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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."
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...
I'm going to be honest, I posted that without first reading your article. Then I stopped reading your article after the first paragraph:
Microsoft joined the Apache open source project as a platinum sponsor, promising to put $100,000 per year into a project that beats its own IIS (Internet Information Services) in the market.
Uh, what? That's delusional, there... oh what grounds does Apache beat IIS, exactly? "Being named after a Native American tribe?" At worst, the two servers are neck-and-neck.
In any case, if you're delusional enough to believe the above quotation, and paranoid enough to assign some far-fetched conspiracy theory to every single action Microsoft engages in, I can see there's no room for a rational discussion.
Comment of the year
No, I haven't seen their code, and I highly doubt you have either, unless you've worked there. Now, stop with the fear-mongering bullshit based on stereotypes, especially about how their *closed source* code looks.