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Microsoft Dilutes Open Source, Coins 'Open Surface'
sfcrazy writes "Now, Microsoft is coining yet another term to further confuse users — 'Open Surface.' Senior Director for Open Source Communities at Microsoft, Gianugo Rabellino, said at Oscon 2011 that customers don't care about the underlying platform as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open. That's when he threw the term 'open surface.'" This seems to have more than a grain of truth to it — after all, programmers have been creating open-source software with closed-source programming languages for many years, and I'm certainly more impressed by Google's willingness to let me export my data than I am turned off by the fact that they use a mix of open and closed source software to run the Google circus.
I believe this is step 2
This is so backwards from Slashdot norm. A summary with a tidbit of "news" in it and intelligently written opinion, no FA to read.
Am I missing something, did Microsoft not really coin this term or is there some biased, slanderous opinion that was unintentionally left out of the summary?
Chalk this down to a marketing team with nothing better to do.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It's called "published API".
Microsoft, as usual, is trying to conflate "published protocol" (an interface that can be used by independently developed software that may share no components with software providing interface) and "published API" (an interface that requires direct use of software providing the interface within common framework such as libraries, plugins, compilers' handling of interface definitions, etc.)
Shut up, Microsoft. Nothing short of published, open protocol is going to suffice. And none of your products will survive if you won't hide and obfuscate protocols used by them. You know that and we know that, so don't pretend that you are not our enemies.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'll be the first to coin "free (as in freedom) surface."
as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open
The key thing is to ensure that the APIs cannot be controlled, or changed or withdrawn or have conditions of use imposed on them. Open means more than just having them documented.
The only way to ensure that the APIs remain usable is to have the ability to rebuild the underlying software, rather than simply have a third party provide us with it - where the way the API is still under their sole control. To do that requires unencumbered access to the source code, and the entitlement to copy it and make other things that use it.
Without those abilities, there will always be the possibility that the original owner could arbitrarily change it, refuse to support it, add private functions and features or prevent certain classes of users from benefitting from it. These are the attributes that make free software valuable.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Whether or not this is a move to co-opt FOSS, I can't say, although I have my suspicions. But from a security standpoint, it sucks. Security breaches are becoming more and more common; with the underlying code being closed, there can be no independent confirmation of the quality of security measures, patches, etc. So when a vulnerability is found and 'patched', we still won't have any assurance, beyond Microsoft's say-so, that the patch fixes the problem and doesn't introduce any new ones.
This announcement doesn't really change anything, and on the face of it it's non-news. But as propaganda, it stands a good chance of getting more people to drink the MS Kool-aid. And remember when MS used to use undocumented OS calls to give their own applications an edge over competitors? I think we can expect such abuses to increase greatly - the appearance of openness will hide what's really going on.. The 'surface' may be 'open', but the underlying code, and the underlying politics, are murkier and more closed than ever.
Besides, 'Open Surface' sounds rather shallow, doesn't it?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
His revelation is right on the mark. I constantly see proponents of Open Source say things such as "It's auditable because the source code is free". Well yes it is, but no one cares. I think even from the Slashdot crowd the number of people who bothered to build Firefox from source is a small minority compared to those who downloaded it. Those who actually look at the code are an even smaller subset of those bothered to build from source.
People talk about open source as if users give a damn. Users are only interested in 2 things, how much it costs, and if it works. Open APIs are part of the ability for something to work if your idea of working is interoperability.
I believe the following statement on the front page says it all:
"rights under Microsoft patents covering such specifications are available separately"
Published APIs are important, nay, necessary for "cloud" applications and services to be useful to developers to build upon. Open source is necessary for community based development of the underlying applications or services.
Open source software is completely irrelevant in this instance and this appears to be a simple strawman attack from Microsoft against the open source movement.
> customers don't care about the underlying platform as long as the APIs, protocols and standards for the cloud are open.
That seems true. Customers want openness in the part that they deal with. Since the customer does not deal with system maintenance and development, he does not care whether the underlying platform is open. The provider of the cloud service, on the other hand, has a deeply vested interest in the openness of the platform. Maintenance, repair, and extension requirements all strongly favor an open platform from the cloud service provider's perspective.
Pointing out that the customer does not care about platform openness as long as the protocol is open is a bit like saying that automobile drivers do not care if the paving crew uses horse-drawn paving machines as long as they get the job done in a timely manner. It does not necessarily follow that horse-drawn paving machines make sense.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Have gnu, will travel.
His revelation is right on the mark. I constantly see proponents of Open Source say things such as "It's auditable because the source code is free". Well yes it is, but no one cares. I think even from the Slashdot crowd the number of people who bothered to build Firefox from source is a small minority compared to those who downloaded it. Those who actually look at the code are an even smaller subset of those bothered to build from source.
It isn't necessary for a user to personally view, modify, or even compile the source to benefit from open source. At some point the copyright holder may add shovelware, spyware or just plain bugs. They may choose not to port to other platforms. They may just abandon the product. In these cases. a user of a closed source app can do little but continue to use the old version until it no longer runs on current platforms or until advanced security threats make it unsafe.
But as long as one person has the will and ability to adopt what the developer has effectively or literally abandoned, the freeloaders can still their updated binaries. They won't be exactly what they wanted but the freeloaders never had or asked for that anyway.
All I am going to say to those of you who think "open source" does not matter is read Richard Stallman's paper "Who Does That Server Really Serve?"
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
Having open and honestly published API's and protocols is important and certainly better than nothing, but there are so many other reasons why access to source code is important for trust and freedom in computing.
Um... what? That's not what the word "open" means. If a door is "open" is might at some point in the future be "closed". The word open describes the current state of something.
Unless you mean "Take the word as it is given the specific context I will now thrust upon it, thus defeating the point of my own argument that the word has a specific universal meaning"
Look on the bright side - with M$ involved nobody's going to suggest intelligent design.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Is it just me, or are open* and cloud* becoming the new cyber*?
Middle manager: "Hey, did you try the new CyberCloud 2.0 Open-Surface ® operating system by OpenMicrosoft ®?"
MS patent goon: "You bet your Zune ® I did! It allows me to innovate my value-added cyberdata to enhance availability in scalable cloud based enterprise architectures channeling an enterprise virtualisation solution, thus leveraging existing ROI and increasing key delivarables as per OpenMicrosoft ® BestPractise ®!"
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond