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Top 25 Hottest Open-Source Projects at Microsoft Codeplex
willdavid writes "Via CNet, a link to a blog post with the top 25 most active open-source projects on Microsoft's Codeplex site. As the CNet blogger notes, 'Codeplex is interesting to me for several reasons, but primarily because it demonstrates something that I've argued for many years now: open source on the Windows platform is a huge opportunity for Microsoft. It is something for the company to embrace, not despise.'"
FOSSies just don't get it. MS never despised open source, although FOSSies certainly despise MS.
MS only had distrust for the GPL... and seeing as how the GPLv3 was explicitly written as an attack at Microsoft specifically (and commercial and business interests in general), they are entirely correct in distrusting the GPL.
The way I see it, Windows is the only truly free platform (free as in freedom, not as in beer). You have options in Windows you don't have on other platforms. You can be part of the world and use the applications everyone else uses, rather than being forced to use third-rate software some 17 year old zealot whipped up in his parents basement during a rough night of Red Bull and Cheetos.
Also, that freedom to be part of the world gives you a future. Someone entering the job market who only knows how to use Open Office will, all things being equal, lose out in the job market against someone who knows MS Office... they don't have to be retrained, and the employer saves money and gains productivity.
Education is about adding value to yourself. FOSS only devalues you in the job market. Also, the zealotry makes people who are difficult to get along with, and of course no employer needs that.
So having the freedom of open source software, free offerings, and professional commerical software (with support) are all available on Windows, but not on other platforms. The only way OSX can gain that same level of freedom is by their "Wannabe Windows" virtualization... which is honestly leveraging a real install of Windows in order to make up for their deficiency of NOT being Windows.
And teh Lunix... nobody in the marketplace takes it seriously, and rightly so. Teh Lunix, while being free as in beer, is not free as in freedom. ALL your apps will be FOSS... whether you want them to be or not. You have no choice: the GPL purposely forces commerical software away from teh Lunix. Teh Lunix has never sought to create a balance between FOSS and commerical software, mainly because they seek to be, in their own way, a monopoly (in the same respect that Apple is a monopoly). Both Apple and teh Lunix wish to bind their users to only the software (and hardware, to varying degrees of success) which they dictate.
For example, teh Lunix can only really work with video hardware which has FOSSie drivers. Obviously, most for-profit video card manufacturers have no wish to make FOSS drivers... so in that way the GPL is restricting who can make compatible video hardware. They are essentially saying "support our platform how we say, or not at all". That doesn't sound like freedom to me, unless we are talking about in an Orwellian "Slavery is Freedom" sort of way.
There, fixed it for you.
Actually Microsoft does not despise Open Source but Free software, remember up until Vista the networking stack in Windows was from BSD? The codeplex is how they aim to embrace the Open Source/Free software community. Using their 'Open Source' license (that allows people to develop and share source on the Windows platform and under the condition that Microsoft can make it proprietary) they will extend it, this fractures the community putting Free software and Open source advocates at logger-heads. 'Open source' wins thanks to the backing of Microsoft, anyone wanting to write code under an open license will use Microsoft's because it is good enough.
Free software will be extinguished, it is only a matter of time. Netcraft has already confirmed it. If we don't all start writing .Net now we face redundancy.
One things is for sure - they all rely on proprietary Microsoft produts. ... [and they use] A license that governs USE of the software
So really, this is more of the same and another demonstration of what a bunch of control freaks the people at M$ really are. It's not enough for them that they own the OS. It's not enough that people want to write applications for that OS and that gives them sales and user value. No, they have to specify exactly how distribute and use anything that touches Windoze. They so fear losing their dinky little monopoly that they must control every detail of every kind of computing done.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Pretend you're software developers, for just a minute, and not OS kooks obsessed with ridiculous ideals. ... ...
... I have to admit, I feel a bit sorry for you.
*chuckle*
How about you pretend for once you're a software developer and not some MS user who doesn't give a damn about lock-in and plattform independance?
If I have to go back to developing in Perl/Python/PHP or even Java I'm going to put a pencil through my eyeball - most of it's just sloppy, primitive shit compared to what MS is doing.
Where I come from, we do out code ourselves. And AFAICT it's not sloppy at all. Not that I'd want to poke my eye out over that quick hack I did this morning anyway. Must be tough.
Cry all you want about their OS's [...]
Personally, I actually piss my pants laughing about their OS's most of the time.
[...]they'd port an industrial strength CLR env to Linux along with all their class libraries, and Visual Studio/Orcas[...]
You MS folk seem to have it with eye-pocking, so let me put it this way: I'm 120% sure Balmer & Gates would rather have both their eyes poked out than have that happen. Would be interesting though. A nice 'what-if' anyway. Both the MS-Exec eye-poking and those IDE's you were talking about.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You can't use GPLv3'd software with DRM,
Wrong. Dumbass.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.