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Microsoft Blesses LGPL, Joins Apache Foundation
Penguinisto writes "According to a somewhat jaw-dropping story in The Register, it appears that Microsoft has performed a trifecta of geek-scaring feats: They have joined the Apache Software Foundation as a Platinum member(at $100K USD a year), submitted LGPL-licensed patches for ADOdb, and have pledged to expand their Open Specifications Promise by adding to the list more than 100 protocols for interoperability between its Windows Server and the Windows client. While I sincerely doubt they'll release Vista under a GPL license anytime soon, this is certainly an unexpected series of moves on their part, and could possibly lead to more OSS (as opposed to 'Shared Source') interactivity between what is arguably Linux' greatest adversary and the Open Source community." (We mentioned the announced support for the Apache Foundation earlier today, as well.)
Maybe they finally got tired of being wrong. This is surprisingly clueful behaviour, and should be encouraged.
There's some 'embrace, extend, obsolete' in here somewhere, but I'm beginning to think that this behavior from MS has a lot more to do with Ballmer's seemingly obsessive desire to overtake Google.
In other words, in order to defeat their enemy, they're going to try to BECOME their enemy first. MS is trying to emulate everything Google does, including supporting open source projects.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
You know, it's funny, but despite the success of open source, embracing it is something companies have been known to do when they're on the rocks. Novell did it, Palm is trying to do it - heck, Netscape is the shining example, with the Mozilla project announcement - and I think there are others that have crashed and nearly burned, only at the last minute to say "And we'll be opening the source of the next version!" or "And we're going to run the next device on Linux!"
I wonder what sparked this at Microsoft. Granted, they have no real prospects besides the usual Windows/Office cash cows, but they're not exactly bleeding money.
More likely this is a move to build OSS and interoperability cred they'll need in court if/when they feel the need to pull a SCO against Linux.
You should do some research. Microsoft has $23 billion dollars in cash. They have no debt at all. Every quarter is profitable. Check out real numbers here and let those inform your rantings.
I was bullshitting with my friends and said that I think Microsoft has two years left before it's no longer the leader of the operating system market. I said it with no real insight or evidence, I just claimed it and I bet 10 dollars against it.
218 days left... maybe I'll get to go on Oprah or something and show off my framed ten dollar bill. This slashdot entry is officially almost kind of like proof that I said what I did a little bit.
As big as this news is, assuming it's credible and lasting, I'm completely unsurprised.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
The real reason they are doing this is to make the option of running Apache on Windows more appealing. This way Windows has an easier time gaining ground on Linux in the server market.
Like others have said, embrace and extend typically leads to something getting extinguished. They are not to be trusted. Sorry.
Have they renounced their "200 patents" claim? Have they stopped bundling, tying, and bullying vendors?
No.
All this other stuff is largely irrelevant. OSP is legally meaningless, the LGPL doesn't require Microsoft's blessing, and joining the Apache foundation could be as sinister as their ISO efforts.
Microsoft seems to have been moving a little in the right direction, but they are still far away from being trustworthy or respectable.
Here's a repost from the last time Microsoft did something OSS friendly, I'd love to get feedback from the idea:
Microsoft is often accused of pissing off their user base and risking corporate and government conversions to competitors due to them continually trying to create vendor lock-in. Here's an idea that sounds like the absolute worst thing (from MS's point of view), but I'm starting to think it is the most profitable thing that MS could do, and would guarantee MS's future prosperity in a way that nothing else could:
Make MS products open source. MS faces the most competition in the markets dominated by elite users such as computer science majors and the like, so why not join the competition? If that were to happen, MS would instantly gain thousands of pro-bono security reviewers, feature implementers, etc.; they'd have all the benefits that open source projects have. I would bet anything that a team (it would be wise for MS to start it) would form to port MS operating systems onto the Linux kernel. ODF would be written into all Office apps, and the best part is that MS would stand to lose nothing. The open source environment has a way of coalescing around the most mature applications. How many OpenOffice developers would love nothing more than to work all the features they love about OO into Office? If MS truly GPL'd their software, they would gain unstoppable momentum. Developers, developers, developers!
I know, I know, here's the obvious reason this would never work: MS doesn't want to give away their software. The kicker is, people would buy the packaged and supported official OS, even if they could roll their own for free. Look at the Red Hat business model; corporations and other large entities want support, and they want a large company holding their hand and telling them that it will be OK. My parents aren't going to download tarballs and compile Vista because the majority of people will happily pay for convenience. OK, so other people can roll their own MS based packages and try to sell them, you say? MS has the most brand-awareness that has ever existed. Ubuntu's Ubunista (now with Office 2007 and Exchange!) will not out sell Microsoft's CollabOS, because people will buy what they know best. The media hype around the decision will leave the average user with the thought that MS has done something to make their product even greater, not with the thought that they can now go to someone they've never heard about and buy MS Office.
It seems to me that MS would retain the majority of their customers, be given the labor that would transform their products into the best software that exists for free, gain market share in the tech crowd as their products mature, and steal developers from their OSS competitors. All at the same time. What am I missing here?
no dice. LAMP has grown so big that nothing can topple it anymore. many of you are probably not aware, because you are working in old school corporate positions, or even locked into ms shops, however there are bazillions of web sites, estores, portals, communities being hosted on throngs of LAMP servers throughout countless shared hosts both small and big in size throughout the net.
it has grown to such an extent that the scripts have become expertise fields in themselves. they are asking for "joomla experts" in elance, "oscommerce module programmers", "somephpscript api coders". not even plain straight 'php programmer'. you are already expected to have a good grip of php, mysql. these sub expertise fields can really vary in hourly rates that are accepted throughout the markets. as a php coder you may able to get $15 an hour if you're decent (even with the $3/ hour indians get), yet an "oscommerce expert" can fetch you over $20/hour, and other niche stuff can even fetch higher. and thats all telecommuting, not even talking about on-site positions.
im telling these to let you know that even the 'people's community' facet of LAMP has grown to be a market in itself, specializing into subfields. not only that, but as many medium businesses start to adopt lamp, we are increasingly being asked larger scale projects every day.
you cant match the will of the people. it has gone WAY larger than anyone can have a hack at.
but thats microsoft. they may not be able to hack at it, but they may definitely try to dent it. thats their philosophy.
Read radical news here
Maybe this had to do with Bill Gates' departure from Microsoft?
Just wondering...
All the points you mention may be valid, but I think that's not the most important issue here. It doesn't matter what are Microsoft's future plans, the important thing is that they have seen the need for a major change in tactics. This means they are starting to see the possibility of defeat.
You should do some research. Microsoft has $23 billion dollars in cash. They have no debt at all. Every quarter is profitable. Check out real numbers here and let those inform your rantings.
I believe you are talking about "Cash and Short Term Investments" of Microsoft being $23,662.
Check AAPL (Apple) and it is $19,448. Comparing the sizes of the two, I'd say Apple isn't doing too shabby.
But don't let that stopped your "informed" rantings.
Perspective is a funny thing. If you consider that they had $63 billion in 2004, it means they are losing $10 billion/year. Well, not exactly losing, since most of that has been paid to stockholders as dividends, but the fact remains that they *have* to use their cash pile to keep their market value from plunging, operational profits alone won't do it.
Yes. I've spoken with a few MS folks, and most that I've spoke with are quite bright and most definitely not evil. There is just an insufficient number of such people in the right places. Did I mention I never spoke with anyone in any sort of upper management?
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
It sounds like Darth wader saying "Luke come to the dark side, or else I will bring the dark side to you"
True, but if you want to see what could be an impetus for change, flip that link over to the stock chart, overlay with AAPL and switch to the 10-year view.
I leave it you the reader to do that....and I hope you're not afraid of heights.
-Matt
I would not work for $20/hour.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't dispute that. I'll do you one better: they invented the concentration camp during the Boer Wars.
That still doesn't change the fact that during Gandhi's time they collectively felt squeamish about thrashing unarmed colonists.
During much of the time I was at HP - hired to be an Open Source leader first and an HP employee second - I knew about this and had to keep it secret. It was a pretty big hardship for me, obviously I felt I was being disloyal to my own community. I'm pasting it in here today so that we don't forget Microsoft's previous intentions toward Apache. - Bruce
From: Campbell, Gary [mailto:gary.campbell@hp.com]
Sent: Monday, June 03, 2002 7:27 PM
To: Stallard, Scott J; CTO Office Directs; Chaffin, Janice; Denzel, Nora; McDowell, Mary; Elias, Howard; Fink, Martin R; Becker, Rick (ISS); Beyers, Joe Cc: Blackmore, Peter; Robison, Shane
Subject: Microsoft Patent Cross License - Open Source Software Impact
Microsoft Patent Cross License - Open Source Software Impact
Today we agreed on a new patent cross license with Microsoft that protects HP in the short term, but it has significant impact on HP's use of Open Source software in the long term. More importantly, we now understand that Microsoft is about to launch legal action against the industry for shipping Open Source software that may force us out of using certain popular Open Source products. We need to create a cross-HP staffed program to understand the implication by product group and to provide the short term and long term steerage. I'll hook up with Martin tomorrow and start planning next steps for a cross-HP planning team.
Background:
HP is we believe, protected by our previous cross license for patents filed by Microsoft up to June of 2001, to ship open source software that violates Microsoft patents that was developed or shipped prior to today. This means that we can freeze on today's open source functionality and we are protected.
The new cross license does not protect us against new Microsoft patents filed after June 2001 against new open source product functionality shipped or created after today. So we have a two year window before HP has exposure on new Microsoft patents against new open source functionality, but we have exposure because of the MAD clause in the GPL if Microsoft attacks another entity with existing patents. See next section.
Open Source Software is described as a license that follows the intent and process of GPL or GPL lite. Additionally several major products are explicitly called out as not protected by the cross license, such as Samba, Wine, KDE, Gnome, Apache, Sendmail, and Linux.
Microsoft's Intentions:
Microsoft could attack Open Source Software for patent infringements against OEMs, Linux distributors, and least likely open source developers. They are specifically upset about Samba, Apache and Sendmail. We believe Samba is first, and they will attempt to prove it isn't covered by prior patent cross as a so called "clone" product carve out in the previous agreement.
OEMs that don't have a cross(like SUN), or OEMs like HP that they force a change in their cross license to exclude open source software are probably the first target. Intel, Red Hat, SuSE, UBL, Oracle are probably in the first wave as well.
IBM we don't know what the status of termination of their Microsoft cross license is. They could be protected by their previous OS/2 deals?
Mutually Assured Destruction Clause:
But it probably doesn't matter, because the GPL license has a mutually assured destruction clause in section 7, if anyone is sued over a patent infringement, no one is licensed under the GPL to ship GPL-ed products. This is probably what Microsoft intends to do.
Basically Microsoft is going to use the legal system to shut down open source software, and for all of its cleverness, the GPL makes it fairly easy unless a white knight steps in.
Best guess on the timing, this fall when they are finished settling with DOJ and the states.
Industry Reaction:
At this point we have no information on who would defend open source with
Bruce Perens.
jayagopaldaz writes:
i say optimism is something other that "maybe microsoft will finally do something right". that is just naivety.
in this case optimism means: sure, microsoft may have come up with some strategy to get more leverage by showcasing a superficial alliance with open source communities, but at the end of the day, the open source community is somewhere on the order of thousands of times more competent than microsoft when it comes to intelligently evolving.
if microsoft ever releases something with open source, the community will intelligently and dynamically accommodate whatever is worth accommodating.... kind of like eating something. you shit out the useless stuff and turn the rest into part of your own body.
alternatively, if you compare microsoft to a disease, and the open-source community to the host (great metaphor if i may say so myself) then the battle at hand is whether the disease kills the host, or the host either annihilates the disease or adapts to be able to co-exist with it. in the latter case, the open-source community will become ever-more powerful.
we just brace ourselves and see this for what it is: a war between good and evil... bring it on!
IOW, what happens to the code in the file? Can you grab it and do whatever you want with it, as long as you put it in another file?
I suspect this would put the Apache license in a gray area just as much as GPL has regarding include files and the concept of derived work.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
The real reason they are doing this is to make the option of running Apache on Windows more appealing.
Not sure how this makes running Apache more "appealing" on Windows. I was under the impression that the Apache web server already ran fairly well on Windows. The code MS was donating was to the PHP project; the only thing they've given the ASF is money.
Nevertheless, I think I see your larger point about being wary of Microsoft's intentions. They certainly have a lot of ground to make up to win people's trust, especially with the debacle of the OOXML fast-track process.
However, I think what we're seeing with these OSS moves is that some of the new technical leadership MS has brought on board -- in particular, Ray Ozzie -- are beginning to turn the ship around. Better interoperability is truly in everyone's best interest. It vastly increases the size of the pie for MS products, especially in the larger, international market.
I think people like Ozzie "get" this in that fundamentally important, engineering sort of way that can override marketing's objections. I'd like to see where this goes, to "trust, but verify", in the words of a recent politican.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday