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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.
for their "Spin" artice as an example.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
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.
Most of the stuff on
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!
ilovegeorgebush
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.
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?
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.
Pirate Party UK
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.
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.
:D
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.
Camping on quad since 1996.
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:
For me, it would be more trouble than it's worth to use M$ code in any of my projects.
Thank God for evolution.
Let me rephrase: Are we guaranteed that Microsoft won't claim that it has patented the code after we start using it?
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).
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?
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.
Thank God for evolution.
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.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hilarity ensues.
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.
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?
You certainly have the pulse of the world's personal and corporate computer markets.
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 =(
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
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.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
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.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
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.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
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...)
Anti-Globalism
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
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".
I am officially gone from