Slashdot Mirror
Ask Sam Ramji About the CodePlex Foundation
This week the Codeplex Foundation announced its first project, the ASP.NET Ajax Library Project, as part of its first sponsored gallery, the ASP.NET Gallery. The CodePlex Foundation is now two months old, and Foundation President Sam Ramji has agreed to answer questions about the Foundation, its first project, and overall progress to date. Usual Slashdot interview rules apply.
I just want to know what it's been like to work with Bruce Campbell on so many projects, and if there's a "Spiderman Vs. Hulk" movie in the works anytime soon.
What do you say to the inevitable flood of "advocates" who claim Microsoft is doing this sort of thing to subvert FOSS?
Bonus points: Do you see Microsoft headed in the same general direction as Google and IBM where the core products and IP are held close to the chest while some of the more peripheral stuff (not key to revenue) is released under open licenses? Recent news like the open sourcing of one of the versions of the .NET framework make it seem that way.
Double bonus points: Do you see Microsoft ever releasing the whole of .NET itself under a non-restrictive license? Do you think there would be some benefit to Microsoft in pulling something akin to Sun GPL'ing Java and still retaining control over its direction? I ask this because it would end a lot of problems (imagined and real) with Mono, for example. But that would imply a lot of work with things like WinForms, ASP.NET and parts of the data client stack, without which any .NET implementation cannot help but be seen as a interesting experiment rather than as a valid enterprise-ready alternative.
To be clear, I would love to see Codeplex lead the way in facilitating a truly cross-platform alternative to .NET on the Windows platform. If that's Mono, great. Perhaps within Microsoft something like this is seen as a threat, but you guys need to get past that mindset. How come I can robustly host PHP or Python apps on Server 2003 today but I can't do the same with .NET in BSD? The Mono team has already done most of the heavy lifting, all you guys need to do is clear up the air around it!
(sorry for the multiple questions, these are things I've been thinking about lately a lot)
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Damn, I thought it said Sam Raimi.
Will priority be given to those using Microsoft tools, or can anyone play?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
How do you plan to integrate Ajax into the Web 2.0 Cloud to empower the Semantic Web using SaaS on top of a SOAP backend utilizing XML? What is the signal-to-buzzword ratio in day-to-day communications at your foundation? Isn't Ajax just soooo 2007, and shouldn't you rename your new project something more up-to-date, such as Tweetbook.blog?
Why not contribute to SourceForge.net instead of unnecessarly duplicating it?
davecb5620@gmail.com
From your FAQ:
We wanted a foundation that addresses a full spectrum of software projects, and does so with the licensing and intellectual property needs of commercial software companies in mind.
This seems to imply that there are existing foundations that do so without those licensing and IP needs. Regardless, what do you see as the role of a foundation like yours in addressing the needs of commercial software companies?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
How will the Codeplex foundation organize and align its [future] projects ? For example, in other foundation sites, over time there are typically several projects created by different groups, and while each is different, there is a good bit of overlap in the features and the main goals of the purpose of the project, and this can lead to confusion for people that would want to use the project, not sure which one is the better one to use.
Achievement Unlocked: Minefield!
Achievement Unlocked: Implied as Facts!
Unfortunately, the CodePlex Foundation has some sort of distinction between a gallery and a repository. I spoke for 30 minutes with Ramji a few weeks back, and yet I still have absolutely no idea what those differences are. He said that these galleries weren't about code, but rather about the ways corporations contribute code into them.
So, here's the first question: What is the difference between a Gallery and a Repository?
is your svn hosted on a 386? is it in someone's closet, on a dsl line? why is your source repository humiliatingly unbearably slow, and why does it take minutes for an svn update to even start? is the abominable performance a hardware, or software issue?
Does the issue of the extreme hostility to Microsoft across the FOSS community come up much when you're planning this sort of thing?
Half the Board of Directors, and half of the Advisory Board are from Microsoft. Why should we think that this anything but a Microsoft front?
The about page says "Our Board of Directors is an interim board" and that they will pick the new board but that's no too encouraging given who's doing the picking. CodePlex seems like Microsoft trying to create a community.
tomorrow who's gonna fuss
Can you give us an update on the development of Spider-Man 3?
A repo is an individual project. A gallery is just a way to display those projects as a collection. Granted, the collection can be inside of a repo. It's kind of like how "Boost" is a gallery and there are individual packages which might be in separate repos. That's not how Boost does it, but it's kind of a decent analog.
How can angry ACs look at themselves in the mirror knowing that they've worked at and succeeded in make bad grammar everywhere?
You and your cohorts are making huge progress in making bad engineering acceptable. How will you live down the effect that has had on the competitiveness of the US as a nation?
I though it said Sam Raimi, now that ajax implementation would have some cool animation.
maybe the appropriate question is, why should this answer bs eo complicated?
Why does the ASP.NET AJAX library need a 400k .js file? Isn't that a bit excessive???
Microsoft isn't used to dealing with open source, so you should expect a bit of clumsiness.
Everyone stumbles a bit when they first learn to walk.
How can you and your cohorts look yourselves in the mirror knowing that you've worked at and succeeded in making bad engineering acceptable and a common occurrance?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I see that you kept your AOL screen name. So, you were the 99th guy on AOL to think your were being unique? Kind of like MoodyBlue23464?
Why no Army of Darkness sequel?
So, Mr. Sam Gamgee, now that Frodo is gone, what do you plan to do?
Why did you need to use the name Codeplex? Now the foundation will always be associated to the codeplex.com site, which is owned and operated by Microsoft, and where all code is in Visual Studio Team System/Server/Foundation/Whatever it's called, a thoroughly closed patform for source control.
I recently had to deal with Codeplex in order to track down a bug on code hosted therein that we were using at my workplace. This is fine, I am quite happy to work with free projects in order to track down bugs. Unfortunately, I got the impression that Codeplex doesn't "get" what free collaboration is about.
For instance, it has a clickthrough for GPL and other free licenses. While harmless, it is annoying and shows that Microsoft doesn't "get" it. I also had issues doing an svn checkout of the code, since it looks like the svn repositories are hidden except for Codeplex developers. They did eventually gave me a URL to an svn checkout, but I had to ask, and it wasn't exposed in the site's web interface. I overall got the impression that unless there was some way to track me (e.g. with a username), I wasn't welcome to look at or contribute to their code. Regardless, I did eventually track down the bug and submitted a patch which got accepted.
My question, why these hoops? Is there still some restraint from Microsoft from allowing free collaboration? Do old habits die hard, is that why there are clickthroughs for free licenses, hidden svn repositories, mandatory registration? What can you tell me about the historical non-free culture in Microsoft and how it is adapting to free culture?
Microsoft isn't used to dealing with open source because they still aren't. They're still trying to get rid of it for a reason beyond me, especially considering that embracing it would guarantee far more sales. It's like the RIAA's sue it into oblivion thing, even though they'd make more sales with the new stuff if they even bothered considering it.
This is the biggest crux of MS I can never understand: they have amazing resources, tons of seriously talented developers, and they could get the whole software environment behind them (even open source) if they just played nicely. Can you imagine the capability a staff of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of developers have?
I guess the reason it takes 20-30 years to accept it is that old management needs to be replaced, and new management understands these ideas better. Pretty sad really, I imagine (although I admit I have no fact to back it), but that MS is quite burdened by management.
"why should this bs bs eo complicated?"
There, fixed that for you.
Hi Sam,
Codeplex claims to be an "open source project community". So why no GPLv3? If fact, why was GPLv3 actually *removed*? And how is this in the interests of the "community" of which you claim to represent?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." -Pravin Lal
That is Sam RAIMI.
This is that hobbit guy that went with Frodo to Mount Doom to chuck that ring into the lava pits.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Will there be a fourth installment of the Evil Dead series?