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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?"
we'll make our *own* Open Source only ours will be better and it'll have beer and hookers! Ha! Forget the beer and hookers! ... wait ... that's not how that goes...
[signature]
No, my brother, Soviet Russia is in you now.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
Remember that butt ugly fish with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth that lives way down deep and has a worm-like appendage that dances tantalizingly just in front of its mouth? That's what I thought of when I read this story.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
MS is tying up traffic in Seattle today to bring all of their people together in one of the city's sports stadiums. Anybody know if that is the usual monkey-boy chair toss or is something up?
The stage is dark. Suddenly, a catchy theme pours from the speakers. It's... could it be... YES! Rick Astley! The crowd groans uncomfortably.
One of the screens showing the Microsoft logo goes blue. "Stop 0x0000000A or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL".
Steve Ballmer appears through a fine mist of perspiration twisted into delicate symmetrical whorls by an army of desperate interns, hair dryers in hand, all aiming at his armpits from just offstage. The humidity in the room increases by an order of magnitude.
"Seven, Seven, Seven! GIVE IT UP FOR ME!"
The stage erupts in blue flame. Mystical symbols are traced on the faces of aghast onlookers as Crawzogorium, the Infernal Keeper Of Ring 0 materializes above the podium.
"WHO DARES SUMMON THE MASTER OF THE HIERARCHICAL PROTECTION DOMAINS?"
Crawzogorium notices the bluescreen. "TAINT! WHO HAS DISREGARDED MY LAW OF KERNEL PROCESS ACCESS? I WILL PUNISH YOU NOW!"
The light in the rooms fades to a dark brown, and a tortured scream is heard. It's Ballmer. His interns have dropped their hair dryers and fled the scene. He's fallen to his knees and is scrubbing at his underarm area with the tatters of his shirt.
Things look bleak for our hero and his audience? How will it all end? Tune in next post!
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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.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Believe it or not, there is a vast world of non-linux developers out tehre - people who have no interest in developing for linux - who actually are interested in building and using oSS Windows tools. People will take them seriously, and they'll meet with a fairly large amount of success amongst windows-only developers.