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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.
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.
Vista is failing in the marketplace because M$ continues to play their stupid monopoly tricks. Vista is the most restrictive and buggy version of Windoze yet. They are currently making life hard for anti-virus makers, Google, Firefox, iPod, Palm and OpenOffice, even Adobe. As usual, the M$ replacements are technically inferior. Between that and all of the MAFIAA friendly digital restrictions Vista is still a disaster that people are avoiding.
To compensate M$ is doing what it usually does, claiming everything good for themselves, sabotaging and lying about everyone else. They have been playing the blame game for a long time now, sabotaging the competition and them blaming them for the problems. In this case, they are desperate to claim all of the goodness of free software for themselves and cause confusion about real free software. OOXML, is that "Open Office XML"? No, it's M$'s confusing term for it's incomplete and patent encumbered new Office format. "Shared Source", is that something new from Debian? No, it's the usual "what's ours is ours and what's yours is ours" way of stealing your work. Free software is their main competitor, so they are going to try to say they are all the good things free software is and that free software has all the problems they do because "complex systems" just act that way.
This kind of thing would be laughable if it were not for the billions of dollars they have to spend pushing it all out. People want a new Office format, a new computer and a new GUI like they want a hole in their head. M$'s shoddy stuff has damaged the entire industry's reputation. It's finally come home to them in poor sales, but the same poor sales are going to hurt everyone else too.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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$'s astro turfing efforts are.
If they are not paying you to be so annoying, you need to find a more productive hobby. This one is getting you nowhere.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is just another nail in the FOSSie coffin. Their flagship product, Lunix, never managed to gain traction in the marketplace. In fact, it's biggest cheerleader just gave up Lunix on the Desktop as hopeless (blaming Microsoft for his deficiencies as a programmer as well... but you can take the FOSSie out of the FOSS, but you can never take the WHINE out of the FOSSie). FOSSies have been chasing Windows 95's tail lights for over a decade, and are actually farther now than when they started.
Then there is Firefox, which continues to be an inferior product to IE in every respect (except printing web pages... why the hell can't MS ever get printing right?). Like Lunix and OSX, it's much bragged about security is illusory (and via obscurity).
And we can't forget the main reason people even look sideways at Lunix, which is Apache. But sadly, that proves itself buggy as well... and amazingly enough, the FOSSies STILL haven't figured out how to get it to install properly on every distro. "Properly" meaning getting it to work doesn't mean manually moving files and folders, and editing config files. You know... kind of like Microsoft has been doing since Windows 3.0 (or earlier, if you want to talk about MS-DOS).
Now Vista comes along, kicks their ass with stability, kicks their ass with security, and IE7 comes across with the haymaker, bringing the most flexible and secure computing platform available in the world today. It has the Red Hats making Yellow Pants.
Now with MS providing a serious place to get OSS, where you have people actually working real jobs doing real projects, FOSSies are literally seeing their world crumble before their eyes. Years of bashing MS for not being friendly to FOSS, and now that they get their wish... all they can do is cry.