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Microsoft Donates Code To Apache's "Stonehenge" Project

Posted by timothy on from the but-one-dimensional-villains-are-easier-to-comprehend dept.

dp619 writes "Several months after joining the Apache Foundation, Microsoft has made its first code contribution to an Apache project. The project, known as Stonehenge, is made up of companies and developers seeking to test the interoperability of Web standards implementations."Reader Da Massive adds a link to coverage at Computer World.

5 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing to lose, only to win for Microsoft by postmortem · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Interoperability simply means that Microsoft stuff that was not used (or possible to use) with OSS projects, will be used now. Which leads to more sales.

    Microsoft still charges for its products, it just has opened doors to more customers.

  2. Re:so, is it safe? by HiThere · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If the company itself, i.e. the patent holder, donates the code, then it is probably safe. I'm not in a position to judge how useful it might be. But MS has long taken the position that it supports the BSD license, and other similar licenses that allow it to take code contributed by others, close it, modify it, and sell the closed & modified version under a new name.

    I can't say that I know that they actually support such projects, but that's been their official position for over a decade.

    --

    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  3. Re:I don't get it... by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's a lot easier to fix IE than to ditch IE and shoehorn Gecko/Webkit into the IE programming model. If developers miss their COM objects, there will be riots in the street. When I say easier, I mean for a company that would have to throw away a huge investment as well as have many people around who know so much about a product that doesn't behave like that any more. Plus, not invented here.

  4. Re:Other notable contribution by batkiwi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It allows the apache developers to do compatability testing on MS os's without having to go to the store and buy a copy of each OS for each developer.

  5. Re:You did it wrong. by bdelacretaz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I do believe "Embrace" was covered when Microsoft joined the Apache foundation....

    Microsoft did *not* join the Apache Software Foundation, companies cannot be members in any shape or form. I have written about that before at http://grep.codeconsult.ch/2008/07/26/hey-el-reg-microsoft-is-not-becoming-an-asf-member/