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Microsoft Discloses 14,000 Pages of Coding Secrets
OrochimaruVoldemort writes "In an unexpected move, Microsoft has disclosed 14,000 pages of coding secrets. According to The Register: 'This is Microsoft's latest effort to satisfy anti-trust concerns of the European Union, which is possibly a tougher adversary for the company than Google.' The article mentioned that this will be done in three phases. 'Between now and June it will garner feedback from the developer community. Then, at the end of June, Microsoft will publish the final versions of technical documentation — along with definitive patent licensing terms.' Lets just hope those terms are pro open source."
Unexpected, as in they told us very loudly that they were going to do it?
Yep!
They've told us a LOT of nice stuff they're "going to do" that they turned around and either didn't do or poisoned.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
I'll believe it when/if it's finally done. (And even then I'll wonder what "gotchas" are included.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Perhaps. Or perhaps it brings on suggestions from security experts that will prevent virii.
MS has NEVER done anything yet that is pro open source. They have gone to great lengths to make sure that something has the appearance of such, but that it would not help. The only question should be, how far ahead is MS thinking? They have always been a pretty good chess player.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So Microsoft finally releases a huge tome of secrets Microsoft uses to compete with other vendors on its closed system. After years of denying that, after years of keeping them secret from even the thousands of paying customers buying what they thought was equal access to the MS platform.
And somehow that admission that MS has been lying about something so central to protecting its anticompetitive abuses of its monopoly is supposed to reassure antitrust investigators?
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make install -not war
Not really. With the exception of a few bits of Microsoft-written software, most Windows software is written against published APIs with the occasional work-around for bugs in the APIs. WINE 'just' needs to implement the already-public APIs (including replicating bugs) and code will work. The WINE team only need access to secret APIs if code has been written using them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
People said this same thing when the Windows 2000 source code leaked. Nothing happened. Multiple problems with that theory but one of the biggest is simply that it is wrong. Lots of people have the Windows source code. MS has a license where universities can get a copy for research. One university I know that does is ASU in Tempe, Arizona. So this idea that only MS has ever seen the code is false, thus the argument is invalid, never mind the other problems with it even if it weren't.
I believe Wine, ReactOS, and MingW are using MSDN and "clean room reverse engineering" to develop (meaning a group writes documentation, another group implements). And they are well making sure that no code in the trees are taken from the leak of the Windows 2000 code a few years ago, and no code is written via direct reverse engineering Windows. This information MIGHT be helpful, but Microsoft is unpredictable when it comes to enforcing its patents and loves them. If I were on any of these teams, I would advise to stay away from this documentation until it is cleared with FSF that the licence is compatible with GPL (which I highly doubt it will be).
Since "Pro open source" seems to mean "Can't cost anything, and can't put any restrictions on it other than requiring the code to be open." That is pretty much going to kill almost anything from being pro open source.
I imagine it'll be similar to MPEG-4 and such as it'll be an open standard with RAND licensing. What that means is anyone can get a copy of the standard and licensing to use it, and the price of that license will be reasonable and standard. However, that does mean you have to pay if you want to use it. I can't see them just wanting to give it away for free.
So if you are willing to adjust your definition of open source to accommodate things that are open standards, where it is open to all, but you do have to pay a license, then I imagine you'll be happy. However if you take the stance that it cannot cost any money, well then you are probably SOL.
Please,
/yoda voice
Improbibility is not required....
Think business. What better source to find your bugs than the many thousands of angry coders who are not M$ fanbois. Let your hatred consume you Luke, find the flaws in the code..... or rather "Your hatred, a tool, it is. Fix that which is broken, and glory you will find"
And you suckers ^h^h^h^h guys will do it for FREE!!
How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
> The WINE team only need access to secret APIs if code has been written using them.
And LOTS of such code has been written. Examples include Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, etc. Why do you think Microsoft hides the source-code of these applications? It's not because of ANY of the many popular reasons. It's ONLY because these applications interact with the OS in many undocumented ways, i.e., in ways that can't be used by non-Microsoft applications (I avoid using the word "API" because it is the most misused word in MS related discussions). The result? No matter how competent Firefox developers are, IE works faster than Firefox or consumes lesser resources. Beginning to smell Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior? Imagine the huge penalties that Microsoft would have to pay if the sources are disclosed. In fact, ANY application that's linked with the libraries that ship with Microsoft's proprietary development tools is going to have SOME of these undocumented interactions too. That's the reason why DevC++ or GCC/Win can't create applications that are faster or feature-rich than the ones created using Microsoft's commercial tools. The Result? "Developers", as some these MS fanboys call themselves, choose Visual Studio and thus creating yet another source of revenue for MS.
In summary,
The functionalities of various windows applications are as follows:
Microsoft's In-House Applications (is superset of) Applications developed using Microsoft's commercial tools (is superset of) Other windows applications.
The speed (or performance) varies as follows:
Microsoft's In-House Applications > Applications developed using Microsoft's commercial tools > Other windows applications.
The difficulties for wine in running the application:
Microsoft's In-House Applications > Applications developed using Microsoft's commercial tools > Other windows applications.
Please please stop wasting resources fighting for Open Source. It's either far ahead of time or very stupid. Instead, fight for Open Standards, Open Specifications, Open Formats, Open Protocols, Open Interfaces. These are the immediate needs.
Whether you copy implementation details from a document or not has no bearing on patent rights.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Without clarity over patents involved, those pages amount to a contract anyway. By using that stuff, you're signing the contract. The only thing is, you aren't getting to read the contract yet, until the patent issues are disclosed.
Im sure there are plenty of OSS apps which havent had thousands of security experts poring over them (presumably for fun). Outside the relatively few OSS apps that are used in the enterprise I would imagine code quality is worse since commits typically aren't buddy checked (buffer overflows ahoy!) and regression testing is a relatively new addition to the OSS scene.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
For open source one should be using the definition from the Open Source Initiative (OSI) since it's a term used to indicate software that has been released under a software license compatible with the definition from the OSI. Note the very first criteria from the definition, "The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.".
The same goes for "free sofware" which uses the definition from the Free Software Foundation. On that page it is explicitly stated that, "Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission."
For "open standard" one could look to the definition by the European Commission (IDABC programme), which most importantly includes: "The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.".
It should be clear now why the bit about "licensing fees" (or royalties or whatever) is exactly the problem and would prohibit such software from being referred to as either open source or free software. Once I receive software or a specifications document I should be able to distribute it without asking or paying anyone for permission.
Note the difference between paying a one-time fee for receiving and paying fees on distribution. See also the article "Selling Free Software".
Perfect is the enemy of done.