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Microsoft and Apache - What's the Angle?
A week ago, we discussed Microsoft's contribution to the Apache Foundation. Now, Bruce Perens has written an analysis "exploring the new relationship of Microsoft and the Apache project, how it works as an anti-Linux move on Microsoft's part, and what some of the Open Sourcers are going to do about having Microsoft as a rather untrustworthy partner." In particular, he notes:
"...Microsoft can still influence how things go from here on. If they have to live with open source, the Apache project is Microsoft's preferred direction. Apache doesn't use the dreaded GPL and its enforced sharing of source-code. Instead, the Apache license is practically a no-strings gift, with a weak provision against patent lawsuits as its most relevant term. Microsoft can take Apache software and embrace and enhance, providing their own versions of the project's software with engineered incompatibility and no available source, just as they forced incompatibility into the Web by installing IE with every Windows upgrade."
Apache.NET?
Does that Bruce Perens link really need to be a mailto: link? His Slashdot user page might be more appropriate: http://slashdot.org/~Bruce+Perens/
So a week later, and the best sinister motive they can come up with is Microsoft doing something they could've done without contributing to the project..
*breathe a sigh of relief*
You had to look for a reason to get mad at microsoft? I don't know why I bother with /. anymore... the editors are as childish as my 4 year old nephew.
You can make up the most harebrained conspiracy theory about what they are going to do and people will believe it.
Why?
Because they have done it before!
It is almost like they enjoy playing the villain for our entertainment!
and extinguish
So, will we soon see FSF-blessed project?
One that hath name thou can not otter
page 1: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/print.php/3762786
page 2: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/print.php/12068_3762786_2
...there's kind of a BSDevil inside the Apache-teepee, and now Gates and Windows as well.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Eric Raymond was forced by the community to "retire" when he revealed himself to be an unapolegetic racist.
I'm currently trying to get C# to talk to Java through SOAP. In C#, I'm using WCF (A Microsoft Framework), and in Java I'm using CXF (An Apache Framework.) It's very difficult.
No, I will not work for your startup
What's the angle? How about an aging relic of the 90s trying to appear relevant?
"Sufferin' succotash."
I know, I know, you don't need the karma, but you never know if you run too low. It's happened to me.
Largest OS vendor interested in improving compatibility with the largest(?) web server software. How dare they!
I fail to see how this is some evil plot to crush Apache/FSF/GPL/LGPL/Linux/whatever. At most its a MSJAVA like thing, but thats pushing it do to apache being way more popular on Linux/BSD then windows
I'm not sure why this would be said to be an anti-Linux move. I realize that this might be what people sense with regards to the contribution, but like the article said the "Apache license is practically a no-strings gift". With Microsoft's new talk of becoming pro open source, this might become like Apple's contributions to BSD. You don't here anything bad about Apple with their use of BSD, but at every chance possible commenters are willing to frame MS in a bit light.
I just wanted to point out that this type of news should be addressed as unbiased as possible, as Slashdot isn't exactly respected as a home of unbiased views or anything.
This might sound completely insane but did anyone consider that Microsoft might try and cut costs by using Apache for the backend in Windows Server 2010?
Apple has done it with Apple OS X Server. It would allow Microsoft to keep up to date with web standards without having to spend vast amounts to do it. All they would really need to do is develop propitiatory modules that they could hook in.
Microsoft really have very little vested interest in keeping IIS up-to-date. It isn't a big cash cow and I think most people would agree that it isn't a great web server (although does have some nice tie-ins with the OS).
While I am posting I really dislike the article attacking the Apache licence. The Apache and BSD licenses are the purest form of what OSS stands for. It is freedom in the true sense and not freedom in the American sense (e.g. Freedom at the barrel of a gun).
I've always recognized raymond as a douchebag hanger-on (I don't know why anyone listened to him), but how is it racist to acknowledge that the average black IQ is 85 (vs 100 for whites, and slightly higher for some other groups)?
So, if MS forks Apache, will they still be able to call it Apache, or will they have to make up a new name for trademark reasons? If so, it'll just be another fork, won't it?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
So let me see if I have this right.
1: If they activelly avoid compatibility with open source, they're being evil.
2: If they just ignore it, they're being evil.
3: If they try to co-operate with any open source project, they're being evil.
What, to be blunt, the fuck is going on?
Ok, I'm not claiming closed source vendors are great or anything, but to my mind, this smacks of closed minded zealotry, and as we know, courtesy of the worlds religions, that generally doesn't work out well in the long term.
Is the open source movements plan to vilify any and all attempts of the 'establishment' to work with us? Is that the plan?
I freely acknowledge that Microsoft don't really have much in the way of compatible philosophy, but if all we do is bitch, all we'll get is negative publicity and bad feeling from people who, shock, horror, are actually entitled to think that open source isn't the source of all that is good in the world.
I'm an open source developer myself, but obviously not a 'proper' one, because all I care about is sharing my code.
The Usual Pattern:
1. OSS story pops up on Slashdot.
2. Someone posts: "Developing OSS is antithetical to making money!!"
3. Deluge of responses: "You're crazy. There're all kinds of ways to make money off OSS. It's the way of the future!"
And Now:
1. Slashdot posts a story about Microsoft showing sympathy towards OSS.
2. Deluge of posts: "This can't be! They must have evil secret motives."
I don't know what to think anymore.
For the Apache foundation to revise its licensing terms. Microsoft's plan is as evil as it comes; if we can't scare `em with patent litigation risk -and no-one wants to enter into an indemnification agreement- then we'll get in their code and fuck-it-up for them.
If you didn't see this coming way back when, you'll be part of the landscape by the time they pull their next move.
Sig this!
What is it that Bruce is actually worried about happening here? All I see in that article is a lot of standard (for slashdotters) ideas mixed together, but no actual coherent argument end to end. Is the worry that if Microsoft joins OS, they'll cause ... what? Fragmentation? Destruction? Mayhem? What is the danger?
embraceextendextinguish
...if something they do appears to not be evil, that's only because we're not looking at it the right way.
Microsoft has lots of money to hire key Apache developers, if they actually plan to use the code and want good service from its developers on a 24/7 basis. So, this $100,000 contribution and the partial patent grant aren't about interoperability.
Who says Microsoft wants to use this code? From the earlier article, it sounded like they wanted to improve the code that other people use, to make it easier to use on Windows. And this way they don't have difficulties with convincing people to become @microsoft.com, or with convincing people to trust and work with people @microsoft.com.
Last year, GPL went through a major revision, with the participation of dozens of attorneys from the world's largest companies, along with academics and individuals. That caught it up with the elaboration of copyright and patent law over the past quarter century. A second version, the AGPL, has evolved to deal with the business model of Google, software as a service instead of on the user's PC. That's fortunate, as GPL is going to be even more important now.
Because writing and using good, unique software is something that has to be "dealt with". Re-implementing parts that could be useful isn't enough, non-shared software is Evil and must never be allowed to be written.
Both kinds of developers may choose the GPL: the commercial ones because they want to keep their competitors from running away with the program without sharing their own work, and the individuals because they'd rather function as equal partners in enforced sharing than as unpaid employees who give all they create as a gift to the big company.
So if you make something available for everyone, you become the "unpaid employee" of anyone who improves it? Regardless of the fact that any further improvements you make will actually create more work for them to do (unless they send their changes back upstream)?
This also has philosophical issues, manufacturers of physical products don't get to forbid aftermarket modifications (and can't even void warranties just because of aftermarket work), why should this be considered a legitimate right for manufactures of knowledge (I know it's a legal right, but that doesn't make it reasonable)?
And most important, GPL is what developers will use if they welcome Microsoft's participation in their projects, but only on the same terms as everybody else.
Because BSD/MIT/X11 have wacky rules that apply differently to different kinds of contributors.
Microsoft can take Apache software and embrace and enhance, providing their own versions of the project's software with engineered incompatibility and no available source, just as they forced incompatibility into the Web by installing IE with every Windows upgrade.
Right on, that's cool. That's the purpose of the ASL. It is written such that commercial entities can extend it in unanticipated directions. That's what makes it different from GPL-like licenses, and it is totally OK. Some people (like myself) prefer to release under GPL-style licenses because we want to prevent commercial proprietary extension, and that's OK too.
Also, Bruce's commentary is fine. He's using an active case-in-point to demonstrate a behavior that some may view as a downside associated with using a liberal license, and which will help new joiners to the Open Source community to make their personal choice.
Or, in short, there's no need for yet another GPL versus BSD flamewar. We can all do what we like with our code, and that's good.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
They're trying to take the oxygen from Linux and you're breathing a sigh of relief. But suddenly you gasp. No oxygen! The room is spinning. It's getting dark...
Bruce Perens.
Divide and Conjure baby! Divide and Conjure!
They're trying to take the oxygen from Linux by becoming the dominant server for Open Source applications. But if you're an Open Source developer, helping them displace an Open Source platform isn't such a great idea, is it?
Bruce Perens.
I work for a fortune 100 company and we have a ton of middleware running on Apache Tomcat. Currently we have Tomcat running on old Sun Servers, HP Servers and newly procured Linux servers.
One surprising thing to me is the number of Windows 2003 Servers that we have running Apache Tomcat as well.
Maybe Microsoft realizes that there is some big business potential playing nicely with Apache?
It does have its limitations. It's more of a share and share alike license than a path to public domain software.
If I, as an open source author, want to give my code back to the community, with no strings attached, public domain is the only way to go. That way, anyone can use the code for any purpose they see fit. It is truly a gift.
But GPL'ed code is not a gift, it is a license. It seeks to enforce - through copyright law - the notion of free software. That is, you can't take my free program and add in proprietary changes, and add restrictions to the use of the code.
It's a good license. It does bring balance to the big picture.
But it doesn't address one of the fundamental problems of open source: it's difficult to make a living writing open source code. Sure, you can make a living supporting open source code, but it is very difficult for the average programmer to make a living on what open source pays (usually nothing).
Without the proprietary model, I would have to make a living doing something other than writing code. Which would mean, that because I would truly be an amateur programmer, my code would not be as good as it would otherwise. I'm able to make a meaningful contribution to open source code in part because I write code for a living.
The consequence of being employed to write code is that I can't contribute code which would interfere with my employer's business interests. So while I'm able to use my general programming skills to benefit open source, I cannot produce open-source software in my area of expertise. Which, to me, is a real problem. But the GPL doesn't solve the ethical dilemna of an employee undermining his employer's business model. A large portion of us rely on the revenues generated by the pay-per-license proprietary model; without it, our customers would have to pay inordinately large sums of money up front for software, and we couldn't introduce new and innovative features because the budget wouldn't support it.
I am a good programmer, and I do produce something of value when I write code. I have no problem with people sharing the code that I write, but we as a society need to understand that programmers need to be paid for their work. That is, if we are to have any reasonable expectation of software quality. Without the experience that comes from writing code professionally, the quality of software would be absolutely abysmal.
And open source does have the proprietary model to thank for its quality - typically, the code written for open source projects is written the way a programmer knows it should be written, rather than taking shortcuts because of scheduling and marketing issues.
I like open source, but I realize that I, and other programmers, need to be able to make a living writing code if we're going to contribute meaningful software to the world. Unfortunately, the GPL doesn't address this problem in an economically viable way. Even Stallman admits that in a free software world, programmers wouldn't make nothing, they'd simply make less. Problem is, I have a family to feed, and don't have the option of making any less money; if the whole world went open source, I'd have to go into management just to feed my family. I don't think it's very ethical to ask my children to starve so you can have your software free of charge.
The GPL is good, and needed, but there needs to be a balance. I can contribute to free software because my employer's proprietary model allows me to make a living writing code.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Vista's customer-hostile emphasis on digital rights management ... caused its downfall. IT managers won't stand for that ...
Thank you Bruce. I've been saying this since a year before Vista even shipped. Folks complain about a lot of different things in Vista (some of it fairly, I think) but I see most of those "features" as mere pains-in-the-ass that I could begrudgingly live with. What really gets me and why I won't be installing Vista on any servers or desktops at work is the DRM. To me it's reminiscent of the campaign slogan from a few years ago - "It's the DRM Stupid!"
As far as the Apache/MS thing is concerned I thought IIS was mostly used on parked domains, so it's like who cares what they do? But what if Microsoft extended this idea to the desktop O/S? Start with the distro of their liking and build their own UI on top of it. Isn't that what so many of us have been hoping for?
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Apache, in a way, is Microsoft's kind of software. It has lots of cruft, features that have been added over time and don't interact well. So it's hard to clone or replace. Lots of things plug into it using its API, so it has slave projects. That's the kind of lock-in Microsoft likes.
(Technically, all an Apache-type web server really needs to do is support serving of plain pages, and FCGI. With that, you can do anything, because there's an efficient way to pass off work to other programs. Interprocess communication is a good thing. But that's not the way Apache grew.)
In that case, what, exactly, would change with this scenario?
The contribution to the Apache Foundation would have the same PR effect, so that wouldn't have been affected at all.
The ability to embrace-and-extend would be slightly differentiated, but not all that much. Microsoft would integrate some new System Libraries into Windows Server, and any Microsoft-only extensions of Apache would be made dependent on them. The calls to the Windows System Libraries would be GPL, but the code in the libraries would remain closed, and adding their features to the GPL version of Apache would require a WINE- or Mono-like project.
And, um. What else is there? Well, Microsoft would logically be contradicting its GPL statements, but Interix/Services for Windows/SUA/whatever it is this week already did so.
Is there a place where I can see all the commercially owned OSS projects? If I recall, Apple owns CUPS, Oracle owns Innobase, Sun owns MySQL etc.
It is racist because the idiot fails to see the underlying social mechanism
It seems that Apache license allows you to modify and re-distribute without giving back the source. I bet the Apache foundation people gave a bit of thought about something like that happening before they chose the license and obviously they decided it wasn't that important.
Do people really think Microsoft will suddenly manage to destroy the Apache foundation because they said they wanted to contribute? I would suspect their sponsorship is going to strengthen Apache Foundation's capacity to penetrate more corporate entities. In some places the open source argument does mean anything to the decision makers but vendor support and an IBM/Microsoft backing certainly does.
Others like IBM have been doing just that and no one seemed to care. (http://www-306.ibm.com/software/webservers/httpservers/).
There are two versions of IBM HTTP Server, based in turn on 1.3 and 2.0 versions of open source Apache, but with small alterations to allow IBM to attach extra features. The code bases are maintained inside IBM, where IBM keeps them up to date by selectively picking up and applying bug fixes from the open source Apache CVS repository.
Go get your IBM httpd trial and see if you get any source with it. (I didn't check because I don't really care).
I'm also pretty sure that amongst all the project of the Apache Foundation, the Apache httpd server is probably not the most interesting for them.
Speaks the truth about IQ distributions across ethnicities: check
Atheist: check
Overtly anti-Islam: check
Pro-privacy: check
He might be a crappy developer (sorry, "hacker"), and a pretentious writer, but his core values are certainly good.
All you need is Windows.NET Server 2012 to host and run all your free and open source software and applications in the world. Isn't that nice?
It's not victory yet until Microsoft's power shrinks below the government-corrupting size.
Rain mod points on this gang, if he's right this an unbelieveable ace in the hole for Rationality!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
just as they forced incompatibility into the Web by installing IE with every Windows upgrade
WTF?
Am I the only person that remembers reality?
These things are said like 'fact', hell even Wikipedia has "included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995." - and IE was NOT included with any Windows OS in 1995, whatsoever... The only way to even get IE was through the Plus Pack for Win95, and it cost as much as Netscape.
Talk about urban legend becoming 'people's' reality. Geesh...
So Microsoft screwed up the Web with non-standard handling? You mean like adapting to a missing end table tag and still showing the freaking table instead of giving the user a GPF or a blank page like Netscape did? Ya, Microsoft was being evil by letting crap HTML not crash the program and still display content.
In contrast to IE, Netscape was crap, even Marc said the code was crap, and MS got a raw deal in the Anti-Trust after it was all said and done.
Going back to history, does everyone forget IE was based on SpyGlass's Mosaic of all things (yeah no standard there uh?)...
Netscape at version 3 was originally the most 'non-standard' browser with their 'own' html handling, and poor html handling, that existed all the way through Netscape 4 when they finally were de-throned.
(Just requesting the page again when the window was resized was enough to backhand the Netscape developers for being really freaking stupid.)
Ok, most people here don't like Microsoft, but can we at least stick to freaking reality for a moment. Netscape hated MS for giving away the browser, and making IIS free, another Netscape slap in the HTTP server realm.
As for the web and Standards, Microsoft's browsers have NOT always been great, but Microsoft itself has handed over other standards like AJAX and XHTML to the web, with no 'revisionism' and without any freaking strings, and we still have dorks like this seeing everything MS touches as some evil plot of 'embrace, extend, extinguish'?
IE had nothing to do with a Windows tie-in, as IE was released for *nix, and Mac System for years, gaining Microsoft NOTHING in the Mac world, other than giving people a free browser. Man were they evil...
IE itself wasn't even designed to be a 'browser' but a set of DLLs for rendering HTML for developers. (Hence why AOL used IE's engine for years after owning Netscape.) - The IE 'Browser' was a proof of concept tool at first, as Microsoft believed a simple fact that an OS should be able to display HTML natively, just as it displays Fonts, Bitmaps, and Metafiles...
Now please, explain to me what other 'GREAT' technology have been 'embraced, extended, and extinguished'? Seriously, this is said a lot, yet MS doesn't have the power to extiguish a technology, and if people here think they do, then the OSS movement is already dead, pack it up, go home...
If people really don't want to see MS have any input in the 'standards' or non-Microsoft world, then either de-throne them, or be happy with the 'shit' they produce that is nothing like what everyone else is doing because they were kicked out of the playground... Pick One.
I personally would rather see MS be a part of the 'real world' and 'have' to play with everyone else, as they are slowly being forced and moving to do. Kicking them out of the Apache playground is going to gain people what?
The second choker in this, is people act like Microsoft needs Apache 'Source'...
WTH? For What?
IIS7 is a generation ahead of Apache in features and performance and even 'gasp' stability, and if Microsoft wanted to 'steal' Apache source, they could have read the source already, don't people get this? You don't need to reuse line by line code to 'use' stuff.
In fact you don't even need SOURCE, as assembly and binaries are just as readable to uber geeks as Source Code is. Has the OSS forgot this, and also forgot to teach the 'new kids' that Source Code is NOT required to see or replicate how software works? Talk about 'we need source' crutched mentality...
Open Source is great, but for people to pretend that compiled code is 'worthless' or 'unreadable' is just freaking retarded.
Ok, rant off...
Giving you credit for a great pointer piece, the next question is how many onion layers of Sneaky/Stupid Microsoft engages in until we're all utterly numbed.
If I didn't know better, I'd say it's like the hustler who tosses you a round to lure you in, beats you Double or nothing, loses a round from drinking too much, then sobers up and wins another round again when you thought they were trashed.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Microsoft can take Apache software and embrace and enhance, providing their own versions of the project's software with engineered incompatibility and no available source, just as they forced incompatibility into the Web by installing IE with every Windows upgrade.
As long as they don't call it Apache, there is no problem. You make your page work with the server it's on, not other peoples. If Microsoft think they can "take over" the internet by screwing with a version of apache that only Microsoft customers use, then let them try. We might get a bit of peace from the lusers. If those same MS customers want our money, they're the ones who'll have to conform.
It doesn't matter what the "underlying social mechanism" is.
The numbers don't lie. If they show something disturbing then
it's time to acknowledge them so that we can fix the problem
rather than pretending it doesn't exist.
We can't wait for all of them to suddenly realize that they
are being outdone by Mexican immigrants, have an epiphany
of shame, and suddenly solve their own shortcomings.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How ironic that Perens, whilst all the time deriding the Apache license and sanctimoniously gloating about the purported high moral ground and the higher intelligence ("Stallman has a Macarthur 'genius award'") that delivered unto this poor world of ours the Holy GPL - for us, the hoi polloi - unabashedly supports proprietary licenses - just as long as it's MySQL's.
I just can't take Linux advocates seriously anymore.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
" I'll certainly do so if this proves to not be anti-competitive."
so you want to create and achieve or just beat [no pun intended] somebody or both? competition is only legit in sports and games, e.g., the short stock market is a "sport" (one which should be banned, btw).
Because correlation != causation ... acknowledging to different to attributing IQ to skin colour. Let's say that IQ was instead to do with economics and that groups of humanity (of all races) have at times failed and at other times flourished... societies can be destroyed and education can fail, whereas other groups of society grouped by location, gender, race or age can grow and prosper. Don't think about it as race, think about it as how people group themselves based on their perceived identity or commonalities. Cultural Isolation has a much larger statistical affect,
If you are trying to say that black IQ is lesser then I'd put it back on you -- where's the genetic cause of this? Where's the genetic flaw that afflicts black people? It's only then that you'll have evidence, other than your pointed statistics with racist implications.
Ergo Microsoft are going to add a GUI to the Apache server backend and release as Patchy Windows[0].
It's true, my magic 8 ball said "you may rely on it", what more do you need?
[0] to shamelessly reuse a joke from another post.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo
On the other hand, niggers are the only people poor enough that they can't afford to buy Windows.
n/t
Fuck 'em
you had me at #!
MS are trying to gently persuade people to stop development for all platforms in favour of Windows only.
you had me at #!
We are judged by what we DO.
Goes for Microsoft, Bush, just as much as you and me.
you had me at #!
it doesn't address one of the fundamental problems of open source: it's difficult to make a living writing open source code
That's because it's socially constructive - in other words, an honest occupation.
What's your point? It's difficult making a living doing anything that's socially constructive as opposed to socially destructive and/or dishonest (TV, Hollywood, big business, arms dealing, petrochemicals, big pharma, drug dealing, etc). That's a fundamental sickness in contemporary civilisation, and a message that's unfortunately unpalatable to many Americans.
if the whole world went open source, I'd have to go into management just to feed my family - Get prepared. Open source is the only viable future for software. The Gold Rush is over, Bill Gates won that round and already robbed the bank dry.
That said, nobody is threatening the proprietary software model that you describe. The threatened model is proprietary platforms, which were never any good anyway, and were actively destructive (mainly via lockin, and simple thievery). Open source is a win-win by providing high quality, free platforms and infrastructure, which allows high quality proprietary (non-distributed, for example) solutions to be developed cheaply. You can continue earning money building solutions for your employer. But if you're in the software industry trying to sell those, you're going to have to compete on merit, instead of taking the Microsoft model of using dirty tricks to keep people locked into a mediocre product. I don't see a downside here. :-)
you had me at #!
How long will it take before people realize that the GPL is holding Linux back? It's the greatest single strategic weakness of the beloved-by-socialist-wanna-be-programmers. The BSD style licensed projects get more momentum and make forward progress. Meanwhile, GPL-style projects fork and fork and fork and fork endlessly. How many Linux distros does it take to beat a clue into the head of a GPL zealot? The world may never know.
My Karma is gonna get a major dent from this, I know it. But there it is, folks. Apache isn't in danger from Microsoft because Apache is still free. Like totally free. Like not encumbered by any strings, free. Like get over yourself copyleft freaks, free.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Netcraft says that Apache has more than 49 percent of web server share, while IIS has 35 percent and a fraction.
Bruce Perens.
The room isn't spinning, it's Linux spinning, pulling from a roll of saran wrap for years. There's more oxygen in the tech marketplace today than there has been for twenty five years. Too bad Linux looks like a middle aged couch potato, instead of a 22 year old hottie chock full of nature's goodness.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me twice, well we won't get fooled again.
Bruce Perens is the Chuck Norris of the geek world. He doesn't age. He recompiles time.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The more you tighten your grip, Ballmer, the more handhelds will slip through your fingers.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
He wants to know why no one has stated the blindingly obvious truth yet.
IT'S A TRAP!
It doesn't matter what the "underlying social mechanism"
If IQ turns out to be an indicator of melanin concentration when it is meant to be an indicator of cognitive ability then we should go back and find out what went wrong with the way we determine intelligence.
We already have perfectly good optical instruments for measuring the colors of things. We don't need stupid indirect ways of doing it.
If IQ really is different for people of African descent then it is IQ which is broken.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Now we know linux has hit the big time when its supporters have to spread FUD about rival open-source licenses in order to keep market share. ;-)
Im not a microsoft fanboy btw. Im typing this on my dell laptop with ubuntu 8.04
They did it to confuse washed-up non-coding open source pseudo-contributors.
Ok what wiseass and his blind followers marked this as "funny"? It's not especially funny, in fact, I find it rather insightful and interesting (both valid options). At the very worst it's something you disagree with.
Seriously, can we stop with all the "Oh noes! MS is going to destroy Apache" bullshit. It isn't going to happen. There is NOTHING MS can do to stop Apache. It's open-source, it's in the public domain, it's simply not possible.
So what's my point-of-view on this move? Interoperability improvements contributed by MS, interoperability with MS products that is. Why? So it's easier for Apache users to migrate to IIS and other MS platforms. OK, now, obviously Apache devotees are going to be opposed to this, and understandably. But really, is this such a terrible thing?
Apache also strives to improve interoperability with MS products to achieve the reverse, making it easier for IIS users to migrate to Apache. It works both ways. I'm in favour of both. That way, swapping between web-servers for whatever reason is cheaper and easier. And no, I don't just mean for the feature benefits of each web-server, I mean changes due to underlying platform as well. Eg. Company is moving to Unix away from Windows, so we move to Apache as well. And.....the reverse process.
Really, all this conspiracy theory crap is getting the better of me. Yes, I know MS is evil, I've heard it all before, and I don't necessarily disagree, but you need to put things into perspective.
If you're an optimist, this could even work out well for Apache, in that they can use MS products they otherwise couldn't while still continuing to use Apache. Herein lies the "extinguish" aspect, but if they take that road, they also extinguish any possibility of future Apache users migrating due to pulling the plug on continuing interop.
Think about it.
RE: Spring... is anybody still taking the "many eyes == security" claim seriously? The evidence supporting this claim is scant, and by now there ought to be piles of irrefutable stats. There are not, and it's not because people haven't tried. How can you seriously try to extend that essentially refuted claim to differentiating between open source projects with different types of licenses or enterprise contributors? Good grief. You cannot possibly be Bruce Perens. ATTENTION Real Bruce: did you go off and leave yourself logged in again?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Oh, by the way, I was being serious, if a little sarcastic. Although I admire your thinking and generally clear expression, it appears that we differ on the point of licensing for open source projects. For a long time I was license agnostic. I figured people would experiment and find the right license for the right project. Instead, what I see is a camp of folks most of whom are quite religious (dogmatic) in their thinking about the topic. The BSD/MIT license people tend not to engage in the debate at all, largely because they don't perceive it as a religious issue, but rather a practical issue. The net result seems to be that Linux, after many years, remains an experimental kernel for hackers, rather than an operating system, promoted by zealots who care more about GPL purity than they do about getting things done. (I am not directing this comment at you, nor at Linus, nor at RMS, but rather at the legion followers).
Linux is already being marginalized in the market, and the reasons have nothing to do with Microsoft. Linux vendors are following, not leading. They are so busy forking distros so they can slap their logo on the desktop that they have entirely failed to make Linux usable. Honestly, I wish Linux didn't suck. It does. Religious adherence to GPL, I'm becoming convinced, is one of the reasons why it continues to suck, and will continue to suck, forever, in a niche ghetto.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
And if MS wants OUR money, THEY will have to conform!
Umm.. you're entire premise stems from a flawed premise, in that one cannot write open-source software and still get paid. You might want to tell Red Hat, Sun, Google*, Nokia (recently bought Trolltech), etc. cause they're obviously going down the wrong path.
The misconception you have is that there's a single business model available. There are several:
You can always dual-license it (a la . i.e. provide a commercial, closed source license or a GPL version. Additionally, you could provide propietary extensions to make it look even more appealing.
You could sell support (a la Red Hat).
It's not as easy to monetize directly as one might selling binaries, but a creative business model will earn you money.
Additionally, no reasonable person is arguing that we force everyone to abandon proprietary and go open-source.
Additionally, there are self-taught programmers who contribute to open-source projects (I imagine it is less common these days). There is at least 1 concrete example of such a person: Con Kolivas. I'm sure there's plenty of others.
You're correct in that the GPL is a license and not a gift. You however seem to forget the non-gift part later on. What you miss out is that while the GPL is gratuit for end users, it is not for other programmers. The form of payment I'm expecting for GPL-released code from other programmers is that any changes are given back to me. In other words, I've invested my time, effort, and possibly money in writing this GPL code - I expect a non-monetary form of compensation.
Also, maybe you wouldn't but I probably still play around with programming as a hobby, even if I couldn't get payed doing it. I view my personal projects this way: do I have some problem that I can solve through automation or programming. Then I try to solve it, and usually put up the source code as GPL.
* At least to some extent. They certainly produce a lot of open source code and do provide a lot financial support to open source projects. However, they don't in any way have a business model that depends on open source software.
Actually, I think it's time someone steps forward and points out the obvious truth.
This is clearly a subversive ploy by Big Aluminum to coerce our conspiracy-leaning compatriots into buying up unnecessary tin foil hats. Tell your friends they're being duped by Big Aluminum!
He who has no
Bruce Perens is such a tool. The sky is falling the sky is falling! Isn't he the one who made such a big deal out of the Novell/MS deal like it was the end of all Linux or something? I think he even showed up to the annual Novell tradeshow in SLC in 2007 and made some big press buzz about it. Glad I didn't hold my breath on that one. Bruce and Dvorak should start doing a tech predictions blog together so the rest of us would have something funny to read every week.
Let's take a couple:
"IE is derived from Mosaic, the original Web browser, open source with a license similar to Apache's." The implication is that Microsoft took Mosaic for free and then subverted it. While all browsers date their lineage back to Mosaic, Microsoft didn't base IE on open source code. Instead it licensed Spyglass which wasn't open.
"Vista's customer-hostile emphasis on digital rights management, often handicapping its own features in suspicion that the user might have illicit content, caused its downfall. IT managers won't stand for that, and thus Microsoft has a lot of code to trash and rewrite before it can make an acceptable server platform." Does Perens know anything about the server market about which he speaks? Microsoft has a server OS called Windows Server 2008 and it's selling quite well. It isn't the same as Vista and doesn't have the same perceived problems. Microsoft has a huge part of this market. Perens tries to use slight of hand by conflating Vista and Server 2008 but they are not the same OS.
He may or may not be right on his reasoning about why Microsoft is joining the Apache foundation, but the rest of the article is based on so many false premises that I'm skpetical about the objectiveness of his analysis.
Oh come on, you're not even trying. People have known about the Erris sockpuppet for years.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
The important thing is that if one race has lower IQs because of social reasons, to present it as such and not as a racial deficiency which would encourage discrimination (self, especially). Properly identified problems are properly corrected.
On the other hand, Michael, you do make the awfully big presumption:
"If IQ really is different for people of African descent then it is IQ which is broken."
There are obvious physical differences between people of different races. It would be ridiculous to say body-size didn't change a person's strength, and disingenious to say that head size/shape (just for one) provably does NOT have an effect on their thinking in any way.
This is like the gender debate. We know men are larger, that's politically correct to admit. But are there physical (not societal) mental differences? It's pretty much taboo to ask.
The statement should be:
If IQ scores differ for any reason commonly accepted to not actually change ability in general (skin color, native language) then the test is flawed from the practical standpoint of accurately predicting anything useful.
Sadly, all Bruce P. seems to write these days is Slashdot-grade conspiracy theory.
Er, no, Microsoft had to license it from Spyglass, Inc. Netscape chose to rewrite from scratch because the original Mosaic code was non-free.
[citation needed]... or is this just wishful thinking? Ever heard of Windows Server 2008?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Somebody confuses BSD and Apache license here... The rest of the rant is probably just as crappy as that quoted part.
You have misread his post. He even emphasized the important part and you still missed it. Red Hat, Google and Sun don't sell software, they make their money with support or other services.
But lets take a closer look at Trolltech. They make money with selling the dual licensed Qt. Why does anyone want to buy something they could have for free? You don't even have to use the GPL, you can use almost any Open Source license for your product.
The reason is simple: there are many companies that just can't afford to Open Source their products. It is a simple calculation. On the one side is the cost for a comercial Qt license. On the other side are the costs of releasing the product as OSS. And Trolltech makes money because the latter often outweights the former.
And the GP even gave good reasons for it. If you sell OSS you have to charge the first customer that much that it pays for the entire development of the software. And that often enough is to expensive. Especially if you have competition that does not allow redistributing their software. They estimate how many people will buy their product and distribute the costs of development on a number of customers.
Just imagine how much the development of something like Photoshop costs. And now try to charge a single customer with that. And you don't really have the option to pay your bills with support.
Microsoft can take Apache software and embrace and enhance, providing their own versions of the project's software.
Yes, but the Apache license does not allow forks to use the name Apache (I also bet it is a trademark).
Kind of hard to embrace and extend if you need to call it something like "Iceweasel"....
Thats insane. If there is a difference, it is because people are different. Not better or worse, but different.
In order to find a solution to a problem, you first have to be aware that a problem exists. Refusing to acknowledge the problem because the act of acknowledgment might offend some people's sensibilities is working only to perpetuate the problem, it isn't solving it.
Science isn't about political opinions, it is about observable and repeatable tests which give us information about our environment. If someone discovers a fact which isn't palatable, then swallow your distaste and start working on a solution which changes the situation.
Don't smother the people who happen to isolate facts which you find distasteful.
What you are suggesting is that if an established test doesn't provide statistical results which align with your sensibilities, then the established test is broken. Wrong. Your mode of thinking is wrong and you need to fix it.
A.I. Research. The peculiar science in which we know the question and we know the answer, but can't show the working
It's like I said in http://evanjenkins.net/blog/?p=4 MS can't compete with the ASF product. IBM does it, HP does it, Oracle does it. Soon you'll see the familiar http underneath the IIS.
Maybe MS are just hoping this fragments the OSS community the way the Novell alliance did, and that's all, just because Apache is one of the biggest OSS projects.
Twinstiq, game news
Microsoft can re-engineer apache into shit software. That's great. More power to them.
They cannot, however, force people to stop using apache.
No one will use Microsoft's web server which should be called Custer.
They're using their grammar skills there.
No, I'm not confusing them. I'm suggesting that the GPL, which is the license for much of the software on the typical Linux distribution, has effects which reach beyond the project (whatever it may be). Those effects, I suggest, result in massive amounts of wasted effort, and hold back progress of open source software. Let's take Linux out of the discussion for a bit, since it seems to be such an emotional issue for so many.
Let's talk about compilers. Only real nerds get emotional about compilers. Here's my prediction: LLVM will take over the world of free compilers, almost entirely displacing gcc, and most geeks are going to love it. GNU/gcc enthusiasts will make all kinds of excuses, but one of the biggest reasons why this is going to happen is that LLVM projects use a free license, not a copyleft license. It will be years before I'm proven correct, but this will happen. The world of free compilers will be liberated from the tyranny of gcc (credit to jcr for first uttering that phrase on the phone to me a few months ago).
I'm really going to be impressed with myself if I get a Troll mod for talking about free software licenses on compilers. It might go to my head.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
My biggest argument for BSD is this:
BSD is a direct analog of academic attribution. Much of the US's modern economic and scientific expansion was fueled by public-private collaboration between universities and industry. Publicly funded research institutes create fundamental science that is turned into products by companies.
Public research institutes get grants from industry and govt to keep doing fundamental science. Companies keep making products based on said discovery.
A hell of a lot of software isn't interesting enough for volunteers to do anything more than a half-assed job maintaining it. Seriously, writing the stuff is fun. The other 90% of the job is boring.
For those things, corporate developed software can be a Good Thingâ. Public gets to buy nicely polished stuff or read the science. Scientists get scientist cred. Companies get company cred called money.
GPL short circuits the this and says, "Fuck you, we're *keeping* this software academic. There is no room for commercial development in our world." That's their right, but as one of the FOSS faithful, I'm getting more and more leery of projects that don't have some pretty clear inertia.
Well, I for one want the option to buy commercial software. Sure, I'd like all my software to be awesome quality, open source, also free-as-in-beer software. But children in hell want ice water.
BSD licensing doesn't force software to be undead. If a bit of BSD code is taken and extra features, quality, service, maintenance, etc. are added by a company, that original code is still BSD.
IF AND ONLY IF that code is worth it to the volunteers to maintain, someone will plug along with the original BSD code. If two years elapse and someone wants to pick it back up, that original BSD code is still there for the taking. Meanwhile, the original code has found some life running my systems and helping some coders make a living.
With GPL code, things tend to get left in a half-dead state. A developer produces some whizzbang code and then either loses interest, or the maintenance burden (the other 90% of the SDLC, remember) become too big for one lone guy.
In the case of the GPL, I never get the opportunity to wave money in someone's face to maintain the software unless I'm prepared to wave lots and lots of money in someone's face to maintain the software in its pure, blessed by The Stallman, state.
I respect what you've done with Open Source, Bruce. You've created an intellectual framework where software's source code can be a community resource. I like that. But not all licenses are created equal. The GPL is too unidirectional and doesn't facilitate evolutionary pruning of dead branches.
. Penguins Surely Ca
Try being honest, then we'll discuss things on-topic.
In the meantime, using a third shill account is hardly impressive. How are people expected to believe what you say when you post from behind a lie?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
But if you think MS is giving their money for nothing, you will discover, like many other aggravated parties in the past, that they simply don't do that.
If Apache ever becomes irrelevant we may very well come back to this news as the starting point of its demise....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That some people that have benefited from embracing open methods of development do not know who their friends and enemies are.
Novell, Xandros and it seems now the Apache Foundation are going to bed with a very dangerous partner. May the bunnies protect them all.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We are talking about a good friend making a bad move by befriend the neighbourhood bully.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Or they could put something like mod_rewrite natively in IIS, so windows users are not FORCED to use Apache just for the lack of features.
mod_rewrite is not that important for intranet or corporate sites, but it's fundamental for any web site that needs to be found via Google or other search engines.
And it's fundamental for RoR.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
You want to program proprietary? Go ahead, fight the world all on your own.
If you think you can offer the same quality in your own, offering code whose source can't be seen, well, only MS can do that, and even them will find this more and more difficult now that even Sun is opening as much code as they can.
The problem with making money by selling software is that it goes against the normal flow of ideas and the creation of cultural goods.
You could want to make money by selling bottles full of air, that does not mean you have a right to do so.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I try to use GPLed software only.
BSD and BSD like successful projects are prime target to be easily swallowed by big corps with enough cash.
Apple hijacked lots of BSD stuff and the community got back zilch.
If you think the regular Joe is going to benefit in any way with MS's involvement in Apache, you are truly naive.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I am having a little trouble figuring out if you are sarcastic or serious.
I have great respect for the BSD kernel projects, they do some things a lot better than Linux. But if you compare the pace of kernel development, by source-code line count, Linux tremendously outpaces BSD kernel development.
What you're left with after that is a lot of Java projects. Which are great for enterprise, right now. But building a stack of new Java code is definitely building today's code for today, not tomorrow's code. Java is the conservative choice of enterprise at the moment.
And then there are community issues, like the Spring bug that showed us that this enterprise-critical code wasn't getting the eyes that an Open Source project with more non-company programmers does.
MS has been getting free labor from BSD for decades and lately appears to be trying to create an opposition between complementary projects in order to trouble the GPL. MS has as much or more to lose from the GPL than from anything else. The rest of us, we gain from the GPL. However, it is important to remember that the license chosen, is part of the game and that to play in any given sandbox, you must agree to the rules, whether ISC or GPL, or else find a different sandbox. So keep that in mind when MS trolls or pawns try to play BSD/ISC vs GPL licensing.
One caveat for non-ascetics is that in this day and age, especially when going up against a competitor known for 'embrace, extend, extinguish' breaking of technology, is that it isn't enough to just give away source code like we could back before MS politicized technology at the end of the 1990's. There now has to be something to keep the software free as a public resource while it evolved, sort of a payment-in-kind, rather than letting bad players not just walk away with free labor, but use it to undermine the developers.
To steer towards the technical aspects, the BSDs are interesting in that there is a lot of cross-pollenation between them. An advance in one usually rather quickly propagates to the others. Any of the four are excellent tools and complement Linux-based projects like Debian, Fedora, Busybox or UClinux. Any can be used in conjunction with just about any Free or Open Source Software including the various GNU-project tools we have come to use and rely upon, such as Apache, Perl or GCC.
The weakest one of the lot, strategically mind you, is FreeBSD. That is in part due to the mistake of allowing binary objects in the base. First, blackbox binaries are a security hole in and of themselves. Second, they make you as fully dependent on the vendor providing the binary as you are on the binary itself. That is a double kick in the nads for anyone that plans ahead. Increasingly businesses and governments are realizing that binary-only anything should not be touched even with the shitty end of a barge pole.
YMMV
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
NT4
win2000
Jesus Christ, Twitter...
These conversations with yourself have gone from obnoxious and unconvincing straight to batshit insane.
Get some help.
... unlike most other open-source software.
Runs on any platform, doesn't have a heavy-handed license, and Linux fans constantly use it as an example of the BEST application to ever run on Linux servers.
But those same fans conveniently forget to mention that it, along with Mozilla/Firefox, refuse to play the "pure" open-source games that cause the majority of the problems in Linux.
The real quality open-source projects like Apache and Firefox, have real business models and real licenses that work for those models...
The Linux OS open-source fans have constant breakage and forks. Go figure.
Mod me Troll... this is Slashdot, and a real discussion about usability and putting the end-user's desires first, won't fly. I know.
+++OK ATH
.htaccess.NET?
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