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MS Releases Open Source Alternative To BigTable

Posted by kdawson on from the devil-puts-on-gloves dept.

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."

21 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... just wow. by Jonas+Buyl · · Score: 5, Funny

    So this means pigs CAN fly?

    1. Re:Wow... just wow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Swine flu. Now anything can happen.

    2. Re:Wow... just wow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Only if that pig is seated in a chair in Ballmer's office.

  2. I lol'd by Aranykai · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?
    1. Re:I lol'd by brusk · · Score: 4, Funny

      The latter. Pirates are better.

      --
      .sig withheld by request
    2. Re:I lol'd by hairykrishna · · Score: 5, Funny

      Rubbish

      emacs is clearly superior

      --
      "Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
  3. really? by Darlo888 · · Score: 5, Funny

    They open sourced the surface?

    1. Re:really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Do some real research and stop proliferating garbage. The SpiderTCP stack used in NT3.1 was licensed from Spider Systems, who obtained and modified the BSD code, which was distributed under the BSD license. SpiderTCP is not and has not ever been open source, even if it was based on open source code.

  4. Which license? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Which license? by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      You should check your glasses and re-RTFA. Two points there:

      1) The Kumo search team did not develop the FS. They've used the one Apache Hadoop (guess the license).

      2) The Kumo search team have implemented a BigTable analog on top of Hadoop FS, and that's what they've open sourced. The result is a subproject of Hadoop now (again, guess the license).

      Also, this isn't obvious from TFA itself, but looking at the sources that it references, this is really old news: the blog post they link to is from 2007. It is also before Powerset was bought by Microsoft (that happened in 2008), so the relevance of all this to Microsoft policies is unclear.

  5. It's not an alternative to BigTable by wilsoniya · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:It's not an alternative to BigTable by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      Not completely correct. You can use BigTable right now. There are Google AppEngine APIs that can access BigTable. You just can't use it without using Google's servers, that's all.

      If, at this point, you still can't see why it's completely obvious why Microsoft would write an alternative to BigTable and open source it, all I can say you haven't been paying attention.

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:It's not an alternative to BigTable by prockcore · · Score: 5, Informative

      Using Google's AppEngine, you can use BigTable.. so while you can't install it on your own servers, you can still write software that uses it.

    3. Re:It's not an alternative to BigTable by BikeHelmet · · Score: 5, Funny

      Which means that your appliance that uses BigTable needs continuous access to the Internet.

      What!? This is absolutely outrageous~! None of my servers have internet access!

    4. Re:It's not an alternative to BigTable by martin-boundary · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Open sourcing anything software-related is a bad idea for Microsoft, unlike Google. Google are in the search/advertising business, not the software business. Their "crown jewels" are the databases they've collected about everything. Microsoft are in the sofware business. Their "crown jewels" are the source code for their products.

      You'll note that Google aren't opening up their crown jewels: you can't just download their raw web page index and do your own thing with it. Since they're not in the software business, they can afford to give away or open their software tools. Since Microsoft are in the software business, that hurts them.

      Now there's an interesting symmetry here. Being (primarily) in the software business should mean that actual content and databases isn't too important for Microsoft. If they wanted to hurt Google, they would open up their raw msnsearch indexes and other useful content databases. That would hurt Google, because people could download massive competing data collections and create their own competing search engines without the huge resource investment in crawler farms etc.

  6. Crap by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Crap by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

      They did: they gave to the Hadoop project an open source equivalent to Google's BigTable. Not only was this mentioned in the article, it was also mentioned in the summary.

      Note also that while Google has a bigTable, they have not released it as open source (as far as I can tell, but they do sell it as a webservice). So there may be some desire to undercut Google here with this move.

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      Qxe4
    2. Re:Crap by mc1138 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Looking at Microsoft's history, I could see them releasing it, making it freely available, just to take a little bit away from Google. The animosity between Microsoft and Google isn't exactly a secret, and neither is Microsoft's do anything to win attitude. Case in point, look at how they've handled piracy overseas. Rather than crack down, they've been lenient to help keep their market share up. Better Window's for free than no Windows at all... I could see them going totally open source if they thought it would improve their hold on the market or at least hurt some competitors.

      --
      The musings of just another geek and his junk.
    3. Re:Crap by bockelboy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, you're not even close.

      A company called Powerset developed the open-source alternative to BigTable called HBase. This was developed as an Apache Software Foundation project under the Apache license.

      Microsoft bought Powerset for a bucket of money because their search technology based of Hbase was pretty damned good. This was last year. This year, the folks behind powerset - as Microsoft employees - were given the go-ahead to continue committing to the ASF project and they continue to make it better. For what I can see, they aren't keeping anything juicy in-house.

      It's honest-to-goodness MS committing to an Apache project.

  7. no surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. HBase isn't a Microsoft product by bryanduxbury · · Score: 5, Informative
    This article is really confused. Powerset, before it was acquired by Microsoft, started work on HBase, which is a BigTable-like storage system that runs on Hadoop. Both HBase and Hadoop are Apache projects that are out in the open basically in no relation to Microsoft.

    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.)