Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Seeks Open Source Certification
eldavojohn writes "Microsoft is applying for OSI certification for its Shared Source Initiative. The move is described in a blog post by an MS OSS lab worker: 'Today, we reached another milestone with the decision to submit our open licenses to the OSI approval process, which, if the licenses are approved, should give the community additional confidence that the code we're sharing is truly Open Source. I believe that the same voices that have been calling for Microsoft products to better interoperate with open source products would voice their approval should the Open Source Initiative itself open up to more of the IT industry.' According to PC World, reaction from the community has been mostly positive."
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I apologize for submitting a dupe.
From that blog posting: I also run a training class that teaches people around the company how to engage in open source projects and make them successful. Now, after reading the higher ranked comments from the first article, I know many of you saw this as disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics on order with a politician, the RIAA or Steve Ballmer.
But this blog is written by someone who's genuinely interested in Microsoft becoming part of OSS efforts. Will it happen? Probably not as a good many of you pointed out.
The real question is, when it doesn't happen, what was the real reason? This is tough, because Microsoft is a large company. I felt the pain of using their products when I had to stay at work until midnight on Wednesday trying to get AJAX (that worked fine in Firefox) working in IE. But this is only one of their many products. Is it fair for me to condemn their application for hundreds of other products for OSS certification based on a few tools I've used?
My answer to that is that "I don't think so."
What I'm trying to say is that the open source community is a community. Once you start to blame Microsoft for everything, turn a cold shoulder towards them whenever they even mildly reach out, you're essentially becoming them on the other side of the mirror. What's worse is that this attitude will ensure that there will never be a point in time in the future when Microsoft can reconcile with OSS. I think the fact that even one person inside the company is reaching out says that Microsoft as an entity is not 100% against opening a code base. They have great marketing and business tactics, they are hear to stay for as far as I can see. I think that the attitude should be open arms under the right conditions instead of a persistent never ending cold war or middle east-style conflict in software today.
Will I be jumped on as not being a hardliner open source advocate? Probably. Because I care far more about the success of everyone than I do the success of either side.
The people running the accreditation will no doubt be very stringent on the licenses passing OSS certification. I'm not a lawyer but I doubt any of the MS-GL/SL/RL licenses will pass. I hope it's not an outright rejection. I hope there's talking between the OSI and MS, I hope there's negotiations, I chances are given, I hope for compromise, I hope that some of the projects end up as OSS, I hope to use Microsoft's software, whether I pay for it or not, and to be able to see the source in the future.
Everyone needs to make money, I need to make money. This is a capitalistic society. I don't blame Microsoft for making money, I blame them for failing to see the folly of their position. I believe a different pricing scheme could net them billions more dollars & millions more users. I believe that slowly opening up the code on more and more of their products can only improve it. I believe that people will steal it one way or another if they want to so your job shouldn't be to catch them but to take away that motivation.
In the end, if you rail against Microsoft for doing this, you're only building the barrier higher. I wouldn't recommend an "you're either with us or against us" attitude, I personally do not feel that has gotten anyone anywhere before. The world is not black & white, software is no different.
My work here is dung.
microsoft... open source... oxymoron
Microsoft, of late, has been pretty responsive to public outcries. Now, I know at the heart of it they're just responding for financial reasons. But, an era ago they didn't have to care -- and they didn't care. They were the game.
But now, I don't think we care. We being the few, the proud, the OS hackers. I would love to get my hands on the Windows kernel, and it's "DOS". I would love to get into its scheduler.
Until some monumental step by Microsoft, I can't be impressed. (But, sir, they released a package that allowed the OSS community to create Windows installers! -- and they'd never scrutinize what we package with it.)
It's a Sunday. I guess this is the best reused story I can expect on church day.
My ZooLoo
"According to PC World, reaction from the community has been mostly positive."
PC World hadn't yet read this Slashdot thread.
I thought we already had an april fools this year!??!
the same voices that have been calling for Microsoft products to better interoperate with open source products would voice their approval should the Open Source Initiative itself open up to more of the IT industry.
What a pile of M$. The only barrier to products that interoperate better is them. Everyone else has bent over backwards for years, only to treated as a pawn in the quest for M$ dominance of everything. M$ is the only organization using such sleazy language. The goal is not some kind of imperfect interoperation, it's the use of real standards, the end of M$'s silly games and the beginning of real freedom. Without the four freedoms, everything M$ does is just another game.
If M$ sends the OSI software freedom, great. If they don't and the OSI certify it, the OSI will not have raised M$ in anyone's opinion, they will have disgraced themselves and further diluted the terms "free" and "open". We will all be able to judge for ourselves, but I don't expect anything useful from a company that's rabidly threatening everyone with patents.
At this point, M$ has very little of value to offer and the best thing they can do is cease hostilities and start to repair the damage they have done. It would take the community a decade to fix the mess Windoze and Intel BIOS are. It will take even longer to undo the DMCA, software patents and other evil stuff they have promoted. The market itself is doing a better job of fixing the problem by ignoring them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Linux is open source to an extent. You only have to release the source code to those who you distribute it to. Take Google, for example, to my knowledge they run a stripped down Red Hat kernel on hundreds of thousands of machines. Have they released this modified code that runs the core of their search engine? Nope.
The same could be true of Microsoft. Say I'm using the
Their software system & security is broken. Unfortunately their marketing and business divisions are top notch world class--that means we have to put up with the former. I hope they get as close to making me happy as possible. Would it be out of the question for them to release at least some of the Windows source code or IE's source code? I hope not, I would dearly like to see what the hell that rendering engine is doing sometimes
Their fears are obvious, people scanning the code for bugs
I seriously hope you change your mind about Microsoft. I mean, I hope that the community--those who make the decisions--are willing to work with Microsoft or at least hear them out. The open source community and licenses should be safe enough that anyone can use them or take part in them without finding a haft of a knife in their back. If they aren't, they need to be changed, hence all the debate on the GPLv3. If you're telling me that Microsoft is exploiting the Open Source Initiative for their own good, I question who's at fault here--Microsoft or OSI? Because Microsoft excels at making software make money, open source should excel just at making software work for everyone.
My work here is dung.
If not, I don't see any reason for you to apologize. Even if you are, it's not like you're duping an article within a couple of days or less. Because I've bitched about dupes many times before. Many times. Which implies that I hold the editors to a high standard. If I can't be a standard candle for them when I submit stories, how can I expect them to hold these artificially high standards I force them to?
Too many times, I've said that if they just went to Google or Google news and typed "site:slashdot.org Microsoft OSI" they would find the dupe from a few days ago about a story with basically the same keywords. I mean, you could even build a link on the admin page for them to click and do that search.
I apologized because I submitted before taking my own advice, leading to what I considered a dupe.
I apologized for being a hypocrite. It's a basic idea of not contradicting yourself that was ingrained into me when I was a child & seems to be lost these days. You act like you would want someone else to act (the ultimate maxim) and it's clear to me that everyone hates a dupe so I apologize.
My work here is dung.
Ok, so after I submitted this story this morning (while I was grasping for sobriety), ...
Not another one night stand, I hope.
I know many of you saw this as disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics on order with a politician, the RIAA or Steve Ballmer.
Can you tell me why someone who works for Steve Ballmer should not be looked on as a pawn, or why we should suddenly trust Ballmer/Gates? Do you really want them telling you what software freedom is?
Take a nice cold shower, compile a program with gcc and you will start to feel better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You can buy a certificate, but you can't buy trust. ..... Assholes.
you had me at #!
It's a trap. Even if the guy who's pushing for this is someone who genuinely wants to push FOSS within Microsoft, Microsoft as a corporation does not. If it ever does allow this to happen to a significant extent, it's because they have some evil plan to Mer GNU/Linux in the balls. They like Merring balls. shoot me...
In other words open source that REQUIRES closed source to use is not open source at all.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Any of several ulterior motives on the part of M$ management is equally plausible. The most obvious is that they're going to hang some of their code out there until every contributor to Linux internals is tempted by curiosity to take a squint at it. After the next kernel roll, they swing the patent hammer, claiming that the new release can't possibly not be "contaminated" by its authors' having been exposed to their proprietary code.
The other possibility, if all the OSS folks assume the above and don't take the bait, is that Redmond cues the violins about how they made oh, so great an effort to meet the other side and act in "good faith" to promote interoperability, and use it as an excuse to continue going their own way.
Even the greatest Lord of Sith ever to exist redeemed himself as he was about to die. Maybe Microsoft is feeling its life energy leave its body and decided to go down a hero instead of a villain.
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then they pretend to join you and stab you in the back at the first opportunity. Never trust Microsoft.
Gandhi (somewhat adapted)
Loose lips lose spit.
This is just a PR stunt so that Microsoft can reap the benefit of open sources good reputation. If they wore genuinly interested in working with the community all they had to do would be to release current specs for their various document formats and network protocols. I really hope the OSI take a long hard gander and turn every single stone before agreeing to anything. Microsofts history tells you to watch your back. Microsofts shared source license should not in any way be let in without complete abolishment of the windows platform clause. OSS licenses should not tell you what platform you can use the code on.
HTTP/1.1 400
It's all crap. Microsoft Windows XP has all of the stability and (relative) performance of a development Linux 1.3 kernel + userland environment. My 20+ year old AT&T Unix PC had a similar but prettier and far more productive user interface.
I do care about a level playing field when buying equipment. I do not wish to be forced to pay for a license for software that I will never use.
I do care about a level playing field when it comes to interfaces. Standards must be open and drivel like render this paragraph like 1996 Microsoft Word running on a Macintosh just doesn't cut it.
Mod me down, Microsoft Fan Boys, bring it on. I've spent the last few months attempting to appreciate Microsoft Windows XP, but fortunately my employer has relented and will now allow me to install Linux on the company notebook.
I am fine with Microsoft wanting to open up their source code but OSI needs to go through the proposal with a fine tooth comb. Prior to approval, OSI needs to make certain that this is truley open source, not the shared source propaganda a few years ago that placed such stipulations on the "openness" as to preclude being used in an open source project. In fact, this Shared Source was such the proverbial crap that Samba (and others) had to ask developers that signed on to the MS Royalty free agreements and Shared Source agreements not to participate. If that isn't a wolf in sheep's clothing, I don't know what is.
the farmer found the snake freezing in the winter
the snake said 'please help me out, pick me up in your coat and i wont freeze to death'
the farmer said 'but you are a snake, you will kill me...'
the snake said 'no, i promise i wont. please help me'
so the farmer picks up the snake and puts him in his coat. after a while, the snake warms up.
his natural instincts take over. the snake bites him.
as the farmer lays dying, he says 'what on earth has happened. you rascal!'
the snake said 'you knew i was a snake when you picked me up!'
Seriously, we're way past the point that new licenses are tolerable. It seems like every major project demands its own license, even if the result is 99% similar to other common ones. Is there really a need for the Apache, CDDL, Mozilla, and Artistic licenses and their countless derivatives?
If you want other developers to use your code, no strings attached, pick BSD or maybe MIT. If you're more interested in end users but want the developers to still have a few avenues to lock the code down, there's GPLv2. If you're really into end users and care about patents, etc., then pick GPLv3. Repeat after me: no new licenses!
Really, I think OSI needs to pretty much reject all new submissions unless they are substantially different from the pre-existing major choices. Fragmenting codebases by writing Foo License and Bar License that are almost identical but incompatible in some subtle way can only appeal to Microsoft and other proprietary vendors. Just say no!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The writing has been on the wall for years. Microsoft has little to no interest in continuing to be a company that builds the core platforms in the long term. Over the next several decades, Microsoft will become a company very similar to Google in most ways, though they will still have the Gaming / Media Center business around (the underlying technologies will be mostly open source by then, though). This is a good thing for everyone, Microsoft included.
You see how good is it that Microsoft joins in? They have already improved the existing standard definition!...
From reading the higher modded posts on the previous story, I was surprised that few people seem to have bothered to take a quick look at these licenses. Let's give that a try-
Both the Microsoft Limited Permissive License (Ms-LPL) and the Microsoft Limited Community License (Ms-LCL) contain a clause like this:
Platform Limitation- The licenses granted in sections 2(A) & 2(B) extend only to the software or derivative works that you create that run on a Microsoft Windows operating system productThe Open Source Definition has this:
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
Either 5 or 6 look a like a clear contradiction to above clause. So IMHO, the 'limited' licenses shouldn't qualify for OSI approval. Then the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL) has this:
the Licensor grants you a non-transferable, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce the software for reference use(Emphasis mine). Basically a 'look but don't touch' license. Thanks to other commenters for pointing out Open Source vs. Free/Libre: this could qualify as Open Source, but definately does not qualify as Free/Libre software.
I don't see any obvious problems with the other licenses though. And 1 thing I do like: they're nice and short, so that you can actually read them, and (try to) understand what they say. As opposed to reading through the pile of legal mumbo-jumbo in common EULA's.
One final point I'd like to make: one shouldn't take a license and complain about whether it does or doesn't suit your purpose. Instead, start with what you want to do with your code, and use a license that best suits that purpose. For some funny, new app the GPLv2/3 may be good, but for an implementation of a low-level networking protocol, that you want to become the defacto standard, a BSD-style license may be more appropriate (so that it can be used by anybody, even hidden deep inside black boxes, but using your protocol). You might be worried about the exact purpose of these MS licenses, but they may also be a vehicle to have your code included in MS products (and help improve standards compliance/interoperability). Not to mention that it's zero problem to contribute things like small bugfixes to projects licensed under these.
So I agree very much with parent poster. Why complain about MS when you think they're throwing you a bone, and you don't trust it? Simply throw them a bone back sometimes, and see what happens.
Would you let Microsoft in the OSS pool? I sure as hell wouldn't, for the same reason I wouldn't let someone in my swimming pool who has a history of malicious urination. Adult swim, creeps; out of the pool!
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
So been living under that bridge for awhile, or you own micrSoft $tock$ ?
LOL
Gates in a press conference openly admits the only way they are doing well
in Asia is piracy, or it would be linux on top.
I find that hilarious.
You prolly reach over to your Vista box to check your portfolio.
Hahaha.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
Now Microsoft is trying to hijack the term "Open Source." Their "shared source" is in no way "Open." It's a "look but don't touch" bullshit initiative.
If I'm not mistaken you have to sign all sorts of agreements including the agreement that you won't try to compile the source. That's right, no way to verify that they really gave you the real thing.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Sir, you're full of it.
Lots of OSS works on multiple platforms, including the one of the Marketing Spenders. OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, MySql, PostgreSQL, Apache HTTPD, jBoss,...
Now, would you kindly return to the forest? Or wherever a decent troll's habitat is.
Personally, I find it offensive when Microsoft tries to pass off it's "Shared Source" for "Open Source." I don't think they are doing this by accident either.
Maybe Microsoft would have better luck "building bridges" to the Open Source community if they stopped trying to screw us at every turn.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Honor is important to Klingons, but not the Ferengi or M'softies, who worship at the alter of Latinum.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
MS at least SEEMINGLY reaching out to 'make peace')
That reaching out is to do things like changing the structure of MSO2007 purely to ensure that third party ODF convertors that work in release candidates do not work in the final release.
Or stacking the deck so that organizations with legitimate questions about Office Open XML are prevented from attending meetings, and that all questions about implementation of OO-XML are rejected as being "not important".
If Microsoft wants to make peace with the FLOSS community they have to do the following:
As an alternative to the above, the following will suffice:
Until they are willing to do all that, any effort on their part to make peace with the FLOSS community should be viewed with the same degree of skepticism as one would have of an announcement by Pope Benedict XVI that Southern Baptists can take communion at a Mass of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, without undergoing the Rite of Christian Initiation of an Adult.
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
Groklaw had an intersting look at how Microsoft'shared source worked last year and it was very enlightening. The first paragraph I find the most amusing part of the article as they try to explain in simple human terms how Microsoft views sharing.
When my sister and I were growing up, we were almost always about the same size. We still are, actually. So we shared clothes. It was a way to double our wardrobe. But, from my point of view, I shared mine freely and she never wanted to share back. If I'd say, "I'd like to wear your blue sweater today," her answer would often be, "No, I'm wearing it."
I believe that the same voices that have been calling for Microsoft products to better interoperate with open source products would voice their approval should the Open Source Initiative itself open up to more of the IT industry.
I think they'd voice their approval much quicker should Microsoft make a concerted effort to actually interoperate better with other products, open source or not. It's interoperation that is really the key... for example: back in the early '80s the yet-to-be-named open source community embraced UNIX not because it was open source - in fact at the time it wasn't - but because it was designed to be easy to interoperate with at every level.
It's not good enough to provide open source components that only actually work on top of your API, or to provide libraries that allow people to talk to your protocols through the cut-out of your system software, you need to open the black box and commit to supporting documented and non-proprietary wire protocols and file formats.
Otherwise what you've got is better described as an "open pit-trap".
I've been in the position you are in where I gave M$ a go, only to find that they again acted in a way that justified being cynical and suspicious of their motives, I see the same thing now. If Microsoft were sincere why don't they just open source the code base of Windows 95 or Windows 2000, which in reality that is the kind of thing they would need to do to end criticism, and if Sun can do it with Solaris...
No, M$ is well past the point of trust, even if their employee's motives are pure there is little doubt the coporate machine will find a way to corrupt the original intentions, bend it to M$'s advantage to the detriment of all other parties.
M$'s practice of bullying their employees shows in they way they bully the entire IT market and treat everyone else with contempt. It's a pityfull state of affairs for a so-called "market leader", still, you reap what you sow.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
They aren't "reaching out" at all. If they really wanted to reach out, they would open the APIs for Outlook, Exchange, SMB, and who knows what else. Until they open these products, they're merely hand-waving. It's that simple.
Nothing is inexplicable; only unexplained -Tom Baker, Doctor Who
I'm looking forward to downloading their source code and compiling it. As is normal for open source, this'll be made available from their web site to anyone who wants it, and will have no penalties for personal use. Maybe it'll give me some ideas for development that I can use for similar, competing products.
Or have I missed a point here?
Slashdot has been duping MS/Intel/Cisco/Dell/Sony stories over and over for more than a year. As a 24 year veteran of IT, I worked for WordPerfect, Lotus, Aston Tate, Fox Software, Novell, IBM, At&t ... I'm guessing you are young to take the position that MS hasn't acted illegally for the last 3 decades. I'd just like MS to pay the taxes they owe American's for those 3 decades and not in vouchers.
The most important thing the FOSS movement can do it not believe a word you say and not spend time reading it. MS never could open their code because it proves all the IP they stole and the courtroom lies. You only care about destroying everything not MS. If you study a little bit of business, you will see that MS marketing has been some of the worse in world history. MS has only succeeded due to using illegal tactics like bundle'n'dump (i.e. IE). 3 decades later they are still fighting FREE SOFTWARE which NO ONE makes money on. Stealing is ok as long as it's MS/Intel/Cisco/Dell/Sony.
IT is at an all time low led by MS. Overseas outsourcing was led by MS. Making CS degrees useless was led by MS. Buying developers to put coders out of work was led by MS. Loss of language standards was led by MS. Why does MS have to fight against FREE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE volunteer projects which holds no economic threat to MS? And why do you think that anyone who has any idea of what IT has been through for the last 3 decades would believe anything you have to say?
MS is on a glide slope and has been for a while now. Sure they have a lot of cash and altitude and can glide for a while... but decades? I think not!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
i'm sorry you are so bitter, retire and go rot on a golf course. If the work you put out is as useless as what you just posted your bitterness makes so much more sense. I won't even debunk you, your too jaded to actually read this anyway. good luck.
You know, Ballmer, there is a difference between being labeled an open source company and actually acting like one.
Your ideas are completely batshit stupid. Apparently bankruptcy is the only way they can make peace. Actually, your post is proof that the open source community really is all about getting stuff without paying. Just read yourself, and you'll see you look like an arrogant git.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Yeah sure, we all believe your BS now just because it was moded down, MR AC,you are so right!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
And that's the problem, people will never be happy. Nothing MS ever does will ever be good enough, short of going all out, and that won't happen. [long winded, condescending apology for non free waste, blame the victim and other nonsense]
Poor little M$, all beat up by big mean Twitter. All of M$'s evil behavior is his fault. Right. Back in reality ...
I'm perfectly happy without anything from M$. If and only if you can show me how they are willing to respect my software freedom will I consider any of their stuff. Free software has given me technically superior and easier to use alternatives. M$ is welcome to the party, but this big stinking turd they are trying to call free is not welcome anywhere.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
More like living under a rock, kept in the dark, fed shit, and basically a mushroom in intellect.
/.) claiming all sorts of missing features and crappy programming when in reality all the open source guys did was defend by correcting what was obviously wrong.
FOSS just wants their freedom. They don't want to have to be shit upon by a criminally convicted monopolistic company that has a reputation of stealing other's intellectual property.
FOSS has not slammed anyone except to say that it makes no sense to pay money to a criminal monopolist is to continually bury your head in the sand. If you continue to use a product that locks you into continued purchases then it isn't FOSS that is shitting on others. It is Microsoft shitting on you. To continue to pay for something that locks you in is silly. To use a product that costs you money when there's a free nice alternative, well that's crazy. On top of that it was the Office zealots that dumped on Open Office (in prior threads on
How on earth can you not see what they have done and how harmful that has been to the whole industry? The opportunities for strong competition in the OS market are essentially non-existent due to Microsoft's criminal behavior.
The FOSS movement has done absolutely nothing wrong. They've stolen from no one. They've hindered no one. All they want is to keep a criminal monopolist out of their home. I'm sure you would feel the same way about allowing a criminal into your home.
On top of that you fail completely to understand that Microsoft is spying on you. They have 47 programs in Vista that collect information about you and return that information to their servers for analysis. They also have programs that essentially search and can seize your computer (refuse to work if they believe it is pirated, even if it isn't). They do this without most people's knowledge. They spy on you after having stolen from you for so many years. And you let them continue while essentially attacking the benevolent group of people who just want to have a fair free competitive market. Something that Microsoft has denied so many for so long.
On top of that you also fail to understand some of the largest companies in the world support FOSS and Open Source. What the FOSS industry doesn't want is Microsoft tainting the waters. Microsoft is already extorting cross licensing from other companies upon threat about IP violations that have never been proven nor the IP ever been identified. How would you like it if I stood in your neighborhood and told your neighbors that you were stealing and that I had proof of X number of thefts. You, and they, would demand that I tell them what you stole (what crimes you committed). They wouldn't put up with it.
Microsoft is like the big oil company that threatens all car owners that drive because they buy gasoline from one of their competitors. They say that the gasoline is refined using IP that they own. On top of that they are threatening any large company even more so if they don't agree to not just pay them money but give up their own intellectual property. It doesn't seem to matter that no proof is offered nor evidence of any sort yet they still claim that all car drivers will have to pay a price to them.
Don't you think it is silly that they threaten their competitors customers because they aren't using their gasoline? They can't compete on their own merits?
And your attitude is appalling. You have no idea, you have no knowledge, you have no eduction in this matter and you have never taken the time to actually understand what is happening. Then you come here and abuse everyone else who differs in opinion to you. Its rather sad if you ask me.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
As someone who hates Microsoft, loves FOSS, and uses only Linux on his desktop, I am really sad to see Slashdot reacting this way. Whenever big bad Microsoft tries to make positive changes, you should encourage it, not mock them and immediately discredit it without consideration. It feels to me like the Slashdot crowd actually wants Microsoft to stay evil just so they can continue to make fun of them.
Microsoft could easily become a huge positive contributor to the FOSS world. Does nobody want that?
*runs outside, and looks to the sky throwing hands in the air* NNNnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo........ .......
"As a 24 year veteran of IT, I worked for WordPerfect, Lotus, Aston Tate, Fox Software, Novell, IBM, At&t ... "
For a "24-year veteran of IT, you sound remarkably immature. You sound like a self-rightious know-it-all 12-year old. I imagine the reason you've worked at so many places is that you couldn't hold down a job because your coworkers couldn't stand working with such a whiner.
Second, I can't help but notice that nearly every place you've worked got its butt kicked by Microsoft. Is that why your're so bitter wrt Microsoft? Tired of losing to them all the time? Well, maybe you should look in the mirror. You've lost so many times to Microsoft at so many different places; the common denominator is that these companies that lost to Microsoft had YOU has an employee. Maybe YOU were the problem. Given the drivel you spouted, revealing your lack of intelligence, that would make sense.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Microsoft, like any other software company will release the source of the software of their own choosing.
You guys worship IBM, right? Has IBM open sourced AIX? Notes? Smart Suite?
In fact, I'd dare say that Microsoft has released more code for more projects than has IBM.
They've rleased more code than has Sun.
They've released more code than has Google.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Bingo! As good an example of any is the DR-DOS debacle, the court filings of which may be found at http://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/cyberlaw/ microsoft/msnsued.html. The point is that Microsoft lied to their customers, over-sold their own 'coming soon' versions of DOS, and built checks into Win 3.1 startup code to refuse to start over DR-DOS, even though their was no technical impediment to running Win 3.1 over DR-DOS.
And per-processor pricing was the real kicker - if you didn't sign into the multi-year per-processor license agreement, you couldn't get product and even if you could the dollars would kill you. It was brutal.
I've no doubt their are very competent, bright people doing good work at Microsoft; look at Mark Russinovich, who is a freakin' genius, and whose work has brought me much joy at critical moments when his tools saved my day.
But collectively, Microsoft is a predatory marketing machine that will kick the fsck'ing shit out of you without slowing down. I have, honestly, met members of the [insert internationally known motorcycle enthusiast/club here] who are interesting and intelligent, but get in a conflict with one of them and the whole club will stomp you, without a moment's hesitation before, nor any remorse after the fact.
And that's Microsoft business character. So if /. is a little corner of the world where Bill et al takes it on the chin, fairly and even unfairly, then that's okay with me.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
Won't comment on the moderation there, but as for whether or not Microsoft likes open source, I believe that at just the last Financial Analysts meeting, Ballmer told them that "open source is not a business model we can embrace" and that it's "inconsistent with shareholder value" (i.e. we're not doing it & we won't make any money off it).
In that light, this move only looks even more suspicious to me. If they're not going to embrace OSS, what are they doing here? Hoping to strangle it?
what have you been smoking ? you sound like a troll. sun/ ibm/ google have all contributed significatnyl to the OSS, please cite us your references of microsoft's release all that shitloads of code ?
Danger Will Robinson! Danger!
What GPL taketh from the developer, it Giveth to the end user.
Really? All those companies have full time people hacking the Linux kernel. Does Microsoft?
Can anyone think of any useful application that is part of your standard GNU/Linux/BSD etc. desktop/server that was written by Microsoft? The only thing I can think of is IronPython, and that wasn't written by MS per se.
kill all the fucking niggers
Seriously, it's a good thing. Maybe there's something hidden behind the curtain but right now - we've sourceforge and it's way better than codeplex (in terms of the amount of projects). It's a step forward for there are a lot of proprietary source that when turned into open source may do some good. What if MS. decides to open Silverlight? Won't Moonlight project not benefit from it? Will that force Adobe release it? Of course, it's just an assumption. We should think in terms of benefits of the release rather than trying to find the hidden objective of MS (which won't really be threat esp. due to our 'hate' @ their non-disclosure of the patent infringements). May be (another assumption) that is an initiative to make us less hate the fact that MS has "allied" itself to Major Linux distro companies. For my part, I don't really care - I'll just take whatever I need from what MS releases, and work on that, start new projects regardless if the source comes from MS or not.
Do I require the c-sig package to have a signature?
Is there really a need for the Apache, CDDL, Mozilla, and Artistic licenses and their countless derivatives?
Yes, because GPL2/3 are viral and actually prevents cooperation*, and BSD is obsolete (doesn't cover many important aspects of modern business).
* Why GPL prevents cooperation? Because the GPL requires that the whole software must be licensed under the GPL. Now imagine a large open source project consisting of portions written by hundreds of authors all licensed under BSD. Some of the authors are dead, some of them impossible to find or contact. As you cannot get their permission for relicensing, you cannot use any GPL code in your software. That's how GPL actually PREVENTS co-operation and sharing in the Open Source and Free Software world (and it should be avoided if possible).
The kernel isn't that bad. It's everything besides the kernel that's bad. The services, bad. The UI, bad. The default configuration, bad (and the concept of storing everything in the same four files, just as bad). Drivers, often bad but Microsoft decided to almost completely let the manufacturers handle them, so it's not surprising. Default apps, bad. Kernel... actually not entirely crummy. Okay, and NTFS has its upsides (like fine-grained ACLs), too.
Windows is what happens when you take a promising kernel and a decent file system and wrap them in shit. No matter what kind of gold nugget you have on the inside, the result looks, feels and behaves like shit. If Microsoft would dump everything besides the NT kernel and start a completely new OS based on it (especially one without twenty years worth of backward compatibility hacks) and used a more sane approach to development than overstaffed fiefdoms they'd probably come up with something pretty decent.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
You can always relicense BSD software as GPL - that's implicit in the license text - and if you absolutely must include GPL code in your BSD project then that's the bargain.
Note that you don't hear the *BSD projects whining about this. They choose not to accept those conditions so they write their own GPL-free code.
So, we've disproved your silly, oft-repeated (and oft-rebutted) hypothesis about the GPL being viral. What do you have against the BSD license? What does it allow or disallow that's anti-business and that one of the GPL versions doesn't cover?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You know that is all true. But why don't we see the same virulent comments when IBM does something like this? They are also past criminals. Do they get a pass because they aren't "evil" anymore? Is there some time limit they've exceeded for personal bias? Or did they pay penance via open source contributions?
Seriously, it's gone beyond common sense and being skeptical of MS and it's tools and ventured into the world of group think. Certification of a license with OSI is a bad thing? I'm not grasping this.
But that's not correct. I can relicense any BSD software I want, including yours. Let's read the actual text:
Those are the only restrictions on its use. If I want to ship it with modifications, including a different license, I may do so as long as I keep the copyright notice intact and don't use your name to advertise it.
So you've missed the point completely.Ditto.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I stopped reading here:
"FOSS just wants their freedom. They don't want to have to be shit upon by a criminally convicted monopolistic company that has a reputation of stealing other's intellectual property."
Microsoft has never been "criminally" charged with anything, let alone "criminally convicted".
Learn the difference between civil law and criminal law.
Since you can't even understand that simple concept, or can but still choose to toss around the false "criminally convicted" rhetoric, it's safe to assume that the rest of your post has no credibility and isn't worth reading.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
The other licenses mark other tradeoffs, including but not limited to the tradeoff of having a community feel they own the license. This may be as important as the feeling of a GPL-using community that they "don't get abused".
For instance, there is yet no license that marks the tradeoff that I see as reasonable: An attempt at optimizing the copyright term to the one that is most productive for society. While Stallman go on and on about how different length copyright terms are more effective for other forms of copyrighted works, and copyright is fair and proper there, he goes for "can work" for the functional class of works - and implements this as the GPL. I agree with him about using optimal terms, and see this as extending into the area of functional works.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
If I want to ship it with modifications, including a different license, I may do so
The author gave you only permissions to do only certain explicitly stated things. He didn't assign copyright to you nor any other kind of intellectual property. He remains the copyright holder. That's why you still need his explicit permission to relicense the code. Because he only allowed you to redistribute the code and use it (i.e. incorporate it) in your work. There is no permission to relicense the code -- on the contrary, the license states that the terms and conditions and the legal notice must be retained (hence, the license cannot be changed!). Get it now?
The open source community doesn't really need any contributions from Microsoft. But in fact, it could represent some self-pressure on them to clean up their code-- it's not like they have a reputation of quality or anything. Perhaps cleaning a few things up for "public consumption" isn't a bad habit for them to get into-- it's comforting to see they actually found a few modules they were willing to spend some time on to do that. The only possible downside I could see is that such contributions will divide the "community" into two camps:
- those that will never use MS "open source."
- those that will use MS "open source."
Is that a big problem? Are they at each other's throats yet? No, I can't really see much of a reason to care about this one way or the other...
Nice of /. to put some comedy on the site once in a while.
GENERATION 24: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
The Ms-PL and Ms-CL licenses are arguably improvements to the BSD and MPL licenses. As part of their submission, they have to make that argument.
Some people want the Two-clause BSD license approved because a number of FreeBSD packages use it. Would you say that it is substantially different from the pre-existing Three-clause BSD license? Is the Three-clause BSD license substantially different from the four-clause BSD license (the one with the advertising requirement)?
There are so many licenses because there are so many people. People have different wishes and goals. People pursue different paths to the same goal, even. We can't STOP people from creating OSD-compatible licenses. All we can do is not approve them, which just pisses off the associated developers.
If you want to get rid of all the licenses, you have to get rid of all the developers, and shrink the community back to what it was in the pre-open-source era. I don't want to do that.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
No. It's almost identical to the MIT/X11 license. Since that already exists, there's no pressing need for "BSD2".
Is the Three-clause BSD license substantially different from the four-clause BSD license (the one with the advertising requirement)?Yes. That extra clause was enough to make it incompatible with other F/OSS licenses, namely the GPL. Going from 4 to 3 was much more significant than going from 3 to 2.
We can't STOP people from creating OSD-compatible licenses. All we can do is not approve them, which just pisses off the associated developers.Then piss them off. Everyone's entitled to write their own license if they wish, but they don't have to be approved. There's no need to have 100 different licenses saying almost the same thing in 99 different poorly thought out ways.
If you want to get rid of all the licenses, you have to get rid of all the developers, and shrink the community back to what it was in the pre-open-source era. I don't want to do that.Don't get rid of current licenses unless you must, but why encourage and support the creation of new ones? No matter what terms you want, there's almost certainly an OSI-certified license that already has them. If there isn't, then what you're asking probably doesn't qualify as F/OSS anyway.
If every developer whipped out their own libc, we'd call them crazy. Let them come up with a new license, though, and there's a rush to get the OSI to accept it. Well, nuts with that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Ah yes, delusional FFOSSies like IBM have on understanding of how to run a business, it's due entirely to the GPL that there are problems in this world, and Microsoft is a benevolent God come to make our lives better.
Man, you either need to share, or put away that koolaid.
Changa hates change.
Changa hates change.
That will make your coments more credible.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... but according to you, it is somehow /.'s fault for not getting it.
When they have a consistent attitude in regard to FOSS, then most reasonable people will sit and listen.
A company that makes unsubstantiated claims regarding patents and clear litigation threats, tries to divide the FOSS community with dubious deals based on those claims and then pretends to be all nice about standards frankly can't expect much sympathy by default.
Other companies that have probed consistently they are in the FOSS field do not get a terse treatment here, MS that is pretty much a declared enemy of FOSS surely can't expect to fare any better.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That should only take common sense to be understood.
If you allow yourself to be you vs good luck and all the best.
I you are part of the FOSS movement, if you are ever in a situation when you have to confront , then it becomes FOSS vs in many senses, which may include the legal and economical one.
Techies do not understand how important it may be to be part of a movement. It has nothing to do with "hyppieism" or being a good comrade, it is just sensible that people organized in big groups will have big bargaining power.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.