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Microsoft's Open Source Guru Faces Tough Fight
coondoggie writes "Microsoft's Sam Ramji is like a turkey knocking on Thanksgiving's door. Ramji has the unenviable task of stretching his neck out into the open source world as Microsoft's representative. On top of it, his employer has preheated the oven with years of hubris, sleights of hand and broken promises.
Ramji's Sisyphean task was evident last week in Portland at the Open Source Conference (OSCon) and will likely be fuel for chatter at next week's LinuxWorld gathering in San Francisco."
Microsoft is good at winning the game when people are agressive towards them. Which I know its very easy to get hostile towards them. But they are somewhat lost when another group is their host and they are not in control. So we should be welcoming, give them a drink of the kool-aid and treat them like one of the gang. Its going to be hard and we'll have to keep an eye out for deception, but I think we should start playing nicer with them and hope that they do the same. Perhaps Microsoft would see the light and become friendlier to open source and open standards. Unlikely, but so was getting Excel working under Linux through Wine if you asked someone 10 years ago.
In the end, open source is simply a better model for software development and its a lot more impervious to threats than proprietary software is. Businesses just don't get that. In a business, the software focus is on making money. In open source, the software focus is on quality and empowering the end user. In the end, open source and the user will win. Heck, we're already winning, Microsoft is interested in open source (regardless of the reasons).
Don't throw arrows. Be diplomatic.
"Sucks to be you!"
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
We are open source, we accept all code but we are also a community. This community must be respected. Corporate entities will run all over us and then want to be friends. Must we lie down and take it or resist and be defiant because we are the movement? I know what I am saying is controversial but I say it with a reason. Bow once and bow a thousand more times. Microsoft is the main enemy, defeat him and we will conquer all. I may be in the few, but I say rise because the time is now and it is time to strike.
I thought the same thing. Sisyphean makes is sound like he just can't win. Of course, that might be accurate.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Hasn't Microsoft trained us over time with a reverse skinner box approach, by offering cooperation and failing to deliver on the open principles they committed to?
Microsoft has earned the negative attitude they receive with years of practice, hard work and dedication. It's like posting at -1. It takes time to dig yourself out of it and Microsoft can't just create a new account and start over.
If Ramji really wants to be taken seriousyl, he should be prepared to be received poorly for some time to come and take that in stride.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Yeah, FOSS is *so* far behind that MS is desperately throwing money around trying to get a foot in the FOSS door. "Dear Know-Nothing", indeed!
Caveat Utilitor
I am not a Linux kind of guy, but if I were, I would want Microsoft to be as open, honest, and helpful as I can get them.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I think we should fight Microsoft, not Sam Ramji. We should just make it clear that Sam works for a company with a monopoly conviction and a long record of dirty fighting.
Microsoft's joining Apache, to a great extent, as an anti-Linux play. They still can't stand the GPL, it's too fair for them, but they think they can take some of the oxygen from Linux by being more of a platform for Apache-style software. And the Apache license lets them "embrace and enhance".
Don't give up now, folks. Only your vigilance and your willingness to point out when Microsoft plays dirty tricks will keep them from getting away with even more of that.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I'm sure there's tons of really great people working at Microsoft. It's easy to put a kind face on Microsoft when you think of the examples of nice people who work there. But when it comes to business, Microsoft is not that nice guy.
Poor, poor Ramji. I feel so sorry for him. Getting his head cut off and all. Boo Hoo. TFA is pure Microsoft FUD. Yeah, Microsoft is trying to get along with Open Source. Sure.
Microsoft wants to kill Open Source and don't ever forget that.
Hey Ramji, after all your employer has done to promote Open Source like backing SCO and buying off ISO, why don't you just crawl under a rock someplace and quit wasting our air. Just go cash that big check and live in some kind of peace and harmony with your bought-off ass.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Unfortnutely the good actions of 'the little people' are completely overshadowed by the greed and arrogance of the top decision makers. As with many global companies, and countries for that matter, most of the people that get to the top are, or become, twisted and evil, even if the general population is really quite nice once you get to know them.
I thought the same thing. Sisyphean makes is sound like he just can't win. Of course, that might be accurate.
Given that Microsoft has traditionally played the eagle[*] to FOSS' Prometheus, I'd guess that there are more than a few people who don't want Microsoft ever to win.
-----
[*] Microsoft actually thinks it's Zeus in this legend, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
That's because you are a zealot. Unless you're saying that the cash had been dipped in radioactive goo before it was handed over, there is no reason for an organisation not to take a donation for a good cause just because it came from a company you personally don't like.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Open source is supposed to be cross platform...
Says who?
There are a lot of open-source projects that are platform specific. Sometimes that's what you need.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I hear what you're saying, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" But I really think we can beat 'em. Have you tried the latest Ubuntu?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Microsoft is a single entity in one sense, but it is also a community, or a political organisation, if you will, comprised of lots of people with differing agendas and varying levels of "evilness". Adhering to a militant stance as a stated policy and assuming defiance as a fixed position is not just very lazy, it is short sighted, counter-productive and stupid.
Sure, it makes everything easy now. You don't have to think about what your "enemy" is doing, just reject everything as bad because it comes from Redmond - just like how anything that Muslims do is terrorism and anything the Jews did in central Europe in the 1930s was evil and subhuman. It actually doesn't help anyone though.
Microsoft can make public gestures of reconciliation and receive public rejection. This gives the wider community the impression that Microsoft is fair minded and willing to cooperate with others while the FOSS community are is some bigoted group of crackpot zealots. So Microsoft wins the battle for hearts and minds while the FOSS community, through a conscious choice of ignorance, loses. Pressure on Microsoft to share protocols and adhere to genuine open standards is diminished while the world of FOSS remains an obscure backwater.
Yeah, I've come across this approach personally many times, and it's never been successful for the militants in the long term. It tends to be one of those behaviour patterns that intelligent teenagers grow out of. Sometimes it's just the militants who lose, mostly it's everyone.
Of course if everyone was determined to adhere to a militant approach, I suggest marching in the streets wearing brown shirts as a good start to impress the general population and win supporters. Worked for Adolf.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Just look at another M$ news today about some versions of Vista failing to dual-boot: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/30/204241
So, what was that noise about Microsoft being more open?
http://revj.sourceforge.net
Look at the guy they hired to run their Linux Lab, Hilfe or something like that is his name. They made him up to be a friend to OSS but then he got put in charge of their anti-linux marketing or the likes.
20+ years of watching these guys tell me it is business as usual for MSFT. Windows is their baby and nothing is going to threaten it. Linux and OSS is too compelling for many of Microsofts customers so Microsoft must get its hands dirty and shove its way into that area enough to figure out how to pull those customers back to Windows.
Their business is Windows and maintaining that products position. Software which runs on Windows and some other platform is a threat. This is how it has always been so why would anyone think they are playing any other game? Twenty years folks, twenty years. Just look at ODF and MS-OOXML for proof of how far they'll go to protect their position.
this new guy should not be given the time of day IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
you mean you've never noticed them joining competing industry committees before? They usually do this for a few reasons and all of them have to do with making sure they know how to fight the product.
They do it to get inside numbers on things like install base and download numbers. This lets them know how much they need to throttle up or down marketing funds to fight the product.
They do this to slow down the progress of the committee for obvious reasons. It's pretty easy to do when you've got billions of bucks and hundreds of developers taking orders from you.
They do it to learn the inner workings of the development process and other business-like mechanisms so they can feed valuable data to their sales force and help promote their product over the committees product.
I doubt they had to become a sponsor to contribute a MS-SQL patch to ADOdb. That was just a bone to throw out to make it look like they have changed from the 20+ years of fighting every cross platform product which threatens a Microsoft product. They lose billions annually doing this but with far more billions in profits from Windows, nobody seems to care.
There is no about-face and surely one, two, three or more press releases and cheap tricks isn't going to change 20 years of history. open source is a threat to their only money maker, Windows and they must stop it. That is the face of Microsoft. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
We should not trust Microsoft, no matter how nice their liaison to the FOSS community, until they drop their claims that Linux distros infringe their patents. Either they need to specify WHICH patents or withdraw the claim entirely.
If we give in to anything less, we're selling out and lending cred to M$, not to mention allowing them to make money off of FOSS through their "licensing" program.
Nitewing '98
Everything works...in theory.
Do these three words sound familiar? embrace extend extinguish
And install vending machines with used panties.
Your ad here.
microsoft is capitalist,they go where they think the money is.
if you give em hard proof of a more profitable future in OSS,they will run to it faster than a young puppy chasing a rubber ball.
They have broken the law, cheated on business partners, used underhanded tactics in the OS to stifle competition.
That has nothing to do with capitalism. Capitalism does not work without the respect and adherence to the rule of law, and needless to say, one is immoral because one chooses to, not because one is a capitalist.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I dont want to ignore them.
I don't mind purchasing software and i'm not really militant about all software being open.
But what I would like to see is the ability to buy off the shelf, or download quality software and not have to worry about what OS i need to install it on.
Before office 2003 there was a time when I would have actually purchased Office if it ran natively on my linux desktop without having mess with Wine or a virtual machine.
Theres a few games my kids like that would be nice for them to have on a linux workstation, then I could get rid of the last XP pro install in my house.
If MS would release software for other OS's maybe Hardware vendors would open up and take into account that people use something else than Windows.
Who run Barter Town?
You're missing something. With LGPL, Microsoft's additions don't have to be under LGPL. They can be under a proprietary license. They don't have to come with source. And when you convert the LGPL code to GPL, you can't convert the proprietary part. That's how LGPL differs from GPL.
Bruce Perens.
Looking at Microsoft's current situation...
(1) FUD on open source has failed. (Get the Facts...What happened to the bloke who came up with that, didn't he get fired?)
(2) OOXML is in limbo. (Fast tracking process was inconsistent like no tomorrow...Stack the ballot!)
(3) Live Search solution is a flop. (Google is still dominant!)
(4) Xbox 360 has reliability issues. (RROD...What was initially an attempt to save a few million is now costing them a Billion!)
(5) Vista is suffering from poor adoption. (The reality is becoming more obvious when you see that they need to rejuvenate Vista's PR image with deception).
So what's a way to kill Linux? (while they're at it)
Simple, take away its applications! Make them work better with Windows!
LAMP => WAMP.
Do anything and everything you can to win the community over! Play nice, wear T-shirts, throw money at them, donate some code (to Windows benefit!), etc.
Notice how in that movie, "Pirates of Silicon Valley", the character playing Bill Gates wore a T-shirt offered by Apple. (Apple basically embraced them into their community)...Guess what happened? Gates screwed them over!
Point being?
Microsoft can be seen in two views: Character and Personality.
The Character is what everyone knows it has done. It will plunder, stab you in the back, etc to get its way. This is how they've always worked. Manipulate the situation to THEIR benefit. Get what you need NOW! Don't worry about the law, ethics, moral, etc...Leave that for later. (Hello anti-trust cases!)
Personality is its PR side. All that marketing spin, that olive branching to open source, playing nice...Nothing but lip service. Its a facade.
Seriously, wouldn't you be suspicious of the neighborhood bully suddenly playing nice?
Deep down, Sam Ramji is just another expendable employee of Microsoft playing "Liason" with open source. You can feel sympathy for him, but you don't have to feel sympathy for Microsoft. Then again, why would you feel sympathy for Sam? He joined MS on his own accord. His choice.
So the question really is (from a FOSS view): We've done well without Microsoft so far, why do we need them now?
As joked many years ago: Microsoft isn't the solution. Microsoft is the question...And the answer is: NO!
This is becoming even more true in the 21st Century.
I have to agree with you in that OpenSource (while it may be superior for a computing platform) really is not ready for avergae Joe / Jane Doe. I couldnt even imagine the amount of support within my own family that would be required if I replaced the "Microsoft Solution". Before anyone starts telling me about all the benefits etc, I am agreeing with the original poster in that, unless you are semi proficient or really inquisitive OSS is not ready for primetime. Forget the marketing it must be 100% user friendly and reliable(i.e. as idiot proof as possible or even - "Hey this is great, joe I just put in the Cd and my program /game works - no configuration required). Just my two cents...
Oh yeah - to all the rabid oss people - you need to really work with a general business sometime where the average user is a 60 year old grandma who comes in twice a week to help out with the secretarial work and caouldnt tell you the difference between a hard drive and hard toast...
If Joe Sixpack knew his computer could be fast, dead reliable and simple to use while still doing everything his Windows box can do
I just set up Ubuntu two nights ago, with the latest version and all. Joe Sixpack has no hope of getting Ubuntu running on his machine. Savvy power user *maybe*.
Installation was easy enough, and thankfully was something very well done. Not too much technical mumbo-jumbo, very straightforward. Nice.
Except wireless didn't work. The kind of hackery I had to do to make it work would be beyond even most power users. If I wasn't a dev I'd have no idea wtf I had to do to get wireless working. And honestly, wireless is an *indispensable* feature in any modern laptop.
Until the wireless problem is fixed, Ubuntu will be DOA for the vast majority of users. I understand that this isn't necessarily Ubuntu's fault (more likely Intel), but nonetheless, don't preach the awesomeness of something when it doesn't even work out of the box.
Oh, and while the flaming fox and the purple bird work well enough, the road cone is the worst media player software ever conceived by mankind. Well, the backend is pretty solid, but that's true for most open source software. Trying to use the UI, though, is like staring into the maw of hell. User pops in a DVD... File->Open Disc seems like the logical thing to do right? Do that, and then look at the dialog that pops up. You think Joe Sixpack won't be intimidated? Compare with Windows Media Player, where popping in a DVD will just... *gasp* play the DVD!
Says the person posting on the Internet.
how to invest, a novice's guide
"usability" So important to drive adoption, so neglected by the community.
"There is nothing to do it. But to do it." -Floyd Pepper
Cant speak for the_mink, but I have.
I still, throughout my entire life, have never been able to get any form of Linux running on a laptop I've owned (either personally or through job).
Not once. And these are all high end corporate class machines from Dell and HP. Like the ones that hundreds of millions of other corporate types are using and buying daily.
Ubuntu 8.04 LiveCD wont even run on this laptop. The standard install disc NEVER works on any machine I've ever seen, apparently because the 'splash' screen is a problem. The first step after install from the alternate disc is always to edit grub to disable the splash. Otherwise you never get a screen, and cannot even pull up a terminal. How could the splash option in grub boot result in a terminal not being available? This is not something I understand.
I mean what the hell. Didnt these guys ever hear of a generic software VGA driver, like every other OS on the planet has to fall back on?
And wireless never works. Ever. On any laptop I've ever used.
Even when I recruit the local Linux expert, he spends many hours, and then just shakes his head and gives up. And on the current laptop, thats with the Intel 4965agn, which has a freaking open source driver from Intel. It still doesnt work. And the approach taken to saving WPA keys, where you are expected to enter them in every time you connect? Thats just terrible.
On the flip side, I've had huge success with using Linux running as a guest in VMWare to serve some specific services. Works pretty darn flawlessly, actually. I've had a copy of Kubuntu running on VMWare server on my windows laptop host for years, for various purposes, and it works great. But on real-world hardware? Never.
At the moment Linux and other Unices are purely for deep specialists. And this doesnt mean the millions of rabid 'I use linux' people out there, who rant and rave about how awesome Linux is and how bad Windows is, but then have no freaking idea how to do simple things like switch a linux box from static to dhcp. I mean its just sad.
So it certainly has its place, and 'its place' is growing yearly. But its nothing even remotely like what you're suggesting, at least in my experience.