Slashdot Mirror
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 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!
oh please...Apple makes a completely closed loop set of systems...MS is bigger and more successful because they actually trust developers (like me) to create products their customers want and need...and they don't take 30% off the top
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Apple doesn't take 30% off the top. I believe they do with iPhone apps, but certainly not with Mac OS X apps. Secondly, you completely misinterpreted my comment. I said Apple was gaining market share (which they are). I made no comment on their being more or less open than MS. The point I'm making is that no one stays on top forever. MS knows this, and they know they need to start getting their shit together, or they are going to lose their asses in the long run.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.'"
So what, now that balmer is free of gates' meddling he can finally express his love of oss ? :)
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
In my book, being willing to do anything legal to make a buck isn't good. It's pretty evil. There's lots of bad things you can do to people within the law, since the law isn't there to legislate morality which is different for everyone anyway, but to generate revenue.
"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.
The release of this April Fools gag was handled by the Vista team.
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.
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!
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?