Cloud Driving Microsoft To Open Source?

Julie188 writes "Sam Ramji thinks the days where Microsoft's, (and Apple's, and Oracle's) love-hate relationship with open source are numbered, thanks to the cloud. Whereas some open source advocates say the cloud may kill open source, because users won't have access to the source, Ramji says the cloud will be its salvation. Ramji, Microsoft's original internal open source dude, thinks companies building clouds won't be able to keep up if they don't participate in open source communities because that's where the developers building new cloud infrastructure are doing most of their work. The main concerns standing in the way for both cloud builders and users of free software are legal fears, he contends. These include fears of the GPL's copyleft provision and fears of being sued by downstream users. Is he right ... or full of FUD?"

Comments

"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[einhverfr]

Also not present in the article.

On the whole I agree with Ramji here though. I think that the development of cloud computing in many areas (though not applicable everywhere of course) will force many companies who are sitting on the fence to adopt open source both for reasons of up front cost, and also for reasons of participation in the community. This trend will furthermore move up the stack until all that is held as proprietary (even in BSD-licensed projects) will be a few enhancements tailored to the niche of the specific cloud provider. This is already to be seen in BSD-licensed projects like Apache and PostgreSQL, and it is almost certain to occur with GPL-licensed (not AGPL licensed though) as well.

The fact is that although from a user, access to the source is not necessarily provided with cloud computing, as a provider, it is absolutely necessary.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[Meshach]

Also we need to realize exactly what "adapt open source" means. Projects providing an interface to an open standard is different from companies putting their CVS on a public FTP every night.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[einhverfr]

Well, here's how things work with the (BSD-licensed) PostgreSQL community:

Lots of people develop and share code. Some companies release proprietary, closed source versions. For example, EnterpriseDB offers Oracle compatibility above what the community wants, and therefore finds a niche market in those who are migrating from Oracle. Green Plum offers a parallel-based BI version. However on the whole these companies contribute back everything the community would actually accept or want in order to minimize the headaches of maintaining it themselves.

So when we talk about adapting open source, that's the model that comes to mind: sharing everything one can to reduce costs of code maintenance, while keeping whatever the community doesn't want as part of the company's own product offerings.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[Squiddie]

To be honest, I don't like the whole idea of SaaS at all, which is what this "cloud" computing is. In the end all it does is take control away from the user, regardless of the software being open or not. I can see it being used for a business so that employees can take their work home with them, but once you start trusting others with your data, you're going down a dangerous path.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[einhverfr]

The danger is there not just regarding open source though. Think of the dangers it poses for data ownership for businesses. I am a firm believer that businesses should not store their data in a cloud, unless it is one they have direct back-end access to (like a virtual private server or something), and even then they should be taking frequent backups and bringing those off the cloud.

The fact is, critical data needs to be owned by the company that is using it, and it needs to reside (at least in backup form, if not in fully managed form) inside the company's infrastructure.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[black6host]

The fact is, critical data needs to be owned by the company that is using it, and it needs to reside (at least in backup form, if not in fully managed form) inside the company's infrastructure.

Absolutely. I can't tell you how many small businesses I've worked with that are franchisees and one of the big selling points is that they won't have to manage an internal network. The franchise company handles the whole vertical market app (such as dispatch software for service companies) including storing the data. I ask them: what happens if your internet access goes down? How are you going to find our where your techs are supposed to be? What about if the hosting company for the parent company goes down? Or, worst case scenario, you get in a conflict with the parent company and they don't release your data to you. You're out of business. Even if you had the data you don't have the app to read it. Trust me, this is being tried by a lot of franchise type companies and it's not going to be a happy ending for someone. The franchises aren't stupid, they know control of the data is control of the franchisee.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[JasterBobaMereel]

This might be like Android is OpenSource ... i.e. it is OpenSource, and so are all the components, but from the user's point of view this make no difference at all you are still locked into a propitiatory sandbox ...

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[ozmanjusri]

Interesting timing for another round of this particular FUD.

You do know Ice Cream Sandwich will be fully open source again?.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[JasterBobaMereel]

Many Android devices are effectively locked down so that you can only use the interface provided, regardless if it is open-source or not ... But at least with Android you have the device in your hand and so can always tunnel underneath the interface and get at the real system ...

With Cloud based systems the interface is all you have access to and so what the actual system is written in what OS it is on are largely irrelevant ...

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[somersault]

In the end all it does is take control away from the user

Most users don't want control. They want to get on with what they want to do without having to configure everything themselves.

regardless of the software being open or not. I can see it being used for a business so that employees can take their work home with them

Nope, that's what VPN is for.

Cloud services are good because somebody else is taking care of the boring parts for you - like being on-call 24/7 to make sure your services stay running so that you don't have to. I'm considering moving our email to external hosting so that I don't have to worry about redundancy and reliability issues myself, and also because you get constant feature upgrades without having to buy and install new versions of Exchange every couple of years (not that I do that anyway - I only upgrade when we actually need new features). I'd consider moving our internal web applications infrastructure to cloud hosting if its resource requirements grew massively, but I doubt that will happen.

but once you start trusting others with your data, you're going down a dangerous path.

It depends on the data, and whether it's encrypted for one thing. There are certain things that you want to keep in-house, but a lot of day to day business is pretty mundane stuff. Our email is already filtered via a third party, so all of our email is going through them unencrypted anyway. I wouldn't have a problem moving all of our email out of house. One benefit of that is that the email service I was looking at has a higher SLA than our ISP provides, so when our internet goes down (which annoyingly happens around once a year, last time was some kind of interface card burning out at our local exchange), people will be able to use their phones as modems and still get their email since it's hosted elsewhere.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[JAlexoi]

In short:

• build your own network, don't use internet
• buy a university to train your own engineers
• hire those chip designers to create a chip that you will own
• build a manufacturing facility to build your own hardware
• do not use anything from anyone else...
• and obviously, closed-source is then evil!!!!

In other words, your statement just stinks of medieval thinking - when people cared a lot about self-sufficiency.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[ozmanjusri]

Many Android devices are effectively locked down

I haven't seen many. Cyanogen seem to have ROMs for most of the current crop - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices. Can you link to a few locked-down examples?

With Cloud based systems the interface is all you have access to

So not at all like Android then?

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[einhverfr]

I think you are taking things to an extreme nobody even in the Middle Ages would have agreed with.

The points I make here are about control of your own data. This is an important point. If your internet connection goes down, that's bad. But if you lose your data permanently this is often something that can easily make a business go under, not to mention cause legal problems when filing for taxes, etc. If you control your data, you control your business. How you reach that data is secondary. If you are running a PostgreSQL server on Amazon's cloud but taking nightly backups onto your site, that's one thing. If you are trusting your data to Cloud Apps R Us and have no direct access to backups, that's bad news.

Additionally in many cases, there could be additional issues. Consider the case of credit card data, for example, and PCI-DSS compliance.....

I am not saying not to use cloud computing. I am saying to stay in control of your data. One of my customers, for example, runs their web servers for business apps in Amazon's cloud and then connects from there back to database servers running in their own network. I see this as reasonably responsible. If Amazon decides to screw them, they could deploy inhouse quickly and with no data loss.

Often asking the questions is more important than pontificating answers.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[pseudorand]

And then you tell them what it will cost them for you to do all the form them and they quickly figure out that it's better to take the small chance that they get in a dispute with their franchiser and hope they can sue for damages if it does occur than to create an entire IT support system themselves. Simple math, centralized IT is cheaper.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[BitZtream]

Yes, it will certainly be open source by the time humanity ceases to exist, but no one will care then.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[exomondo]

Most users don't want control. They want to get on with what they want to do without having to configure everything themselves.

I definitely agree with this, as much as 'control for the user' is touted as a benefit of open source the prevalence and success of devices that don't offer this proves that the user does not want control, all they want is for the device to do what it is supposed to do, they want someone else to take care of the management and configuration of it for them.

Re:"Salvation" is a bit overstatement

[exomondo]

I haven't seen many. Cyanogen seem to have ROMs for most of the current crop - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices. Can you link to a few locked-down examples?

You really haven't seen many devices that you have to root before being able to install cyanogenmod?

Next up

[ColdWetDog]

On AirNews

The kernel in Windows 9 will be Linux.

Steve Jobs will be reincarnated as a Pony.

Obama will get us out of Afghanistan, balance the budget and move Wall Street to a FEMA trailer court outside of Biluxi, Mississippi.

Re:Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd settle for a bit of the transparency that he promised.

Re:Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll settle for an iPony.

Re:Next up

[cupantae]

The kernel in Windows 9 will be Linux.

...so will we be able to claim that as The Year of the Linux Desktop?

Re:Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be made of bologna.

Re:Next up

[Greystripe]

Make it ham and I'll buy one.

Re:Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

On AirNews

The kernel in Windows 9 will be Linux.

Steve Jobs will be reincarnated as a Pony.

Obama will get us out of Afghanistan, balance the budget and move Wall Street to a FEMA trailer court outside of Biluxi, Mississippi.

Funny aside, you need to learn how to spell the town you are trying to make fun of, ya?

Re:Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

Osama will get us out of Afghanistan

Re:Next up

[Bacon Bits]

The kernel in Windows 9 will be Linux.

...so will we be able to claim that as The Year of the Linux Desktop?

Don't be silly. We still have to wait for SP1 to be released.

Re:Next up

[JonJ]

Mod parent funny.

Re:Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear P.C.,

Don't buy anything from this 'Steve Jobs'. While he makes good music players, they involve no magic whatsoever, regardless of what he claims. And his lock-in schemes are greedy and dangerous. He's been organizing orchestras to gouge the average pony!

-T.S.

Re:Next up

[Anonymous Coward]

The kernel in Windows 9 will be Linux.

...so will we be able to claim that as The Year of the Linux Desktop?

It's The Year of the Windows9/Linux Desktop fer Christ sake! Sheesh!

Re:Next up

[datavirtue]

It is just a matter of time before Microsoft releases an OS based on Linux.

Re:Next up

[gmhowell]

The kernel in Windows 9 will be Linux.

...so will we be able to claim that as The Year of the Linux Desktop?

It's The Year of the Windows9/GNU-Linux Desktop fer Christ sake! Sheesh!

FTFY.

Sam Raimi ?

[Gothmolly]

What does the creator of "Army of Darkness" know about "cloud" computing?

Re:Sam Raimi ?

[Taty'sEyes]

that's how I read it too...

Re:Sam Raimi ?

[Exitar]

Way more than many IT consultants, whose buzzwords often make less sense than "Klaatu Barada Nicto"?

same as it ever was...

[pyronide]

Microsoft will most likely keep their business model that they have had for almost 40 years - in its very nature, their business model does not shift to new Ideas, but shifts the new Ideas into that model.

More Anti-MS crap

[gadzook33]

I'm sure I'm just really jaded now but I can't read a slashdot story anymore without looking for the anti-MS rhetoric. You think Microsoft sits around thinking about whether the cloud will force the adoption of open-source or closed-source software? Or do you think they're looking at what Amazon is doing and they've done the math. The cloud is about viewing computation as a commodity to be sold and bought. Why do open-source advocates have to make everything about open-source? Isn't the far more interesting trend that computing solutions are collapsing? We're getting better at this stuff and not re-inventing the wheel every time (MS is better at this than just about any other company IMHO; Oracle by comparison is terrible, which is sad news for java). It's not about open-source vs close-source it's about tool-sets that make your life easier as a developer. The cloud is just another tool. Looking at things as open vs closed is a pretty antiquated idea in my opinion.

Re:More Anti-MS crap

[Anonymous Coward]

We're getting better at this stuff and not re-inventing the wheel every time (MS is better at this than just about any other company IMHO

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Microsoft has basically reinvented the wheel - and for the most part, terribly - on just about all software they have ever produced. (Oracle is a strange comparison, mostly because they are now a services company, not a software company. What they end up doing with Java remains to be seen.)

Wait - did you really type that with a straight face?

Re:More Anti-MS crap

[RazorSharp]

I'm sure I'm just really jaded now but I can't read a slashdot story anymore without looking for the anti-MS rhetoric.

I know, when did this attitude become so prevalent on /.? Microsoft never did anything to warrant this type of negative bias.

Re:More Anti-MS crap

[gtall]

errm...could it be because of MS's past history of tying everything in their ecosystem? Might that have something to do with it?

In other words, it isn't that open sourcers make everything about open source, it is more MS has made everything they touch about MS and the principle feature they use is closed source and its ancillary ill-effects. Care to explain why MS treats everything not MS as an enemy, how they posit their tools as this- or that-killers?

Re:More Anti-MS crap

[somersault]

You think Microsoft sits around thinking about whether the cloud will force the adoption of open-source or closed-source software

Probably. Microsoft hate open source. Well, they hate any form of competition in fact, and basically just try to destroy anything that might try to oppose them. Try looking at some of the memos released during their anti-trust investigation, or witness Steve Ballmer desperate to "fucking kill Google" (good luck with that, Steve).

I'm not sure what you mean about MS not reinventing the wheel. They've been reinventing their user interfaces a lot recently. Often turning them into less usable messes (at least in the default views). It's also important to reinvent systems every so often to remove the cruft that has accumulated over time. I'm not sure how much of that they've done with Windows 7, but I know they at least removed some legacy stuff from the Win16 days by now.

Open vs closed is not "antiquated", it's just one side of things. Proprietary vs standardised is another. Company owned vs outsourced is another. Local vs remote is another. Single server or "cloud" is another. We will keep considering all of these things and choose what is most appropriate for our own situations rather than trying to make everything black and white.

Re:More Anti-MS crap

[rgbatduke]

I have to disagree, sir. Microsoft has stolen the wheel, for the most part terribly.

CPM -> DOS
Basic -> Basica
Turbo [Pascal, C, ...] -> Quick C (early), then IDEs for all MS compilers
Lotus 123 -> Excel
Wordstar, Word Perfect -> Microsoft Word
Apple Lisa -> Windows 1
Mac OS -> Windows 2
Mac OS, Sunview, etc -> Windows 3
VMS,OS/2 -> Windows NT (and boy, was IBM pissed, long story of billion-dollar betrayal biting of the hand that raised you up from a pup)
Mosaic -> Explorer
TCP/IP -> Reluctantly, TCP/IP. Damn they wanted their own proprietary network. Too bad about that Internet thing...
Java -> Java, sort of. See above. In fact, see a whole list of web development stuff, all cloned or stolen to make it proprietarily their own.

And the list goes on. You can count the number of significant, actual, in-house innovations and products invented and programmed by Microsoft's own programmers on the fingers of one hand. Microsoft's entire history is one of waiting for somebody else to innovate, invent, take huge risks, and bring a radical killer app to the PC market just so that they could then clone it, spread a bit of FUD, emphasize the FUD by ensuring that the original product was still only partially debugged when MS released each successive version of Windows (and that those versions would therefore break the competitor's product in critical ways), and then smoothly sell their own replacement into all of the really big corporate houses and most of the smaller consumer houses, leaving the innovator and risk taker gasping with 1/4 or even less of the market.

Just ask Borland. Ask Corel. Ask Lotus. Ask MicroPro. Oooo, you can't ask some of these companies anything at all any more, can you, because Antitrust laws don't, actually, get enforced when the company in question is the partial stock base of nearly every pension fund in the Universe and a major contributor to every candidate who looks at all venal. To Microsoft's "credit", they do sometimes make smaller companies an offer that they can't refuse and buy them out instead of clone-and-conquer, but it is buyout where the buyee is looking down the barrel of a long metal tube waiting for somebody to shout "Chin le Bo", ancient pirate talk for "fire the cannon".

So yeah, when you read slashdot stories there is a certain amount of anti-MS rhetoric. Perhaps that is because those of us who are "old guys", ageing geeks, persons born back when computers still booted from paper tape and who learned to program using actual -- not emulated -- teletypes and card punches remember the history of MS and got to actually watch as they went from being "the good guys", the purveyors of the operating system (only) of the IBM PC, the computer that more than any other (including the Mac, sorry ghost of Steven Jobs, now Pony) set all humans on the path of Enlightened Freedom from the serfdom of timesharing on huge and expensive mainframes or smaller but still expensive minis, to Evil Incarnate, a corporate amoeba that actually managed to invert the hardware market and put the cart firmly in front of the horse, taking the lion's share of the profit of (nearly) every computer sold.

rgb

Re:More Anti-MS crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Turbo [Pascal, C, ...] -> Quick C (early), then IDEs for all MS compilers

What did they 'steal'? The idea of an IDE was not new and C was not owned by Borland you anti-MS fool.

Lotus 123 -> Excel

Stole Lotus123? They stole the idea of a spreadsheet? Did Apple also steal Lotus123 to create Numbers?

Wordstar, Word Perfect -> Microsoft Word

So every word processor 'stole' from the very first word processor then? Of course your anti-MS trolling means you ignore all others but Microsoft's.

Apple Lisa -> Windows 1

Oh right, just like the Lisa took its ideas from Xerox, i suppose Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment and every other GUI 'stole' that from the Lisa too?

Mac OS -> Windows 2

How do you get that Windows 2 is a stolen version of Mac OS? You retard.

Mosaic -> Explorer

Stole Mosaic? If MS 'stole' Mosaic then so did pretty much every other browser developer, but of course you're just an anti-MS troll so you ignore that.

TCP/IP -> Reluctantly, TCP/IP.

How retarded can you be to think they 'stole' TCP/IP?

Re:More Anti-MS crap

[exomondo]

errm...could it be because of MS's past history of tying everything in their ecosystem?

Yeah i can't think of any other companies that do that.

Please repeat the question

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary was so bad by the time I got to "Is he right... or full of FUD?" I was wondering what the heck are we talking about?

Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're microsoft. We'd really like to profit off this new openstack thing. Please, please, please re-license it so we can screw you all over. Pretty please?"

GPL vs BSD

[lucm]

Without the GPL, a shameless company can base its own Operating System on the work of open-source contributors, lock it down, put a nice logo on it and sell it with its hardware, calling it "innovation" or "vision".

It is even easier if that same company is using generic hardware available to anyone, that way they don't even need to put a lot of work in drivers.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

yes.

As they already do, and is fine with the BSD system developers, and often results in improvements being fed back -

(RTFM in any BSD derived system manpages or source tree for all of the live-and-dead company references of contributors)

what is your point, other than trolling?

Re:GPL vs BSD

[macslas'hole]

So what? The shameless company is sticking to the license. How is this wrong? I don't get this. The sources are still available and actively developed. The shameless company might employ some of those developers (it does) and contribute back to the community (it does).

I am a programmer who's employed to work on public domain software. My software is regularly used by academia and in commercial products. That people find it so useful is a good thing for me. That people can use my software to make money is a good thing, for me, for them, and for our users.

You ideologues are the same as ever, a bunch of fools.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

It is called a copyright license. Or are you calling companies that bought a commercial license to Qt, then used Qt in their applications "shameless companies"?

Seriously, this is quite sad.

The purpose of BSD is to allow everyone to use the software and benefit from it, hopefully improving the original BSD software.

The purpose of GPL is to keep any changes to it open to the end user.

Many more companies can incorporate BSD in their proprietary applications while being shut out from GPL. These same companies then feed improvements back into BSD that are relevant to the larger community. There are many reasons to feed back improvements, including cheaper maintenance of your own future products using said BSD software.

Your entire point, if you even have one, is frankly, childish.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[larry bagina]

Without the GPL, a shameless company can base its own Operating System on the work of open-source contributors, lock it down, put a nice logo on it and sell it with its hardware, calling it "innovation" or "vision".

TiVo and Android do that with the GPL.

Re:GPL vs BSD

[jo_ham]

And this is wrong in what way?

They are sticking to the licence, and using the code as intended by the people who chose to release it under said licence.

Furthermore, they are contributing new open source code back to the community at large (and not just by being "forced" to by things like the GPL licence on KHTML/Webkit).

I'm not sure what your point is. That it's "shameless" to participate in open source projects?

Open Standards, not Open Source

[Anonymous Coward]

The cloud will help open standards, not open source necessarily.

Re:Open Standards, not Open Source

[geoffrobinson]

Open standards are more important anyway. It helps you avoid lock-in and it provides an environment in which open source can do well.

Apples and Oranges

[Osmi]

OMG! The annual apple harvest is coming! I foretell that the hysterical mobs will burn down the orange orchards and oranges will become extinct! FUD.

He is full of something else.

[unity100]

And it seems to be shit -> for, in the end what he seems to be demonizing is copyleft license. So then entire thing becomes a veiled statement for proprietarization of previously open licenses.

Ramji != Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick point - Ramji does not work for Microsoft. Funny how the summary doesn't make that clear. . .

Developers work where the money is

[chrismcb]

because that's where the developers building new cloud infrastructure are doing most of their work.

You do realize Microsoft and Apple have a lot of developers, and they can hire more. If they need more people to build cloud infrastructure, they will. Microsoft was able to build an entire OS without using Open Source Software. They can also build an entire Cloud Infrastructure without using Open Source Software.

Re:Developers work where the money is

[ahodgson]

Yes ... they can. Because they don't have to pay themselves licence fees. And they have the source.

The point, however, is that no one else can.

Re:Developers work where the money is

[Robert Zenz]

Microsoft was able to build an entire OS without using Open Source Software.

Yeah, but look what became of it.

Re:Developers work where the money is

[rgbatduke]

It's even better than that. The "cloud" often puts the actual application on the cloud servers, right? All that is running at your end is a browser with a network API. So Microsoft can take GPL applications, hack them and repackage them any way they like, and put them on their own cloud servers without contributing back a damn thing, all while staying perfectly well within the GPL. In fact, the cloud gives MS the best of all possible worlds -- the ability to use GPL and other OSS software internally on their cloud servers after adding anything they like to enhance or differentiate it, and the ability ensure that some key pieces of functionality can only be accessed if the remote system is running Windows plus Explorer. I mean, it's like the skies are raining money for them, in the end.

An end that IMO will probably never come, BTW, but that is another rant. The history of computing is littered with the fossilized bones of companies that thought that consumers were finally ready for thin clients and would no longer insist on having a fully functional local workstation with its own local software. The cloud may -- and I do say may -- eventually become the universal data-haven, extending the existing client-server data model to client-cloud megaserver, although there are some serious questions of data security and privacy and recoverability and liability in the event of the bankruptcy or corruption of the parent cloud company remaining to be answered, but the notion that all of the software is going to live "in the cloud" is far from proven. Rather, the evidence of the past is that it ain't happening this time any more than any of the other times it has been proposed.

rgb

Re:Developers work where the money is

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why I like the AGPLv3 for network applications - if you're offering network access to it, you need to provide the source the same as if you were shipping binaries.

Microsoft can use open source code on the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft would be capable of using modified GPL code on the cloud, without giving back, simply because they wouldn't be distributing the code.

I wonder if an even more strigent version of the GPL is coming due to that.

Re:Microsoft can use open source code on the cloud

[larry bagina]

It's already here.

Microsoft's cloud stack will be so complex

[Anonymous Coward]

...it probably won't matter if it's open source or not.

Go back and take a look at Miguel's technical description of Metro. App developers will code a mixture of XAML and a general purpose language such as C#, which will compile into bytecodes interpreted by the .NET CLR and bound to the new WinRT runtime (perhaps using the infamous P/Invoke), which Miguel says is layered on top of COM (a component technology leftover from the '90s which MS developed to compete with CORBA and DCE) on top of Windows kernel services. Who outside of Redmond has time to become even mildly proficient in all of this stuff, along with their normal job responsibilities?

Cloud Cloudy Cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes this 'cloud' is a real threat! Ominous, huge, black thing, hanging over our planet, threatening to cut off the precious light from the Sun! Oh, hang on, what are you talking about??

Sure, Apple and Microsoft are the same

[gig]

If you are in I-T, just fucking shut up about Apple. You just keep saying stupid fucking things. How is WebKit a love/hate relationship with open source? How is shipping the only name brand PC with open source software on it a love/hate relationship with open source? Fuck. So stupid.

Re:Sure, Apple and Microsoft are the same

[jo_ham]

Nice anti-Apple spin on that bro.

The truth is somewhere off to the side of everything you just posted.

Just for example, "failed to contribute patches back to the community" is a total fabrication. They didn't release their source until they shipped something based on it, which as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong here), is perfectly ok by the terms of the GPL. They released a big chunk of code back initially (to be in compliance) and then set about making it much more streamlined and easier for other people to work with, such that Webkit now is a shining example of an open source project that works well with a proprietary vendor supporting it - it's a success story for OSS.

And as far as being "sincere" about OSS, how do you explain the release of totally new projects under OSS licences from Apple (ie, not code that they are "legally forced" to release, but new, written-by-Apple code that they have contributed back to the BSD community. Things like libdespatch, or the calendar server, and countless other examples. You can't simply call that "open washing" to suit your argument. I might as well call your post "paid anti-Apple shilling" - I have no basis to do so, but hey, if the shoe fits!

Re:Sure, Apple and Microsoft are the same

[Anonymous Coward]

*psst* (whisper) Dell ships Linux. :)

Re:Sure, Apple and Microsoft are the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Try loading an Ipod with open audio formats if you want to see the hate side. Observe that tho open source offerings you cited were not actually origintated by apple, and that they guard their own code like rabid dogs.

General hint about life: usually, the problem is *not* that everyone *else* is stupid....

Re:Sure, Apple and Microsoft are the same

[UnknowingFool]

heya,

Err, because Apple historically has had a rocky relationship with open-source?

In fact, the WebKit example you try to cite is a classic example. Apple took KHTML, forked it, then failed to contribute patches back to the community. The KDE developers were famous for referring to the relationship as a "bitter failure":

www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1002

Way to spin that and leave significant details to make your point. Apple forked KHTML and forked it under the GPL. They released patches to WebKit but did not back port those patches to KHTML. I believe the point of forking something is that you want to go in a different direction than the original developers. Apple didn't do a very good job of documenting their changes but that's nothing new in software.

Then there was Apple's entire debacle with Darwin, and closing up the sources for that.

Again spin and leaving out details. Darwin is based on OPENSTEP which is under a BSD license. The BSD license has no requirement that changes or modifications be released. OS X is composed of Darwin which is still open source and Aqua which is proprietary. Aqua was never open source but the BSD does not require it to be.

Re:Sure, Apple and Microsoft are the same

[datavirtue]

I don't see Sun as mismanaged. They did exactly as they intended to do. They just didn't care about money. They took from the Wall Street racket and pumped it into open technology. I think we have all benefited from this. I came to this realization when I saw the CEO getting grilled on PBS one day from all sides by Wall Street analysts. Sun was staffed by true technologists, people who loved doing what they did, research and development. Sun turned out some awesome technologies and funded their engineers' salaries by selling systems.

Re:Sure, Apple and Microsoft are the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple opensources only what they are legally required to. MacOS X is mostly closed source, most other apps are completely closed. The only good thing they delivered to the free software community is WebKit, and it is because WebKit is a fork of KHTML, which is LGPL.
Also don't forget linux Eee PCs, they are name brand PCs with truly open source software in it.

Biggest Open Source Contributor already

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Microsoft one of the biggest open source contributors already?

I seem to recall they contributed this VM code to Linux and then started committing 1000's of patches to fix their shitty code.

Re:Biggest Open Source Contributor already

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall they contributed this VM code to Linux and then started committing 1000's of patches to fix their shitty code.

A bit of debuggging seems to have been in order, if those commits required 1000's of patches.

I trust you weren't trying to say the Linux kernel is full of shitty code?

he is kidding right?

[Anonymous Coward]

apple did just the opposite of the status-quo. instead of giving away its software, they instead built great product and charged top dollar for it. oracle instead of giving away software, continues to dominate the enterprise. microsoft is making a pretty penny on open source with licensing fees for linux, i mean unix. google docs as a threat to office software -- not in the century

OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I don't see how people see any logic in thinking that Cloud has anything to do with Open Source. Seriously, I mean what relevance does the "Cloud" (if you MUST use that word) have to Open Source?

Just because the data is hosted remotely or with a third-party (ie Cloud) this does not directly affect access to the source code. Alot (Most ?) Open source software store revisions in the "Cloud" anyway right? Sourceforge, Github, google code anyone? Or maybe you have your own "Cloud/SVN Server" in your server rack or data center instead! Just because the data or application accessed remotely, does not have anything to do people accessing source code. People access source code all the time remotely.

As long as you, your employer or whoever owns the data have administrative/root/whatever access to your "Cloud" Infrastructure. The Cloud will fail without such access, especially business users.

once again, cloud/open source = not related

different paradigm

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between desktop (even office based servers) and cloud computing is the reason.

Cloud users only see the service.

Desktop (and office based servers) are sold on a brand name and see the product as it is being installed (ok at least the it department does).

Clouds users will buy into a service based on a reputable brand name. Once subscribed they will stay if the service is good quality, not caring what OS or version is running in the background.

Re:different paradigm

[monkeythug]

Once subscribed they will stay if the service is good quality, not caring what OS or version is running in the background.

Or will they stay because MS doesn't allow them to download all their documents or transfer them to another service (or allows them to be downloaded, but they're in proprietary formats that are useless for migration purposes anyway)?

Cloud?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like watching them pass overhead.