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Microsoft's CoApp To Help OSS Development, Deployment

Posted by timothy on from the meet-the-world's-biggest-foss-vendor dept.

badpazzword writes "Microsoft employee Garrett Serack announces he has received the green light to work full time on CoApp, an .msi-based package management system aiming to bring a wholly native toolchain for OSS development and deployment. This will hopefully bring more open source software on Windows, which will bring OSS to more users, testers and developers. Serack is following the comments at Ars Technica, so he might also follow them here. The launchpad project is already up."

6 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. How Long Before ... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... MS pulls the plug on this and leaves OSS developers hanging high and dry? Or worse, pulls some slight of hand with licensing, copyrights or patents and forces OSS dev's to stop in their tracks waiting for MS's next move?

    1. Re:How Long Before ... by ChrisMounce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe they recognize that there's a ton of open source software that people really want to use, and that easy installs of OSS on Windows adds value to Windows.

      Like how they contributed some Linux stuff a while back to make it easier to run Linux in a VM... with Windows as the host machine (I'm not clear on the details, so I'm probably getting the terminology wrong).

    2. Re:How Long Before ... by aBaldrich · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do you know what was the first thing I thought when reading the article and the project's launchpad? Halloween Document II. Why does Microsoft need to support Free Software? I mean, they claim to have everything they need, their new shiny should 7 have it all.
      This article's summary should be something along the lines of: Microsoft embraces OSS. How long before they extend their dirty tactics to OS? I don't trust them.
      The jewels of OSS were built because we, developers, needed them. We needed an OS and made Gnu, and Linux. We needed a web server and made Apache. We needed a GUI and made GNOME, KDE and Compiz. We needed a web browser and made Firefox.
      Now Microsoft needs package managing software, and they really believe we are going to build it for them. Laughable.

      --
      In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
  2. Re:I'll follow them here too. :D by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ask me about CoApp, I'll tell ya everything ya wanna know.

    Garrett Serack CoApp Project Owner

    I'll bite. Given Microsoft's track record, particularly its embrace-and-extend tactics, its questionable business practices, its status as a convicted monopolist, its use of vendor lock-in, its related use of proprietary file formats, and the Halloween e-mails from top management clearly defining Open Source as an enemy, I have just one question: why should we trust them?

    Most (nearly all) of the upper management people who arranged everything I just listed are still working at Microsoft.

    "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

    --
    It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
  3. Re:Microsoft has been surprising me lately by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't help but think you are incredibly naive. Have you been paying attention to how Microsoft is suing third party controller makers? Or how they are subverting their own standards? Or if you are in Europe, how they are heavily lobbying your representatives to hurt open standards? If you live in the US, don't worry, they are working to influence your representatives too. Not to mention they stand firmly committed to helping out a truly evil empire (yeah, saying 'evil' is a bit much but a government that censors political speech and has secret trials for people they don't like isn't exactly nice).

    I mean, this is just in 2010. You shouldn't have particular love for any company, but claiming that Microsoft has changed can only be done by ignoring the facts and reality. Don't do that.

    --
    Qxe4
  4. Re:"bring OSS more users" by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And more *windows* users, more windows license, more vendor lockin, and fewer alternative OS's...

    Until Windows users realize that all their favorite apps run great on Linux as well as Windows.

    If chrome runs on Windows and Linux and you just use Chrome most of the day then it becomes trivial to switch over to Linux since your app will look relatively familiar. The largest obstacle to Linux adoption besides its contempt for its users is the lack of applications people are familiar with. If someone got used to pidgen then they would be less likely to revolt when they tried using Linux.