Slashdot Mirror
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."
Who stole the Heart of Gold !?
Unexpected, as in they told us very loudly that they were going to do it?
Unlike existing open source projects, these protocols/code/APIs have never been scrutinized by independent security experts. I'll bet this reveals hundreds of new attack vectors.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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
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.
I have to admit I'm tempted to be interested in the Exchange stuff. The
company I work for uses it. As with most MS products it's not, um, horrible,
when it's working but it's a PITA to troubleshoot problems. The MAPI Tool for
looking at the "innards" is horrible. Maybe this documentation will at least
spawn some better third party management tools that I can convince my employer
to buy.
For now most pages (all?) are prefaced with: [This topic is preliminary documentation and is subject to change in future documentation releases.] I haven't had a chance to search out legalese to answer the summary's question on open source friendlyness.
I figure a "hope-for-the-best-expect-the-worst" attitude is the best way to approach this one...
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Can anyone (intelligently) comment on the implications for projects like WINE? It seems that having so much information released would benefit these efforts in some manner, yes?
The article links to:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/interoperability/default.mspx
where several documents in non-standard formats are describing how well ms are complies with standards.
Not to mention you have to buy a licence of M$ Office too read it.
M$ laughs EU in the face with this one.
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?
--
make install -not war
the pages had for now was a bunch of disclaimers. Turns out this is just the
first page of each document. I, for the life of me, could not see a way to go to
the next page. The side table of contents doesn't work either.
But every doc is available as a PDF and you can grab whole sections in zip files.
I found it interesting that they chose a cross platform format like PDF and
didn't try to shove Word Docs at the world or their MDI(?) format, their supposed
PDF killer.
Anyway the legalese is vague and scary for now... Intellectual Property Rights Notice for Protocol Documentation
Copyrights. This protocol documentation is covered by Microsoft copyrights.
Regardless of any other terms that are contained in the terms of use for the
Microsoft website that hosts this documentation, you may make copies of it in
order to develop implementations of the protocols, and may distribute portions
of it in your implementations of the protocols or your documentation as
necessary to properly document the implementation. This permission also
applies to any documents that are referenced in the protocol documentation.
No Trade Secrets. Microsoft does not claim any trade secret rights in this
documentation.
* Patents. Microsoft has patents that may cover your implementations of the
protocols. Neither this notice nor Microsoft's delivery of the documentation
grants any licenses under those or any other Microsoft patents. However, the
protocols may be covered by Microsoftâ(TM)s Open Specification Promise (available
here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp). If you would prefer a written
license, or if the protocols are not covered by the OSP, patent licenses are
available by contacting protocol@microsoft.com.
Trademarks. The names of companies and products contained in this
documentation may be covered by trademarks or similar intellectual property
rights. This notice does not grant any licenses under those rights.
Reservation of Rights. All other rights are reserved, and this notice does not
grant any rights other than specifically described above, whether by
implication, estoppel, or otherwise. * emphaisis mine
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Lets just hope those [patent licensing] terms are pro open source.
I'm going to hope for a pony too! A flying one!
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
It's a cook book!!!
...apologies to Rod Serling.
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.
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.
As we know, there are public standards. We also know there are some standards that are secrets. That is to say, they are used very publicly but the details are kept secret. And there are also public secrets. These are the secrets that were kept secret for shame and are made public.
But there are also secret secrets. The ones we don't know that are secret and should be kept that way.
(with apologies to Donald)
- customizing AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS for Windows Vista Ultimate?
- Hungarian Notation 2008 from Cosmonaut Charles Simonyi?
- A vastly more powerful set of MFC macros that will now make it possible to maintain different versions of an enterprise project code base from a single source file?
- 3D OLE Automation DCOM interfaces from the Visual Basic team?
- the difference between "Unrecoverable Application Error" (Windows 3.0) and "General Protection Fault" (Windows 3.1)?
- a detailed explanation of what each alternative does in the "Abort, Retry, Fail, Ignore" dialog?
The mind boggles at the possibilities.
I'm starting to think that this looks a whole lot like the 'we know there is source code from windows in your apps' thing. It might look good for MS to the EU, but it also looks extremely well for MS if they put in some legal clauses into the documents and twist their tongue around making it look friendly.
Could open up a whole new can of worms where they start taking out open source projects based on the fact that those people have SEEN the code.
No, I'm New Here
Everything you wanted to know about Windows 3.11 in 13,999 pages..... WFWG next!
The world is not yet ready to learn of the Ballmer Peak!
I think you'll find may who don't agree. I've gotten in to this same argument many times before. Personally, I think open standards are open source friendly. You can get a license for them, distribute your program with full source included, with whatever mods you like, and so on. Only requirement is you have to pay licensing. I see no problem.
However I've found that view is not common in the OSS community. Many seem to think it is only truly open if you can have it for free. They seem to think the GNU/GPL idea is the One True OSSS(tm) and anything else isn't open.
So that's what I mean. I imagine MS's terms will be perfectly friendly to having the source code open, as it'll have to be that way if it is an open standard. You get the code for MPEG-4 or VC-1, for example. However I do imagine that, like those, it'll cost money. So while someone could buy a license and make something for Linux based on the code by paying the fee, they couldn't just take the code for free and use it to make something.
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.
Actually the 28,000 lines of code is all that microsoft coded that works. The rest is just bloat so people feel good spending a few hundred-a few thousand for a product.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.