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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 $100K USD a year), submitted LGPL-licensed patches for ADOdb, and have pledged to expand their Open Specifications Promise by adding to the list more than 100 protocols for interoperability between its Windows Server and the Windows client. While I sincerely doubt they'll release Vista under a GPL license anytime soon, this is certainly an unexpected series of moves on their part, and could possibly lead to more OSS (as opposed to 'Shared Source') interactivity between what is arguably Linux' greatest adversary and the Open Source community." (We mentioned the announced support for the Apache Foundation earlier today, as well.)
He doesn't like cold.
Maybe they finally got tired of being wrong. This is surprisingly clueful behaviour, and should be encouraged.
I think M$ has seen the writing on the wall. With the utter failure of Vista, and Apple's skyrocketing market share, it's only a matter of time.
I am with Linus on this one
Hey, Duke Nukem Forever still isn't out. It's not the end of the world YET.
In unrelated news, evolution picks up pace as pigs gain wings.
I love seeing things get open sourced just as much as the next guy, but who in their right mind would WANT the source code for Vista?
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!
Extend...
Extinguish.
Sorry Microsoft, but given their past behavior and downright malicious attacks, they're going to have to do far more to gain trust.
What is interesting/scary is that for a relatively small amount ( As seen from the Microsoft Universe ), they could buy off virtually every project, of note, out there. How many projects could be supported on Microsoft's toilet paper budget alone?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The Apache and LGPL licenses aren't much of a threat to them. GPL is, because GPL prevents "embrace and enhance", Microsoft's commonly-exercised strategy to take over a market. Microsoft has signed over work to FSF in the past when it was necessary to get changes into GCC for one of their (past) divisions that was making a Unix compatibility layer. I don't think this is the first time they've had to deal with GPL, by far.
So, the big question is, have they turned over a new leaf? I think they're still a super-size multinational for-profit corporation, and the reality is that every one of those will be self-serving first, whether they are Microsoft or someone more usually identified as a "friend" to Open Source. But Microsoft has managed to set themselves ahead of other corporations as a frequent user of dirty-fighting tactics to get its way. I don't expect that corporate culture to go away.
I think we still have some big problems with Microsoft, primarily around software patents. They are still in a position to attack Linux with them, although they would probably do that using a proxy, as they did with SCO. Their increased involvement in Open Source organizations means that they will be taken as a member of the Open Source community when they speak with national legislators. This is terrible for us, because it means they'll be able to short-circuit our work to protect Open Source from software patents by speaking to government as an insider in our communities. They've been lobbying for a software patent treaty between Europe and the U.S. (part of the "anti-piracy treaty" currently under discussion but not available to the public) which could make criminal prosecution a new tool against suspected patent infringers on both sides of the Atlantic. And because this is a treaty rather than legislation, it effectively takes the question out of public debate and just leaves it to congress to approve or reject the entire treaty. Want to guess how many people in congress want to be seen as "for piracy"? Any non-trivial software program infringes patents, Open Source or not. We're still in rather deep trouble regarding this, if anyone wants to push the issue. And their general counsel made clear, in a recent speech at OSBC, that they're still not willing to put down the patent "gun".
So, I can't say I think this is a good thing.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
1. Extend
2. Embrace
3. Extinguish
4. Profit!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Wasn't the Java situation more like embrace, extend, lawsuit, retreat?
The Mayans never claimed the world would end. They only claimed their funky calendar would run out of days.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
Mr. Burns: Smithers I'm thinking about donating some money to the orphanage... when pigs fly!
(Smithers and Burns both laughing)
(Homer's BBQ pig flies past the window)
Smithers: Will you be making that donation now, sir?
Mr. Burns: Eh, I'd rather not.
In other news-
- Hell froze over
- The moon turned blue
- George Bush renounced violence as the pathway to peace
- Oh, and Microsoft "embraced" open-source software
In the press release, Bill Gates was quoted as saying, "This is going to hurt you a lot more than it will me."
This oughta be more fun than a barrel fulla monkeys. It ain't over till the fat lady sings ... just wait until other shoe drops... yadda yadda.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
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.
Apple will never use Intel processors.
Dell will never ship AMD processors.
Dell will never ship Linux.
These things happen. People can change their minds. Microsoft is still doing evil and illegal things on a regular basis (like last year, offering illegal bribes to get Nigeria to drop Mandriva) but not every single employee at Microsoft is evil. Not every department is necessarily evil.
Microsoft has been doing a number of reasonably good things for a while now, and everyone keeps suggesting they are part of some scheme and conspiracy. People shouldn't be completely shocked by this act.
I think it is just a continuation of a new trend towards being slightly less evil. Every time Microsoft opens more protocols, releases more code, and tries to work with the OSS community, instead of acting like children and calling names, I think the community should encourage Microsoft to continue the trend of migrating to a more open company.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The sky is full of flying pigs! ... or... I'm hallucinating. What's the catch?
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
More probably, 2007 was The Year of the Linux Desktop. The Asus eeePC showed that the Linux desktop is a perfectly viable business proposition, at the same time that Windows Vista flopped in the market.
Microsoft isn't defeated yet, but they are certainly doing a strategic retreat. You can be quite sure they will do their best effort to regroup and counterattack, but at this moment no one can deny that free software is advancing.
That strategy only worked for Gandhi because the British were basically civilized. It wouldn't work so well against, say, the Khmer Rouge.
It's hard to say what the case is here.
Mark my words. Duke Nukem Forever will ship within the next calendar year. Prey went from vaporware to shipping. People have recently seen and played Duke Nukem Forever. 3D Realms is actually going to ship it.
However, we can always mock the Phantom Console, which will never ship.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
An upcoming Debian release!
I thought the interpretation was that 2012 was just the end of era, not necessarily some Armageddon.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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?"
yes, but they had no era defined for what happened next. similar to the y2k or y2038 problem, their particular system ran out of room for the digits necessary to describe what happened next.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
They have joined the Apache Software Foundation as a Platinum member(at $100K USD a year)
They just bought out ISO. I wonder if this is getting a start on ASF?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
No Microsoft havent become "Mr Nice Guy [TM]" overnight, they have just realised their old marketing methods don't work anymore and they need a new gig. With Apple (I dont like Apple personally but I can respect them) gaining market share I can just imagine the Microsoft marketing dept looking at the ever growing FOSS code base and fanboys and wondering, how do we get a bit of that action, easy become a paying member.
April Foo..hmm, no
... microsoft = evil) ... the world makes sense again.
I don't get it.
All my explanations about how microsoft doesn't care about anything except taking money aren't going to make sense anymore...
Oh wait, somebody mentioned "it's a trap"...
Ah... (my head is clearing now
(Man, they're getting good at this)
They can release the source code to Windows 98se.
Wait...they can't do that..it would tank Vista sales.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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.
microsoft uses GNU?
The story you are referring to is written by a software patent proponent who would like to reverse the USPTO's new position on software patents. He is choosing google as his example in order to inflame other corporate attorneys into working on the problem in favor of software patenting.
I would be overjoyed if the Bilski case and other recent cases solved the software patent problem for us. But I think the reality is that congress is ready to repair the situation and restore whatever software patenting the courts and USPTO administrators take away.
Bruce Perens.
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.
Actually, they didn't do that, either. A rollover of a particular long cycle in the Long Count calendar occurs then, and its one that has correspondence to an end of a previous creation recorded in their myth (the last 5 numbers of the date are the same, and only those last 5 numbers are recorded, which was apparently fairly common practice), from which various New Age folks invented the idea that Maya Calendar prediced the end of the world on December 21, 2012. There are, in fact, specific predictions made in some Maya writings of predicted future events clearly within this creation on dates in the Long Count that would post-date December 21, 2012, so its pretty clear that if such a belief in the end of the creation on 12.19.19.17.19 existed (for which there is, AFAIK, not one bit of evidence), it certainly wasn't universal.
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?
Slashdot really needs an Admiral Akbar icon because this story just screams "IT'S A TRAP!"
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 $20/hour, and other niche stuff can even fetch higher. and thats all telecommuting, not even talking about on-site positions.
im telling these to let you know that even the 'people's community' facet of LAMP has grown to be a market in itself, specializing into subfields. not only that, but as many medium businesses start to adopt lamp, we are increasingly being asked larger scale projects every day.
you cant match the will of the people. it has gone WAY larger than anyone can have a hack at.
but thats microsoft. they may not be able to hack at it, but they may definitely try to dent it. thats their philosophy.
Read radical news here
They let you see their code, and then claim that your subsequent code is an infringement. Don't look at anything that isn't properly labeled.
What?
Maybe this had to do with Bill Gates' departure from Microsoft?
Just wondering...
There are absolutely no links on the article to any sort of announcement, internal blog post, PHP mailing list, bug system, anything.
So my response is: wait for an announcement elsewhere.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
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.
It worked for Lech Walesa... and they were against the communists.
I'd argue that that situation was different. Pope John Paul II got involved and Soviet power was already waning.
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.
Bruce, any updates about an AMBE replacement and the Codec2.org project that came out of Dayton?
Thanks.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
August fools!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
They're not some James Bond villain. They're not evil. If there was money in cleaning up the oceans, sponsoring the arts and giving everyone a puppy, they'd do that.
Companies are not evil. They are trying to make as much profit as possible, that's all. And since it's profitable to eliminate competition, to push for their standards to be accepted and to sneak their people into the boards of companies they want to take over, that's what they do. That's not because they're evil, that's because they're out to make a profit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Dear Apache Foundation,
You may want to run smallpox cultures on the yearly $100k from Microsoft. Also, screen carefully any code submissions from the aforementioned containing fragments such as: "Diseases.smallpox.infect(apache_foundation);".
I can't remember the last time I forgot anything.
That once all Microsoft's code and specifications are open sourced, all of it, from the Windows API to the doc format, will be better or equivalently implemented in open source products and noone would have a reason to use Windows anymore.
If MS truly GPL'd their software, they would gain unstoppable momentum. Developers, developers, developers!
But at what cost? Sure, they'd probably end up with the best OS in the world, but they'd have to give it away! Microsoft makes huge amounts of money on OEM and corporate distribution without ever having to provide support. Selling support happens to be the only long-term, viable strategy for GPL software, and even then, you can't have a monopoly on it. I could sell support for Redhat OS if I wanted to.
Dell sells millions of computers per year. Even at a Microsoft tax of $10/unit, a lowball estimate of the microsoft tax, they would save millions per year by just hiring a small team at $50k/year to do quality assurance, cutting out Microsoft.
So I can convert it one file with a bunch of simple text config lines.
e.g. DRM_enable="NO"
Windows-Firewall_enable="NO"
Office-2007_reduce_to_sane_options="100"
Crash_screen_color="PURPLE"
XP_driver_compat="YES"
and so on, kind of like a really long rc.conf file.
Meh. That means nothin'. You don't know of any charismatic, quasi-Messianic personalities rising to power at the moment, do you?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Even if they finally turned around and will finally work with everyone else with no dark agenda for the future, old-timers like me (i.e. more than 25-30 years old) will not trust them until they have really proven themselves.
However old timers like me (who programmed computers that used vacuum tubes, not just for the switches, but for the DIODES in the logic), remember when IBM had much the same reputation for closed tech and predatory behavior as Microsoft does now.
After SCO vs. IBM (and for a while before) there's no question where IBM is on the issue now. Wouldn't it be nice if, now that Bill is going away, Microsoft is starting to take a few steps down the same path?
(Then again, perhaps an "itsatrap" tag is appropriate...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What you're missing is the culture of control at Microsoft. The attitude of management in the company is that they know what is best for the industry. They were forged in the theories of Vertical Integration and the power of Intellectual Property. The concepts of a long tail, a peer-collaboration approach, or an open relinquishing of control and trust in the market are not things that have ever occurred to anyone at that company.
All the Microsoft employees I know corroborate this attitude. And I know quite a few, since I live in Seattle. (Even if they disagree with the concepts, they agree that it is the dominant modus operandi for management.)
Note that these are attitudes that are very common in companies, especially big ones that dominate their respective industries.
The attitude is, "Whatever you can do, we can do better. Our way."
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Since, essentially, Gandhi prevailed because the British found it distasteful to continue to maim and kill unarmed resistors: yes.
A wise man once passed away and went to Heaven. He asked God when Duke Nukem Forever would be released. God replied, "Not in my lifetime."
If he'd said that at the right time and place in Cambodia, Pol Pot would've had him skinned alive and set fire to.
Bashing MSFT is a favorite part time on Slashdot. Despite the facts that Vista sucks and Office still sucks, MSFT has people who are smart enough to figure out that if you cannot win the war, you should join the opponent. MSFT has a division that is in charge of open license products and part of the initiative will be highlighted at TechReady (next week in Seattle).
Will everything be Open Source? I highly doubt that. But if MSFT shows enough effort and releases enough software products that are open to modification then MSFT wins in many ways: To develop something you must use some sort of a program. MSFT will give you trial version and sell you good ones. More developers, more sales.
It is possible to make money on Open Source software. I assume you can do something like software + service so people who write software will need to get tools somewhere, which brings me back to the first point.
Corporations love agreements with vendors. The problem with stuff that you can find on Sourceforge is the fact that if there is a problem, you may not get timely support. And support is what our corporate overlords love. That's why RedHat still makes money on subscriptions while anybody can download CenOS for free.
Good PR.
Also, looking at Linux and all beautiful things Open Source generates new ideas for MSFT. These ideas can turn into products just like the latest cross-platform monitoring software, System Center Operations Manage. The company swims in money and it can afford releasing some software for free. It is sort of like T.Boone Pickens investing into alternative energy. He may be pro-alternative energy and pro-energy independence, but make no mistake: He will make money on it :)
Mark my words. Duke Nukem Forever will ship within the next calendar year. Prey went from vaporware to shipping. People have recently seen and played Duke Nukem Forever. 3D Realms is actually going to ship it. However, we can always mock the Phantom Console, which will never ship.
Sure, but you're ignoring a key factor in Prey's development that directly led to it being finished... It was developed by someone other than 3D Realms.
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
IIRC (it's been a while that I had a passing interest in funky calender systems, you should see the persian system for leap years ... that's freaky. But insanely accurate!) the mayan calender says that this "era" ends and the next one starts, and that there is likely going to be some sort of heavy turmoil, but not end of the world itself.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can assure you that any corporation has one thing in mind: Make profit. There various approaches to the schema, but the main goal is the same. You have to make money to please the investors or to enrich the founding members. Things like "good" and "evil" become irrelevant once profit and money is involved.
MSFT pays well, provides decent benefits and offers world class working environment. Yeah, there are a couple of nuts who like to drop an iPhone into a blender an then show the results to the public, but overall most of the employees are just people with _some_ paycheck mentality. The same can be said about employees of other big companies like Google, Cisco, IBM, etc.
They wouldn't have to do all of that. They could do well enough if they supported Linux to the same extent that they support OS X. And they would have to do it with the same level of commitment. No sneaky 3 version behind bullshit and no sneaky make-the-Linux-version-work-like-ass. If MS had been split like it should have been, that probably would have happened. An "MS Applications" company would have no reason to be hostile to Linux anyway even if they didn't have Linux versions. But the MS OS+MS Apps company we have now is almost incapable of resisting the urge to go for lock-in.
Ars Technica do for you?
Complete with a link to a short interview with Sam Ramji (no, unfortunately not he of Evil Dead fame)
he says: "It is not a move away from IIS as Microsoft's strategic web server technology. We have invested significantly in refactoring and adding new, state-of-the-art features to IIS, including support for PHP. We will continue to invest in IIS for the long term and are currently under way with development of IIS 8.
It is a strong endorsement of The Apache Way, and opens a new chapter in our relationship with the ASF. We have worked with Apache POI, Apache Axis2, Jakarta, and other projects in the last year, and we will continue our technical support and interoperability testing work for this open source software."
embrace, extend, lawsuit, retreat... reinvent, replace and market.
(C# = MS Java)(VB.NET = C# without curly brackets)(everything else = not fully supported anymore) :)
and was a different game to what was prommised in 1998. I mean where was the fps space combat hybrid with seemless fps to space transition?
As these events pick up pace 2012 is not gonna be doomsday.
It's gonna be the year of the Linux desktop.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
You mean like they didn't think computers need to know years pass 2000?
1) they ignore you
2) they laugh at you
3) they fight you
More like:
4) They make a record 60B this past year.
5) Geeks go cry in frustration.
yes, but they had no era defined for what happened next
Ah, so the world will end not with a bang, but with a segfault.
You also forgot the 3D Realms is using their parent company name again.
It sounds like Darth wader saying "Luke come to the dark side, or else I will bring the dark side to you"
Why is this surprising? In yesterday's investors meeting Ballmer stated they'll be investing (read: losing) billions into their online biz every year. $100k is chum change that falls out of Bill pocket every minute, yet it gives them another week of buzz and gets all the slashdotter's panties tied in knot. We all know MSFT studies and copies every successful open source project there is. Now they can steal the code openly. Wake me up when they contribute something back in GPL or donate $100m or $1b.
REPORTER: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think about Western Civilization?
GANDHI: I think it would be a good idea.
They keep releasing videos recently. Maybe they release in 2012? The microsoft thing is just a sign of things to come.
I think you have an interesting point, but it's too far fetched.
They stand to gain just as much support and momentum as you're suggesting by trickling fixes and code like they have just done, than to open source their entire product line. By your logic, they're joining the competition by contributing and being 'open'. People won't need to move off of their most precious product - Windows - because it'll all work and they'll have millions of people scouring their code.
I think their current strategy is to dangle enough food over the FOSS croud to keep them on their platform. That'll do enough to keep the shareholders happy.
ilovegeorgebush
finally play in the same room?
Is nothing.
Its a cheap 'feel good' advertisement for them, nothing more.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is clearly the solution to today's MS's woes, Who would companies trust to support their Windows systems if they were open? Microsoft or a third party two bits firm?
What would be the most used Windows distro? Microsoft's or any other?
Software is services and support. The sooner MS realizes this and embraces and genuinely extends technology, the sooner we will forgive all their sins and welcome them to the open ecosystem.
Yeah, hell freezing over would be nice as well.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Heeelllooo!
Their cash reserves are depleted, and they would equal zero if their nonsensical buy out of Yahoo went through.
And the market is speaking, their share price has been pretty much flat (i.e. has lost value in real terms) since the dot com bubble burst.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The 23 billion would go out on thin air if they could get Yahoo with their dirty paws.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The British killed millions (just in Kenya 1 million natives died during rebellions prior to independence).
This nonsense about how civilized the British were while oppressing other peoples has got really to stop, it has no base in any credible evidence.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
13.0.0.0.0 is supposed to be the end of the present creation, rather than just a change of the same significance as the rollover to 12.0.0.0.0 from 11.19.19.17.19.
Maybe 13.0.0.0.0 is the era of the linux desktop.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would not work for $20/hour.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It worked for Gandhi because the British were already losing money on their Empire and it would have cost them money to go massacre everyone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Dear Open Source Community,
We were wrong and we're sorry. As a token of our apology, here's a nice big wooden horse.
Sincerely,
Microsoft
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
(C# = MS Java)
Only vastly improved, or did you forget that part? C# is a pleasure to use where Java is a pain.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
No. It's just that next year's April Fool's came 8 months and 6 days early.
"And there be unix which have made themselves unix for the kingdom of heaven's sake." - Matt. 19:12
Microsoft can't win with zealots like you. Either they're evil because they hate OSS or they should be treated like scum when they try to open a hand toward OSS.
Amazing.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Apache is the most popular web server program in the world. So, it would make sense for Microsoft to try to implement it in their Microsoft Server series in order to boost sales.
I don't expect DNF until 2112...
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Damn you pentium, you win again!
The release of this April Fools gag was handled by the Vista team.
I didn't know they had IP addresses back then.
Since no one I know thinks it is worth buying.
-ted
Everyone is right to be suspicious. This is a distinctly un-Microsoft thing to do. But it is a little odd that this happens just a couple of weeks after Gates' last day. I know we all like to think as Ballmer as a crazy bastard, but it's still possible that perhaps Gates was holding Ballmer back from making some un-Microsoft-like decisions. Don't forget, Gates has a history of hating open-source, even before Microsoft. It's too out of the question to think that Ballmer's hatred of open-source is just a reflection of what Gates wanted him to believe.
i am reminded of the parable of the fisherman and the hungry fish.
the fish trusted what the fisherman said and became the fisherman's dinner.
given microsoft's history and actions, why believe what it says over what it does?
me. --a by-product of public education
Yeah, but they were going up against Sun Microsystems.
I loved all the old Apogee games. Bring Apogee on. I'm all for it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Some would call that optimism.
Anyway... What do you want.... for them not to cooperate?
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The only winning move is not to play.
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.
*envisions a fabulous xkcd panel based off that*
Exactly. That lousy strategy wouldn't work with somebody like me, who maims and kills unarmed resistor and capacitors on a daily basis and likes it!
The cake is a lie!
"God is dead."
-3D Realms, with apologies to Nietszche
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
has supported open source software for quite a while in various forms. Everyone likes to talk about Microsoft as if it were trying to destroy Linux and open source... but I've never heard someone who worked there say that, and I know plenty, and had even interned there in the past.
The idea that Microsoft is the enemy of open source has more to do with the fact that some well known members of the open source community have used scary stories about the evils of Microsoft to rally people around them. Microsoft is the "other," that which is meant to inspire fear so that people will give up their critical reasoning and blindly follow a leader *cough* Richard Stallman *cough*. It's a pretty common trick. You might have seen is practiced in politics before.
Micrisoft does compete with Linux to some degree, as they compete with many products on many fronts, but Microsoft's main competitor is not Linux. The story of the epic battle between Linux and Windows, Open Source and Enslaved Software, Freedom Loving Nerds and Corporate Goons, is just a story. Software is a business, not a political ideology. 95% of the people in the industry read the evangelistic crap on Slashdot and roll their eyes.
Oh yeah, change it into a flame war without even stating why X is better than Y. Well, that's probably for the better, can somebody please mod parent down (and after that you may mod this one into oblivion as well).
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!
OMG the WORLD is going to END in on January 18, 2038!
Heh. The Mayans were a lot more savvy than we are - they thought a thousand years ahead, we haven't even counted on the next century - twice.
The Brits were never afraid of killing a few wogs when the need demanded and during the Quit India campaign of the 40s, India suffered it's fair share of suppression. You see, although Gandhi always countenanced the Peace & Love approach, a lot of people died whilst his campaigns were under way.
In the end, he didn't so much win as the British give up. The gig was up and the Brits knew it.
I'd like to think this is what is happening with MS, but I'm not holding my breath whilst that idiot Balmer is in charge.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
I'm 42 and the near death star robots have yet to claim me, so I can't be old either.
Oh hang on, there's someone at the door...
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
The release of this April Fools gag was handled by the Vista team.
Excel Project Manager: Hey! No fair! The Vista team stole our credit!
Watch out for the razor blades normally carried in that hand. This policy provides no patent protection for collaborative projects, and we've seen similar attacks with SPF. Embrace the standard, extend it with a patented and ugly add-on, then break the standard and claim all the previous users as clients of your enhanced standard while refusing to cooperate with the public codebase.
Microsoft also recently donated $32,000 to support the Sage Mathematics Software Project, which produced GPL'd free software. See the financial contributors list.
-- William (Sage developer)
It's a shame I'm in here so late... half way thru reading this summary I was ready to post.
"In before people find some way this still makes MicroSoft even more evil and capable of eating your children"
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Hell to freeze over...
Duke Nukem Forever to be released...
Im a gnome user, but, tried 4.1 and it was the biggest crock. Nothing of interest except useless vista type eye candy. Lots of work required. I know Gnome is not perfect but at least i know how to make it work - its designed that way...
if microsoft ever releases something with open source...
But, Doctor Evil, that already happened. Microsoft has been shipping Interix, which uses GCC and includes the source to their mods, for years. They've also released several bits of very Windows specific code (like installers) under an even more open license than the LGPL.
Mister Bigglesworth is unhappy when Doctor Evil is lazy.
Think about it. They monopolized the os and the office market and then stiffeled innovation in both markets for at least eight to ten years. That gave oss the time to catch up.
If there would have been competition I suppose we could talk to our operating systems now and they would read everything that came into range of their web cams. I mean look at OS/2 and Windows 95. Vista is the first os that has a gui that is a little different from that of Windows 95. Imagine the innovation if they would have plowed ahead at the speed they had in the early 90s when there was still competition. Look at the difference between Windows 3.1 and OS/2. When did BeOS come out?
At that speed I can't imagine oss keeping up on the desktop.
Maybe on the server. But with so much competition on the desktop who knows what would have been on the server.
So to all those that know of the political implications of closed vs. open source at least give Microsoft the nod. Maybe we lost a couple years of innovation (I mean who knows how much we really lost, I am just blowing steam, nobody really knows what could have been), but we gained freedom.
only when you have the IDE tools, otherwise its a nuisance.
anyway, you conveniently missed my smiley.
a well-established business model which works
You mean the one Gates copied from the Mafia?
you had me at #!
Bill Parish has something to say about MS' financials.
you had me at #!
Microsoft could give all their money to me tomorrow (and I hope they do!)
You'd go hand it back to everyone they stole it from?
Seriously, money isn't everything unless you're as sociopathic as Gates.
you had me at #!
MS is not only uncivilised, it's one of the greatest contemporary threats to civilisation. However, human beings have a knack for routing around damage; Microsoft, long irrelevant, are increasingly ignored...
you had me at #!
I keep reading even on the most MS friendly blogs/IT sites one thing: "Do what Apple dared to do, switch to Unix!"
Wonder if such a radical thing would happen. They had a Unix license, they are automatically experienced in Unix thanks to shipping really big selling stuff to OS X , even Leopard the most picky OS of all times...
Don't let how dated Xenix is fool you, see what the most modern Unix Desktop says on boot (for Mach) kernel[0]: Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
being willing to do anything legal to make a buck isn't good. It's pretty evil.
C'mon, that's half of the American way! The other half is of course doing illegal stuff for a buck, which MS never shied from, and if nobody cares in the DoJ, we can still hope the EU isn't going to tolerate it.
Remember: Money is EVERYTHING! How you get it doesn't matter. - Gates' credo, in its essence.
you had me at #!
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
Riiiiiiight. Because that really works with the LGPL; sure, they could rewrite, something tells me reimplementing open-source projects that are under semi-restrictive licenses isn't exactly something they'll bother to do. Microsoft hates the GPL, and for good reason--they've never really had an issue with the other, more free software licenses.
And your fearmongering reasoning kind of fails to answer why they're publishing more specs on interoperability with Windows.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Whoops, I did. My bad.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
This is just Microsoft patting the dog on the head and saying "nice doggy" while looking for a large stick to beat it to pulp with the other hand.
They just dont want to be left alone as the only company not doing open source at the same time as they work full throttle in finding ways to rein in and put a leach on the open source monster.
HTTP/1.1 400
Naw - that quick freeze will soon thaw so enjoy it while it lasts.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Read Ballmer's message to the troops -- his selected targets are Apple and Google, not FOSS. That is a calculated strategy, not an awakening. The man is very deluded, but he ain't stupid -- he knows that he can't take on the world, but he can aim at a couple of big bears that have started to take over his forest.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
You can't "buy" a membership in the Apache Software Foundation, and corporations cannot become members. As has been blogged elsewhere, El Reg has its terminology wrong on this one.
Microsoft has agreed to a platinum level sponsorship of the Apache Software Foundation. If you browse to the page, you'll see that the benefits of sponsoring, even at that level, consist of a logo and a press release.
You can't buy a membership in the ASF. The only way to influence the ASF is to show up and talk code. Anyone can join the mailinglists and start contributing patches, and everyone who contributes a substantial amount of code signs a license agreement to clear the IP. If folks contribute code of consistent quality, they become committers. As they show their interest in the project surpasses their day to day circumstances (like affiliation), they are invited to the Project Management Committee. Show that you have the interests of the foundation at heart, and you'll likely be invited to become a member and get to vote in board elections. That's how it works. Membership can be earned, but not bought.
-- Sander Temme - Member, Apache Software Foundation
What Would the Fab Five Do?
I have been wondering what would happen if MS decided to Embrace and Extend Linux. If they produced MS Linux, made their MS Office suite compatible with just MS Linux (and still closed source), what variety of Linux would the typical user buy and run? Microsoft has the biggest name in software, anything they adopt or produce has a massive advantage in gaining acceptability because it has the MS monolith behind it and common recognition. It would end up leaving the rest of the linux distros in the dust.
Yes, they would lose out on OS revenue, but with the success (sic) of Vista, thats probably not as much of a factor as it might have been previously. Office on the other hand is definitely their mainstay and could continue to be so.
This would mean they were no longer competing on the Operating System front at all, just on the Office Suite front where they still have a clear advantage. They would be seen to actively support OSS and at once stifle a lot of opposition from the OSS community, they would eliminate a lot of the security problems that plague their previous versions of their software and they could make contributions to the WINE project to ensure that backwards compatibility was assured.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
"The attitude of management in the company is that they know what is best for the industry. ... Note that these are attitudes that are very common in companies, especially big ones that dominate their respective industries."
Not just companies, also crusaders like RMS, ESR, the FSF, and slashdotters in general. All of these also think they know what's best for the industry.
The world won't end... It will go dark, and everything will halt, waiting for someone -- anyone -- to click "CANCEL OR ALLOW"
The world won't end... It will go dark, and everything will halt, waiting for someone -- anyone -- to click "CANCEL OR ALLOW"
The world's too old for UAC prompts; it's more likely to be "RETRY, ABORT OR IGNORE?"
I do tend to agree. I was speaking of the "British" collectively. In that light, I think my point still stands.