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How Open Source Has Influenced Windows Server 2008
willdavid writes to tell us that Sam Ramji over at Port25 has a nice succinct list of the major open source principles that have been used while developing Windows Server 2008. "Overall, we've learned and continue to learn from open source development principles. These are making their way into the mindset, development practices, and ultimately into the products we bring to market. I've focused here on 'what Microsoft has learned from Open Source' - and ironically, I've agreed to do a panel at OSBC on 3/25 with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation on 'what Open Source can learn from Microsoft'. As all of the different organizations in IT continue to evolve, we'll learn from each others' best practices and make increasingly better software. As in science, this incremental improvement will move all of us forward."
...open source development principles?
What are those, exactly? I'll bet he couldn't name them. I'll bet no one can. It's a bazaar, not a cathedral!
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
Open standards, choice of platform, no vendor lock-in, release-early-release-often, user-modifiable programs, ability to fork... yeah, they've learned all kinds of stuff from Open Source.
Thomas Galvin
You can find these wherever you see participation at scale - and often a rearchitecture to a more modular system precedes expanded participation. Great examples of this are Firefox, OpenOffice, and X11 - from both the historical rearchitecture and the increased participation that resulted. The Apache HTTP server and APR are good examples that have been modular for as long as I can recall. OpenOffice? Modular? Maybe OOo is developed in a modular way, but the end result is hardly anything but modular. In fact, it's quite monolithic -- when you start OpenOffice Writer, you also start OpenOffice Calc, Base, Draw, Impress, etc. Programming language agnostic
A given project uses a consistent language, but there are no rules on what languages are in scope or out of scope. Being open to more languages means opportunity to attract more developers - the diversity of PHP/Perl/Python/Java has been a core driver in the success of a number of projects including Linux. Open source projects are 'programming language agnostic' because they used public, published and open interfaces. They follow standards. The reason a the Linux kernel build process can be a mixture of bash, Python, Perl, awk, etc. is that all of these things can connect together using pipes and whatnot. The reason you can write GNOME applications in almost any programming language is that the APIs are completely open. The reason why AbiWord and KWord can read Open Document Text files is that that spec is completely open and free of royalties, patents, etc. Feedback-driven development
The "power user" as product manager is a powerful shift in how to build and tune software - and this class of users includes developers who are not committing code back, but instead submitting CRs and defects - resulting in a product that better fits its end users. Huh? How are CRs the same as accepting code patches? Open Source development differs in that these "power users" as he calls them can make their own changes and, if necessary, fork off their project to offer a competing or even a completely different project. Built-for-purpose systems
frequently seen in applications of Linux, the ability to build a system that has just what is needed to fulfill its role and nothing else (think of highly customizable distributions like Gentoo or BusyBox, as well as fully custom deployments). Uhhhh....BusyBox is not a "distribution" and cannot really be compared to Gentoo except that, yes, the program (as in single program, hence, not a distribution) is cutomizable through the use of custom build options. Sysadmins who write code
ability of a skilled system administrator to write the "last mile" code means that they can make a technology work in their particular environment efficiently and often provide good feedback to developers. This is so fundamental to Unix and Linux environments that most sysadmins are competent programmers. Unix sysadmins are generally NOT competent programmers. We're lazy schmucks who whip up quick-and-dirty scripts to accomplish tedious and boring tasks out of sheer laziness. And then we call it 'enhancing productivity' in an attempt to get a raise.
Whether the standard is something from the IETF or W3C, or simply the implementation code itself, where these are used projects are more successful (think of Asterisk and IAX2) and attract a larger ecosystem of software around them. Real open standards are developed by the community at large through agreement, not by a monopoly who can change the "standard" at anytime without notice.
My blog
The problem with MSFT is not that they don't know these things. They do. But the internal power structure in MSFT is so driven by "if the playing field is level, we will lose" cowards. So they still do things that was ok when they held a 20% share against Word Perfect and 10% (by revenue) share against unix and mainframe giants, back in the late 80 and early 90s. They got lots of money and grew too fat and have too many layers of management. So they go and hire this dogbert to tell them what they already know.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Open Source has learned how a company can abuse their position, how a company can be a monopoly and make billions and then influence those who are elected into office to protect us. Those billions go a long way to influencing the lawmakers to push aside any attempt to make a better cheaper product.
It is ludicrous to think that a product that can be made cheaper and better should be put asunder because some powerful monopoly can influence the powers that be. There's no socialistic tendencies there. No communistic tendencies. It is pure capitalism that is being thwarted by Microsoft's practices. Microsoft is a bully, an entity that has one goal and that is to rake in all the money while destroying the competition and they are doing that with their monopoly.
Your privacy is being violated hundreds of millions of times a day by Microsoft with WGA/WGN and Vista's equivalent. They are able to get away with it because they don't take competition seriously because they don't have to. Would you go out and pay $2000 for a TV from Best Buy and then allow Best Buy to enter your home to verify that you didn't actually receive stolen property? What if they want to do that every week or every month (inspect your home for stolen goods)? What if they say that they'll do this with a hidden camera? Would you permit it? Say you buy frequently form Walmart. Would you permit Walmart to enter your home to inspect your property to prove you didn't steal it from the store? I think not. You wouldn't let your neighbor enter your home upon accusations that you stole something from him. You wouldn't let the police enter your home even if the neighbor filed a complaint.
What the open source community practices has learned is that Microsoft is the type of entity that uses "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" tactic to kill solid technology and those companies trying to bring them to market. The open source community has learned that Microsoft has threatened every Linux user with 235 alleged patents claiming everyone will have a price to pay to Microsoft, without Microsoft stating specifically what is being violated. This is like an oil company stating that they are going to sue car owners for using gasoline from one of their competitors because their competitor may have allegedly use some of the IP in the gas refining process. Then they threaten the car manufacturers or large companies that use that same gasoline with lawsuits if they don't stop using the competitors gasoline. Then they refuse to say which competitors and they refuse to say which IP has been violated. BTW, that IP was probably stolen by them to begin with.
We've learned from Microsoft that they will steal IP from small entities and when caught will ignore those companies request to have Microsoft pay up. Z4 Technologies is one of those companies. In this case Microsoft was contacted about their use of the IP developed by this firm for the purpose of over the internet product activation. According to the final ruling which went in favor of Z4 Microsoft knew they were in violation of the IP of Z4 and they continued to use it. During the trial they flooded the court and Z4 with paperwork in hopes of covering it up. The day before the trial began Z4 found the evidence. Z4 won the trial and were granted approximately $100 million. In the ruling the Judge noted numerous acts of misconduct on Microsoft's part and though he could have awarded 3 times the amount he only awarded an additional $25 million in special damages (which is no small amount by any measure). The Judge also noted that Microsoft had participated in these acts because they believe that Z4 was to small and to weak to defend their own IP. Upon appeal Microsoft lost with the Judge also noting the numerous acts of misconduct. With the latest appeal of this Microsoft lost that as well with all awards in tact.
But what you must understand from this is that Microsoft stole the IP of Z4 which Microsoft used to keep you from stealing their IP. So, they stole the technology
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
As Henry Spencer has said (and also as quoted by some commentators on the original page)
Microsoft just fails to understand what actually makes the success of Linux and F/LOSS, and thus they are only ble to pull out pale copy of what they think they've seen in order to fill such PR announcements.
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As an example, their entry about "Modular architectures" is almost funny if not tragic, citing OpenOffice.org and Mozilla Firefox as examples (which are actually criticized by the Linux community sometimes for being too bloated). What makes *nices systems cool isn't the ability to stuff plugins into big apps, what makes them cool is the "Unix way" : programs that just do 1 thing but do it well. Modularity is about all these small single-function programs and all those libraries (for ex.: pattern finding, on-the-fly compression, conversion filters, multimedia processing, etc) that can be freely played with by the user and assembled into more complex never-intended-for-this-usage construction, which forms the basis for huge application like those cited above. Application like VLC aren't an example of modularity, but an example of what modularity enables by putting together a bunch of functions already provided by libraries.
Also the ultimate advantage of F/LOSS is about freedom and the feeling that the software you have belongs to you. Something that is completely un-achievable with Microsoft style softwares.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Windows' market share obviously has nothing to do with its quality.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"