the product to which they apply before you're allowed to read them. And then you've got to accept a new, possibly more restrictive, license with each bug fix.)

I accept that it is conceivable that MS seriously is trying to make a truce. Unfortunately, given their track record the only safe and sensible response is to, at minimum, turn a deaf ear. So I'm not going to even bother looking. It might be tempting, but being tempted and succumbing would likely be fatal (economically if not physically).

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[innocent_white_lamb]

Microsoft needs to just understand that OSS will sooner or later out develop them.
 
Sooner or later?
 
Look around a bit. It's already happened.
 
Hence the desperation, and all that.
 
No, I'm not kidding. I haven't used MS software in 8 years and I'm not missing out on anything other than viruses, security problems and headaches.
 
Sooner or later, indeed.... Sheesh.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Ed Avis]

No Linux code violates other's IP. Period!

Studies - not done by Microsoft - have found that just the kernel violates hundreds of software patents. Even if you dispute the exact number, there's no way that it is zero. Have you seen the triviality of many software patents? It is impossible to write a complex program without infringing on patents held by others.

This is not FUD and it is not something to be ashamed of. Microsoft Windows also violates patents held by others. Practically all software does.

There's no violation until a court of law states there is.

This is clearly not true. If a patent is infringed, it is infringed now, even though you may not discover the fact of the infringement until later.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[jimicus]

Microsoft needs to just understand that OSS will sooner or later out develop them.

It hasn't yet. 99 times out of 100, there already exists a closed-source equivalent to an open-source product, be it Microsoft or someone elses. Whether or not the closed-source equivalents are any good, however, is another issue altogether.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Ed Avis]

If a patent ends up implemented in OSS one should prove the implementation has been stolen or the patent should have expired/not have been awarded in the first place.

That is a good outcome, but it's not always possible. You and I may think a patent should not have been awarded, but the patent office and the courts may think otherwise. It's fantasy to imagine that every single software patent can be overturned. Often you just have to live with them (a good example was the Unisys GIF patent that stopped people distributing GIF-encoder software in the United States.)

The right answer is not to rely on challenging individual patents, but to fix the whole system so that patents are not granted for computer programs (those being covered by copyright instead). I am not defending the software patent system at all, just pointing out the reality, which is that Linux infringes software patents held by others.

The GPL doesn't allow easy mixing with code under any other licence.
It doesn't when the result wouldn't be free.

No, it does not allow it at all. If you distribute a derived work of a GPLed program (unless you have special extra permission from the copyright holder) then the whole resulting work must be distributed under the GPL or not distributed at all.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Open sourcing (opening the code) to SMB2, and other protocols, will not help much. People would still have to scour the code and work out what is supposed to be happening or what it is supposed to do. What would help is if they publish the specifications of this (and many other) protocols. This would be much better and is what the EU are trying to get them to do. Because this would then put other OSes on a level playing field Microsoft are resisting like crazy!

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[someone1234]

They start an own OSS site to study FOSS development (to dissect it like a lab rat). What they fail to see is, that many oss developers wouldn't give their code to them even if they paid for it. So their study will be very biased and the site will fail. So yeah, OSS a la M$ is dead.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because it hasn't been proven doesn't mean it has been disproven.

What part of "There's no violation until a court of law states there is." you haven't understood? The burden of proof is on the plaintiff's side.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Oddscurity]

Indeed, software patents are granted on such trivial and/or broad concepts that it may very well be that "Hello World" turns out to be covered by at least a dozen. Even if you wanted to do "due diligence" and research patents, something which could later work against you if "willful infringement" is claimed in a lawsuit, that doesn't make patents exactly easy to search for.

Just look at how many of them are worded like: "A method and apparatus for ...". Quite!

Then throw in different ways of phrasing concepts, so that when you're looking for "browser" the IP lawyer in question thought it a good idea to call it "method and apparatus for accessing and displaying information which may be hosted locally, and where said information may be indexed, and in fact we have about 300 other 'claims' to sell you."

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[plague3106]

Let me rephrase: Are we guaranteed that Microsoft won't claim that it has patented the code after we start using it?

You have a license to use it. Its up to MS to not license patented code under the new license.

Using GPLed code under an M$ would almost certainly be problematic. I was talking about the other way. It's a lot easier to make OSS code GPLed than GPLed code go to a different license (aka, impossible).

Sounds like the GPL is more restrictive on developers then. That's the trade off with the GPL by the way; you give users rights but take them from developers.

What does that mean? Most FLOSS software reinvents the wheel? True. But if you're looking to use someone else's code, why start at Microsoft?

Perhaps because it may solve the problem better than the other code out there? Ruling their code out automatically just because it was made by MS is just stupid.

It's possible to do so, but debugging something that's as buggy as I believe M$ code to be is probably a bigger undertaking than writing from scratch.

Perhaps you should leave personal beliefs out of your evaluation and stick to facts. All code has bugs. Sometimes the bugs are irrelevent. But MS' software (especially XPSP2, Vista and server 2003) is very stable.

But there is reason to be more suspicious of M$ code for the reasons I mentioned. If I knew for a fact that ABC's OSS code had the flaws I refer to, I wouldn't use it either. I just don't trust Microsoft.

Of course not, because you have not evaluated them recently. You think that they could not have changed and fail to realize the company is so big that some divisions want to work with OSS while others may not.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[nevali]

How many of those patents have actually been tested in court?

A patent that's merely been granted is just a tool to persuade people to stop doing something you don't like. It doesn't actually mean that you hold that "IP", just that you have a right to take somebody to court who you believe is violating it and put it to the (legal) test, provided you're aware that you may very well lose.

The patent system (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly) balances a reduced burden upon the patent examiners (who can't reasonably be experts in all fields) with an increased burden upon those who actually want to protect the IP that they've developed: if you want to assert your ownership over some piece of technology, you'd better be prepared to prove to a judge that you're entitled to it.

Because of that, a patent that's never been tested is just a license to go to court, and very little else. Don't get me wrong, that license to go to court is important, but somebody apparently violating an untested patent doesn't mean there's some kind of IP theft going on, just that there might be.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[plague3106]

Huh? Already happened? Then why do we need articles saying year 20xx is the year of desktop linux? Where are the deluge of applications for linux?

It seems to me OSS is playing catch up constantly; is there anything like WPF for Linux? What about WCF? Frameworks which make UI development almost trivial, and are able to setup communications channels with a simple config file?

Since you haven't used MS in 8 years you probably don't know that security has greatly improved. XPSP2, Vista and Server 2003 are all very secure, as is IIS6 and Sql Server 2005. Please, don't claim they aren't, you don't know because you haven't been around it.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Ed Avis]

I don't think it is helpful to talk in terms of 'IP' (since that muddles together copyright and patents) and especially not 'IP theft' which makes it sound like some kind of moral issue. Any complex operating system infringes software patents. Some of those patents would likely be invalidated in court, some of them are stronger and would not be. Some of the patents will be held by Microsoft and some by other companies. That's just the way it is (in the USA anyway).

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[marcosdumay]

"I think a better list of things to consider is whether you have freedom to (1) use, (2) share, and (3) change the software. If you can do all those then it's free software, no matter which company it came from. There's no reason to hold Microsoft-written code to a different standard to other code. If it's free it's free."

Ok, have you read any MS's EULA? Can you clearly tell what rights that document grants you, and what it doesn't grant? Let's take something simpler... Have you take a look at the GPLv2 (yes one of the simplest software licences out there)? Did you finish reading it without any doubt appearing about what the text meant?

Hystoricaly, Microsoft don't make partners, but victims. Also, it's almost impossible that they will create a document that plainly gives you those rights (people are still arguing about the details of GPLv2). Now, why should anyone bet on Microsoft honesty? If they are able to delude huge companies (with teams of lawers) into thinking they have a fair deal when in fact they don't, why should sole developers trust their interpretation of the licence?

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"And considering the "stability" of M$ products, do we even trust the code to do what they claims"

Really, when are you people going to grow up. Up until Windows 2000 this might've been true, but 2003 server came out more than 4 years ago. I work in a large business that's almost exactly half RHEL and half Windows 2003 and they are both perfectly stable under bizarre and demanding loads (a 2003 server actually held our uptime record until the datacenter had to be powered down at around 400-ish days). Security problems I'll give you, but stability really ain't the issue it used to be.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[tehcyder]

Just because it hasn't been proven doesn't mean it has been disproven.

That is true, but unhelpful, in the same way that the fact that you can't disprove I am the son of God is not proof that I am, in fact, the son of God.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[snoyberg]

Perhaps because it may solve the problem better than the other code out there? Ruling their code out automatically just because it was made by MS is just stupid.

Granted; I rule it out because of the assumption I have about their code quality. I should not have presented that as two separate arguments.

Perhaps you should leave personal beliefs out of your evaluation and stick to facts. All code has bugs. Sometimes the bugs are irrelevent. But MS' software (especially XPSP2, Vista and server 2003) is very stable.

I'm stuck using Office at work. If you had Excel crash on you as often as I have it, you wouldn't consider their code stable. Granted, I do more advanced things than your average Excel address book, but there's no excuse for a piece of software they've been working on for well over a decade (coming up on two decades if I'm not mistaken) to crash this often.

Of course not, because you have not evaluated them recently. You think that they could not have changed and fail to realize the company is so big that some divisions want to work with OSS while others may not.

I'm using XP sp2 and Office 2003. Maybe they've changed significantly since they produced those POSs. Based on word of mouth, Vista's supposed to fix all previous flaws, right?

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Ed Avis]

Since Microsoft are submitting their licence text to the OSI for approval, you don't need to be completely certain what rights it grants you - if you trust the OSI, you can take their judgement about whether the licence is free or not. If you don't trust the OSI's judgement then you must read the text and judge for yourself. But if you decide it's non-free, it would be better to do so by finding specific parts of the text which make the software non-free (or whose meaning is unclear and might make it non-free), rather than by reasoning that if it comes from Microsoft then it must be bad.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[gstoddart]

Just because it hasn't been proven doesn't mean it has been disproven.

The chances are there is some code somewhere buried in a piece of OSS (I don't care if it's Linux or not, SourceForge alone has 153,954 OSS projects as I write this) which violates somebody's IP, somewhere in the world.

See, the problem is that the presumption that if two people independently develop the same thing, the second one is violating someone's IP.

When I went to school, they taught us a bunch of general concepts about computing, what was going on in the industry, and what is was being used for, and how to make use of it. So much of what is happening in the industry is merely evolutionary.

Unfortunately, software patents which seem to patent the concept of doing something instead of how you actually implemented it are really damaging the ability of a skilled practitioner in the field to do something which is fairly obvious.

I mean, really, imagine if people had patented linked lists, or tree structures, or filesystems, or user interfaces (which MS just stole from Apple and Xerox and then successfully argued in court you can't patent). These are fundamental building blocks, but if I write something from scratch using these that do the same thing as someone else does with their software, I'm suddenly 'violating' their IP. It feels like the industry has been violated more than the IP.

Let's face it, most of the 'innovations' done by MS has been to take what someone else is doing, do it in their own proprietary (and, often, huge) way. Then they claim that they invented it, and you're not allowed to copy their copy of someone else's stuff. That's not innovation, that's appropriation.

Cheers

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[aliquis]

"Does their shared-source license allow easy mixing with other FLOSS code, eg GPL and BSD licenses?"

No, because nothing mixes easily with GPL.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[HermMunster]

It is pure and flawless until it is proven to be flawed. This isn't traffic law that we are talking about here. It isn't a matter of people speeding or going through red lights or not stopping fully at stop signs or not having insurance or not paying the meter and getting away with it.

We are talking about serious implications if people believe that Linux is in violation of others intellectual property. If false word spreads then people will believe it because it is easier to take the simpler approach to problems than it is to dig deep and find the real truth.

If you believe they should just believe the surface accusation then you are just like Microsoft in that you can claim, in an attempt to harm the Linux industry, by stating that Linux violates it's patents. But alas, Microsoft only makes the claim without stating the patents nor the court cases to back it up. So in essence, by just trying to get others to believe something that hasn't been proven you are doing exactly what Microsoft was doing--spreading FUD.

It is well established that in a court in the US you are believed to be innocent until proven guilty, so in the US there has been no violations. In a civil court the plaintiff must prove with a preponderance of the evidence, whereas in a criminal court the case against the defendant must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Since there have been no cases of OSS loosing a suit and very few OSS projects being sued at all theres a greater chance that none are in violation of anyone's IP. It is pretty simple. You innocent until you are proven guilty.

The main reason Microsoft does not want to disclose which IP are in violation is that they would be sued by these various organizations such as the EFF and FSF to prove their case, and for slander and libel. This would cost Microsoft dearly. It isn't that every one and their brother would challenge Microsoft because everyone and their brother can already challenge the claim. You simply need to do so by sending a certified letter demanding that Microsoft disclose to you the actual IP in question and which project (as you are being threatened as an end-user). Your letter should state that if Microsoft fails to respond fully with full disclosure by a certain date then you and those related to these IP violations are to consider the matter addressed and closed. The point is that if they really felt threatened by all those that would challenge them on the patents they can already be challenged without even knowing the IP in question.

So, all of their posturing was simply for FUD and since it has never been proven that any laws or anyones property was stolen there is no breaking of the laws and nothing was stolen.

Are there crimes that go unpunished because the culprits are not caught? Yes. We all know that. Are there serious crimes that go unpunished because the culprits are not caught? Absolutely. Is everyone using Linux or developing projects committing serious crimes? Depends on how you look at it. But if we are all committing serious crimes and we are being accused of those crimes we deserve to know what they are and an opportunity to defend ourselves. If you are of the mindset that we are only committing crimes akin to traffic violations then we still need to know what crimes and still are to be given the opportunity to defend ourselves, and it is still up to the proper authorities to bring those changes and to have those charges settled in a court of law with jurisdiction. Otherwise, to just let it foster is to simply spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.

The only way to offset that is to ensure that those reading the claims understand that more is at stake than just the claims (as the average persons don't go out and investigate, they just tend to read the headlines).

Now there's an even greater issue here. The average commercial entity producing software is probably in violation of more IP than any OSS project is (by your logic). At least with the OSS project anyone (including you) c

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[cecil_turtle]

Where are the deluge of applications for linux?

Right here.

is there anything like WPF for Linux?

Mozilla's XUL/XULRunner - you know, the thing Microsoft copied from to make their own XAML in the first place.

What about WCF?

Do you know what WCF even does? Did you seriously just ask if there's a linux equivalent to web services and message queuing? Or is this the part where you go on a rant about how revolutionary .NET technologies are compared with the other available frameworks?

and are able to setup communications channels with a simple config file?

OK now I know you're trolling. You just gave Microsoft credit over OSS for having a simple config file.

Since you haven't used MS in 8 years you probably don't know that security has greatly improved. XPSP2, Vista and Server 2003 are all very secure, as is IIS6 and Sql Server 2005.

This is relatively accurate, though I'd qualify that by saying that they can be very secure but sometimes only after a little bit of work (XPSP2 is still pretty vulnerable out of the box, can't wait for SP3 if they ever get around to it).

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Ciaran_H]

The poster didn't say anything about Linux. And he also didn't say anything at all about intellectual property, which we all know is a rather silly way of trying to exert control.

What he said was: ...it's almost guaranteed that [free software] does infringe software patents (both those existing now, and those that will be granted in the future).

And guess what? It's true. It really is.

It's not just restricted to free software, of course - *any* piece of software, even those coming from Microsoft, are pretty much guaranteed to infringe on some software patent somewhere. The reason is pretty clear - it's because software patents are granted for things that are way too obvious, which is the one of the reasons why they're so utterly stupid. This was actually explored pretty well in this episode of Security Now! from grc.com. Do take a listen, or at least read the transcript on that page.

Now, did the poster say that they agreed with software patents? I certainly can't see that anywhere, so if you manage to find it I'd love to know. The use of the word "infringe" doesn't count; after all, the patents *are* being infringed on. They're just utterly silly patents that should be thrown out, and notice that I didn't say that the patents are *right*.

Notice that I also haven't said that the patent owners should win in court if they have a software patent. Most likely, they shouldn't, and you pretty much won't ever find me backing Microsoft in a battle against FOSS.

Do software patents constitute a kind of 'intellectual property'? Not in my books; not in the way I understand IP. The idea that it does is ludicrous.

Yes, Linux code infringes on software patents. Which ones? I don't know, but I'm fairly sure it does. Are these software patents *right*? Does Linux contain anybody else's 'intellectual property'? Hell no.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW, I see your points but a company like this does not and will never change, regardless of what divisions of the company want to work with OSS. The Bottom Line is this if you want to keep OSS where OSS is today which is Free as in "Speech" I suggest not using the code, because it will only hurt the community. MS has done too many things to try and destroy the OSS community, now that they know for a fact that the OSS movement is gaining popularity specially here in the U.S they want to play nice, thanks but no thanks. They can keep their code regardless if it is stable. Also the whole thing on xp sp2,vista and windows 2003 being stable is bullshit, nothing but bugs; I work with them everyday and after a hidious day at the office dealing with wincrap all around I get home to my Ubunu/Linux machine and it just works, so why would any rational developer would want to use their code. THIS SPELLS TROUBLE!

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[nevali]

And to just repeat that statement continually misses the point entirely. "Infringing a software patent"means nothing except "you might be taken to court". It says absolutely nothing about the likelihood of winning or losing the case.

Given the frivolity of many of the patents that have been issued, it's going to be extremely difficult for any piece of software of any reasonable complexity to not infringe upon a granted patent, open source or otherwise, but that doesn't actually mean that any actual innovation took place, that the patent holder would win an infringement suit (it doesn't mean they'd lose, either), or that the developers of the software did anything wrong.

All that patent is--until it's been tested--is a hypothetical opportunity to stand up in front of a judge and attempt to argue that you did in fact invent the thing being described by the patent and that the defendant is utilising it without your permission.

  In real terms, talking about "infringing upon software patents" is absolutely meaningless. Talk about specific patents, and ones which actually have some grounding, and you're into the realm of a tangible risk. Anything other than that, though--talking about infringement in general terms--is basically just one of those footnotes or random statistics that people mention from time to time; it shouldn't, and in a practical sense can't have any bearing on the development of software, be it open source or not.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[HermMunster]

What' he's claiming qualifies as copyright infringement and license violation. The only way it can be an IP violation is if he has a patent on it. Which he does not. Technically, if that was taken verbatim he's right. It still hasn't been proven. Of course, it is sad that if it is his work and was taken and used in an unauthorized way I'd vote for some way to compensate. But it certainly isn't a patent issue and hence really isn't IP theft. It is simply pirating of software.

Soon, we'll have music companies or bands patenting the way thier music sounds so no one can imitate them. Pretty sad and all. Artists will patent how their pictures look or the process used to create the music or the pictures.

Those are better covered with copyright instead of patents. That's how this guy should be covering his.

From what I understand the same thing happened with the broadcom wireless chipset features that were reverse engineered for linux and someone from the BSD community of products copied it verbatim.

Microsoft is not claiming that open source is in violation of their copyrights. They are claiming that open source stole their IP. They claim 235 patents are being violated. That's an accusation of IP theft. What this guys is claiming is nothing more than copyright infringement or even a violation of the license. That's no IP theft.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[Ed Avis]

I think that the danger of a software patent can be divided into two parts: whether the program falls within the scope of the patent, and whether the patent would hold up in court. If someone patented quicksort and your program implements quicksort, then it infringes the patent without question, and you don't need to go to court to determine that. However, if the patent holder tried to sue then you could almost certainly get the patent overturned.

I think we are in agreement. Any complex program will 'infringe' on software patents, and in particular Linux does so - but this is not necessarily something to worry about. I was responding to an earlier post that questioned whether 'open source' code released by Microsoft should be avoided because it could not be guaranteed to be 'patent-free'. I pointed out that virtually no complex program is 'patent-free' and mentioned that Linux infringes on lots of software patents, yet this is not a reason to avoid using Linux.

Re:RUN AWAY!!

[nevali]

"I think we are in agreement."

I think you may be right :-)

I think one area of concern is merely that of singling out Linux, because that so often gets seized upon as a source of FUD. The only significant factor regarding Linux as a source of infringements is its size and complexity, and of course there are many many other pieces of software which fall into that category.

itsatrap

[Anonymous Coward]

popular tag today...

Seen it before

[gentimjs]

Yeah, and Attorney General Gonzalez swore to tell the truth before being questioned by the senate... And we all see how much -that- meant ...

The real reason

[MosesJones]

Is that Balmer has run out of chairs. By doing this he hopes to gain access to all the Open Source communities chairs.

Re:The real reason

[Howitzer86]

He'll get my chair when he prys it from my cold dead ass.

Re:The real reason

[lilomar]

prys it from my cold dead ass. ARRG!! Bad Mental Image! Bad! Bad!

Re:The real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

He could ask the Melinda and Bill Gates Chairity

I think this should be submitted to Wikipedia....

[iknownuttin]

for their "Spin" artice as an example.

OT - Typical Microsoft web design

[Ant P.]

The site displays a huge black rectangle over half the content if you don't allow it to use Shockwave Flash.

Talent Poaching.

[Prysorra]

PR. Free product testing.

Any other ulterior motives?

Re:Talent Poaching.

[Anonymous Coward]

Subversion.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[metlin]

If you can't beat 'em, join' em?

I mean, at the end of the day, a large chunk of OSS developers also have regular day jobs coding proprietary software for money. The money in OSS is in support, not in the end product itself.

Secondly, OSS only works for products, and we all know how the product-service life-cycle goes. So, if Microsoft can't make money out of a product, they can make money out of a service.

And so, even MS can now say that they are doing that "Open Source thing" when a potential customer's (tech-ignorant) management asks them.

This is probably a first step to that end. News at 11.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[snoyberg]

Subversion.

Nah, I'm sure Microsoft uses their own source management tool...

Re:Talent Poaching.

[UbuntuDupe]

Yes.

"Hey, we're contributing this code to the open source community."
"Oh, cool, this is pretty useful, nice interface. "my mom likes it!" "Hm ... are we sure about this?" "Oh, hush!"
*wait, wait, wait* *most OSS projects now include the code from the MS contribution* "OMG!!!! That was actually copyrighted proprietary code!"
*wins enormous judgment against anyone using it*

Re:Talent Poaching.

[Anonymous Coward]

embrace, extend, extinguish, we are at the "embrace" stage; two more steps in Microsoft's plans to go...

Re:Talent Poaching.

[GrievousMistake]

Not a chance. No one ever became a large and successful software firm by using Microsoft source management tools...

Re:Talent Poaching.

[snoyberg]

Well, maybe Microsoft started off using someone else's tools and then once they become "large and successful" they switched to their own solution. That would explain a lot actually...

Re:Talent Poaching.

[Richard_at_work]

Team Foundation Server and the Team Edition tools are actually pretty good, certainly worth a look (if you aren't adverse to spending money). Its leaps and bounds ahead of the shitty Visual Source Safe crap.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[CastrTroy]

The money in OSS is in support, not in the end product itself.

This is true even of closed source software. MS may make some money selling copies of Windows, Office, and a bunch of other applications. But they also make a lot of money on support contracts, training courses, certifications, and all the other stuff that goes inline with selling the software. There is a lot of money to be made helping people use software, because most of the people using it have no idea how it works.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[CastrTroy]

After all the horror stories I've heard about corrupted databases and using network drives as the sole means of accessing the repository with Visual Source Safe, I'm not sure if I'd ever want to use a source control system from MS. SVN and CVS are simple, well tested, and can be accessed in a about 1000 different ways, from almost every IDE and operating system. I don't see any strong points to Microsofts offerings, but I hear lots of downsides, such as being crashes, corrupted databases, and very heavy on the network. I think I remember something about having to be connected to edit code in the repository, but that's too stupid, so I must have misread that.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[cyphercell]

except it seems that every time M$ tries to "hug" the community, it just gets bigger, then a couple of years later M$ comes back arms wide open again.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[Lockejaw]

Wouldn't that be rather hard to hold up in court? An open source project wouldn't include code without a license to do so.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[cyphercell]

dual license, then you could try to slip it through. Especially, if the open code were pulled down (maybe even edited drastically), or just flat out deleted.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[EvanED]

MS does use its own source control software. They don't use SourceSafe, they use their own proprietary and unpublished software.

I'm nearly positive this is true, but I'll check with a friend who works there later tonight.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[ClosedSource]

MS makes most of money by selling software, not services etc.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[CastrTroy]

That's why someone like Google should go to work indexing and caching their own copies of this stuff. Is there a service that lets you date files? I've always thought this was a good idea. Send a file over the internet to some organization, and they digitally sign it, and somehow include the date which it was signed. I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement something like this, or to prevent them from just signing something with some other date, but stuff like this would be useful for having verification with dates, of when something happened.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[Hucko]

They've regressed? I thought they were at the extend stage! Aaarrrggghhhh!

Re:Talent Poaching.

[ozmanjusri]

Is there a service that lets you date files? I've always thought this was a good idea. Send a file over the internet to some organization, and they digitally sign it, and somehow include the date which it was signed.

This is the service you're looking for. http://www.openaccess.org/index.php?section=86

Re:Talent Poaching.

[totally bogus dude]

It would be incredibly difficult for a thinking, self-aware, intelligent being to create an RCS which isn't leaps and bounds ahead of VSS. Not saying that Microsoft couldn't do it -- if anyone can, it's them -- but it would be really stretching their capabilities to produce something that bad in 2007.

Re:Talent Poaching.

[owlstead]

Unless you are using something different than Visual Studio in your company. Then you are stuck using the client software directly or paying through the nose for integration. E.g. Eclipse (Java) integration with Team Builder currently costs about $500 per seat. That's pretty steep in my opinion. Also, in my company, they think Team Builder is a mixed bag, and there definitely seem to be problems with it. Of course, as another poster already commented, nothing even comes close to Source Safe in terms of crappy version management system, so that's a given.

But hey, I'll give Team Foundation Server a try if I am stuck on .net for my next software application.

Buckling under pressure?

[jshriverWVU]

Wasn't this the same company that called the GPL a virus, and spread FUD about FOSS being communist and undermining the whole industry? Guess even the giants can change and adapt when pushed by something more pure than profits.

Re:Buckling under pressure?

[Door in Cart]

FOSS != OSS

See the Wikipedia article on Alternative terms for free software and RMS's Why "Free Software" is better than "Open Source".

Re:Buckling under pressure?

[snoyberg]

FOSS != OSS

However, for the current purposes (ie, how M$ relates to it) I think it's fair to put FOSS and OSS in the same camp: Microsoft has in the past attacked both of them.

I mean, really...

[Divebus]

Microsoft is now trying to catch some of the OSS halo effect... while trying to figure out how to own it... or at least trash it? Who do they think is going to buy into anything like this? I guess when your primary business model is going down in flames, you need to co-opt someone else's.

Re:I mean, really...

[mr_mischief]

They've had a hard time vanquishing OSS by embracing and extending standards, so now they'll try to embrace and extend code and licenses.

Expect the same tactics on different fronts. It's still Microsoft, and they are still run by the same inner circle of Gates and Ballmer cronies no matter what Hilf does from his little playpen.

Re:I mean, really...

[replicant108]

They've had a hard time vanquishing OSS by embracing and extending standards, so now they'll try to embrace and extend code and licenses.

Given the recent decision by the OSI to endorse badgeware, the 'Open Source' community appear to be doing their work for them.

Re:I mean, really...

[Yfrwlf]

Except that once software is released with a license, that never changes. It can never be controlled, altered, destroyed, because it *exists*. They can't go into every home that has that software on their computer and force them to change that license, and with the GPL it helps ensure that future versions will also never be destroyed or controlled. I'm not underestimating Microsoft, I'm sure their lawyers are thinking long and hard about all the kinds of mean twisted tactics they can to demolish all competition, but I'm simply asking how would it be possible for them to E.E.E. licenses? Or were you just being prepared and saying they would try? If so, no doubt about it.

Re:I mean, really...

[MysteriousPreacher]

The original licence can be changed as long as the terms of the licence allow this. i.e. "You have permission to distribute this software with no restrictions but this licence is subject to change. Please visit mysteriouscode.com/licence for the latest version". That wording is probably not legal but I'm sure a competent lawyer could write something that would stick.

Even if an existing licence can't be changed, there's nothing to stop the copyright holder from switching to a new licence for future releases, like the XFree86 project. Thankfully most projects can be forked if something like that happens, as we saw with X.Org.

Re:I mean, really...

[Yfrwlf]

Right, you can just fork the last copy of the source, so even if the "owner" decides to "close it down", it can be revived. So, having a BSD-style totally free and open license can be useful and such but a GPL gives that extra bit of reassurance that things can't be screwed with so easily. Any way, I can't imagine how Microsoft could attack licenses unless they also weakened their own by weakening license laws in general which would be funny.

Re:I mean, really...

[mr_mischief]

1. take a license
2. get it OSI approved
3. get people comfortable with doing work with your license
4. change some wording in your favor
5. keep calling it the same license even though it has changed
6. keep tightening your hold on the code in the project
7. close it up and let the community try to make their fork compete against Microsoft, the largest software bully there is

1. get license OSI approved
2. convince people to sign the copyright over to your project on all contributions
3. get an initial round or two of public help
4. close it up, and let the fork try to compete with Microsoft's full-time programmers, installed base, and marketing

1. convince everyone you're a big OSS supporter
2. convince as many people as possible that you're now totally objective because you're on both sides of the fence
3. convince as many as possible that OSS really is just for hobbyists and tinkerers, and that your now "objective" opinion reinforces the fact that you need to pay MS for any software that does anything reliably

1. get a bunch of stuff out under your OSS license
2. allow bunches of people to work on it
3. base your source code on another project's
4. sue every other OSS project out there for stealing your source code, since it's obvious they had access to it and some of it looks the same

1. put out OSS stuff
2. allow copying into other OSS stuff
3. patent everything you code
4. say it's okay that people copied, because the license allows that, but sue for patent infringement

1. put out patented stuff in OSS
2. say your customer are covered but other people need to pay patent royalties
3. charge nearly as much for royalties as for your product, but make the paperwork convoluted and don't give support for the patent royalty option
4. encourage copying of the patented code far and wide

1. get known for having an OSS license (license A)
2. release a bunch of stuff under a similar looking, similarly named license with key differences (license B)
3. use the confusion to, oh, say, require in license B that contributions be sent directly to MS or distributed only as patch sets against a particular stated version
4. don't allow anyone to host the main branch, just the patch sets
5. have license B state that anything sent to MS for possible inclusion in the main branch becomes copyright MS
6. have license B state that any patch set made available must be maintained and available for download X number of years
7. update your version number a hundred or so times a year, with each version update invalidating the markings on each patch set
8. watch as people drop off the MS approved patch set vendors for the problems of storage and bookkeeping
9. close all the versions from this point on
10. close-source the current version once MS is happy with all the free code
11. stop offering the main branch for the old versions
12. sue into oblivion anyone who acts according to the terms of license A when they are bound by license B

I'm sure there are more ways to screw with Open Source people through license atrocities. MS probably has a team of people working on this idea full-time.

Of course not all of them would work beautifully, and some will raise the ire of those who really grok Open Source, but this is Microsoft. They're the ones with corporate drone customers they've kept brainwashed into thinking only Microsoft can do things correctly. They've built up a hate among many of these drones for OSS.

Now, they're going to be saying, hey, the face of Open Source has changed. Microsoft came in and made Open Source what it should be. Now, there's a geek's experimenting paradise. We make sure none of that confusing, buggy geek crap gets to you in our products, though.

Re:I mean, really...

[MysteriousPreacher]

GPL does give some additional protection but only if you do exactly what the FSF ask. They like authors to sign copyright over to them, this way they can assured that an author won't go rogue and decide to relicence the project at a later date. If a GPL project hasn't been signed over to the FSF, the author can still do what they want regards the licencing of new releases - as long as they are the copyright holder or have a licence from contributors that allows them to re-licence. Of course, there's nothing to stop the FSF from going mad and placing a GPL project under a restrictive licence.

If the author retains ownership, the GPL doesn't really add any protection, at least in the context of this conversation. The GPL does provide additional protection regarding the usage of the existing code though, at least if you want those restrictions.

Interesting site

[ilovegeorgebush]

It seems Microsoft's approach on this site, is to twist the terminology and meaning of Open Source to link it to their products.

From the site (microsoft.com/opensource), they've linked to a PDF explaining how SharePoint (first link, 'share' and 'open') is the 'Road To Open' and the Sharepoint Learning Kit (SLK) has been released under Microsoft's own OSI-submitted open source license.

Could the idea be to confuse the average consumers (and buzz-word obsessed manager types) into thinking Microsoft when they hear 'Open Source'?

Either way, it's interesting to see them formally acknowledge their opponents - again!

Re:Interesting site

[jedidiah]

This just goes to show the problem with the whole "open source" versus Free Software idea in general. If you try to dress something up to make it more appealing to robber barons, you will probably create something that is much easier for those robber barons to hijack. There's a reason that Free Software gives some people the willies. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Re:Interesting site

[Divebus]

Well said. There have been signs of this "openness" pretense for a while. How does that saying go? "..but keep your enemies closer".

Re:Interesting site

[EricTheGreen]

Worse still, with this so-called 'product' in particular. The article goes into long,loving prose describing the development of the learning kit, it's functional origins in a now-defunct product, how it provides great value to education users, promotes peace throughout the land, etc... and omits how useless it is without having already purchased a decidedly non-open and very expensive SharePoint product.

Where is the value here for the customer? This is an improvement,how? Great, customers get a development kit optimized for producing a certain type of SharePoint object set. Just another SDK...whoop-dee-bleeping-doo. How is this different from the legion of Microsoft SDKs and APIs produced over the last 25 years?

Same tired horse, different saddle. Not that I'm very surprised.

Re:Interesting site

[Anonymous Coward]

Same tired horse, different saddle I'd say it's more like riding a bike without a saddle :p

Re:Interesting site

[Richard_at_work]

and omits how useless it is without having already purchased a decidedly non-open and very expensive SharePoint product.


Ok, this is my second 'non-anti-MS' comment today, and my karma will almost certainly suffer for it, but here goes anyway.

The PDF linked to talks about Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0, which is actually zero cost and downloadable from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads - you seem to be making the assumption that its talking about Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007. Its not.

Re:Interesting site

[archen]

I think you're onto something, but I don't necessarily think it's their products that are the target. I think what their going for is a sort of "open source is sharing source code", but in a way that disregards all license considerations. Then at some point someone will cry foul and there will be a huge whirlwind trumped up by a few companies having their peepee stepped on. In essence attempting to ensnare a company or two in a minefield then trumpet the dangers of "open source" when the time is right.

Re:Interesting site

[mrchaotica]

But what good does "Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0" do you when you need proprietary software (namely, Sharepoint itself) to actually do anything with it?

Re:Interesting site

[Yfrwlf]

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Clarification: Bad for businesses built on closed-source commercial software, good for consumers wanting choice and freedom. But I'm sure everyone already knew that. :)

Re:Interesting site

[nnm.one]

I'm just going to hit my head against the wall when I start seeing Microsoft the open-source solution commercials!.

Re:Interesting site

[Yfrwlf]

Exactly, EricTheGreen said:

and omits how useless it is without having already purchased a decidedly non-open and very expensive SharePoint product. So he's saying yes, SharePoint is some kind of sudo-open source software perhaps but what you need to use it is not. If this is true (I haven't looked into it) I'm not at all surprised as Microsoft has done this thing many times before. In fact their main anti-FOSS/OSS strategy seems to be make things that seem like they're open source and such, but built to run on and require closed source software.

Sort of like a used car salesman trying to sell a Pacer with a Porche body.

Re:Interesting site

[Ambidisastrous]

Could the idea be to confuse the average consumers (and buzz-word obsessed manager types) into thinking Microsoft when they hear 'Open Source'?

Not just to confuse consumers and managers, but politicians, too. There has been a lot of legislation flying around lately regarding open standards, government use of open source, etc. (especially around the OpenDocument/OOXML dispute), and at least some politicians are beginning to like the sound of the word "Open." It sounds a bit like cleaning up corruption, something many politicians are looking for ways to demonstrate (quickly and cheaply, of course). Especially outside the U.S., governments have been pushing legislation to favor "open" platforms.

Microsoft wants to be able to cast itself as having all the advantages of open-source alternatives, but with the bonus of being backed by a huge, well-known company. By blurring the lines between open-source, especially Free software, and Microsoft's own protected, heavily patented offerings, it's easy to throw some smooth lobbyists at politicians who don't fully understand the issue and convince them that Microsoft products fit the government's need for openness and standards compliance.

And for business buyers, the reflex for the past decade or more has been: "I need a ___ product. What does Microsoft have?" So now there's an answer when the blank is "open source."

Re:Interesting site

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about? Windows SharePoint Services has only one dependency: Windows.

On a related note, Apache requires an operating system! HOLY CRAP, WHAT GOOD IS THAT THEN?

Re:Interesting site

[Allador]

Are you kidding me?

Sharepoint is free. wss 2.0 shipped with windows 2003 server, and wss3.0 is free to download.

The _only_ prerequisite is windows server. Thats it.

There is a for-pay version of sharepoint, called sharepoint portal server (new name with the just released version), but to be honest, the only people buying it are reasonable sized orgs who want to gather, search, and manage all their many different unit sharepoint webservers into one managed unit.

So no, wss3.0 (the item being talked about) does not depend on some other non-free thing called 'sharepoint'.

Re:Interesting site

[Richard_at_work]

Again you demonstrate absolutely no understanding of the subject at hand - Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) is a standalone product, Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) is again a standalone product.

WSS 3.0 is a reduced feature version of MOSS2007 , so there are benefits to buying MOSS 2007 but you certainly are under no requirement to do so.

You can merrily install WSS 3.0 without ever having to even consider buying MOSS 2007, WSS will give you a functional intranet site collection for the cost of a download (and if you want to be pedantic, the machine you will run it on).

Re:Interesting site

[Johnny Mnemonic]

zero cost

Zero cost has very little to do with OSS. It certainly has less that MS seems to think. Wake me when they open the code to SharePoint, so I can make it work on the platform and OS of my choice. And add extensions that I care to.

Sharepoint sounds like an interesting product. I refuse to have a dependancy on Windows Server to make it run, however. And that requirement is precisely what makes it non-free.

Re:Interesting site

[EricTheGreen]

you seem to be making the assumption that its talking about Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007. Its not.

I did indeed make that assumption; thanks for the correction. Strike the "very expensive" rhetoric.

That done, however, I stand by everything else in the comment, and certainly by the "non-open" adjective. At the end of the day, the software responsible for all of the meaty, heavy-lifting stuff remains closed, while a highly specialized library providing limited general functionality is provided in open form. A godsend for it's particular users, I'm sure, but of limited practical value.

This is still just another variant of the "expensive closed platform + free SDK " strategy Microsoft has been using for the past two decades now, but wrapped in warm fuzzy open source market-speak. Absolutely nothing that's materially new.

Also...no 'karma burn', not from me at least. I don't hate MS, not at all. But rubbish is still rubbish, and needs to be called as such. And this is most certainly rubbish.

Re:Interesting site

[Anonymous Coward]

but what operating system?

It can be run on Linux, Unix, Windows, OS/X etc etc.

That is the difference. You have choice when you use Apache. When you use Sharepoint Services you have no choice!

We have a winner!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has launched a site dedicated to collaboration between Microsoft and open source community.

Finally -- A viable contender for the "Worlds smallest Web Site" award!

Re:We have a winner!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh... good! The world's shortest book: "Microsoft's Contributions to Technology"!

What was that...

[Anonymous Coward]

about adding my "biological and technological distinctiveness to our own?"

What do the latest Halloween documents say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame we don't have a fresh leak of the Halloween files - as it is pretty clear they have an active and aggressive strategy in play at the moment (different from previous FUD efforts) to try and kill the OSS community - smokescreens like this junk don't happen by accident.

Keep your friends close...

[Interl0per]

Interesting strategic move, I assume they're trying to leverage the Open Source buzzword without buying in to the free as in speech model, which is where some of the more fascinating innovations in development and marketing could possibly be hatched. Will this make even a ripple in the free software community?

Remind me why I give a shit?

[PeterBrett]

Windows is an pathetic excuse for a platform. It doesn't even properly implement the minimal syscalls required by the POSIX standard (open, close, read, write, fork, exec).

If they actually cared about getting more open source developers to port their applications to Windows, they'd harmonise their API with the other major operating systems (Linux, OS X, Solaris, *BSD). As it is, this just looks like (yet another) an attempt by Microsoft to paint over the gaping flaws in both their business model and their approach to software development.

Wake me up when that changes. Until then, I really couldn't give a shit about Microsoft's supposed "friendliness" to open source software or their non-free "open" license.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[LWATCDR]

"If they actually cared about getting more open source developers to port their applications to Windows, they'd harmonise their API with the other major operating systems (Linux, OS X, Solaris, *BSD)."
Windows isn't Unix. NT did include a POSIX system but that bit-rotted from lack of use and was removed I believe.
Kind of like damming VMS or the AS400 for not supporting all the Win32 calls.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[zx-15]

Windows isn't Unix. NT did include a POSIX system but that bit-rotted from lack of use and was removed I believe.

This is called bait and switch, I believe.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[W3bbo]

There's no need to troll. Windows Server R2 does actually implement POSIX, it's a very complete implementation too. Look up "Windows Services for UNIX". Microsoft has everything to gain from interopability with *NIX applications, it means more marketshare for them. Consider what Apple is doing with Windows is what Microsoft is doing with *NIX: "allow them to run their programs on our OS, but not vice-versa". And FYI, there's a massive section in MSDN on advice for porting programs from *NIX to Windows, including XWindows.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[krelian]

Windows is an pathetic excuse for a platform. It doesn't even properly implement the minimal syscalls required by the POSIX standard (open, close, read, write, fork, exec).

Well, they don't really have to, do they? Who said that every OS needs to be POSIX compatible? If they thought POSIX was superior they would have based their system on it and not try to create a new one. Windows Services For Unix's purpose is to help in migration and not be a full POSIX implementation.

If they actually cared about getting more open source developers to port their applications to Windows, they'd harmonise their API with the other major operating systems (Linux, OS X, Solaris, *BSD). As it is, this just looks like (yet another) an attempt by Microsoft to paint over the gaping flaws in both their business model and their approach to software development.

Wake me up when that changes. Until then, I really couldn't give a shit about Microsoft's supposed "friendliness" to open source software or their non-free "open" license.

Microsoft's OSS purpose is not to spread free software and love but to help educate the people who use and develop for MS software. MS finally understands that letting developers peak inside and see exactly how the API they are using does its job is educational and helps developers create better software. This of course indirectly affects the quality of MS software and platforms and as a result, their bottom line.

Their is OSS as a software development paradigm and their is Free software. Going Free is not going to help MS one bit, showing the world their code is.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[eht]

You obviously give enough of a shit to comment.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[Slackus]

...gaping flaws in both their business model...

With a profit for their fourth quarter of $3.04 billion it's hardly what I would call gaping flaws in their business model.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[EvanED]

NT did include a POSIX system but that bit-rotted from lack of use and was removed I believe.

The POSIX subsystem is no longer included in Windows distributions, but you can still get it as a free download as part of Services for UNIX (SFU). (You'll also see mention of it as the Interix Subsystem and the Subsystem for UNIX-Based Applications (SUA).)

It is continually being maintained, and MS actually seems to have put an increased (albeit still small) push of it fairly recently. There is a fair suite of programs available for it, including GCC, Bash, automake/conf, SSH, etc., and it was supplanted to (supposedly) be POSIX.2 compliant. (When it shipped with Windows, it only supported POSIX.1.)

The big problem with it is that programs running under SUA can't access Windows API calls. This isn't surprising given the architecture of Windows, but it does mean that, for instance, you can't really have a GUI. I'm also not sure how complete the POSIX support actually is.

Basically I suspect it's a combination of they didn't want to put it on the CD and hence slightly encourage end users to install it (the did this with Windows 98 and TweakUI and Raymond Chen said it turned out to be a disaster for their tech support lines) and the CDs of XP being too full for it.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[EvanED]

Um, no. Bait and switch is advertising something then delivering another. MS did deliver it for the versions of Windows for which they advertised it for. And of course this ignores the fact that the OP was wrong about the bit rot bit, and in fact MS has *improved* the POSIX subsystem since they stopped shipping it with Windows, but I wouldn't expect the typical /. poster to actually know that, because it actually makes MS and Windows look a little less bad.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[suv4x4]

Article:

Microsoft Launches OSS Site, Submits License for Approval

Your comments:

Blah blah about Windows not supporting fork. "If they actually cared", "wake me up when", "until then, I couldn't give a shit", "gaping flaws in software development" and more cliches about how terrible MS is in principle, so anything they do sucks.

So I'm sitting here wondering. WTF has your post to do with the article at hand. Do you just copy and paste this on all Microsoft related news? Definitely wouldn't be noticeable, it's some quite generic rant.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[Yfrwlf]

While you do make a legitimate point that you can't expect one system to be completely compatible with another, still, the fact is (and the point that was trying to be made) is that Microsoft is very capable of making BIG moves toward using and helping improve standardized open APIs and cooperating in general with free software standards if they wanted to, as well as helping and contributing to FOSS/OSS projects, and dumping their technology and ideas into the information pool we call Earth to be used by everyone, but they don't want to. Why? If I have to tell you that, you've been living under a rock with your brain removed. Maybe they will start doing that eventually since they're feeling the pressure of FOSS/OSS, but so far they've said fuck you to ODF, fuck you to FOSS/OSS in general about patents, and a billion other negative things toward the FOSS/OSS communities, so gee I wonder why everyone is pissed at them, and gee I wonder if they'll suddenly wake up one day with angel wings. Again, eventually yes, but now? I highly doubt it.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[LWATCDR]

You are right I didn't know that POSIX was still available. I just knew they stopped shipping. I never found any use for it under Windows since I tend to use Linux for my Unix needs. Thanks for the info. I will have to see if I can find it to download.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[EvanED]

BTW, the post you're replying to was too harsh to be meant for you. Being wrong is fine; everyone's wrong sometimes. It's just that the poster I was replying to (who's currently modded troll) was sort of being an ass about being wrong.

I also tire of the anti-MS slant on Slashdot. I'll be the first to admit that Windows has flaws, and I have from time to time been fairly vocal about some stupidities of its design. That said, I'm one of the seemingly rare CS people who actually likes Windows. (I'm sure a lot of this is familiarity and the fact that I know how to do stuff on Windows, but I'm no stranger to Linux either.) It gets tiresome for people to complain that MS is wrong for every single thing that they do. So the "that sounds like bait and switch" or whatever bugged me a bit.

The reply I made directly to you was the one you were supposed to read. ;-)

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it. Guess where the code for "Windows Services for UNIX" comes from?

Oops, it's GPL'ed GNU code! I thought Microsoft wasn't bound by the GPL?

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[LWATCDR]

Have you ever coded for Windows???
Just had to ask since I had too write an install that worked on 98, 2000, and XP. Some of the crap I had to do to find out where to put files was just ugly. I also hate MFC with a passion and have fought with more bugs in it than you can shake a stick at.

Windows isn't as bad as many people on Slashdot say it is but it is really ugly in many ways.
Linux also has it's warts but since it is free I am more forgiving.

Re:Remind me why I give a shit?

[BBandCMKRNL]

Windows is an pathetic excuse for a platform. It doesn't even properly implement the minimal syscalls required by the POSIX standard (open, close, read, write, fork, exec). The whole POSIX-on-non-UNIX systems was a result of the U.S. Federal government making it a requirement for all OSes purchased/licensed by them. I believe this was in the early 1990's. It was an attempt to get a standard interface for all OSes used by the feds. The idea was that you could manage everything from an IBM mainframe to a PC with one skillset. Ah, the brilliance of government.

As a result, DEC's VMS was the first non-UNIX OS to fully comply with the requirement. After the feds realized that nobody in the government was using the POSIX interface to manage heterogenous systems, they dropped the requirement.

Apparently, no one else was using the POSIX interface either, as DEC/COMPAQ/HP (whoever owned VMS at the time) removed POSIX support after the government stopped requiring it.

EEE

[Anonymous Coward]

Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish.

Near 100% increase

[Anonymous Coward]

So a company providing OSS solutions started providing Windows solutions as well and they nearly doubled the sales. In other words, the Windows version didn't sell as good as the other alternatives combined?

Run!

[miffo.swe]

No good can come from this. Expect some MVPs donating code but real OSS developers? I dont think so =P

Re:Run!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to keep anon, but I'm an MVP and I contribute to one of the largest ASP.NET open source projects. Mind you it is BSD licensed, we simply prefer that as opposed to the religion that seems to have come out of redefining free to make the narrow viewpoint / vision of one person.

For some reason looking at their OSS site

[pecosdave]

gives me a weird feeling in my stomache. I'm not sure what it is, but I got a chill up and down my spine. I can't catagorize either feeling as good or bad, just strange. When it comes to that empire my first question is usually what's their real objective, with this one I'm not 100% sure and that scares me.

Does this mean we actually crossed over the line as legitimate to them, or is this bait for something else?

Re:For some reason looking at their OSS site

[mormop]

"gives me a weird feeling in my stomache. I'm not sure what it is, but I got a chill up and down my spine. I can't catagorize either feeling as good or bad, just strange."

I think it may have been the same feeling you get when watching Salem's Lot when the Glick kid is floating outside Mark Petrie's bedroom window, scratching at the glass and asking to be let in. Ironically, I suspect that Microsoft has based this business strategy on the plot of Salem's Lot i.e. moving into a new town and picking the residents off from the inside while they sleep.

Re:For some reason looking at their OSS site

[realdodgeman]

I know it is weird the first time, but you have just sensed a disturbance in the force. It was very sad that you first meeting with the force should be so clouded with darkness.

Re:For some reason looking at their OSS site

[Yfrwlf]

Lol, Nightmare on Redmund Road?

I think the answer is simple though. Open source is now more of a buzz word, and they're trying to get attention by using it, attract "free developers!" (developers, developers, developers, developers, after all), and finally it's yet another attempt at, like another poster pointed out, paint over their image with happy puppy flower unicorns which is just sad on so many levels.

Maybe their marketing department isn't used to dealing with more intelligent "target groups", and doesn't know that most open source developers strangely happen to be much more informed about Microsoft's detrimental actions against open source and many of their attacks and tactics against it. No clue why, though. If someone punches me in the face, I usually just tell my mommy that I fell.

Re:For some reason looking at their OSS site

[kripkenstein]

For some reason looking at their OSS site gives me a weird feeling in my stomache.

Me too. Possibly the horrible Flash thing that is hardly responsive and maxes out my CPU for no reason. Yet, I would be willing to bet that the site is very usable under Windows. And that is sort of the point.

Microsoft sees that open-source is being adopted - for example, MySQL has about the same market share as Microsoft SQL Server, despite being far newer. Ditto, languages such as Ruby and Python. Fact is, if these tools don't run well on Windows, it may push people to other platforms, and that is Microsoft's only fear. By working 'with' the open-source community, they will be trying to make Windows the platform on which major FOSS projects work best.

In other words, if lots of people are going to be using MySQL anyway, then Microsoft might be willing to help MySQL work well on Windows, just so those people aren't forced to use Linux. Simple tactics.

The trickier strategy here will be this, I think: Microsoft open-source projects will have the Windows side heavily-funded by Microsoft. Support for other platforms will be left 'to the community', and perhaps discouraged in various minor ways. The goal will be to get those projects to work on Linux, but work better on Windows, hence motivating use of the Windows platform. The FOSS community should be prepared for this.

Re:For some reason looking at their OSS site

[pecosdave]

If I could I would mod you up insightful.

Re:This is wrong.

[ettlz]

stick its head in the ground while chanting nonsensical gibberish

"Aurf guffawaah maaafaaauwawa o faawwawo ei waaguwwaaa raufoiwafa."

Explanation please

[pubjames]

Through that site I came across the "Microsoft Permissive License". The "conditions and limitations" of the license have this clause:

3(B) If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically.

I don't understand this - can someone explain? If you bring a patent claim against a contributor then how does that contributor have a "patent license" that then ends?

Re:Explanation please

[sconeu]

"A" puts something patented in MS "Open Source" code. MSPL says you have a license to use that patent.
You patent something else. "A" does something that you think violates that patent. You sue "A".
Congratulations! Your license to use "A"'s patent has been yanked.

Re:Explanation please

[Todd Knarr]

It's a reciprocity clause. Suppose A holds some patents, and they've contributed them to software S and licensed them for use there. Now, B comes along and sues everybody using software S (including A) claiming that it infringes some other patents held by B. If B uses S themselves, the clause is intended to insure that B loses their license to A's patents, opening them to being counter-sued by A for patent infringement. The idea is to force a situation where a patent-holder can't block everyone else from benefiting from a piece of software while continuing to benefit from it themselves.

Re:Explanation please

[StormReaver]

"I don't understand this - can someone explain?"

It means if you are using someone's software which contains patented code, and you then sue that someone for infringing on any patent you may hold, your right to use the code covered by that someone's patent automatically ends.

Re:Explanation please

[xsadar]

I just thought of something interesting. What if FSF contributes patented code to MS OSS. Then if MS sues FSF for any patents, legitimate or not (as they seem to be threatening), then Microsoft can no longer (legally) use their own software without removing any FSF contributions. Of course I can't see FSF contributing code to Microsoft projects and, from what I hear, FSF has plenty of patents to counter-sue with anyway. But it might be a nice patent protection strategy for others.

Ahh, the irony....

[guitaristx]

Isn't it ironic how Microsoft's site dedicated to open-source has a big, fancy, proprietary Flash movie at its core?

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[lena_10326]

Isn't it ironic how Microsoft's site dedicated to open-source has a big, fancy, proprietary Flash movie at its core?

Curious question. How come Flash haters never demand to see or get a copy of the raw film footage after seeing their favorite movie in the theatre?

Flash.fla is to Flash.swf as Film Reel is to Movie.

I mean really, if we're going to be consistent here, ya really oughta bitch about the movie industry. :D

(Oh, and just to cut anyone off at the pass with the expected reply of "We can buy a DVD copy", that's nothing like a raw film reel (ie source).

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[byolinux]

I believe the parent was talking more about the fact that Gnash (alpha quality) aside, there's no way for the people they're trying to reach to view a Flash movie whilst maintaining the consistent ethical view of the free software community.

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[tribes]

Wouldn't the movie's script be the "source" in your example?

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[lena_10326]

I believe the parent was talking more about the fact that Gnash (alpha quality) aside, there's no way for the people they're trying to reach to view a Flash movie whilst maintaining the consistent ethical view of the free software community.

I know. I was off topic on purpose. Ok. I'll be on topic this time.

If anyone really believes that opinion, then they should start demanding OSS sites release PSD, AI, XCF, CDR, or SVG files pertaining to any raster images featured on the OSS site, because those file formats are the source code equivalents for image files.

Some here are crying hypocrisy but blatantly ignore OSS hypocrisy where it exists.

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[SpiffyMarc]

No, the script is the design document :)

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[byolinux]

Of course, that assumes such files exist.

For example, I run http://www.gnu.org/ - a lot of our graphics were created in the days before people did drawing on computers.

But yeah, all our modern stuff should be up there.

http://www.gnu.org/graphics/ - go nuts.

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[lena_10326]

Wouldn't the movie's script be the "source" in your example?

No, because the movie does not exist with only a script, but it does if the video and audio have been recorded. Movie editing is equivalent to source code compilation.

Let's say two producers have the same script and both create their version of the movie. Both movies will be completely different products. It would be impossible to recreate a movie exactly the same with only the script. But, if both producers use the same video and audio tape, then both could reproduce the exact same movie--indistinguishable down to a single frame.

What that means is the script is an attribute or sub-component of the movie in the same way actors, sets, locations, and sound effects are, similar to how a library of C++ classes are sub-components of your C++ application. The script != the movie. 3rd party C++ class library != your application.

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[lena_10326]

But yeah, all our modern stuff should be up there.

http://www.gnu.org/graphics/ - go nuts.

How about other projects? Other sites? sourceforge.net, ubuntu.com, gimp.org, inkscape.org, etc. Nearly endless list and then throw on top of that the other for profit OSS businesses such as RedHat, Linspire, etc.

www.gnu.org/graphics does not negate my point. It only means YOU aren't hypocritical.

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[byolinux]

sourceforge.net isn't actually free software, so i wouldn't be surprised there.

ubuntu are working on Gobuntu, which actually includes all the sources for all the videos, sounds, documents, etc included with it, but yeah, it's a point well made.

happy hacking.

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[lena_10326]

No, the script is the design document :)

Your comment was more eloquent than mine. Wish I'd thought of design document. Heh. :D

Re:Ahh, the irony....

[tepples]

If anyone really believes that opinion, then they should start demanding OSS sites release PSD, AI, XCF, CDR, or SVG files pertaining to any raster images featured on the OSS site, because those file formats are the source code equivalents for image files.

The big reason blocking these free software sites from just doing <img alt="something" src="something.svg"> is browsers that can't render SVG, such as Internet Explorer. But seriously, I think guitaristx's point is that there is a free viewer for GIF, JPEG, PNG, and SVG. There is no free viewer for many of the SWF files out there. We're not talking about making the SWF files themselves free, just a viewer.

Microsoft vs Open Source

[Livius]

I guess when you're # 2 you try harder. Or something like that.

I think Microsoft is acknowledging that they've been overtaken by open source; I know on my machine the latest versions of KUbuntu have practically made Windows XP obsolete.

All this from someone who works @ Novell

[poetmatt]

So I'm confused, is this considered a shill or just a biased opinion, considering that the author works for SCO?
 

From Alfresco.com:

Prior to Alfresco, Asay co-founded Novell®'s Linux Business Office in 2002 and was an early agitator and architect for the company's shift to open source. In 2003 Asay founded the Open Source Business Conference, the industry's premier open source strategy event, and has served as an Entreprenuer-in-Residence for Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, focusing on open source investment opportunities. Before Novell, Asay was General Manager at Lineo®, an embedded Linux software startup, where he ran Lineo's Residential Gateway business.
  If anyone's wondering who Lineo is, its Caldera AKA SCO GROUP . How does someone this biased manage to make it on CNET? Can someone explain that to me please?

Their long term strategy...

[skinfitz]

...is to patent Open Source.

That's right - all your codebase belong to them.

Did anybody else's...

[Trails]

bullshit detector just blow up?

Wasn't it within the last year that Balmy Balmer was frothing at the mouth about how he was going to destroy Linux and feed Torvalds to frickin sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads?

I'd like to believe that the SCO experiment taught them OSS has a leg to stand on, but that would make me a starry eyed optimist and I'm just not.

It's a trap.

[DoofusOfDeath]

I haven't read the article, I haven't seen the site or the license they submitted.

But I know Microsoft. It's a trap. Either short-term, or long-term. Somehow, this is designed to ultimately restrict our freedoms or slow down the replacement of non-free software with free software.

You may call be bigoted, or a troll. I see my view on this particular issue as just highly conditioned from decades of experience.

Re:It's a trap.

[grcumb]

But I know Microsoft. It's a trap.

It wasn't meant to be. Things would have been a lot clearer to everyone, but the domain that Ballmer wanted was already taken.

Re:It's a trap.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's "Shared Source" license (or at least the version I've seen) is more of an NDA than a license. It allows you to look at the source, and change it for private and academic uses. But you can't redistribute your modified version, and you can't pass the source on to anyone else. I really don't know why they bothered submitting it to the OSI, it's obvious that it doesn't meet the commonly accepted criteria for Open Source.

Re:It's a trap.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're referring to the Ms-Rl - which definitely is a crappy one. Read the other two at http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/li censingbasics/sharedsourcelicenses.mspx - they're really quite decent.

Re:It's a trap.

[owlstead]

Doesn't look like it has been really taken. But you could try the song instead.

MS Does Support OpenSource

[Anonymous Coward]

They do support folks Developing on their platforms, just check out http://www.codeplex.com/ for examples of community develped open source code on MS products.

I see no harm in this at all... (unlike most)

[lena_10326]

MS knows it can't fight open source software (legally or marketwise) and attempting to do so is futile as we've seen with FUD, SCO, and hinting around with patents. Open source can't be squashed, so the next best thing is getting you to run it on Windows instead of Linux. You can debate about Microsoft's motives and intent all day long but you have to remember it's a corporation. Individual psychology does not apply when understanding a corporation's motives. A corporation will attack a problem (ahem Linux) on all fronts, which can and does result in Microsoft performing confusing or opposing actions.

I happen to be a big fan of OSS on Windows (particularly Firefox, Apache/PHP/MySQL, Gimp, Cygwin, Perl, GCC, and a few others). Running those apps on Windows means you will continue funneling money to Microsoft by means of upgrades and support. It's actually rather frustrating to search for free apps for Windows only to discover most are trialware or castrateware. Sometimes you just want a really simple app and paying for it is not a desirable option for you.

I don't have any problem with anyone who opts to use or opts to write OSS for Windows. Windows may not provide value for you Linux or BSD elitists, but it does for those who want it.

OK. Now continue on your bitchfest, but know this. I'm not going to participate. :D

Re:I see no harm in this at all... (unlike most)

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there's nothing sinister about it. However, the emphasis will be on projects that, practically speaking, can run only on Windows or work with other Microsoft platforms and apps - WTL and the CLI are examples. Give away the razors, sell the blades. It's just good business with very little risk to Microsoft.

Re:I see no harm in this at all... (unlike most)

[lena_10326]

If a developer wants to lock themselves into a Windows platform, that's their choice. I can't negatively judge that choice because their motive is their own, not mine.

Besides.. I think it's been proven to death that OS portable code can exist on Windows, so it's not an automatic lock-in. And, the author always maintains control anyway. The only time I'd ever get worried is if MS started issuing mandates on the freedoms you have regarding code you developed.

Re:I see no harm in this at all... (unlike most)

[leviccampbell]

I agree with you 100%!

Re:I see no harm in this at all... (unlike most)

[quantaman]

MS knows it can't fight open source software (legally or marketwise) and attempting to do so is futile as we've seen with FUD, SCO, and hinting around with patents. Open source can't be squashed, so the next best thing is getting you to run it on Windows instead of Linux. You can debate about Microsoft's motives and intent all day long but you have to remember it's a corporation. Individual psychology does not apply when understanding a corporation's motives. A corporation will attack a problem (ahem Linux) on all fronts, which can and does result in Microsoft performing confusing or opposing actions. The problem is that Microsoft has very little credibility when playing with others, when playing with Open Source it has virtually none.

I mean what interactions has Microsoft had with Open Source that haven't been some kind of trap? OOXML? An "open" standard that is anything but. Patent deals with Novel and Linspire? Ok, the trigger hasn't been fully pulled on those yet but MS is already throwing around patent FUD. Before that more patent FUD, other FUD, namecalling, and general hostility, honestly the only positive thing from Microsoft I can think of wrt copyleft style open source is some windows installer that they released on sourceforge.

I don't have any problem with anyone who opts to use or opts to write OSS for Windows. Windows may not provide value for you Linux or BSD elitists, but it does for those who want it. I'm 100% Linux and I'd love to see more open source on windows.

However, at the end of the day it's like the bully who's beaten you up twenty times and asks you to step into the alley so you can discuss the homework assignment. If you just look at the deal and ignore who's making it then it looks good, and heck, maybe the bully is serious. But if you don't want another black eye you have to consider that their previous pattern of behaviour may indicate an ulterior motive. Maybe Microsoft is playing nice this time, but they're going to have to prove it since there's no way I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Step one in an anti-GPL 3 move?

[oneandoneis2]

I blogged on the subject recently:

MS has a number of proprietary things that the FOSS world would like to get inter-operable. The NTFS file system. The Office formats. Etc. etc. And the EU has been nagging at them to release interoperability information for ages.

Since MS seems to really dislike GPL v3, they could solve a lot of their problems with a simple move: Release all the code necessary to get interoperability under Linux working. Under GPL v2 only.

Take Samba. Samaba is going GPL v3-only. If MS released some significantly-big swathes of code under v2-only that resulted in much better Linux-Windows networking compatibility, a lot of people would use the MS-code with the last GPL-v2 release of Samba: Most end users are more concerned with how well software works than with which license it's released under.

That would leave the Samba team with two choices: Stick with GPL v3 and have a less-popular, less-functional fork of their own software. Or cave in and go back to GPL v2 so they can take advantage of the GPL'd code from MS.

And either way, MS would be able to show to concerned parties, such as the EU antitrust people, that they have finally released the code that the FOSS people have been demanding, under the single most popular FOSS license in current use.

Re:Step one in an anti-GPL 3 move?

[mikelieman]

That's a WIN, by the way, for the OSS Community. GPLv2 is JUST FINE, and if MSFT is suckered into that route, I see nothing but upside.

Re:Step one in an anti-GPL 3 move?

[sconeu]

Re: Samba...

<RUMOR>
I've heard that the MS guys don't *KNOW* everything their network stack does, and use the Samba stuff as documentation.
</RUMOR>

Re:Step one in an anti-GPL 3 move?

[Darth]

except that the Samba team would then use the gplv2 code to be able to see both sides of the process and be able to more accurately document the protocol. Then they would reimplement the protocol in their own code under gplv3.

This would do nothing to stop the gplv3 from being adopted by Samba.

I dont think microsoft has any intention of using any version of the gpl. They are trying to get their shared source licenses approved as official open source licenses.

I think the point of this is that open source application development doesn't harm microsoft if they can have it done on their platform and on their terms. I think it's an acknowledgement that open source application adoption for some areas and for some users is inevitable and they are trying to minimize the impact that will have on their monopolies by making the choice to use those applications not necessitate changing platforms.

It is probably also an attempt to take open source developer mindshare away from the things they feel are the real threats in the open source community (the gpl in general; linux and the gnu tools in specific)

Re:Step one in an anti-GPL 3 move?

[StormReaver]

That wouldn't be very effective for Microsoft. It doesn't matter under which Free license the mythical MS interoperability code is released since the concepts are not restricted. All it takes is for someone to document what the code does, then the Samba team could write its own implementation.

Yuo fail it

[Anonymous Coward]

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=255975&c id=20000001

new tag: ivegotabadfeelingaboutthis

[Anonymous Coward]

c'mon, it's not the longest one i've seen

Re:new tag: ivegotabadfeelingaboutthis

[Anonymous Coward]

c'mon, it's not the longest one i've seen

That's what yo mama said.

I wasn't insulted because she's seen it all.

disruptive technology

[Locutus]

I'd just read a story on how Steve Ballmer said that "the company is tackling disruptive technology changes head-on" and both Steve and Bill were uncharacteristically telling analysts that everything was smelling like roses at Microsoft. Now, seeing this story of what's really MS "Get The Facts, Part Deux" and I'm thinking that the "disruptive technology" Balmer spoke of was probably not Google but more likely was Linux, OSS, and AJAX technologies.

IMO, it appears that Linux and OSS is making enough of a dent into Microsofts expansion plans that they feel they need to put up a site where existing Microsoft customers can "learn" about OSS from Microsoft instead of going off to some Linux distro and learning about it from a direction which will likely lead away from Microsoft software. Good move on Microsofts part but how effective it'll be is questionable. With pre-configured and free virtual machine images available for all kinds of experimentation( http://vmware.com/products/free_virtualization.htm l ) it's a tough battle keeping Windows developers tied only to Windows for next-gen products. So it'll keep some hardcore Microsoft customers but the newer customers can and will easily find Linux and OSS enticing once they learn the ropes. IMO.

BTW, Microsoft normally tries to play down growth and future revenue to the financial analysts so to more easily meet and/or beat expectations. The "everything is smelling like roses" stories are usually reserved for the CEO, CTO, and other PHB style of gatherings. So this seems like the first telling of the story of what's really keeping these guys up at night. And Google is definitely part of that story too.

LoB

Flash Player

[thePsychologist]

It's interesting that their open source site requires the proprietary Flash player to display all content.

Move a fork of WINE there

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see if Microsoft can stand by OSS more than Bitkeeper could --

Let's move a copy of WINE there with the intention to port it over to run on Mono ...

I'll believe it when I see it

[Spy der Mann]

Open source IE. 'Nuff said.

Re:I'll believe it when I see it

[Shados]

Considering the blogs of the people from the IE team, especially an interesting one that I read a while back that was about how they patch IE's bugs using external proxy processes and crap, I think thats the last thing we'd like to see. Since Microsoft's wake up call around 2004-2005ish, they've been doing some pretty decent code. The one thats not full of legacy crap, thats the one you'd be interested in seeing (of course, most of it is in .NET and you can look at it in Reflector, so....)

Typical knee jerk reaction to anything Microsoft

[adolfojp]

Oh come on guys, don't be stupid. The quality of the comments in /. has become similar to the drivel that Digg's posters "contribute".

Initiatives like Codeplex have been around for a while and I've personally participated in a few .NET open source projects. There is a vast open source community that works with Microsoft technologies. There is no conspiracy. There is no embrace and extinguish. They are being pragmatic about Open Source and promoting it where it fits instead of dogmatically pushing it wherever they can.

First product: New, free Microsoft OS

[Anonymous Coward]

...OpenBSoD

A Microsoft OSS Site? I've said it before...

[commodoresloat]

It's a cookbook!!

No Traction Whatsoever

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so glad I don't have to care about anything Microsoft does. Linux and perhaps to a lessor extent Solaris are a system integrator's dream come true, in terms of the shear number of pre-integrated components. Even if Microsoft decided to make an open source variant of Windows, how long would it take them to duplicate __that__? The most innovative folks in the crowd truly don't care about Microsoft anymore. Microsoft knows that open source resources are far more valued than anything closed that they are offering. Microsoft is now standing on the losing end of the stick, unable to find a way to engage the F/OSS community in a meaningful way. Heck, even Oracle has done far better. "Yes, you can run my closed source DB on your open source OS" gets much better traction than what Microsoft is saying, namely "you can run your open source app on my closed source OS".

Snake oil from a great salesman

[jgarra23]

http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/faq.mspx'>Thei r OSS site's FAQ

It (their investment in OSS) is totally bogus.

We don't even know what OSS licenses they are advocating.

I really doubt this is going to go anywhere. They are trying to jump on the OSS bandwagon and follow suit similar to companies like Sun and Intel but are doing it their normal kludgy way of anything. Ripoffs and emulations aside, The past year of MS releases (ideas & products alike) have been really seeming like these bastardized & frankenstein-ed ideas that someone came up with before & did a better job with.

Re:Congrats asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that's proper language at all.

Steven
s.mooreston.57@gmail.com

Reality World

[psbrogna]

I think we should all vote MS off of FOSS Island at the end of today's episode.

MS Open source website? ooookkk

[opieum]

Well this is interesting. It is the equivalent of asking a Nazi about Jews and expecting objectivity. Also MS is having trouble having people developing on their platform. They are losing developers for Mac OS and Linux. People know a sinking ship when they see one. Plus the subtle jabs they take at developers claiming that it is their software causing security problems (which is partly but not totally true) why would anyone want to develop for MS when OSS provides full flexibility. People can see the code and not come up with hackish solutions or workarounds to problems they may encounter. http://www.cio.com/article/122152/Microsoft_Window s_Loses_Ground_With_Developers_Survey_Says With Vista being a mess of compatibility and DRM/WDM/"Security" laden crap, it makes it hard for any real innovation to happen in the application space. I used to work for MS. One of the biggest gripes I heard was that drivers were always made wrong. Applications were usually buggy which caused problems with the OS. While again that is PARTIALLY true, part of the problem was the fact that I later learned (after I left MS for the real world) that coding for Windows platforms is a PITA. The closed nature makes everything a hackish effort. Workarounds here, hooks there. Linux, BSD and other open source kernels out there have easy access to the lowest level if necessary of the kernels and OS in general. This makes it extremly easy to integrate with a minimum to intermiediate learning curve (if you are coming off Visual Studio specifically)

Re:MS Open source website? ooookkk

[xsadar]

Also MS is having trouble having people developing on their platform.

Huh? I'm not seeing any shortage of software made for Windows. I do see shortages of quality software made for Linux. (Don't be offended by the word "quality". Sure there are many truly excellent applications for Linux, but for some types of applications, the absolute best I can find is an unfinished piece of junk.) Not only that, but many (if not most) of the most useful Linux applications have ports to Windows, while there are relatively few Windows apps ported to Linux. And don't even get me started on drivers. You happen to have contradicted the number 1 reason, why I still dual boot all my computers. There's just too much software (including drivers) that's available for Windows and not for Linux.

Re:MS Open source website? ooookkk

[Anonymous Coward]

You're looking in the wrong place. What you're saying is equivalent to the following exchange:

CarGuy1: "Well, I've had it with all the problems with gasoline-powered cars. I'm moving to something else."
CarGuy2: "Yeah, I'm getting sick of it all." ... short time later...
CarGuy1: "This new stuff is cool! We don't want any of that old gas BS anymore."
CarGuy2: "Yeah, all the new cars are hydrogen-powered. Gas is old hat."
CarGuy3: "Pshaw, hydrogen-powered cars won't make it. See, everyone still drives gas cars. You're fools."

When publications note that Windows is having trouble drawing developers, they don't look at the number of Windows programs vs. Linux programs to do that. Generally, they'll go to the colleges and universities and find out what platforms the students prefer using. Because ultimately, that's what counts.

What do you think the future of Windows will be like if (more likely WHEN) new programmers find coding for Mac/Linux much much more gratifying and easier? What do you think the future of Windows will be like when an entire generation of coders appears who prefer NOT coding for Windows?

The development mindshare is shifting. People claim it doesn't matter. Companies claim it doesn't matter. The problem is innovation only occurs where the developers are. Ultimately, if a platform loses most of its developers, it dies off.

Yes, there are more quality Windows programs right now. However, programmers are finding that they prefer either exclusively coding for UNIX-like systems, or coding cross-platform. After a while, that will begin shifting the program totals away from Windows. And that is what the grandparent is getting at.

Re:PR, Confusion, Vista Launch, the usual.

[cyphercell]

People want a new Office format, a new computer and a new GUI like they want a hole in their head.

Actually, I really wouldn't mind a new computer.

Guys, you're doing it wrong.

[BlueParrot]

This is how to do it:

"Claims that Open Source Software would be legally troublesome or low quality are completely unfounded. Plenty of large organisations are deeply ivolved with open source development and recognise its potential. As an example, even Microsoft, a company traditionally commited to the closed source model and a long standing sceptic of many open source projects, has recently started to use it for its own codebase and has launched open source initiatives of its own: . Althou the project has had some problems, some of whic were related to the inability of the closed portion of the software to interoperate with the open bit, the work proceeds and recent developments has lead some analysts to predict the company may consider using the same model for other projects as well."

Lets see them try to argue with that one... If they claim the article is accurate they will be promoting OSS. If they claim the project has problems they are admitting that yet another of their projects is a complete failure. If they try to claim the proprietary bit is doing well but the open bit is doing bad, they will piss off anyone participating which could easily lead to a good chunk of bad press. Lets help them shoot themselves in the foot.

More like a conditioned reflex than a knee-jerk

[walterbyrd]

After decades of EEE, and millions of dollars spent on numerous mis-information campaigns, and lying to the US-DoJ, and lying to the EU, bogus lawsuits, bogus patens, tax fraud, etc. I think a bit of skepticism with regard to msft, is warranted.

Re:PR, Confusion, Vista Launch, the usual.

[twitter]

I really wouldn't mind a new computer.

Me neither, but we are not average users. The average user has been on the upgrade treadmill long enough to know they are working hard to stand still, but they don't see an escape yet. Many of them wish they never saw a computer and are ready to give up.

Strange....

[sworoc]

Why was the first thought in my mind:

O RLY?

and the start of a new death spiral.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pull in folks into a forever death spiral one way or another.

Microsoft:

[Anonymous Coward]

Go fuck yourself!

Re:PR, Confusion, Vista Launch, the usual.

[dedazo]

Vista is the most restrictive and buggy version of Windoze yet

Hilarity ensues.

making life hard for anti-virus makers, Google, Firefox, iPod, Palm and OpenOffice, even Adobe.

I'm a little fuzzy on this twitter. "M$" is making life hard on AV makers because Vista is much more secure out of the box, they are making life hard for Google because their search is much better out of the box, and they are making life hard for Palm and Apple because Palm and Apple failed to test their software during the REALLY LENGTHY beta and RC process that Vista went through. Am I reading your outrage right, here?

And do share why they are making life difficult for Adobe and OpenOffice.

They have been playing the blame game for a long time now

Why do you keep using the same bogus, lame tired arguments? That "feature" never even shipped with Windows 3.x. Funny how you never link to the Wikipedia entry for DR-DOS, which explains the issue better than that fanboy link you use. You figure people who read Slashdot are stupid and won't bother to check your links?

People want a new Office format, a new computer and a new GUI like they want a hole in their head.

You certainly have the pulse of the world's personal and corporate computer markets.

It's finally come home to them in poor sales

Well, given that in six months Vista has far out-matched every other non-Microsoft OS in terms of market share and Linux still has a lower share than Windows 98, I don't see how this is true at all. Wait, these must be the 40 million Vista licenses you said Microsoft "stuffed the channel" with! It seems there's a problem, because they seem to be connected to the internet at the moment =(

MOD PARENT UP FUNNY

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Blue Screen of Death... Good one.

Not bait and switch

[ClosedSource]

MS just discovered that POSIX wasn't as important to their customers as they had imagined.

Mod parent over the top

[realdodgeman]

And put in one of those fancy "insightful" tags.

Re:Remind me why I give a poop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't have said it better myself. The day I learned fork() didn't work on Windows was the day I abandoned my very last thread of respect for that steaming pile that some optimistically call an OS.

Okay, this is just to much

[realdodgeman]

Microsoft will survive this one only because they aim so badly that they miss their own feet.

They goofed

[realdodgeman]

By embracing diverse application development approaches and partner business models, Microsoft participates in a world of choice in which individuals and organizations can pursue their goals based on what uniquely inspires them, including open source.

They even tell you that this is the start of EEE...

Re:A Microsoft OSS Site? I've said it before...

[niko9]

To server penguins?

Re:A Microsoft OSS Site? I've said it before...

[niko9]

Crap. I meant to type To serve penguins. I guess Linux really is dead on the desktop. :/

Buy one, buy 'em all?

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing about the "permissive" licenses is that, IIRC, all but one of them had a "platform restriction" on it. I.E. you can only use this to code for Windows. I'm pretty sure that violates Freedom 0.

Of course, there is that *one* license that I remember thinking might pass. So is this supposed to put the OSI in a bind where they either have to accept the one free license (which Microsoft can then confuse people into thinking they're *all* Free, sorta like "Office Open" XML vs. Open Office) or catch flak for rejecting the one license that probably is free because of the confusing set of licenses that are NOT free?

I seem to remember that this came up with RMS & the Creative Commons licenses. He liked some (but not all) of them, so he refused to endorse them as a whole. Then caught flak for that on Slashdot, only to have Slashdotters prove that they were bad at making the distinction he was worried about.

In short, what I'm trying to say here is that I'm worried about their angle here. I think they have both sides covered: get accepted and use it to confuse people into thinking non-Free licenses are Free, or else get rejected and spin it as the community not wanting to play nice.

Perhaps the only way to win is not to play?

Re:Buy one, buy 'em all?

[amber_of_luxor]

Of course, there is that *one* license that I remember thinking might pass. S

The Open Source Initiative is merely the first hurdle. The second hurdle is getting it approved by the Free Software Foundation. Then they can take a shot at trying to get approval by Debian legal. Once a Microsoft licence has met those three reuqirements, it can be considered to be a valid open source licence.

I fully expect Microsoft to proclaim all of their licences are "Open Source", without any of them meeting any of the criteria that Debian legal has set up.

Amber

Re:Buy one, buy 'em all?

[plague3106]

Why would the FSF enter into this at all? Open source != free software. So I see no reason why FSF would need to add its seal of approval. Same goes for debian.

OSS Representative?

[PPH]

Who's going to represent the OSS community on this site?
Neville Chamberlain?

Re:PR, Confusion, Vista Launch, the usual.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote:
----------
I'm a little fuzzy on this twitter. "M$" is making life hard on AV makers because Vista is much more secure out of the box, they are making life hard for Google because their search is much better out of the box, and they are making life hard for Palm and Apple because Palm and Apple failed to test their software during the REALLY LENGTHY beta and RC process that Vista went through. Am I reading your outrage right, here?
-----------
I see why you are fuzzy. To forever to get McAfee to work on Vista while free version (home version) Avast I have been running since Vista Beta. I always find the answer I need with Google search engine, for some reason Microsoft Live Search Engine always bring up Playboy when I do research on Intel processors. Adobe worked great on beta and RC but broke when Windows Vista went gold and XPS came out. Palm and iPod were running great on Vista Beta and RC version then broke when Zune come out and Vista went Gold. So I understand your fuzziness. Of course I love testing Beta's and RC's. Every beta and RC I of Windows I have tested several products would work great but when Microsoft had a new competing product that came out all sudden the product stopped working. Of course Microsoft would not be that foolish, would they? MS product are superior, then there is no need to break someone else product unless MS product is truly crappy, are they? Hmm.... I would know I just love testing products on beta and RC because they work great, and see how they break when MS OS goes gold.

it's search engine squatting

[Anonymous Coward]

In a matter of months/weeks/days any search for "open source" will bring a link to a page owned by Microsoft. Their goal is to get in the trap people who haven't deep knowledge about what Open Source really means.

At least we know where the Pravda writers are

[tjstork]

I have to say that this reminds me of all the ridiculous stuff the Soviet Union cranked out during the height of the Cold War in the 1980s. The Berlin Wall is for defense against Western Attack, we would have elections but the people are perfectly happy with the Communist Party, and now, Microsoft says that Open Source works best on Windows. It all just goes hand in hand.

Re:At least we know where the Pravda writers are

[jargon82]

Actually, they said it SELLS better under windows. Which in many situations (not all), I can believe.

Hardly!

[ImaLamer]

What MS is planning to do is the same thing that all U.S. Presidents did since the declaration of The New Deal:

1. Say they are operating within the aforementioned framework
2. Work outside that framework
3. Sabotage that framework
4. Tell everyone it doesn't work ("See opensource failed!" / "Welfare creates a welfare state!")
5. ????
6. Profit!

Politicians have been doing this for years. "Sure, we'll go with my opponents plan"; wreck that plan; say it didn't work.

OSI Requirements Loophole

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's a trap

Obviously they found a loophole in the OSI requirements. The GPL loophole has been closed with GPL3, so they're moving on to the next target.

When they drop the source for Vista and Exchange on opensource.microsoft.com with an Open Source license, I'll eat my Redhat.

this bit made my night :

[unity100]

.... read articles about open source such as 'Open Source Provider Sees Sales Doubling After Moving Solutions to the Windows Platform.'"

It is simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a trap. Bullshit. I can not wait for the first "setup.exe running techie" to tell me about how great Microsoft is again.

Cough. Gag. Puke.

The DRDOS case shows a pattern of behavior.

[twitter]

Obnoxious M$ Fanboy dedazo asks an amusing question:

Why do you keep using the same [link about DRDOS]?

I like that link because it shows a clear pattern of behavior and the author is credible. It was written by a former MicroSoft fan who read now destroyed court records. Those records proved that M$ planned not only a technical sabotage of DRDOS, they also planned a PR attack on it. This is behavior they continue today.

I also like pointing to the case of Steve Barkto, when showing how old M$'s astro turfing efforts are.

If they are not paying you to be so annoying, you need to find a more productive hobby. This one is getting you nowhere.

Re:The DRDOS case shows a pattern of behavior.

[Macthorpe]

How can it show a "pattern of behaviour" when it's not true?

Re:The DRDOS case shows a pattern of behavior.

[dedazo]

Psychotic zealot twitter crawled out of his barren warren and with much drooling said:

I like that link because it shows a clear pattern of behavior

I'm not sure we are clear on the meaning of the word "pattern". Perhaps you could provide additional examples? After all, that's what makes a pattern, or at least that's what I was taught in elementary school. Hopefully ones that are not almost two decades old? Surely if this is a pattern you will be able to, well, prove it is a pattern.

I also like pointing to the case of Steve Barkto

Of course you do. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we would like you to also prove a pattern there.

If they are not paying you to be so annoying

When Bill Gates came to Elbonia to personally deliver my paycheck for making sure that Free Software is thwarted merely by pointing out that you are a pathological liar, he said to say "Hi!".

FOSS has fewer patent problems than M$. NO TRUST.

[twitter]

In fact, [free software is] almost guaranteed that it does infringe software patents (both those existing now, and those that will be granted in the future).

Free Software is less likely to violate and be abused by patents. If you patent well known methods, you are a patent troll. Those mostly attack established companies like M$, who have money and are much less careful about what they do. This is why M$ continues to be stung with multiple billion dollar judgments. The patent system needs reform and software patents need to be abolished, but M$'s attempts to FUD free software with them are absurd.

There's no reason to hold Microsoft-written code to a different standard to other code. If it's free it's free.

M$'s past and ongoing behavior is a very good reason to stay far away from their code. If M$ wants to liberate their software, they can copy left it and surrender their tremendous patent portfolio to the public good. They have no such intentions and their "shared source" initiatives have been more like sharecropping than freedom. We're talking about a company that recently threatened one of their own MVPs for improving their "free" compiler.

Vista has already failed, claims Acer CEO.

[twitter]

I guess when your primary business model is going down in flames, you need to co-opt someone else's.

It would be great if M$ would GPL their work and become a normal software company instead of the freaky, paranoid monster it is. Fat chance. This site is pure PR to sell yet another SDK for non free crap.

M$ needs to do something, because Vista is a marketplace flop and the vendor revolt is on. Without vendor support, what do they have? Nothing.

Re:Vista has already failed, claims Acer CEO.

[Allador]

This site is pure PR to sell yet another SDK for non free crap [slashdot.org]. The SDK is free. Sharepoint is free. The only dependency here is on windows server, which everyone is presumed to have.

Re:Typical knee jerk reaction to anything Microsof

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no embrace and extinguish.

Amen brother! Slavery is freedom!

anyone RTFL ?

[ianare]

Has anyone actually read the licenses in question? They are relatively simple and straightforward.
The biggest worry with many here is in regards to M$ and their use of patents, but in these we have:

"each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license under its licensed patents"
and
"If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically."

Now, IANAL, but it looks like you can't sue contributors over patent issues. If they become approved by OSI, and M$ releases some good stuff under them, then all the better, no?

Linus is RIGHT

[Anonymous Coward]

I am with Linus on this one. For the life of me I can't understand what this sucking up to RMS is about.
Linus himself does not think GPLv3 is a good thing. So why do people keep adopting it.

Don't do it

[Azuma Hazuki]

Run. Run fast. Run far away. Microsoft wants open source nothing and only desires to get as much free use and work out of OSS programmers as possible before tossing their dessicated husks off to one side. Run, and don't ever look back.

It is your destiny, Luke...

[jihadist]

I am your father. Join the dark side. (The dark side is business itself, but I'm a Socialist who detests wealth used to manipulate others, almost as much as I hate low-IQ urban poor. Actually, I hate most of humanity because they're dumb and have the moral awareness of wine corks. Microsoft is doing what business does... it pushes hard for its agenda, and if it can't get what it wants, it begins sliding up next to its competitors and trying to get into their worlds, like a Kuang Mark 11 virus...)

Title up for grabs?

[SavvyPlayer]

President, CEO, Chairman of the Board, Defender of the Faith?

Re:Typical knee jerk reaction to anything Microsof

[LingNoi]

I've personally participated in a few .NET open source projects.

Wow you've participated in projects that only run on Microsoft Windows! Good for you! That is exactly what Microsoft wants. They want you to do open source. Just not on any other platforms.

That is no reason to not assume Microsoft is trying to "muddy up the waters". Look at the patent deals they have been making with Linux distributions.. You have to be an idiot to think that they have decided to go open source after a decade (10 years) of trying to kill Linux and Open Source Software.

Re:FOSSies, fears, and FUDs

[Divebus]

Ballmer? Is that you?

Now with MS providing a serious place to get OSS...

If by "OSS" you mean "Overly Shitty Software", then yes Microsoft is the place to go.

Re:Typical knee jerk reaction to anything Microsof

[Nazlfrag]

I'm not against MS getting into OSS, it would be great, but as far as I can tell this is just a statement that their customers are open source proponents, not MS themselves. I read about the OSSL making a plugin so Firefox would work in Vista. Do you know of any projects that aren't so blatantly in Microsofts self interest and are more user focused?

exec() is the hard one, not fork()

[Myria]

On Windows NT, you can fork a process by calling NtCreateProcess[Ex] with a NULL image section handle, then using NtCreateThread to create the initial thread in the new process (set the initial context to the same as the current one except 0 in EAX).

exec() is the hard one. NT can't start a new executable without assigning a new PID. In theory, you could deallocate all the memory in the current process then map a new executable in, but that's a total hack.

Windows NT has many semantic differences, but the reality is that for the most part, NT has close to a superset of what is available in UNIX. The debugging API is massively better than what's available in Linux.

Misleading

[Aazn]

Title is misleading. Microsoft is a domain whore, all they do is add domains under C:\whereverthefucktheyputIISdirectories\. I wanted to view microsoftopensource.com, not microsoft.com/opensource/. Fucking domain whores. They only have two! (Xbox.com and Microsoft.com).

At the risk of sounding like an FSF GNU fanboy...

[christian.einfeldt]

...the future belongs to Richard Stallman. It sounds to me as if Microsoft is trying to employ a marketing campaign aimed at developers, business IT managers who are not tech savvy, and the tech press. They are trying to drain resources away from FOSS projects by competing for developers. They are trying to get unsophisticated IT managers to use products that "interoperate" nicely with Microsoft's core cash cows. They are trying to get the tech press to focus on Microsoft's "open source" products to draw attention away from truly Free Software products.

IMHO, Microsoft's problem is that we, the Free Open Source Software community, are drawing end user, developers, and business partners out of their business network. No longer do user need to use Microsoft Office; they can use OpenOffice.org (OOo) or Google Docs. No longer do developers need to learn to code for .Net and similar projects; they know have many other choices.

Microsoft is trying to compete, but their problem is that they will not see the same kinds of profit from these activities that they saw with their Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office cash cows. This problem is what Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen calls "cramming". Lots of market leaders have done this in the past. Cramming is what happens when the market leader tries to use the disruptive market entrants business models. The problem is, the margins are almost never good enough for the market leader, which usually has a massive cost infrastructure to feed, and stellar earnings targets to hit, and the disruptive technology typically assists with neither of those areas.

In the meantime, the market entrant is very familiar with getting by on lean margins and low budgets. Earnings that are too small for the market leader are comfortable for the market leader. So the market leader shrinks, relatively speaking, and the market entrant grows relatively speaking. Sure, Microsoft will now start to compete for service contracts. But it won't make enough money to still be the darling of Wall Street that it once was. In the meantime, Novell and Red Hat and others will continue to grow slowly in their offerings and profitability, while Google continues to hammer on Microsoft in on-line services.

And in the meantime, the areas where Microsoft will least be able to compete will be in code functionality where GPL'd software does fine. The FSF and GNU will continue to lead, depending on how the overall FOSS community deals with the Linux kernel - GNU dispute over GPL 3.

Everything that Microsoft does is dangerous, IMHO, and they should never be taken lightly. But I see this move as reflecting relatively dim news for Microsoft's business network, and ultimately, its earnings and stock price.

All I know is...

[kollywabbles]

I never ever EVER thought I'd see this day come, despite Microsoft's motives.

If you would have told me 6 or 7 years ago that Microsoft would open a Microsoft Linux Lab and start publishing all kinds of flowery heartfelt niceties about FOSS and Linux on a microsoft.com domain - I'd have a hearty laugh.

Stand up

[furbearntrout]

You should get up and walk around more often...

Re:FOSSies, fears, and FUDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista isn't kicking anyone's ass except the poor saps who have installed it. How do you figure any of this post is true? Either you don't know shit or you're dilusional - or both.

Good analysis, but something's missing...

[Random Guru 42]

Yeah, you did come off sounding like a fanboy. Good thing you started how you did, or I would have totally written you off as one, too! :P

Still, your business analysis comes off pretty well, and I'd be hard pressed to fight it. The Novell deal works into this somewhere, though, and that's missing. I'd suspect that Microsoft has been planning this embrace move for a while, and I think that the partnership with Novell, and the feelers out to other Linux orgs played no small part in this strategy. I'd say, realizing that the future lay more towards service than development, Microsoft is playing to ensure it has a finger in everyone's pie to make up for the loss in sales revenues. For Windows and other products to survive as well as Microsoft wants them to, the costs will have to come down, and Microsoft will do that, to keep their flagships afloat.

By the way, don't knock the .NET stuff. It's genuinely useful, and believe it or not, makes for better cross-platform compatibility than the current regime. So long as the Mono project keeps pace with Microsoft.NET this will remain the case, too.

Re:Good analysis, but something's missing...

[christian.einfeldt]

Random Guru 42 wrote:

The Novell deal works into this somewhere [...], Microsoft is playing to ensure it has a finger in everyone's pie to make up for the loss in sales revenues. For Windows and other products to survive as well as Microsoft wants them to, the costs will have to come down, and Microsoft will do that, to keep their flagships afloat.

I have been very puzzled by the Microsoft-Novell-Linspire-Xandros deals. Microsoft has been giving money away to companies that they claim are violating their patents, and neither Linspire or Xandros have relevant patents that I know of that would justify Microsoft's relationship with them. I now believe, as you do, that they want to have economic ties to these various GNU Linux vendors so that these vendors will craft solutions that wrap around Microsoft solutions. Doing so will allow them to dictate the terms to these vendors, as in Linspire's unfortunate decision to make Windows Live Search the default search on Linspire 6.0.

It all snapped into focus for me when I read this article that shows how, in order to get prime biz opportunities with the beast of Redmond, it is necessary to leave your iPod at home, and not even talk about "googling" or Google solutions. Microsoft's insistence reminds me for all the world of the Scientology cult. In both cases, they say one thing in public, but demand blind obedience in individual private dealings. Of course, you could say that all companies want to encourage the use of their products, and discourage the use of others, but Microsoft is different. It's a monopoly, and its dominance of the desktop market triggers anti-trust analysis when it demands blind obedience in this fashion.

So I believe that Microsoft is basically trying to create cultural expectations that they expect their business partners to be their best advocates in the field, and IMHO, it seems to be working. I actually like Kevin Carmony, and I like the fact that Linspire is bringing FOSS to mainstream consumers who otherwise would never be exposed to FOSS. And yet, Linspire's message about Microsoft has become increasingly conciliatory, to the point where Kevin Carmony has become, like so many other CEOs whose companies are Microsoft business partners, a voice of reconciliation and acceptance toward Microsoft, as in this quote from Kevin Carmony's 14 June 2007 Linspire Letter:

But isn't Microsoft the enemy of Linux?

They certainly compete, just like Ubuntu, Red Hat, and Novell compete with each other, but we all have to live in the same desktop computing ecosystem. I'd prefer to use diplomacy and cooperation, than go to war. Linspire plans on working with Microsoft, just like we have with dozens of other partners, to build a better Linux. We will never force anyone to use what we produce. The choice to use, or not to use, the "better" Linux we strive to produce will always be up to you, but I like the idea of finding a mutually advantageous way for Microsoft and Linspire to work together.

Again, I like Kevin Carmony and Linspire, but what we see unfolding in the Microsoft-Novell-Linspire-Xandros deals is a process of accomodation, as Microsoft moves to co-opt its competitors, and align their business interests with its own. Simply put, if a business environment is a constellation of celestial bodies like our solar system, Microsoft wants to be the Sun, and certainly not merely even Jupiter or Saturn. It wants to dictate the terms of interaction, so that it can skim off value from each and every transaction. And it can succeed in doing so. And that is what makes Microsoft so dangerous, IMHO.

Which brings up the issue of .Net . I personally try to avoid using Microsoft products, simply because I don't want to have that kind of undue influence in my life. I understand that for man

Interesting

[trifish]

At least I learned something rather interesting from the site, which I didn't know:

"When the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft reached out to Mozilla last summer, the lab offered support in getting Firefox and Thunderbird running on Windows Vista."

it's a trap

[wikinerd]

Microsoft tries to embrace and extinguish a competing movement. The fact that we have attracted their attention means that we are doing well. They know they are going to die soon. Let them die trying to figure out how a bunch of hippie nerds overpowered the closed source trust.

SUA, sockets, and X11?

[tepples]

The big problem with it is that programs running under SUA can't access Windows API calls. This isn't surprising given the architecture of Windows, but it does mean that, for instance, you can't really have a GUI. But do programs running under SUA have access to sockets? If so, they can run as clients of an X server that uses the Windows API.

Basically I suspect it's a combination of they didn't want to put it on the CD and hence slightly encourage end users to install it (the did this with Windows 98 and TweakUI and Raymond Chen said it turned out to be a disaster for their tech support lines) and the CDs of XP being too full for it. Then why not make the SFU framework available for download through Microsoft Update, like the .NET framework?

Re:SUA, sockets, and X11?

[EvanED]

But do programs running under SUA have access to sockets? If so, they can run as clients of an X server that uses the Windows API.

It's still not perfect. X programs have weirdnesses that native ones don't. For instance, if I open a Cygwin Emacs session running with the Cygwin X server, it ignores me if I change my keyboard layout. You don't get native controls, etc.

Essentially this is because SUA is intended just to ease the porting of Unix applications; it's not intended to be a platform for development of new applications. (It's also not clear that it would be a big win to have access to the Windows GUI stuff; why write it to the POSIX API if you're just going to use Windows-specific APIs for the GUI? It's not like there's a standard widget API MS could provide bindings for or anything.)

Then why not make the SFU framework available for download through Microsoft Update, like the .NET framework?

Still the same reason. In fact, I would suggest moreso. I'm sure more people go through Windows Update, even the manually accessed pages, than poke around on Windows CDs. (Especially as they aren't even included in most new computers.) Plus the fact that it's presented as an update rather than just something sitting around on the CD would suggest people would install it.

I don't really see the virtue in most people installing it. People who are tech savvy enough to want it can download it themselves (though it is admittedly not well known), or use Cygwin, which gives you a lot of the same benefits, and a wider selection of packages. (Though not case-sensitivity in the file system, and Cygwin apps seem to load slowly.)

Re:SUA, sockets, and X11?

[tepples]

It's also not clear that it would be a big win to have access to the Windows GUI stuff; why write it to the POSIX API if you're just going to use Windows-specific APIs for the GUI? Because POSIX standardizes a lot of behaviors other than those of the GUI.

Re:PR, Confusion, Vista Launch, the usual.

[MysteriousPreacher]

You did better than me. I stopped reading when I saw "M$" and "Windoze".

Spinoff

[tepples]

If anyone's wondering who Lineo is, its Caldera AKA SCO GROUP . Caldera spun off Lineo long before this SCO v. IBM debacle started.

Re:A Microsoft OSS Site? I've said it before...

[Anonymous Coward]

nope it's a HOOKbook

BS show me the code

[LingNoi]

From the website

OK! lets download the code!

How to Participate in Shared Source

Welcome to Shared Source

Thank you for your interest in Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative. This guide is designed to assist you through the process of becoming a Shared Source licensee.

Oh nice and helpful :D

Step One: Determine Program

Determine which licensing program fits your needs. A comprehensive list of programs, features, and requirements is available on the Shared Source Licensing Programs overview.

uhh wa? OK lets go the the Licensing Programs overview!

okie now lets find the license for the bedroom hacker!

Enterprise Source Licensing Program (ESLP)

Nope

Government Security Program (GSP)

Nope

Most Valuable Professional Source Licensing Program (MVPSLP)

wtf?! Nope

OEM Source Licensing Program (OEMSLP)

ugh.. nope..

Systems Integrator Source Licensing Program (SISLP)

no....

Availability by Geographic Market

no.. buh! Hey wait, whats this?

National laws, practices, enforcement policies, and attitudes toward intellectual-property protection are reviewed in determining where Microsoft source code can be made available.

WTF?!?!

End of page.. Back to the first page

Step Two: Verify Availability and Eligibility

After selecting a licensing program

uhh can't do that I don't apply to anything..

, review the eligibility requirements and geographic availability for that program. National laws, practices, enforcement policies, and attitudes toward intellectual-property protection are reviewed in determining where Microsoft source code can be made available. See the Availability by Geographic Market page for geographic market eligibility information.

What the hell is this. I have never seen such restrictions on GNU or BSD projects and why is it still "Microsoft's" source code. If it was truly an OPEN SOURCE license and venture the source code would belong to anyone that accepts the license.

Step Three: Get to the Source

Review and accept the license agreement for your program. Several Shared Source programs feature simple click-to-accept licenses, while others require separate, signed documents. Restrictions for the programs vary, so be sure to review the program descriptions.

No CVS, SVN? What the hell?

Re:BS show me the code

[dkleinsc]

I find that list significant in figuring out what MS is up to: This is not for end users, or system administrators, or even programmers. It's for corporate managers and government "decisionmakers" who hadn't even heard about this whole "source code" thing until one of their organization geeks gave a talk on its benefits. Now they can say "Microsoft software offers the same benefits" because it looks like they do (like any manager is going to read the fine print), allowing the manager to argue that point in the meeting on whether to switch some servers over to FOSS.

The other thing I can pretty much guarantee is that if Microsoft's licenses are rejected, they'll trumpet something along the lines of "OSI and FSF won't play nice with us because we're MS and they're commie bastards".

UNIX Subsytem for NT/2k/XP/2k3/Vista

[cbhacking]

For 2000 and XP, you want Windows Services for Unix or SFU. The download includes a complete - though basic - POSIX environment, a working GNU build toolchain (and yes, sources for all GPL code), and NFS server and client abilities. You shouldn't need to do anything except run the self-extracting download archive and run setup.exe. The installer will provide options to enable setuid and case-sensitive behaviors in the filesystem used within the subsystem, which should be used as a number of programs need them. The version of Perl included with the installer is obsolete and probably not worth installing; I'll get to that in a sec.

For Server 2003 and Vista, you must first enable the Windows component called the Subsystem for Unix Applications (SUA). This can be done by going to the (Add/Remove) Programs control panel - there's an option on the side for enabling Windows components. In Vista at least, you can also enable NFS and Unix-style printer connectivity here. You will then need to install the Utilities and SDK for the SUA, which is available for Vista/Longhorn and for Server 2003. On Vista there will be an additional install option to enable su-to-root behavior, required for programs like sudo - this option is important because by default, the Administrator account is disabled in Vista and privilege escalation is achieved through UAC. Although UAC can be used to start a Unix shell as root/admin, it cannot be used to change a shell's permissions while it runs. If you install sudo this becomes possible.

In all cases, you will get two Unix shells, the Korn shell and the C shell, in your start menu. Either one will start the subsystem and run a login process that creates the necessary environment variables and such. However, there are a few notable lacks. One of them is that while x11r5 and x11r6 client libraries are installed (with the r6 libraries used by default), there is no X server. Thus far I haven't managed to port x.org to Interix (the name of the subsystem "OS") so I use a win32 X server, specifically xming which runs on everything including Vista. The second major lack is a package manager or any software beyond the most basic requirements. For resolving this issue there are a couple options; the two I have tried are InteropSystems and NetBSD pkgsrc.

Both provide a good number of commonly used programs, and support the Interix platform. However, there are some major differences: InteropSystems primarily distributes binaries, with an eye to very easy package management and rapid usability. It also integrates better with Windows, doing things like adding a Start menu link for the Bash shell if you install their package. There is a fairly good forum for assistance and mostly it's a very easy out-of-box experience. However, their package tree is somewhat limited, and installing older versions of some libraries is trickier than it might be. They suuport all versions of Interix, from 3.5 (XP-era SFU) up to 6.0 (Vista's SUA). NetBSD's pkgsrc, on the other hand, is mostly source-based (although there are some pre-built packages for Interix; roughly as many as InteropSystems has, in fact). It takes longer to compile from source, and the initial download is hefty. However, a much wider selection of packages is available (although there's no guarantee they'll all work; indeed some, such as the X server, are flagged to not even attempt to build in Interix) and the packages are presumably optimized at least somewhat for your system during compilation. It's harder to find the right packages at times, though, and I have yet to get even the source-based boo

Open source, eh?

[MoxFulder]

I love how when you go to Microsoft's Open Source Site, the first thing that greets you is a giant FLASH ANIMATION. Well, that's not exactly open-source friendly, now is it!

Re:Open source, eh?

[donaldm]

I can connect to the site and can see and use the flash animation. I am using Firefox 2.0.0.5-1 (64 bit) under Fedora 7 (64 bit) which is what I call the "dull bleeding edge" of a Linux distro. I do agree with you that flash is not that open source friendly although for me it was not difficult to install and it is shareable with all the users of my laptop. In many ways we are seeing something that is overly pretentious and not really necessary but then again Microsoft has very deep pockets and can afford to hire all the web designers it needs.

Actually I liked the pdf article on how Microsoft helped Mozilla develop a plugin for MS Media player on MS Vista and how when it was released they got almost 1.5 million downloads in the first five weeks (read into that what you may). Out of the four pages the first page is one large header, the last page a Copyright notice and the middle two pages devoted to approx one and a quarter pages of "sort-off" information. What they don't tell you is that if Microsoft told the Mozilla people to "take a hike" then you would have seen a nice little court case on why Microsoft was using its Monopoly to prevent competition in the browser market.

Re:Typical knee jerk reaction to anything Microsof

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you've participated in projects that only run on Microsoft Windows! Good for you! That is exactly what Microsoft wants. They want you to do open source. Just not on any other platforms. dotGNU anyone?

Easy

[HalAtWork]

They don't have to fool OSS developers or users, just those who may be on their way to becoming OSS developers or users. If they hit MS's new "get the facts" site, they may have some doubts when they start reading about OSS later on.

Don't forget the copyrights!

[chopper749]

It's great that microchip and mozilla could work together! But why is one full page of this paper dedicated to telling you about the copyright on the other three pages!?!

Should be STFU

[cecil_turtle]

It would be better if Microsoft called it Services & Technologies for Unix, or STFU.

(of course) They are still the same...

[Aleksej]

...they still couldn't avoid the word "property" in their OSS website announcement.

I don't think you understand.

[LWATCDR]

What benefit is it to Microsoft to support these APIs?
What benefit is it to Microsoft to support ODF?

To expect a company to do anything that doesn't increase profits is illogical. Unless they will make more sales or not face some type of fine they have no motivation to do anything.
Only by customers demanding something different will Microsoft change.

One should not blame a wolf for acting like a wolf.

BTW this message is being posted from a PC running Linux and Firefox.
While one should not blame a wolf for acting like a wolf, one should also not ask a wolf to babysit their children.