Microsoft Launches Its Own Open Source Foundation

darthcamaro writes "Microsoft already had its own open source (OSI-approved) licenses, its own open source project hosting site and now it's adding its own non-profit open source foundation. That's right, the company that is still banging the patent drum against open source now has its own 501(c)(6) open source foundation. Officially called the CodePlex Foundation, it's a separate effort from the CodePlex site and is aimed at helping to get more commercial developers involved in open source. Considering how they continue to attack Linux and open source, will anyone take them seriously?"

Comments

Re:Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

[Desler]

Maybe Microsoft's new strategy is to split and balkanize the open-source community with a bunch of conflicting licenses and communities.

Microsoft doesn't need to do that. The open-source community has been doing that just fine by themselves for years now.

Re:trap

[Shotgun]

The problem with Ubuntu, or any other Linux for that matter, is that the lack of a stable ABI and certification process for hardware makes it damned near impossible to sell at retail. Which wifi sticks work out of the box at Walmart? Which of the half dozen all in ones that are on sale this week at Staples work, and which are paperweights? Will this laptop at Best Buy work out of the box, INCLUDING wifi, and will it continue to function after the next update without jumping through CLI hoops from hell?

Which one of these devices will continue to work after the next Windows upgrade?

I tend not to throw out perfectly working equipment just because Microsoft decided to gratuitously change their device driver model. I find that 5yr old video and sound cards work just fine in recent releases of Linux, but aren't worth the manufacturers time to create new device drivers in order to operate under the latest versions of Windows. How much hardware was thrown out in order to update to Vista?

You keep buying your cheap crappy hardware at the Staples clearance sales. I'll buy decent equipment that is built to last longer than 6 months, and use an OS that doesn't obsolete it.