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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.
I'd like to know what it would take for Microsoft to actually back up those claims with proof in a public forum. But that's probably a question for Steve Ballmer, since he's the one who seems to flog the patent FUD.
OTOH, I have contracted at Microsoft (once as a dev doing an intranet site for a testing lab, once being the editor in charge of a couple of sections of the MSW homepage), and it's an interesting culture there. It's not the Death Star with Ballmer walking around, periodically strangling people with his mind just to show who's boss.
In a company that big you can't escape the control freaks and evidence of The Peter Principle, but you also have people there like my manager on the intranet site contract, who was the best manager I've had in the 23 years since I started having managers. For all the greed and arrogance people here like to claim go into Microsoft products, there are a lot of people who are there because they love what they do and Microsoft gives them the opportunity to get paid well for doing it. I met some awesome people at Microsoft, people I really respect.
I switched to Mac to avoid Vista. I use NeoOffice instead of MS Office. But I can say that despite some of the aura of badness Microsoft gives off as a company, there are people there who are truly dedicated to the company being a good citizen, putting out good products, and getting along with others. The people who give Ramji a hard time really haven't given him a chance.
Start a happiness pandemic
why can't we just ignore them? I mean seriously, if there is one thing we (oss guys) can agree on... SURELY this is it. For many years, hate for M$ has been the only thing that the free software community could agree on.
why can't the entire free software crowd just stand up and say "No thanks", we aren't interested in what you have to say.
if you think that M$ will ever help free software in any meaningful way, you obviously haven't been paying attention over the past couple decades.
there is good news in this though. M$ is obviously noticing that every day there are people installing linux who used to use window$. They know that linux on the desktop is closing the gap and many other companies stand to profit from it. After years of pretending OSS didn't exist, or worse yet, attacking it in underhanded ways, they don't have a piece of the action. This whole M$/oss thing, just means they are realizing there is a chance that maybe OSS really IS the next big thing.
My prediction is that a huge company with unlimited resources like google will package up a nice, distro, call it something flashy, advertise the hell out of it, and give it away for free. I am well aware of the options that already exist, but the average person is not. It takes flashy marketing to capture the market.
how can M$ possibly compete with other companies who come in at a price point nearly $0, with a better product, a good ad campaign, AND profit margins of nearly 100%? They can't. Someday the house of cards will fall. They know it, they think, they can adapt by getting involved with OSS. They will fail because we hate them.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
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.
Wow, no idea what you are trying to say, it spanks of rabble rousing. In the end, what exactly does open source deliver? That is the question. It's being asked by a lot of people. And we as a community need an answer, which we don't actually have. A philosophy is not an answer. The proles will look to the MS shill for an answer. The question should be, what will we give him to take back, beads and trinkets?
Say bad words about my book, in cold oatmeal, or I shall sue!
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.
You rebel! An open source person with an anti-corporate message!? I don't believe it. You must have massive balls. This reminds me of the time when Greenday stood up against the evils of Bush. A pop-punk band speaking out against conservatives was pretty progressive and unusual at the time, but they to pererviered and finally won the community to their side. Your fight will be long and hard, but I hope that in the end you too convince the wider open source community that Microsoft is the devil.
You are a brave soul to be so bold with such a hostile pro-corporate crowd. Standing up for what you believe in, with no fear that the open source community might respond with hostility and skepticism is a bold act. I salute you for going against the grain and taking such a controversial "Microsoft is bad" stand. If only there were more brave men like you.
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!"
It's not the Death Star with Ballmer walking around, periodically strangling people with his mind just to show who's boss.
That's what Apple is like.
I think you misspelled "incoherent". Just goes to show that you shouldn't always rely on the spell chequer for everything.
Yeah. Green Day was so much better back in the early nineties when they invented punk rock.
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."
Implode, be incinerated, be eviscerated, bleed to death, slowly fall apart from radiation, and gasp desperately for a few more breaths of air, ultimately surrendering.
...And then become a worldwide cultural phenomenon for animation and video games?
OMG! Wau!
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
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
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.
what exactly does open source deliver?
It depends who you are:
End users:
It provides software at no cost. Now, some users may need support, which will cost them, but the chances are they don't need support on *all* their software (i.e. they might want to be able to phone someone up when the operating system breaks, but they are happy with having no support for their word processor.
Also, my experience as a software developer tells me that Open Source _code_ is usually of higher quality than proprietary code - it may not be as obvious to the end user as it is to a developer but I do honestly believe that in (most but not all) cases Free software is more secure, stable and feature-rich.
Another bonus, especially for businesses using the software, is that if you find that you need a feature you can go and contract a developer to write it for you instead of being held to ransom (or ignored) by the original vendor you got the software from.
Small to mid-sized computer businesses:
Businesses can use Free software to provide solutions to their customers - they can make money by selling the services, rather than the software.
For example, if a customer asks for some kind of system you have 3 options:
1. Write the system from scratch.
2. Licence a proprietary system.
3. Use a Free system.
Now, (1) is probably going to be a lot more expensive, so that is out. (2) and (3) are more or less comparable at this point, so long as they both have the features you need. Some time later the customer can come back and ask for some new feature - if you originally picked (2) then you may be screwed, whereas if you picked (3) you can add the feature and charge the customer for your time.
The "services" business model has, since the dawn of time, also had that subscription model that MS wants.
Huge software monopolies (e.g. Microsoft)
This is a lot more problematic - the Free software business model prohibits the abuse of a monopoly position, purely because someone else is always free to compete with an identical (or improved) product but with a lower cost or more favourable contractual terms. If you are producing Free software, you can't just put all the competition out of business and then stop improving your product for years (much as MS did for things like IE) - you will always have competition and staying ahead of the competition takes constant effort, but is good for the consumers as they see constant improvements instead of stagnation.
If Microsoft completely embrace the Free software business model, they _will_ lose their monopoly position, so I can't see them doing that until they have already seriously lost that position anyway. Similarly, from a business perspective they need to be careful with interoperability since they don't want to promote the idea of replacing Microsoft products with competing ones. But what they do want is to enable Microsoft products to interoperate with the competing products in situations where people would be using the competing products anyway (and thus would avoid the MS products if they didn't interoperate).
Microsoft's monopoly position sucks for MS's competitors, MS's customers and MS's competitors' customers (who struggle to interoperate with MS's software and customers). However, their monopoly position is good for _them_ and they will protect it at all costs - to do so, they need to walk a very fine line.
However, even if MS decided to 100% embrace Free software (which, as mentioned above, they won't), they would still have a hard fight convincing the Free software community to accept them. This is because they have spent years time and time again making promises to the Free software community and then stabbing them in the back at the first opportunity - it will take them a lot of time and effort to prove that this isn't just another example of this behaviour (if indeed it isn't).
A philosophy is not an answer.
Pure philosophy is not the answer, but that philosophy has survived for a long time because it gives real, solid benefits for a lot of people.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
* Learn to manually set the MTU of the ppp0 interface when connecting to a pptp VPN at the office since the VPN setup effectively ignores the MTU setting. Although this makes certain things just not work properly when the remote end ignores requests to fragment, it is not a priority to fix apparently.
* Figure out how to make ndiswrapper load the wireless interface drivers on his laptop. Even though there are wireless drivers for the wireless nic, they don't work. You have to download the Windows package, extract the ndis driver from it, and then follow some cryptic commands to get the ndiswrapper kernel module to load it.
* Teach his 4 year old kid how to enter the keyring password so that the wireless WPA key can be retrieved when the kid's gaming computer starts up that is down in the kitchen with a wireless card. Though ubuntu has a nice option of auto login (since kids that young might not know how to type a username and password in) so that he can put links on the desktop that the kid can click to go to Barney's website and such, auto login doesn't count as entering the password. So he can figure out a way to put a script hack in where he has to put in his password IN PLAIN TEXT to get around the prompt for the keyring password.
* Try using open office and embedding pictures in a word processing document, only to find that Microsoft Word (which everyone else at the office uses) either can't load the pictures or the pictures come out scaled to thumbnail size. But, you have to export it in like Word 95 format to at least get the thumbnails.
* He can continually wonder WHY THE HELL DOES FLASH KEEP LOCKING UP FIREFOX? Seriously, after a few LiveLeak or YouTube videos, you have to force-quite the browser and reload it. WTF?
I use Ubuntu 90% of the time now, but I'm no Joe Sixpack. The open source community has its own hubris that is, quite frankly, annoying.
I mean, seriously, all the open source people are rabidly anti-microsoft and insistent that anything they can do OSS can do as well or better. All this forcefully exerting how idiotic it is to use MS products culminates in end users finally moving over to OSS. Then....
They inevitably have problems or encounter bugs. They ask, sometimes not nicely, the project community to fix the bugs, only to be met with: "This type of attitude really irks me. You get all this stuff for free, you can fix it yourself or pay someone to fix it."
It was YOUR agenda that brought the users here, make them WANT to stay here rather than giving up and going back to Microsoft. Ubuntu is nice and useful as long as you know how to deal with these little usability quirks and annoying bugs. Supporting non-developers on OSS still SUCKS.
Do you have any idea what people are really doing with Microsoft products that simply can't be done on Linux.
Spreading NIMDA and Slammer?