Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Off topic, but yes we are and have been for several months now.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Considering the stuff on CodePlex is way more useful than Linux, I'd say yes, people will take them seriously.
Of COURSE they will. In the REAL WORLD the vast majority of "open source" developers and users reside on either Windows or OS X. Linux and FreeBSD are niche OS's for people who are either too cheap to use OS X or too anti-Microsoft to use Windows. Naturally I will be moderated down as a troll, but I have easy proof, go look at what operating systems people run at ANY open source conference and you will see a wide swath of different PC's running Windows and Mac's running OS X. Linux? FreeBSD? Nope, sorry dudes, got take the short bus.
This is actually good news for open source, because before Microsoft took interest, very very few people really gave a shit about open source. Hell, other than Apache, I can't name a single open source tool or app that is better than its closed source equivalent. Microsoft is looking to turn this around by helping open source developers code to a REAL platform that is properly developed with coherent API's and a solid foundation of engineering that systems like Linux and FreeBSD simply lack. The reality is that open source applications need a closed source platform to build upon. Linux and FreeBSD were interesting experiments but the market has spoken and they have failed. It is about time you lot accepted reality and moved on.
No.
It's like Hitler funding a synagogue - you KNOW there's an alterior motive.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
What's the name of the new functional MS database access API? LINQ?
Wow, which shows you know all of jack and shit about what LINQ is. LINQ is not a database access API. LINQ can query arrays, enumerable classes, XML, as well as relational databases.
I wasn't arguing against Microsoft doing this. I was laughing at the claims that the Linux world is full of innovation while Microsoft doesn't innovate anything. This ignoring the fact that Linux is a Unix clone and the vast majority of the Linux userland is clones of proprietary apps and clones of other apps.
I'll probably be modded troll for this, but the reason Linux doesn't obsolete old hardware is that they typically don't support the hardware until it's obsolete on other platforms (or close to it). That's changing, but it's still at least 6 months usually before new hardware is supported on Linux (unless it's a generic driver interface of some kind).
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here