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Open Source Guy Takes the Hardest Job At Microsoft
jbrodkin writes "Gianugo Rabellino, founder of the Italian Linux Society and a key member of the Apache Software Foundation, traded his Linux and Mac PCs in for a Windows 7 laptop and took on a newly created job at Microsoft designed to encourage collaboration between Redmond and open source communities. 'Developers nowadays are mostly to be found in the open source world,' the new Microsoft executive says. 'We need to go where they are.' With Rabellino's help, Microsoft is expanding its successful partnership with PHP developers , but Steve Ballmer and crew are a long way from completely erasing their poor reputation in Linux and open source circles."
It's a trap!
I for one welcome our new frenemy with aspirations of overlord-hood.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Random php user group in random country lauds some particular act of microsoft, and this ends up being 'microsoft's successful partnership with PHP developers' ?
.net., .whatever, silverlight et al ?
what about asp, asp.net,
and really, what 'partnership' anyway ?
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Successful partnership between Microsoft and PHP developers. What could possibly go wrong?
Mostly harmless.
It's not the hardest job in MS. It's a PR stunt. Just being hired is already a win for MS.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
13 years later, Microsoft realizes that PHP is so much better than .NET.
Congrats.
If I remember correctly there was some guy name Bill Milf who had a similar position. Did that ever amount to anything?
Steve Ballmer is the same type of creep as George W. Bush or David Cameron. Instead of Open Source think Compassionate Conservatism or Big Society. It's all the same thing and just a way to market useful idiots as being in the club and get them to work for free. If it doesn't make them and their pals a profit (or reduce a loss) they'll hang you out to dry the second the going gets difficult.
How about instead of selling out to these toffs people learn management, marketing, and finance themselves so they can provide a better alternative? Microsoft, the Republicans, and the Tories will never change. They just want to be top dog and don't care how they do it. Anyone who things they have changed is wasting their time. It's the 1930's all over again.
I mean, I don't know this guy personally, so it's not an attack on him, but MS has hired various "open source" people in the past, and what do we get?
MS pays Nokia to drop KDE and MeeGo. MS pays Novell to develop a C# and .Net stuff (which prevents the antitrust commission calling them a monopoly), and when Novell goes bust, MS buys their patents.
I don't see any indication that this hire is any good news for us.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Would the Open Source Communities agree to be directed by the director paid by Microsoft? Shouldn't the job title be something along the lines of manager/director of relationship/liaison with open source communities? Or Microsoft thinks it can just move in and claim ownership by fiat? What happened to embrace and extend before extinguish?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
No one wants to take a drink from it, no matter how thoroughly they claim to have cleaned it.
Looks to me more like monkeys in flying chairs.
All a matter of propulsion.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You don't have to sue to protect patents. That is trademarks you are thinking of. With patents you can sue those who only sue you first if you want.
Destroying the open source community and wanting to hire them because "that's where the developers are" are hardly contradictory. They gotta eat somehow...
If that's where the developers are it's partly because Microsoft's business practices and general stagnation drove them there.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Anyone remember when Daniel Robbins (founder of Gentoo Linux) went to work for MS?
From Wikipedia
Robbins' move to Microsoft, on 13 June 2005, attracted attention[15][16] within the Linux community, which has historically had a combative relationship with Microsoft. He described his role working for Bill Hilf as "...helping Microsoft to understand Open Source and community-based projects..."[17]
However, Robbins resigned less than a year later on 16 January 2006 due to frustrations that he was unable to fully utilize his technical skills in this position. His new job is at ABC Coding Solutions where he will be focused on building in .NET on Windows.[18]
I'm quite certain he browses Slashdot, perhaps he could chime in on what Microsoft has been up to?
According to TFA, 'Rabellino's main focus right now "is to enable PHP to shine on our platforms."'
So, he's there to get people to migrate from LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) systems to WIMP (Windows, IIS, MS-SQL, PHP) systems.
Microsoft knows the FOSS community has some power now. So instead of their old tactics, they're trying to be nice. Diplomatic.
As in, diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst you find a rock.
That's not how patents work. See "Submarine patent".
however the stupidity is that, php developers pretty much see php as a part of linux, apache by now. EVEN if you push it too hard to argue about oracle and the situation of mysql, and take mysql out of the situation and put any mysql fork or postgressql, php is pretty much served on linux, apache. mod_rewrite, for example, is a daily facet of web development with php. same goes for A LOT of modules that can be compiled with apache. moreover, entirety of the scripts/software which create the php development scene, commercial or noncommercial, run exclusively on lamp. i used the world entirety, because its a situation that far out. actually that is the scene that caused php development to get this big in the first place.
no php developer will ditch lamp and start working on 'wimp'. this at most can cause an infiltration of php developers into windows/iis scene, and cause microsoft to lose on that front too. because due to the synergy in lamp, and the immense software scene of php apps on lamp, php devs will gravitate towards lamp and they will take ex-microsoft clients with them too - 'this requires this, that and that paid infrastructure in ms, but, see, its free on lamp' -> whoops - another client moved to lamp. because, its free into the future - even if you expand, expand expand, cluster, cluster and set up farms.
their effort is pretty much pointless.
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Microsoft is evil, blah blah blah, but if people really want open source alternatives to make any progress with regular people, they need to gain mindshare.
open source alternatives dont need to make progress with regular people in web development scene - that scene is already OWNED by open source. the amount and variety of apps on lamp stack (linux apache mysql php - insert postgres sometimes), and their usage is so huge and so varied. this is what causing microsoft to try to bring all those small and medium businesses (and recently big ones) that got out of their hands in regard to web presence, back to microsoft platforms.
the summary is - all this is pointless. there is no reason for anyone, developers and clients alike, to move to microsoft's platforms. everything is free on lamp stack. even if you go VERY big, and start to cluster servers and then have to employ server farms. all you need to pay for is development of your app. no licenses, no other shit. and, development is quite cheap, because the php dev scene is big.
there is nothing microsoft can offer to open source community in this field.
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Just bear in mind, they have patents (rightly or wrongly) and *could* use them against Linux - but so far have not done so.
I don't really see how they can use patents against "Linux" -- you can't sue "Linux" as an organization. In theory they could sue IBM or Google or someone like that, but those companies have their own patent arsenals. Conversely, they could sue one of these little guys who has no patents, but the little guys also have no money. So Microsoft might get an injunction, but then they've tipped their hand and three days later there is a version that works around whatever patent the old version was allegedly infringing.
And on top of that, any real aggression against Linux would be bad PR for the open source developers they're allegedly trying to woo here, plus any potential antitrust problems for going after a competitor to their monopoly, plus the risk of IBM or someone retaliating, or the EFF or someone else starting a project to invalidate whatever patents they're using to rattle sabers.
It's a lot safer for them to just spread FUD and not actually litigate anything. Although it makes you question their stance in favor of software patents -- one wonders whether a bunch of patent lawyers who don't want to be out of a job aren't lobbying the lobbyists.
This is not how patents work. You can let A infringe all you like and never tell B why. Heck, maybe A is just your good buddy. Patents are not impacted by your choice not to litigate against one infringer.
Hardest job at Microsoft? Pffft...hardly. That prize went to the Windows Vista marketing V.P.
I wouldn't say that is a good example, because MSFT offered them the standard RAND* licensing that they have been selling everyone else for years with regards to FAT32 and TomTom gave them the finger.
So I'd say that is a bad example as you're basically arguing against RAND which actually works quite well. With RAND a company can sink money into R&D and still get paid for their work without holding back innovation since the price is so low nearly anybody can use it without hurting the bottom line. Just look at all the BS we've had with regards to RAM thanks to Rambus deciding to secretly patent everything they heard at Jedec and ignore RAND. The industry ended up fighting lawsuits for over a decade, along with price fixing and a bunch of other messes, all in an attempt to deal with Rambus thanks to their trolling.
So if MSFT had said "Anyone that uses FOSS has to pay 300% more" I'd say that would be a good example, but just deciding RAND should be "free as in beer" just because you want it to be doesn't sound like a fair argument in light of how many years we've had RAND and seen that it works.
*-Oh and for those that don't know the lingo RAND stands for Reasonable And Non Discriminatory pricing. It has been SOP in the standardization process for decades now (and I think it would be easy to argue FAT32 is a standard considering how many manufacturers use it) and works quite well. Here is the Wiki Article for those that want to read up on it and see some examples, such as the submarine patents on GIF and JPEG as to why RAND is needed.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Last I checked, most PHP developers still write code on Windows (albeit with Apache+MySQL rather than IIS+MSSQL).