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MS Releases Open Source Alternative To BigTable
gollito writes in with news that Microsoft has released an open source alternative to Google's BigTable file system, which is used on large distributed computer clusters. Matt Asay writes for CNet: "I also believe that Microsoft's fear-mongering around open source cost it years of productivity and quality gains that it could have been delivering to customers through open source. I hope that reign of ignorance is over."
So this means pigs CAN fly?
Is this really news, or just another opportunity for us to have everyones favorite slashdot debate?
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
They open sourced the surface?
So... the linked article says the Kumo search team (the ones who develop the FS) USE open source. But I can nowhere see that the FS is released as open source. A citation would be good, especially since the used license would be quit important.
Google doesn't sell/license BigTable in any way. It's used internally. I fail to see how it's possible to release an alternative to something which can't be acquired in any form.
I can't remember the last time I forgot anything.
"...I hope that reign of ignorance is over."
don't count on it, you know about embrace/extend/extinguish?
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Article says that they "use open source". Doesn't mean they give ANYTHING back at all, because they are not distributing it, thus the HEADLINE is so false it's unbelievable.
For instance, say they took even a GPL'd piece of software, extended it to add marvellous and important new features and then KEPT IT IN HOUSE. They can still use it, still claim it's "open source" but they NEVER have to let anyone but themselves see that code.
It's bad editing, bad reviewing, bad summarising and just outright lying. There is nothing "Open" about anything being done here apart from the software that MS chose to use.
is it mentioned anywhere? I can't find it.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Will be it attached to .Net? Probably, right?
Meanwhile, the Big Table has python and java (or any JVM variant) as languages.
And how open-source the MS Big Table will be? You can download it and use in your cluster or single PC?
i just wonder if they're as desperate as the couchdb bozos: http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr0n-star
Clearly Microsoft is using open source as a tactical weapon here, the way companies often do against entrenched competitors.
But is this a new tactic for them? No. Back in the '90s, they competed against Netscape in the browser wars by giving away IE for free; unlike Netscape, which was hoping to eventually start charging for Navigator, Microsoft made IE part of Windows (so it was effectively free for anyone who already paid for the PC).
And Microsoft released an "Open Letter to Netscape", asking its rival to cooperate with the W3C and avoid making proprietary extensions to web protocols. As if anything else about Windows desktop development at the time was based on open standards!
Going back even further, at one point Borland International was the leading PC software tools vendor. Microsoft wanted this title for itself (remember "developers developers developers developers"), so to compete against Borland's Object Windows C++ framework, they came up with MFC. And following Borland's lead, they made MFC open source (or "shared source" or whatever. Source available).
So no, they aren't having a change of heart. They will do whatever it takes to get control of this hot market segment.
100 bucks a copy for os licenses x 50K boxes...hmmmm no thanks..
Got Code?
> ...Microsoft's fear-mongering around open source cost it years of productivity and
> quality gains that it could have been delivering to customers through open source.
Yes, but did it cost Microsoft any *money*?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
And I can tell you that the entire original Register article was pulled out of author's ass. The CNet article just extended that ass pulling, Goatse style. Must be a slow news day. None of this will ever end up in Live Search. Nothing to see here, move on.
Try the Powerset demo, compare it to even current Live Search or Google. Realize that this is just Wikipedia they've managed to index, even at that quality. Scratch your head and wonder why Microsoft paid $100M for it.
Microsoft has allowed two of the primary HBase developers, who work at Powerset, to continue their open-source work on HBase, which is definitely cool. But to say that Microsoft is releasing this is just flat out wrong.
(Full disclosure: I am a non-Microsoft-employed HBase committer.)
I hope that reign of ignorance is over.
Lets see... Nope, Ballmer is still in charge!
Nick
So completely missing from article summary and article itself is any information about the software.
This guy is just late to the party. HBase was contributed to the hadoop project by Powerset. A startup that microsoft bought.
None of the articles say it, but they are probably talking about HBase. If this is the case, this is seriously old news.
HBase was started by the Powerset guys before being acquired by Microsoft. After the acquisition there was a lot of concern in the Hadoop community about whether the Powerset guys would be allowed to continue to contribute. They have, and as far as I can tell, the community is not particularly concerned about MS's involvement.
A fast reading got me confused about that terminology. Lets see:
- Last july Microsoft bought Powerset, that were developing what would be the base of a semantic search engine.
- That company (before all of that) used Hadoop, and helped to build over it a BigTable-like distributed storage engine, called HBase.
- And in last october (thats Microsoft contribution to open source) Microsoft enabled the Powerset's developers that were contributing to HBase to continue their work there.
They aren't releasing any "new" open souce, just some of the new employees keep contributing to a project they helped to start when they weren't inside Microsoft. What they will be releasing (not as source, only as service) a new search engine based on that work.
To be a ninja, you only have to share something you made yourself.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Every time I see Matt Asay's name mentioned in article summaries here on /., I'm shocked for a moment, because I have an uncle with that name.
they are a business, they care about profit.
the great thing about being a monopoly is, you don't have to ship quality products - your customers can have whatever they want so long as it's black.
seriously, if you are a de facto monopoly, as ms has been for the last, say 20 years, and you make 50 % gross margins , why on earth would you spend money on quality ?
that sort of thinking is what seperates techies, who toil in the trenches, from c suite execs
The INTERNET: All of the piracy, none of the scurvy.
Microsoft doesn't produce software. Never has. They buy companies that do, they kill companies that do. They buy software that is. They kill software that is. They're still working hard to make sure their OS is compatible with Windows For Workgroups and Botnets For Losers.
Microsoft is a software developer like Vince Shlomi is a ShamWow inventor.
E
It's apache, which is more free than GPL.
More free if you want companies to be able to use the software without giving anything back to you.
Less free if you want changes to always be public for everyone forever.
I'm all for BSD style licenses in some cases that allow a company to use code without contributing changes back to anyone. But do not redefine what "free" really means just because you have an irrational fear of prophetic guys with beards.
Otherwise you are missing the whole point behind open source software, which is that the source in in fact open. Allowing some changes to exist behind locked gates is in fact less free no matter how you weasel it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I meet your ninjas and your pirates and raise you Lumberjack Commandos:
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
... Profit?
I presume they are talking about HBase. We used this a while back and it was pretty flakey and slow. There are numerous alternatives out there, for example http://hypertable.org/ Which has the added advantage of being written in C++
Site here: http://hypertable.org/ GPLv2 license
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"Or this is Microsoft trying to hurt Google because they fear them more than open source"
Or this is Microsoft trying a variation on its old tactical moves. Their usual game is proprietary lock-in. They can do that with open source through extension. e.g.
Step 1: Create an open source project, carrot on a stick.
Step 2: Promote and support open source project, to build up numbers of developers so other competing software projects die out.
Step 3: Earn money from extensions to core project, but say you are focused on support of core.
Step 4: Focus on money making extensions so original open project becomes ever less of overall software project.
Step 5: You win, everyone is making software compatible with your software.
Corporations like to build in ways to control markets into their products. Control is central to their planning long term. (Microsoft are not the worst company in this respect at all, but they are a very high profile company). (Corporations are often run by control freaks. They want to be the boss and in power over others, so their thinking centers on how to control others, its how they fight to the top in corporations. So once you see their moves in terms of control, and how to achieve control of others, their tactical games often become a lot clearer).
For example, Windows was built onto DOS, now DOS is all but dead and Windows is central. If they gave the source code to DOS away it would make no difference to them.
Most Corporations think in terms of how to create control, even though they would use any excuse they can to say they are not aiming to control. So I can't see Microsoft stopping its lock in games. Its founded on control of a platform at its core. As they evolve their core, everyone else has to rework their code as the old core dies out and looses support. DOS, Win3.1, Win95, Win98, Win2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7 ... same game each time, their focus is on control and extension. It helps them milk money out of other companies and places other developers at a disadvantage as they are dependent on what Microsoft do and so Microsoft can undermine other developers whenever they wish by undermining the foundations of other software projects built on Microsoft core software.
Control is central to the reasoning behind Microsoft's game of moving and extending their definition of an OS until everyone ends up writing Microsoft programs where Microsoft has to be central to all software everyone creates.
So looking at this news of Microsoft's alternative to BigTable file system, its their game all over again.
Microsoft don't just compete by trying to make better products as they don't even need to be the best as they instead compete by becoming central to other people's development work and so gain benefit from many other people's work building up the profile of Microsoft's core software, which is made central to everyones work. Plus being in control allows Microsoft to undermine the foundations of other software projects whenever they wish.
Why support the vole and his attempt to destroy open source.
I hope that reign of ignorance is over.
I hope not.
Microsoft is not distributing open source software. This is not an open source product. It can't be used on multiple platforms. It can't be modified and freely distributed. It is not open source.
Microsoft does openED source where you can view the code but never use it outside of your project and never on another platform other than Windows.
Open Source was defined around 15 years ago in the attempt of ensuring that the definition for open source was long standing.
Microsoft and open source together is an oxymoron.
Microsoft claimed in 2007 that Open Source was dead and that Linux was dead. Their attempt to do this was about the time they claimed that open source violated 235 of their patents. Then they refused to state which ones even though the consumers world-wide asked for it.
They were the same company that sued TomTom and backed the company with funding for SCO to sue IBM and other linux backers.
We do not, in open source, put any trust in Microsoft nor do we let them attempt to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Open Source by closing it or limiting it. They are trying to get big business to think that the only acceptable form of open source is that which is defined by Microsoft.
Everyone should be objecting to Microsoft and this 100% of the time.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Americans fucking americans !
GPL and Microsoft are two sides of the same coin !
They are allowing developers that work for a company they purchased (so the developers work for Microsoft) to continue contributing to software released under the Apache 2.0 license.
No matter what the rest of the company is doing, this activity is exactly the "Open Source" that you seem to think it isn't.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Also, who cares if its 'open source'.
Its only news if its Free software
Thank you, but I'll store my data on *MY* server, using protocols implemented in *Free* software.
What 'open source' license is Kumo released under. Does it pass the definition of Open Source at Perens.com, in relation to redistribution, source code, derived works, restrictions, technology-neutral ...
"I hope that reign of ignorance is over."
If the old farts are still in charge, ignorance continues to rein supreme.
This is the problem with the dual personalities of Microsoft. You know that if you use their open source and make a good profit you could end up being sued for not having licenced the patents covering the technology.
Avoid at all costs. At least until their get their split personality syndrome under control.
You don't understand. I'm not "accusing them of lying". I know it for a fact that they're lying.
Read it. Even just the headings:
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html
There is no patent risk (well, no more than any other Apache 2.0 licensed software) involved in this particular instance.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.