Windows 8 Store Will Allow Open Source Apps

MrSeb writes "Some interesting legalese found in the recent publication of the Windows Store Application Developer Agreement could signify a very big win for the open source community. The section in question states that apps released under a license from the Open Source Initiative (GPL, Apache, etc.) can be distributed in the Windows Store. Further, it says that the OSI license will trump the Microsoft Standard Application License Terms, namely the the restriction on sharing applications. As for the reasoning behind this big about-turn, it could be down to Microsoft trying to soften the blow of its Android patent litigation — or maybe Redmond is just trying to differentiate itself from Apple, which famously restricts open source-licensed apps from being sold in its iOS and Mac App Stores."

Comments

Microsoft and open source

[InsightIn140Bytes]

As for the reasoning behind this big about-turn, it could be down to Microsoft trying to soften the blow of its Android patent litigation — or maybe Redmond is just trying to differentiate itself from Apple, which famously restricts open source-licensed apps from being sold in its iOS and Mac App Stores.

Or what about if Microsoft just doesn't have anything against open source projects? They have several ones themselves, have helped writing some Linux code and in every other way have softened themselves about open source.

Microsoft has never really locked down their desktop OS either. It has always been open in a way that it lets you run anything you want. Be it open source or proprietary code. Microsoft doesn't care - they're primarily selling their OS, and their OS has always came with the promise of you're being able to run anything you want. That is also why Windows has such a large market place for all kinds of applications and games. Being able to run anything you want, from any vendor you want, has always been one of the largest selling points of Windows.

Allowing open source programs isn't really problem for Microsoft..
- Linux still cannot compete on desktop. Much larger competitor to MS is OSX, and even then MS does programs for Mac too.
- As far as mobiles go, Microsoft already gets lots of money for every Android device sold. Microsoft wins in either case, be it Android or Windows Phone that is selling better.
- OpenOffice is a toy compared to MS Office. It's missing lots of features, isn't user friendly, it's slow and generally just works badly.
- Visual Studio is much better programming IDE than open source ones, especially when you add visualAssist to it.
- There isn't any open source competitors for Xbox 360. None.

It isn't about "softening the blow" or anything to those lines. Microsoft has just seen that open source really cannot compete with quality products.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[webmistressrachel]

Hmmm, I was taken in right up until the end where you said that "open source really cannot compete with quality products"!

Nice bit of flamebait for Mozilla, Apache, Google devs to be trolled by, if I do say so myself!

Re:Microsoft and open source

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Microsoft has just seen that open source really cannot compete with quality products.

Mod parent funny.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[willaien]

Huge agreement on Visual Studio being superior to pretty much any other IDE I've ever encountered, but, I'll disagree with a few other points: - OpenOffice is, by and large, more than sufficient for most users. Yes, a few things are missing, but, for the average user, they wouldn't miss those features. - Microsoft would likely prefer that Android didn't exist and that they could corner that market. It's not just the money from sales, it's losing some developers to mobile phones, and not to -Microsoft- mobile phones. This likely doesn't sit well with them, for various reasons. While I don't think this is a "Post-PC" world, yet, Microsoft would do well to try to innovate and gain market share in the tablet and phone arenas.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[willaien]

Argh, why did my post remove the formatting? Do I need to use html tags to create line breaks or something?

Re:Microsoft and open source

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Looking at what Firefox has become, I'm not so sure. Sure, there are some good open source products, but they're usually backed by huge corporations like Google or Apple. They both contribute to Webkit and Chromium. Firefox comes from Netscape and is currently a joke. Apache is backed by huge companies.

Apart from those, are there actually open source projects that can compete with proprietary counterparts? Especially on less popular niches like industry products or games (even though games is a popular niche, but there still isn't any good open source games or game engines).

Re:Microsoft and open source

[vikingpower]

Mod parent furry

Re:Microsoft and open source

[MrEricSir]

Visual Studio is much better programming IDE than open source ones, especially when you add visualAssist to it.

*sigh*
/goes back to adding a debug printf in gedit.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, your parents were funny looking.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[TheCycoONE]

Now try to find high quality propriety products that are not backed by huge organizations. (Size of the backing organization and license used are different topics; you're trying to mix them and so your conclusion is flawed.)

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Alwin Henseler]

Or what about if Microsoft just doesn't have anything against open source projects?

More precisely: maybe MS doesn't have anything against open source projects that don't compete with their own products. Another option might be that Apple is a bigger evil to MS than making room for a few open source apps in their app store. Or MS fears losing their share in some markets & makes some concessions in order to stay relevant.

Microsoft has never really locked down their desktop OS either. It has always been open in a way that it lets you run anything you want. Be it open source or proprietary code. Microsoft doesn't care - they're primarily selling their OS, and their OS has always came with the promise of you're being able to run anything you want. That is also why Windows has such a large market place for all kinds of applications and games. Being able to run anything you want, from any vendor you want, has always been one of the largest selling points of Windows.

That's just flamebait... The primary reason for MS being dominant on the desktop is that newly bought computers nearly always come with it pre-installed, people got used to it, and it's good enough. Combined with a hefty dose of marketing, and perhaps a shady deal or two to make life hard for competitors. The landscape is changing, but anyone who believes otherwise is an idiot.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[The MAZZTer]

Yup, HTML cares not for your silly whitespace, it only respects tags!

Re:Microsoft and open source

[msobkow]

As of Gnome 2.0 and KDE 3, Linux was more than capable of providing an acceptable desktop user experience, especially Ubuntu's releases. Unfortunately the very latest releases don't support my Logitech Track Ball, so I use an older 10.04.1 release which still has a couple glitches with the trackball support as well, but I can't fault Linux as a whole for me wanting to use a 12+ year old "mouse".

Open Office/Office Libre are more than adequate for the vast majority of home users. The extra "features" in the official Microsoft Office product line are wasted disk space for the majority of document editors. I can't speak to spreadsheets, as that's never been a technology I made much use of, and I've always preferred other tools for diagramming. Open Office does a perfectly acceptable job of editing and presenting overheads, the only non-document-editing requirement I've ever had for an office package. As to "slow" -- what are you running -- a P3?

Eclipse is actually a more functional and better designed IDE than Visual Studio. However, Visual Studio doesn't compete with Eclipse, it competes with Mono, and the Mono environment for Linux is little better than a workable beta in need of huge performance tuning and scalability efforts, so Microsoft wins the C# market by default as they'd always hoped and planned.

I can see how a video game console has anything to do whatsoever with desktop and server operating systems. Honestly. I can see your point. It's called FUD, and it's uselessly off topic.

But you keep drinking the Microsoft kool-aid, while I sip the coffee of open source. We'll both have our thirst for tools and technology satisfied in the end.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[InsightIn140Bytes]

Now try to find high quality propriety products that are not backed by huge organizations.

Uh, there's lots of them for all industries and niches. You can find almost any app you would ever want. There's tons of small companies making products that are proprietary. They're good too, and continuously supported by said companies. That same can't be said for majority of open source projects, which really often just die or aren't finished.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Relayman]

Yes, I use two brs for a one-line

gap.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tharsman]

Next time you post, click on Options, and from the "Comment Post Mode" drop down select "Plain Old Text"

Re:Microsoft and open source

[ByOhTek]

More precisely: maybe MS doesn't have anything against open source projects that don't compete with their own products.

More precisely: maybe MS doesn't have anything against projects that don't compete with their own products.

Lets face it, in capitalism, no mater how much they claim otherwise, all companies hate competition against their products/services. And I don't believe MS has ever been dishonest enough claim or insinuate otherwise. They don't care about the source of the competition (open or closed), merely the quality and aggressiveness.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[camcorder]

- Linux still cannot compete on desktop. Much larger competitor to MS is OSX, and even then MS does programs for Mac too.

For me it competes pretty well. I used Linux desktop (Gnome on Fedora) both on my desktop and laptop. After the web era I never need a Windows OS for any reason. I don't say Windows is obsolete, of course it has niche stuff for some people. But it's non-sense to say Linux can't compete on desktop. I have to say that using a Gnome desktop (and I'm sure KDE is on par) is a lot easier than using Windows' interface. That's even true for those got used to Windows way of doing things. Currently Linux desktop is best of both worlds, they get useful concepts from MacOSX or Windows, and it gets mature and mature every day due to open source nature, and beats on stability thanks to Linux. Application support is pretty decent and has all the recent technologies on desktop from 3d acceleration to smart network integration.

Desktop on Linux is improving in a lot faster pace than Windows even Mac, but I don't understand why people keep spreading 'Linux can't compete on desktop' FUD. I got money to pay for Windows, and I actually paid for Windows several times without using it on my computer purchases, (so what market share are we talking about?) and even though I'm not a Free Software purist, I find Linux Desktop much more productive than Windows all the time.

Maybe year of Linux on desktop joke will never get old, but that doesn't change the fact that Linux was on my desktop for years.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! wait. Does that mean a bunch of people I know are not anyone?
Linux is no good for up-to-date gaming or specialized stuff (other than coding) but otherwise its a heck of a lot better value that what MS provides.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[_0xd0ad]

Just change it here and be done:

https://slashdot.org/prefs/d2_posting

I always keep the posting mode set to "Plain Old Text". I can't imagine why anyone would want it set to anything else, actually.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[ByOhTek]

Oh, and I know a lot of people who use windows, not because of what you said, but because it suits their purposes better, with them having to spend less time working about making the computer run, and more time doing what they want with the computer. And, yeah, I use windows because the large amount of software with the highest (ease of use * features)/flaws ratio that I find there, better than the alternatives. However, in some cases, I use FreeBSD or Linux because for what I want to do, they have the better solutions. Most people don't do the things that fall into that latter category, however.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[gorzek]

Games. Why do people always ask this? Most games don't work on Linux.*

* At least not without an excessive amount of fiddling and configuration and praying.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[NatasRevol]

What if Apple doesn't have anything against open source projects?

In fact, they contribute a LOT to open source.

http://opensource.apple.com/

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tharsman]

OpenOffice is, by and large, more than sufficient for most users.

If you you going to place the "more than sufficient" conditional, you can say the same about Notepad or Wordpad for word processing.

I personally just love Excel and would not replace it for any other spreadsheet if I have the financial stance to do so (and I have OpenOffice in my home machines.)

Word is also a great word processor. A bit bloated (and thats being kind) but the spell shecking and proofing tools are the best out there. For "prettier" letters, though, I rather use Apple's Pages.

Access... hmmm... I am so past it... but then again I'm a professional SQL administrator. It has it's uses, I guess. I can say its light years ahead of OpenOffice's Base and dont think Apple offers an alternative for macs (then again nor does Microsoft.)

Powerpoint is easily replacable, though.

To be honest, the only reason I dont have Excel on every single computer I owe is the price and licensing. I have 3 desktops and 3 laptops at home alone. 2 of these are Windows PCs the others are Macs. It's either get Office family pack and install in just 3 machines, buy iWorks cheap and use on every Mac without headaches or legal issues, or get OpenOffice on every mac and PC. I still end up not using spreadsheets much out of the office, though, because I cant tolerate the crippled experience (in my opinion) that is Calc or the fashionable but cruncher unfriendly Numbers.

It also bothers me that, should I want Excel, I'm forced to buy all of office. I cant just buy Excel.

On the topic if the Microsoft App Store: I got to say, Microsoft needs a software store and it needs it 10 years ago. I still remember the first time I logged into Windows XP and saw something called "Windows Software" or "Windows Software Catalog". My brain went highwire thinking "Finally!!! An online solution where I can get software without worrying the apps may be the mallware infested stuff I risk myself to every time I download from Download.com!!!!" Big disapointed when I realized it was just a website to order snailmail copies of microsoft products.

A software store will heavily revitalize the windows experience in the desktop, just as it has done with the Mac OSX.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tharsman]

Talking of spell checkers.... ugh... forgot to run this through one...

Re:Microsoft and open source

[History's Coming To]

Hi. I use Linux on a desktop. And a netbook. And servers. How is it? Very nice actually.

There you go, now you can say you know somebody :)

Re:Microsoft and open source

[isorox]

Apart from those, are there actually open source projects that can compete with proprietary counterparts? Especially on less popular niches like industry products or games (even though games is a popular niche, but there still isn't any good open source games or game engines).

ffmpeg and vlc, I can't think of any propriety program that can dream of competing.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[willaien]

Perhaps "More than sufficient" is a bit of a loaded phrase.

Most people that I have asking me for Microsoft Office just want to write a couple of documents. For these users, they would be better served with Libre or Open Office.

Outside of those users, yes, Excel is a great tool. Word, while bloated, does have some nice features (the user above mentioned labels/mail merge) that are awkward or non-existent in free applications.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Quila]

Gnome 2.0 and KDE 3 depends on your definition of "Acceptable." Definitely not acceptable for me, Gnome 3 is acceptable, if I don't mind grinding my teeth a bit. But I'd rather not do even that.

OpenOffice/etc may be technically acceptable by feature list, but regardless of actual feature count it still sucks. I used it for quite a while before I finally gave in and got MS Office, not for features that OO didn't have, but for plain old usability.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[JAlexoi]

PostgreSQL has who? Really... As well as OpenERP and a plethora of many OSS projects. Heck, Apache HTTPd became the dominant web server without any support from major players.
In addition, majority of software projects die anyway, OSS is no exception to the general trend. And most software is as horrible as OSS, making OSS just as successful as proprietary software.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[stephanruby]

As far as mobiles go, Microsoft already gets lots of money for every Android device sold. Microsoft wins in either case, be it Android or Windows Phone that is selling better.

Who is paying Microsoft for Android aside Microsoft's own existing vendors who do not want to bite the hand that feeds them? And does that amount exceed what they've payed Nokia to put Windows OS on Nokia's phones? I doubt it.

And who else will pay Microsoft for Android now that Barnes & Noble broke the confidentiality agreement and let the cat out of the bag? Did you read Microsot's ridiculous patent claims, and the actual dates they filed their patents on? With all the prior art, their patent won't fare much better than Amazon's one-click patent.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[EvanED]

I also fall into that category (though I know many people who do run it on their personal machines.)

As a very-tech-literate person who has his home desktop set up to triple boot between Fedora, Ubuntu, and Win 7 and basically always runs Win 7 (in fact I have both Fedora and Ubuntu because I forgot I already had the other installed), I do it for two reasons:

1. The games reason someone else mentioned. Sure, I could spend some time (in my experience from many years ago, quite a lot of time, though this may have changed) getting things to work under Wine etc.. But I take the opinion that if you're going to work so hard to be able to run Windows stuff, why not just run Windows? (Conversely, if you're a Windows user who does all your work from Cygwin or something, why are you using Windows?)

2. I use Linux at work. Both Linux and Windows piss me off an incredible amount, but in different ways. It's "nice" to get some variety in my annoyances.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[chuckinator]

You know enough people that your anecdotal personal experience is a fair representative sample of all computer users? Try that again, but skip the logical fallacy next time.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[malevolentjelly]

It's not so much an issue with the features as it is an issue with OpenOffice formatting documents like a blind walrus vomiting words onto the tundra.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[JAlexoi]

And that is different to MS Office, how? I have no idea how to print the labels. I saw it being done in 1998 last time.
I still use Open/LibreOffice for documents, because I find Writer easier to use than Word.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[jedidiah]

Microsoft (oddly enough) has a more inclusive notion of what it's ecosystem should include and tolerates "duplicate functionality" much more than Apple does. Microsoft's platform benefits from Free Software including stuff that Lemmings would be prone to accuse of "being shoddy".

Microsoft (oddly enough) is less arrogant and seems less inclined to pointlessly shoot itself in the foot.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tubal-Cain]

Heck, Apache HTTPd became the dominant web server without any support from major players.

http://www.apache.org/foundation/thanks.html

Re:Microsoft and open source

[jedidiah]

>> OpenOffice is, by and large, more than sufficient for most users.
>
> If you you going to place the "more than sufficient"
> conditional, you can say the same about Notepad or
> Wordpad for word processing.

So?

The fact remains that there's no good reason for the vast majority of people to be subjected "Word Perfect wannabes". The same mental block that prevents people from using LibreOffice prevent them from using any other of a wide array of suitable alternatives. Some of those are even commercial.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[PerlJedi]

no one actually uses Linux on desktop

I must say: I'm surprised to hear you say that I am "no one". I run linux as my primary OS, and have for years. I most certainly do not think that I am representative of the average computer user, nor are my friends, but I have more friends running Linux on their personal computers than those running windows.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tubal-Cain]

Try <p> & </p>

Like

this

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tharsman]

Its hard to keep track of that. I know they often back in and out of individual sales, but never have I seen them offer the tool at an acceptable price.

Also the linked seem to be PC only. I cant seem to find Excel Mac for standalone sale. Not that I think it would be woth it, the Home edition allows 3 users, 3 macs, and incluedes the usual trinity for 149.95.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[EvanED]

Open Office does a perfectly acceptable job of editing and presenting overheads...

As a one-time (2009-era) heavy user of presentation software, I felt at the time that Impress was absolute crap compared to PowerPoint. At the time, I'd have rather used PPT 2000 and possibly earlier than the current version of Impress. And ribbons notwithstanding (I'm one of those rare people who is actually indifferent on that issue), I felt like PPT 2007 was a huge leap over the previous versions.

I'll admit to not having given OO a fair shake recently, but I haven't seen anything in the feature lists to give me much hope my evaluation would be much different.

I can't speak to the other parts of OO. I could probably count the number of times I've used either a spreadsheet or word processor (besides to look at a document) in the last couple years on one hand, especially if you let me do the binary counting thing.

Eclipse is actually a more functional and better designed IDE than Visual Studio.

Eh that's debatable. Perhaps it's because I haven't put enough time in to really learn it and get everything configured and such, but I've have more moderate annoyances about Eclipse than about Visual Studio, though no deal-breakers for either. This especially applies for C++. Though I will say that Eclipse makes programming in Java an almost pleasant activity, which is impressive in and of itself.

(I should give Eclipse's C++ support another go now that I think about it. It's been some time since I've decided I'd rather have the editing power of Emacs.)

Re:Microsoft and open source

[InsightIn140Bytes]

It's very telling that Microsoft is one of three largest supporters of Apache. But these "little" facts are often forgotten when slashdotters bash Microsoft.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[jedidiah]

> My mom had a horrible experience with OpenOffice recently.
> She just wants to print out some address labels and the only
> way I could figure out how to do this involved making a
> database.

Troll harder.

Learn how to use Google.

I print labels with OO all the time in various odd shapes and sizes. Mail merge doesn't look too hard either. One Google search makes it readily apparent that you don't need a database for it.

Gotta wonder if the excel+word version of this farce of yours would have been any better.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[jedidiah]

> but because it suits their purposes better

No. Probably not. It's merely the "default option" and "they can't be bothered" to try anything else.

This is how you end up with MS-DOS almost putting Apple out of business.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[rjstanford]

Yup. Which you can also easily do in Plain Old Text mode. C'mon, at least give it a try before being snarky.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[JAlexoi]

Are we having issues with the past tense detection?

Re:Microsoft and open source

[jedidiah]

You have a strange idea of "contributing".

They BAN it from their devices.

That's what this article is about.

More accurately, Apple "takes advantage" of rather than "contributes to" open source. So do actual Apple and Microsoft users. Although it seems that Microsoft is more comfortable with this.

They are willing to leave the likes of ffmpeg and vlc and xbmc alone and not actively prevent their users from installing them.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[TheSpoom]

I don't bash Microsoft much but I was surprised by their heavy support of Apache. Good on them, especially considering IIS.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tharsman]

So?

When someone says "this is the best tool available", you can’t say "that’s not true, because this one is sufficient". You CAN say it's sufficient and leave it at that, but that tool being sufficient does not nullify the statement of the other tool being "the best."

The fact remains that there's no good reason for the vast majority of people to be subjected "Word Perfect wannabes".

I don’t think it was called that in this thread. Just a toy compared to word. Got to say it’s rather true. In 2011, OpenOffice and LibreOffice both feel as if they were 1995 software. It’s usable. As I noted, I use it. But it IS a toy compared to Word.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Belial6]

I can add:
XBMC
Snes9X
Vice
Stella
WinUAE
M.A.M.E.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[_0xd0ad]

Plain Old Text doesn't prevent you from using HTML. It just intelligently converts white space to HTML.

The only mode that prevents you from using HTML is "Extrans (html tags to text)".

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Eyeballs]

Here's Microsoft stance on Open Source:
http://thinktankblog.olliancegroup.com/?p=426

"Microsoft’s involvement with open source is visible and growing – including sponsoring the Outercurve Foundation, participating in events like Olliance Think Tank, Oscon and OSBC, and hosting hundreds of OSS projects on Codeplex.com, the open source project hosting site. Why is Microsoft interested in OSS?

We recognize the value of openness in working with others — including a variety of open source communities — to help customers and partners succeed in today’s heterogeneous IT environments. This includes increasing opportunities for our business partners to support our joint customers regardless of their underlying development model and for developers to learn and create by combining open source with traditional commercial approaches to software development.

Like many other participants in the OSS ecosystem, Microsoft supports open source communities and projects in order to make our products more accessible, as well as to enable our customers to deploy and manage interoperable solutions in mixed source environments. We have found the most success with open source projects rooted in these principles.

Change and innovation are often driven by customer demand. Many of our customers operate heterogeneous IT environments with commercial proprietary software, commercial open source software and community-based open source software working side-by-side. To support our customers and become a more open, innovative company, we’ve worked hard to make open source an increasingly important part of our DNA. We have a better appreciation today for the open source development model, and we have increased our efforts to explore potential ways in which Microsoft technologies may interoperate with open source solutions.

Our perspective on open source software continues to evolve based on many factors, including our increased technical experience and dialogue with customers, open source companies and open source communities. Events like the Open Source Think Tank present a rich environment for discussion among all of these audiences."

Re:Microsoft and open source

[msobkow]

Interesting. I didn't even realize Eclipse had C++ support. But I must admit, they'd have to bring their Java development A-game features to C++ to be able to compete with Visual Studio for developing in C++. My big beef with VS is the underlying libraries which provide an insultingly bare bones implementation of ANSI and POSIX API standards rather than genuinely providing the functionality under Windows.

Let's face it -- Microsoft does not want you coding to portable standards -- they want you locking in to the Windows APIs that do implement the functionality they've crippled out of the standards-based versions.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[NatasRevol]

You mean contributing by submitting all these source codes? Pretty sure that's not taking advantage of. But you can keep that to yourself.

From the 10.7 page, just the a* for the unix apps:

adv_cmds-147 APSL BSD
amavisd-124 GPL
apache-769 Apache
apache_mod_bonjour-15 APSL BSD
apache_mod_bw-201 Apache
apache_mod_encoding2-204 BSD
apache_mod_hfs_apple-11 APSL
apache_mod_jk-202 Apache
apache_mod_perl-105 Apache
apache_mod_php-66.1 PHP
apache_mod_python-202 Apache
apr-26 Apache
architecture-260 APSL
autofs-207 APSL CDDL
awk-18 Other

Re:Microsoft and open source

[m50d]

Sure, there are some good open source products, but they're usually backed by huge corporations like Google or Apple. They both contribute to Webkit and Chromium. Firefox comes from Netscape and is currently a joke.

My experience is that the programs that started out as open-source are the better ones, while those that were originally from a big corp and then released as open source. Firefox came from Netscape and the codebase was always crap, which is why apple and then google used khtml instead (and konqueror's still a pretty good browser). Likewise with openoffice; very few people not paid by sun ever wanted to work on it.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[InsightIn140Bytes]

MS-DOS and Windows were best out there, back then too. Do you even remember how horrible linux distros were in around 1994? Just formatting the hard drive during install was a major pain in the ass, and not even talking about rest of the install and configuration process. Windows was a piece of cake compared to that. Besides, back then it was more common to buy Red Hat or similar distro from computer store. Since many people had to buy it anyway, why not just go with Windows?

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Missing.Matter]

In Word it's under Mailings > Labels. Just tell it what brand you're using and your document is auto formatted.

In Writer it's under File > New > Labels.

Writer seems to be a little lacking in the support area with 10 brands as opposed to Word's 35.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Missing.Matter]

Most people that I have asking me for Microsoft Office just want to write a couple of documents. For these users, they would be better served with Libre or Open Office.

Again, probably not. Sure they might only want to write a couple documents. But then one day they have to fill out a form and it's made in word. They download the file, edit it in Open Office, and then save it as a doc to send back to the person. However, now the page format is all screwy, causing a delay of the filing of the form and some other negative repercussion. This exact scenario happened to a friend of mine. Now, I don't know whose fault it is (Microsoft not documenting their file format properly or OO not conforming to it) but the end result is she would have been better off using word, because then her paperwork would not have been delayed.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Lanteran]

Using paragraph tags for a line break? *facepalm*

Re:Microsoft and open source

[nschubach]

I saw Windows in the story title, and fully expected to come here and see a lengthy first post about how great Microsoft is by a high ID non subscriber account at exactly the same time as the story was made public.

I'm glad I wasn't disappointed.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[willaien]

That is a bit of a corner case. If someone has forms to fill out, why are they sending them as a document that may or may not be usable by the recipient?

Re:Microsoft and open source

[fatalGlory]

Parent should be marked as troll. "Microsoft has never really locked down their desktop OS"? It "lets you run anything you want"? Please. OSX is just as open as Windows in that sense. All "open" means in this context is that they release a compiler for it (so technically you can run any "app" you want). What that doesn't give you is the ability to not run things on the system that you don't want to run. You only get that privilege with a real open source system. Not trying to come across as a FOSS hippie, just saying that the parent is plugging Microsoft on flashy-sounding but quite invalid reasoning. I call troll.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[alcourt]

I've used probably half a dozen word processors in the past fifteen years or so, from MS Works, to IBM Works for OS/2, to DeScribe (proprietary word processor) for OS/2, and so on. I've written and edited multiple documents each over two hundred pages long.

MS Word '97 was the standard that I still compare everything to. Not any later version. OpenOffice is what I ended up using for the past decade, though I recently switched to LibreOffice. My usage model consists of weekly imports of segments of MS Word documents, editing (with track changes), and saving those edits back out to send to someone to read in their various versions of MS Word. Some used odd word processors (e.g. Apple Pages in one case).

I've found that the complaints against OpenOffice were never against areas I ever encountered. I'm doing stylesheet based writing with a custom stylesheet and it just works. The export/import worked remarkably smoothly, only one complaint, and that was in page numbering. (When the page number exceeded approximately 256, it wrapped back to 1 on my copy but no one else's).

The shortcuts were trivial for me and meshed well. Most importantly, I'm able to read my documents from over ten years ago without difficulty. That's the single most important factor for me. Can I still open my files without problems?

No, I'm not putting down images in my documents. I'm writing text. But if I want to change editing items, I want them changed everywhere, hence the stylesheet usage.

I've had to help those who used MS Office before, and have to use it for work. '97 was quite usable. The new version has been getting in my way. Some recent /. discussions may make it usable enough for me, but it still fails that "just lets me work" test. LibreOffice passes that test.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[ckaminski]

I had two major problems with Linux on the Desktop, or more appropriately, Linux on My Laptop:

1. Thermal/Power control. Ubuntu shipped with crap settings by default - I could have changed them, but never did, so some of the fault was mine.
2. X/Windows - was flaky after a few hibernation trips.

That said, Windows has trouble with my Wifi hibernating on my new laptop...

Gaming was the #1 reason I went back to Windows.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[msobkow]

I'd add Azureus Vuze to that list. While it is nagware, it's also the richest content management platform I've seen on Linux or Windows systems. The Windows implementation is a bit more feature rich and responsive, but the Linux version is more stable.

Sometimes adding kitchen sink features like a video player to a download tool just add bloat and inconvenience. The Windows build of Vuze is like that -- it used to launch whatever video player you had configured under the Azureus brand. Now "Vuze" insists on launching it's own bloatware instead. Yet this was the only "new" feature added when they rebranded Azureus to Vuze that I could see -- a step backwards in providing a standard but customizable platform interface my opinion.

I dislike every product that tries to override or ignore my choice of preferred application for dealing with content of any kind.

Quite the contradiction, isn't it? I say it's the best UI I've seen for content management, and at the same time backhand them for content presentation. Still, it's true -- they've done a great job except for that one insanely annoying "feature".

Re:Microsoft and open source

[mario_grgic]

Microsoft reboot monkeys keep repeating this fallacy all the time. Visual studio is really a rather dumb editor. UNIX terminal (and toolchain) with good editor like vim or emacs is way more powerful IDE. But people who program by clicking on pictures would never know.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tubal-Cain]

Ah. There used to be a "Text with HTML" option or something like that, and Plain Old Text was...Plain Old Text.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[InsightIn140Bytes]

You might want to educate yourself a bit about Firefox's and Mozilla's history.. Just saying.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[reverius]

FireFox come from Mozilla not Netscape. You've lost all credibility with that comment.

And Mozilla came from Netscape: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla

You've lost all credibility with that comment, indeed.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[sourcerror]

Well this toy supports inline Latex equations. (OoLatex) Can you tell the same about Word?

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Requiem18th]

The explanation is that MS is NOT in a dominant position in the smart phone market. The lesson here is that competition is always good.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[daniel23]

You made me actually click the links and search, thus, as a ms office evangelist you did well indeed (given that the last version of ms office I bothered to obtain a "decentralised backup copy" was office2k)
But all my search left me empty handed, there still is no ms office/debian edition or some such.
As a x-plattform user with a debian/kde desktop, a win7 laptop, a mac mini for the music I really appreciate that there are oss apps that are available on all of my plattforms and they look and work just the same where ever I use them. Open/Libre office. Thunderbird. ff/chrome/opera for browsing. The list does'nt end here.
MS has changed it's mood and modi operandi vs oss quite a bit over the past 5 years (insert the gandhi meme here if you like) and they even did that u-turn to change msie into a standards-aware security-aware and almost decent browser - but not running on my desktop.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Anonymous Coward]

KMPlayer and SPlayer are closed source freeware, but they are both way more advanced than VLC. All three have built in support for pretty much any video format, but KMPlayer and SPlayer can also use external codecs (like CoreAVC), have better UIs, have much better subtitle handling, have better handling of multi-stream videos and use fewer system resources.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[daniel23]

Both Linux and Windows piss me off an incredible amount, but in different ways. It's "nice" to get some variety in my annoyances.

words of wisdom - or rather, the voice of first hand experience.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tharsman]

http://latexinword.sourceforge.net/

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Trilkin]

I can. It is a commercial product, but still...

Re:Microsoft and open source

[exomondo]

Conversely, if you're a Windows user who does all your work from Cygwin or something, why are you using Windows?

Because Linux doesn't run Windows applications but having a unix-like command line and the basic gnu utils in Windows is very useful.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Not anymore but it was originally developed as proprietary software.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[pclminion]

Now now, I understand that using paragraph tags to delineate paragraphs is clearly crazy, but you need to maintain your composure.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[EvanED]

I'm not really saying "if you have Cygwin installed". I have it on all of my Windows installations and use it a fair bit. At the same time, it has a lot of problems. Interoperability with Windows programs can get really annoying (particularly translating paths back and forth), and my personal viewpoint is that I avoid it for most things if there's a native Windows alternative. (E.g. I use native Python, a native Emacs, usually even use cmd.exe instead of zsh, etc.)

I'm more talking about people who are constantly working in a Cygwin environment. It always seems like it'd be easier to change to Linux and run a VM or something for that one Windows app.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[gorzek]

I love the Humble Bundles for just that reason. But these are also indie games--they have such a small market to begin with, being cross-platform is actually a better proposition for them. When you're making a AAA franchise game, it makes little sense to spend much money on a Linux port when 99% of your users are going to be on Windows in the first place.

Linux users are, I suspect, much more likely to buy indie games in the first place--and those sales would make up a greater proportion of overall sales.

I don't think it's fair to compare the sales trends for indie games to sales of, say, EA and Activision titles.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[westlake]

OpenOffice is, by and large, more than sufficient for most users.

The original goal for OpenOffice was to become a competitive alternative to MS Office, not Microsoft Works.

That means whether there are 15 or 1500 clerical workers on the payroll, all the features have to be there that will be needed by your full and part time staff, temps and senior volunteers.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[msobkow]

Funny. I could swear the summary was about Windows 8 and it's App Store, not Microsoft's general attitude on open source.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[msobkow]

The issue is not OS/X development and deployment, but the conflict between DRM-enabled iOS applications and [L]GPLv3 license requirements that anyone be able to deploy an updated version of such software without having to obtain or pay for a DRM encryption key. As long as signing keys can't be published with the software source, you can't do a build for a DRM-encumbered platform, and are not allowed to deploy GPL-based software to such platforms at all.

Despite the bleating of those who might miss out on open source applications for iOS devices as a result, this requirement is something [L]GPL developers make a conscious decision to require for their software. If you want to blame someone, blame the owners of the DRM walled gardens on the market. They're the ones who won't allow unsigned code that would enable [L]GPL software use on those platforms.

Another point some people don't understand are the clauses of v3 of the licenses. They added language to make it explicitly illegal to "wrap" [L]GPL code in the fashion someone suggested I do for an Eclipse GUI component of my software. There is no way to hide the fact that you're relying on GPL code any more. If you do so, you have to publish the code as long as the product is being accessed directly or indirectly by customers, clients, business partners, or anyone else outside an organization -- and that includes contractors.

If the GPLv3 had not had those restrictions to prevent people from stealing my customer base by enhancing the GPL code but not sharing the enhancements, I would not have released my work as open source at all.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[msobkow]

And only someone as ill informed as you would not recognize the benefits of being able to modify code before it executes in a breakpoint debugger, and to have that modified code execute without having to rebuild and restart the debugger.

In place code editing is a Godsend regardless of whether you're getting it with Eclipse/Java or VStudio/C#/C++.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[im_thatoneguy]

More precisely: maybe MS doesn't have anything against open source projects that don't compete with their own products.

I would choose a similar but slight variation.

Maybe it's because Microsoft writes its policies with a team of lawyers and Opensource is so far off their radar they accidentally squash it every now and then when trying to prevent legitimate abuses.

I suspect this is the largest single cause for any "hostility" towards Open Source... they just forget it exists and forget to make special exceptions for fringe licensing cases.

Some lawyer somewhere says

"We need to make sure we don't get sued if someone submits an app that isn't theirs."
"Good point! Let's add a clause to our EULA:
'The submitter of all apps must swear that they are the intellectual property owner of this app.'"
"Perfect! Drinks all around, good day of work people!"

2 days later on slashdot...

"MICROSOFT'S INSIDIOUS PLOY TO RAILROAD OPEN SOURCE ON WINDOWS!"

Oops!

Re:Microsoft and open source

[peppepz]

have helped writing some Linux code

Please. They've dumped code in the Linux kernel to let Linux run under one of their own products. And they were required to do so by the GPL license. In the meantime, they're suing any company trying to actually use the Linux kernel in commercial products without giving them money.

Microsoft has never really locked down their desktop OS either. It has always been open in a way that it lets you run anything you want. Be it open source or proprietary code.

That's true until now - but things are changing. You'll probably have heard of Microsoft's enforcement of the secure UEFI boot protocol in a way that will make either difficult or impossible for users to run fully open source operating systems on their "designed for Windows" PCs.

- As far as mobiles go, Microsoft already gets lots of money for every Android device sold. Microsoft wins in either case, be it Android or Windows Phone that is selling better.

Let's see if Microsoft will be able to continue extorting money from device manufacturers after their ludicrous patents are tested in courts.

- Visual Studio is much better programming IDE than open source ones, especially when you add visualAssist to it.

Netbeans is better. It's free, it's easy to use, it supports more programming languages, any kind of refactoring / code completion / visual assistance, and it's not bound to Microsoft's inferior C compiler. It's incredible that, in 2011, Microsoft still doesn't fully support C99 and uses DOS code pages for console applications.

- There isn't any open source competitors for Xbox 360. None.

Funny, I hear every day that consoles will disappear because they are being replaced by mobile gaming devices. Most of them running the open source Android platform.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[peppepz]

Firefox is a joke? It doesn't sell user information, it uses less memory than the best open source alternatives, and it has more features. Stop trolling.

And Apache and Mozilla are non-profit organizations.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Phoghat]

It isn't about "softening the blow" or anything to those lines. Microsoft has just seen that open source really cannot compete with quality products.

Puhleeeze, you had me until that last sentence there. -1 Troll, Mr. M$ Phanboy

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Tubal-Cain]

Changed my username. I've been here longer than this account.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[uglyduckling]

It's the fault of the idiots using a word processor document for form filling. That's what PDF is for.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[mario_grgic]

And you are under the impression this can't be done without an IDE? Yet another person who does not see a difference between IDE and compiler/debugger. But of course you feel qualified to talk about things you don't have any idea about.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[mqduck]

>Now try to find high quality propriety products that are not backed by huge organizations.

So you're saying being backed by the Free Software Foundation makes something a bad example of open source software? (Terminology politics aside)

Re:Microsoft and open source

[JohnnyBGod]

I'd agree for VC#, or VB, VC++ has fallen pretty far behind in support, and I think Eclipse is better.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[godefroi]

Other than XBMC, every one of those is an emulator. While the Bleem! lawsuits may have proven that this is legal, they also proved that Sony and the other entertainment giants have enough money to lawyer you right out of existence, even when you win. It's not surprising at all that emulation is not a hot area for commercial software houses.

I'll give you XBMC, though, as I personally prefer it to other options. There ARE highly-successful commercial options though, and many likely prefer them over the open-source ones.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[godefroi]

So wait, is it really surprising that a program that is nearly 100% used for illegal downloading of copyrighted media is open-source? What commercial developer would go out and produce a BitTorrent client? There's not enough downloaders of Linux ISOs around to support that market.

There are some niches that can pretty much ONLY be served by open-source (or other noncommercial methods).

Re:Microsoft and open source

[godefroi]

I second that. I gave Eclipse a good, honest try. I made a serious attempt, and ended up with IDEA. Eclipse just isn't worth the effort, and IDEA is good. Not Visual Studio good, but good nonetheless.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[GuB-42]

ffmpeg and vlc, I can't think of any propriety program that can dream of competing.

ffmpeg and vlc are great but they are far behind what DirectShow can offer.
With DirectShow, muxers, codecs, renderers, filters and players are loosely coupled components. Want support for some obscure video format, just write a filter and all DirectShow players will support it, all you need to do is "regsvr32 yourfilter.dll" (installers do it automatically of course).

Re:Microsoft and open source

[Belial6]

The premise put forth was that the quality software is only produced by groups with large commercial backing. The emulators clearly show that this isn't the case. What your argument is more of an indicator of is that if an open source project is of high quality, commercial backing will come. (Barring any legal fears)

Those are two totally different things.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[walshy007]

But word itself is merely a toy, people who care about typesetting will be suing latex like they always have.

Both word and openoffice/libreoffice are for office people with limited use cases.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[MrEricSir]

Wake me up when Eclipse adds Vala support.

Until then, Gedit remains the best option.

Re:Microsoft and open source

[godefroi]

Uh, no, my only argument was that your examples of "good open source that isn't commercially backed" are all poor examples.

Re:OK Here we go again.

[Gwala]

I think you already did it.

Microsoft is less evil than they used to be

[Anonymous Coward]

because their competitors are getting stronger (Mac, Linux, Google).

Actually I like the "new Microsoft". They seem a great deal more willing to engage in community process than they used to.

Re:Microsoft is less evil than they used to be

[m50d]

Microsoft are, and pretty much always have been, where IBM were 5-10 years ago.

Re:Microsoft is less evil than they used to be

[Fri13]

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. – Sun-tzu

Re:Microsoft is less evil than they used to be

[calinduca]

Microsoft is less evil than they used to be because their competitors are getting stronger (Mac, Linux, Google).

Microsoft is becoming less evil, by comparison to their competitors. Apple, Google are becoming more and more evil.
There, I fixed that for you.

Re:Microsoft is less evil than they used to be

[Billly Gates]

Apple has become so aggresive today that I am glad the mac lost over the pc. Apple today is far more evil than ms ever was. Sure bundling IE was annoying but at least they didnt block netscape and firefox for having rectangular Windows

Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[SuperKendall]

Not sure where you got your information from, but Apple does not disallow open source apps from the app store at all. The iOS development community in fact is heavily based on numerous open source libraries that everyone uses...

You may have been mistaken from the case of VLC, which was pulled because of a copyright claim made by one of the VLC developers. It was not pulled because it was open source.

So it's nice that Microsoft will offer the same opportunity to open source developers, but hardly unique.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[Tharsman]

There are some issues with a very specific open source license and the Apple App store. All apps in the app store have a non-obtrusive DRM in them, this means you can’t hand someone a copy of the free app you downloaded.

Mind you, you are entirely free to give the link to someone for them to download entirely free of charge, just as you did, but a version of the GPL license specifically dictates you can’t block the user's ability to redistribute himself. Even if Apple did have the said DRM, they also don’t allow you to install software from alternate sources, so that also hinders a user's ability to redistribute.

So the question is: will the windows app store give developers a flag they can set to not include a DRM in the specific app? And will they allow (in tablets) to install software from other sources? As it stands now, the Windows Phone 7 store should not be compatible with these specific clauses either (even with the sanctioned jailbreak available.)

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's TOS for the app store and GPL are INCOMPATIBLE. Why don't you educate yourself:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/no-gpl-apps-for-apples-app-store/8046

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[BitZtream]

So what you're saying is that GPL is incompatible with the app store, not that the app store is incompatible with open source.

GPL is designed to not work with things like the app store, its funny when it works as intended people blame the other guy for the fact that its a rather restrictive license.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[Tharsman]

So what you're saying is that GPL is incompatible with the app store, not that the app store is incompatible with open source.

Thats exactly what I'm saying, yes. :)

GPL is designed to not work with things like the app store, its funny when it works as intended people blame the other guy for the fact that its a rather restrictive license.

I personally am not fond of the GPL. If you want to be all hardcore about software freedom, you dont hold hostage the user about him also being equally hardcore.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[mark-t]

It's worth noting that requiring royalties on binary redistribution also blocks a person's ability to distribute a derived work... so this is not a problem unique to the GPL. Regardless of the licensing, open or closed source, a person needs permission to distribute copies of somebody else's copyrighted work, even if they are wanting to bundle their own copyrighted content with it.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[Tharsman]

The App Store actually accomodates for that by allowing the software to be entirely free. Apple does not collect any kind of comission or fee from free app distribution.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[jedidiah]

Don't try to bullshit us.

The Apple terms of service are in direct conflict with copyleft.

VLC was pulled because the terms it was licensed under weren't being honored by Apple. Rather than allowing those terms to be honored, Apple dropped VLC.

Your lies and attempts at spin don't alter the truth.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[jedidiah]

Who came first?

GNU and the GPL has been around since Apple was still selling 8-bit computers.

It was Apple that decided to build a walled garden that clearly excludes Free Software. If you try to discriminate, you are the one at fault. You're trying to blame the victim.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[toriver]

Permission (from the App Store) to distribute (except to 100 "ad hoc" devices), not permission to use. Anyone with XCode can get the source. modify the relevant files to match a provisioning profile they have and build. Not sure if you need to pay the membership fee of $99 to get that certificate and provisioning profile, though.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[msobkow]

And you can download, compile, and distribute the source code for any non-DRM platform you choose. The GPL does not ban DRM, it merely requires that you provide all the pieces needed to build and run the software on a DRM-enabled platform, including any necessary signature keys.

However, I could see Apple not wanting those signature keys being made public. If they do that, they are not legally allowed to provide a distribution channel for GPLv3 software at all.

Personally it's no skin off my nose -- my application code is for servers, not handheld toys and video players. And even if that weren't the case, there'd be Apple's bigotry against Java in the way to start with.

Too bad, so sad, I'll never provide an iDevice interface beyond a web form. Apple made that choice, not me.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[m50d]

You can't modify and redistribute things you download from the app store, therefore the app store is incompatible with open source. Of course you might use open source to make the things you put in the app store, just like IE uses open source libraries, but the version you put in the app store isn't and can't be open source.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[mark-t]

The GPL does not prohibit anyone's ability to use the work either... my point is that limiting a person's ability to distribute a work they've developed that utilizes or is derived from another package that they did not develop is not unique to the GPL.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[msobkow]

If you thing open source philosophy and the GPL are against generating revenue, you need to extract your cranium from your rectal output port.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[jellomizer]

It is against making revenue from producing software. Not from generating revenue.
the GPL. You can sell your software... But after you sell a few copies it will get posted on the web and then it is all over, because given the option someone will get the free version vs. the paid and get the same.
the GPL. You can sell distributions of it. However this model is threatened because data transfer makes it easy to share over the net those big files. Who needs to buy a CD or DVD when Downloading them takes minutes.
the GPL. You can sell support and consulting services. This is all fine and good until you start making money off of it and someone bigger will come and and take away your deal.

So if you make big and bloated and hard to use software then you can make money off of it being open source.
If it is small, light, efficient and easy to use then you will not profit off of it.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[ckaminski]

The GPL is only restrictive for the developer.

The GPL wasn't written for the developer - it was written for the USER, and as such, protects them just fine.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[Goaway]

All apps in the app store have a non-obtrusive DRM in them, this means you can’t hand someone a copy of the free app you downloaded.

This is incorrect, at least for the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store provides the tools you need to implement a DRM system in your app. There is no requirement whatsoever that you actually take advantage of this. If you do not implement your own DRM code, there is no DRM.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[Goaway]

Protects them from actually getting the software they want.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[ceoyoyo]

You need to pay the $99 to get the certificate and provisioning profile to install to a device. Installing to the simulator is free.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[shutdown -p now]

I think the issue here is legal, not technical. You absolutely can include DRM into a GPL app, there's nothing in the license that would prevent you from doing so. But you can't legally restrict the user to circumvent that DRM to do whatever he wants.

Historically, it never mattered much because, in an open source application, any DRM would necessarily be open source as well - and hence completely pointless (tivoization is a tad different - it involves DRM of the entire hardware+software aggregation, not software alone). It only arose with app stores, which automatically DRM any apps installed through them, and EULAs for which expressedly prohibit circumvention of said DRM. It's that latter part which makes it not compatible with GPL (and copyleft in general).

However, Apple has dodged that bullet. They have a stock EULA that applies to apps by default, and restricts the user from redistributing etc - that is obviously not GPL-compatible. However, they allow the app developer to set his own terms:

Your license to each App Store Product that you obtain through the App Store Services is subject to your prior acceptance of this Licensed Application End User License Agreement (“Standard EULA”), and you agree that the terms of this Standard EULA will apply to each App Store Product that you license through the App Store Service, unless that App Store Product is covered by a valid end user license agreement between you and the Application Provider of that App Store Product, in which case the terms of that separate end user license agreement will govern.

TFA is basically about Windows Store including a similar clause, though that one is more specific in that it is narrowly scoped for FOSS:

Your license terms must also not conflict with the Standard Application License Terms, in any way, except if you include FOSS, your license terms may conflict with the limitations set forth in Section 3 of those Terms, but only to the extent required by the FOSS that you use. “FOSS” means any software licensed under an Open Source Initiative Approved License.

"Section 3" here is the one that prohibits redistribution, reverse engineering etc.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[Tharsman]

I was thinking iOS but you are right. I forgot about the Mac App Store.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[BitZtream]

No, GPL was DESIGNED to cause this EXACT 'problem'.

It is 100% intentional. Again, it was DESIGNED to NOT ALLOW for working with things like the app store. For fucks sake, GPLv3 discussions were recently enough that you should fucking KNOW this is an intentional design by GPL ... you know ... the whole anti-tivoziation thing ... which again shows it was DESIGNED to restrict itself from being used in these situations.

Apple did not INTEND to cut GPL software off and in fact there are several GPL software packages ON THE APP store, but only because the original copyright holders (the authors) are allowed to put it up there and are not bound by the GPL restrictions themselves.

I'm fairly certain that Apple does not give one flying fuck about what happens to GPL software on their store, considering they use GPL software themselves (well, at least till the can get away from it).

I'm not 'blaming' anyone for it, I'm simply pointing out GPL is working AS DESIGNED and that Apple didn't actually make any effort to restrict open source since you know ... GPL (and similar copyleft licenses) are the only licenses effected in the way you speak of. Pretty much every other license, OSS or otherwise, doesn't have any problem.

GNU and the GPL has been around since Apple was still selling 8-bit computers.

You need to check your dates and stop being such an ignorant douche.

GPL was created in 1989, at which point Apple was using 68000 processors, which are most certainly NOT 8 bit.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[BitZtream]

If by protect you mean 'they get no choice and can't use it at all' then sure, they are protected.

Otherwise to me, it looks like its restricting users just as much as anyone else.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[BitZtream]

Copyleft is designed to be incompatible with a lot of shit.

Copyleft is not the definition of open source.

Many of us use ACTUAL open licenses that interestingly enough, seem to have no issues.

Of course, the author of software isn't bound by GPL so while I can't publish someone elses software on the app store, the author can, if they choose to, so again, Apple isn't doing anything to prevent GPL apps from appearing on the app store, GPL prevents them from appearing there unless the original authors put it there.

You should look in the mirror when you start talking about spin.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[Raenex]

Apple didn't actually make any effort to restrict open source

But they did make an effort to restrict the app model on their devices, and it's because of this restriction that the GPL ran into problems.

Re:Apple does not disallow open source apps either

[msobkow]

Software as a service. Data as a service. Maintenance as a service. Updates as a service.

Only the unimaginative can't come up with a way to make money while releasing their core code under the GPLv3. In fact, the GPLv3 makes it easier to leverage software for profit than most commercial software licenses, because it addicts the user to community to a steady update stream, something that rarely happens with .x commercial product releases.

The key is to think in terms of software and service leasing instead of product sales of a package. You're right -- you can't make significant money with GPL software if your goal is to sell a canned package.

I think they realize something more important

[msobkow]

I think Microsoft is acknowledging something more important: that many good products are developed under open source licenses, but sold and maintained under commercial terms, a hybrid of philosophies that allows the programmers to keep eating!

As it turns out the patents Microsoft is pursing have nothing to do with the Linux kernel, GPL'd utilities, or Java implementation, the Microsoft lawsuits are just "business as usual" for the telecommunications industry as it has been for decades. The lawsuits are punishing; they're just the way telcos and their technology companies have dealt with the business landscape for decades. It's not a "nice" way of doing business, but it is "a" way of doing business.

Re:I think they realize something more important

[JAlexoi]

As it turns out the patents Microsoft is pursing have nothing to do with the Linux kernel

Yes, specifically the long filename in FAT patent.... Oh, wait.... It is Linux kernel related!

Re:I think they realize something more important

[jedidiah]

No. I think they just realize that innovation comes from unexpected places. If they restrict their platform too much, they risk suppressing the next big thing. They don't want to do that. They want to copy that next big thing and put the inventors out of business, but they don't want to suppress creativity entirely.

Microsoft's platform needs to be open enough to Free Software in order for innovation to work. I think Microsoft realizes that. They lose more by suppressing Free Software than they would gain.

Re:I think they realize something more important

[shutdown -p now]

It's even simpler than that. If FOSS is explicitly allowed, this means more and better apps in Windows Store. And Win8 has to ramp up on apps very fast to compete with iOS and Android on tablets.

Re:I think they realize something more important

[msobkow]

Care to cite even one customer of the Microsoft portfolio paying for the FAT patent? Because any vendor who pays a patent royalty for that particular patent is not defending against patent abuse, and automatically loses their right to use or distribute GPL or LGPL software. Even v2 of the licenses was very clear on this point -- you must pay to have a patent overturned if you want to use and deploy software based on the GPL family of licenses.

The one case where the patents in question were exposed to the public made no mention of the FAT patent being part of the Android patent portfolio that Microsoft is using to earn money from Android. Even Microsoft isn't about to piss off their patent customer base by "accidentally" including that patent and killing the customer's right to use Android at all.

Re:I think they realize something more important

[JAlexoi]

Most definitely all Android ODMs that have signed the deal.
As patents go, GPLv2 is not very clear on the details. ASL v2 however....

And yet

[WindBourne]

these are the same set of bastards that not only pulled illegal actions on Dr. Dos, Stacker, Novell, Netscape, Linux, but AS SOON as the feds released them from being monitored, they went right back to their old trick with Attacking Android via a number of questionable approaches.

I would have to say that any OSS developer, if not any developer, that works on MS is just plain foolish.

Re:And yet

[VortexCortex]

While I agree to a degree, I have to point out that my open source applications run on Linux, Mac and Windows because I ACTUALLY care about customer freedoms. Why SHOULDN'T I accept patches to get my code running on windows?

I wouldn't call that foolish. I'd call it: Complete & total disdain of any OS loyalty whatsoever. If every dev worked this way there would never be a situation where you're forced to stop using the software you want/need just because you have issues with the underlying OS.

At the end of the day, there's a Windows user who tripple-boots Linux & Mac too, and he wants to use the FLOSS software I wrote for use with Linux on Windows. I believe it would be foolish to limit my exposure & thus donations. In fact, I think it foolish to ignore significant market segments altogether for trivial reasons. Even more foolish would be to fragment the user base and cause a fork due to my own OS preferences.

I'm not saying I'm going to distribute my applications in the Windows 8 store, but if anyone else wants to, and they can satisfy the AGPLv3 requirements, have at it.

Not GPL

[PineHall]

Microsoft has language in its agreement that excludes GPL.

Re:Not GPL

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

GPL v2 or v3?

Sounds perfectly compatible with V2.

Re:Not GPL

[mark-t]

Applying the GPL to a work that depends on a non-GPL'd work does not make the non-GPL'd work subject to the GPL. The decision to GPL software is exclusively the prerogative of the person who has the copyright on the software. A person cannot choose to make a derived work of GPL'd work non-GPL because as a derived work, it is subject to the constraints that any derived work under perfectly ordinary copyright law would have to follow anyways. and the creator of any derived work must always obtain permission. The GPL simply happens to state, up front, what the prerequisites are for obtaining that permission (release the source code), and if one abides by its policies, then they need no further consent or approval by the copyright holder. There may be other ways of obtaining such permission too, and those are up to each individual copyright holder.

Re:Not GPL

[Nazlfrag]

No, one guy has interpreted the MS terms to come to that conclusion without explaining why. I can see nothing in the MS terms that would disallow GPL, but I do see terms that explicitly allow GPL as it is an OSI approved license.

So I ask you, why can GPL not be used?

Re:Not GPL

[ceoyoyo]

It's not unreasonable to read that as Microsoft specifying that their app store and it's DRM (which is Microsoft software) must not be restricted by the terms of the licenses used for software in that app store. Which it most definitely would by by the GPL. It doesn't necessarily say that MS's code BECOMES GPLed, just that what it can do is restricted by the GPL.

Re:Not GPL

[DragonWriter]

Microsoft has language in its agreement that excludes GPL.

The interpretation would only be valid if distributing GPL software via the store would magically infect other Microsoft software with the GPL. While that's a myth that some parties have spread about the GPL, its not generally true.

OTOH, its at least plausible that the manner in which Microsoft distributes software via the Win8 store would involve integrating some Microsoft code with the distributed app in a manner which would be more than mere aggregation and which might at least raise issues under the GPL. But I haven't seen anything concrete suggesting that would be the case, so at best as I am seeing the claim about the GPL in the article you link as being speculation on the impact of the language it points to for which no evidence is either offered or apparent.

Re:Not GPL

[jonwil]

Unless something special is done in the building of apps for the Windows 8 Store, I would imagine that any Microsoft code that an Store app links to would fall under the "code normally included with the compiler or OS" exemption for the GPL and therefore it would be fine. Same reason its perfectly OK to link to any of the headers/libraries/DLLs that come with Windows, the Windows SDK or the Visual C++ compiler and have those count under the "compiler or OS" exemption.

Microsoft is more evil than ever

[walterbyrd]

Maybe you have missed all the hyper-aggressive fivilous patent lawsuits that microsoft routinely files against Android users?

Re:Microsoft is more evil than ever

[DeathFromSomewhere]

patent lawsuits ... against Android users

Why yes I have missed these lawsuits. Can you please inform me?

Re:Microsoft is more evil than ever

[TommyGunnRX]

Oh man... did I miss my subpoena? Can a corporation open a class action lawsuit against a population? Anyway, the lawsuits do seem a bit frivolous... but they will force companies to be a little more transparent.

Re:Microsoft is more evil than ever

[JAlexoi]

Can you bring up the technicality that doesn't make Moto or B&N Android users?

Re:Microsoft is more evil than ever

[DeathFromSomewhere]

They are device manufacturers, not users.

Re:Microsoft is more evil than ever

[JAlexoi]

Oooo... I'd like to manufacture Android.
Since they use Android on their devices, they are technically users.

Re:Microsoft is more evil than ever

[Shatrat]

The users still have to foot the bill.

Re:Microsoft is more evil than ever

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Probably not, the price of most of these devices seems to target nice roundable numbers. Like $299.99 or $199.99 or something like that. You don't typically see devices sold for $204.99.

In any case it's irrelevant to the claim that Microsoft was suing Android users, which is obvious FUD.

Re:Microsoft is more evil than ever

[JAlexoi]

Well, I am trying to use legalese and weaselly tactics here....

Re:FUD - again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does add additional terms which violate the GPL (and especially v3) - the only people who can publish GPL applications on iPhones are the original copyright owners of the source code.

Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[maccodemonkey]

Open source licenses themselves restrict distribution in Apple's store. See VLC for iOS. Apple had no problem distributing it on the app store. It was developer infighting about licensing that resulted in VLC themselves making the request to take it down.

Re:Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[amliebsch]

Okay, so it is more accurate to say that Apple doesn't *accomodate* open-source licenses (particularly GPL it would seem.) But Microsoft does. That's still noteworthy.

Re:Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[maccodemonkey]

"Okay, so it is more accurate to say that Apple doesn't *accomodate* open-source licenses (particularly GPL it would seem.) But Microsoft does. That's still noteworthy."

Define "accommodate". The only issue it seems is that it's not possible to load a re-linked executable onto a device with a developer account. Besides that, on iOS, Apple does nothing to stop open source distribution. You're free to distribute source, and you can distribute your executable unsigned outside of the app store (leaving the user to sign it.)

If we want to compare apples to apples (pun not intended), the Mac App Store let's you dynamically link against libraries, sidestepping this completely and making app store apps both fully compatible with GPLv2 and open source.

Re:Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[mark-t]

...and you can distribute your executable unsigned outside of the app store...

By my understanding, only to jailbroken devices.

There are a handful of compelling reasons to not jailbreak, and even more to not expect all of your users to be comfortable with it.

Re:Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[maccodemonkey]

A few things here. We're talking about the Windows 8 store. Mac OS X lets you run unsigned code perfectly fine. If we want to talk about mobile, Microsoft also does not allow for unsigned code.

Second, if the user can resign the code with a developer cert, they can run it on their device.

Re:Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[BitZtream]

Well, you could say that ... except you'd be wrong, as GPLv3 almost certainly doesn't allow for being uploaded to MSes store, GPLv2 is another story since its not nearly as 'make sure all software has 0 monetary value!' like GPLv3.

Re:Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[mark-t]

Sorry... I thought that a comparison was being made to the Apple store, and I was specifically thinking of mobile devices.

Re:Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[iamacat]

To be precise, open source license trolls restrict distribution to Apple's store. You can sign up for iOS developer program for $99/year and run modified code on all your/friends/family devices to your heart's content. While it's possible to design a license that requires development tools on the target platform to be free, to my knowledge no major project came under such a license. It might even be invalidated under "it's none of your business" principal.

Re:Apple doesn't restrict open source apps

[ceoyoyo]

No, it's accurate to say that Apple doesn't accommodate the GPL. MS has apparently written terms that say you CAN distribute GPLed apps in their store if you want to. Whether or not they actually design their store to make it possible remains to be seen.

Re:About turn?

[TheCycoONE]

Probably when they called Linux and open source licenses 'cancer' http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer

Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[forkfail]

Kind of makes me wonder about a few things concerning the App Store and Visual Studio licensing.

Since the app store will be able to kill apps, will they use stricter controls on ownership of their compiler, or will they lower the price and open it up in hopes of pulling open source devs away from the Linux world and also increasing the number of available apps?

Will someone with a student license be able to freely disseminate compiled programs?

Would they be far sighted enough to allow a low price version of the IDE/compiler that isn't allowed to be used for generation of programs for sale, but is for free apps on the app store? (Given that they can kill apps, they could easily ensure that for-pay apps are compiled with a properly licensed version of the compiler; I'm sure they could embed that or have some validation process as part of their licensed developer program or whatever...)

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Tough to get cheaper then free.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[forkfail]

Not complete (e.g., no ATL, MFC, some other core stuff). And binaries are not redistributable for pay:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hs24szh9.aspx

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[amliebsch]

Where in that link does it say the binaries cannot be sold?

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Not complete (e.g., no ATL, MFC, some other core stuff).

None of those affect the metro style apps which use WinRT.

And binaries are not redistributable for pay

I couldn't find anything that agrees with this, in fact I found the exact opposite.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[forkfail]

Hmmm....

Well, 2008 could not be:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Vsexpressinstall/thread/f280e5b7-f17a-4984-9b08-28c5449b6417

However, the moderators on social.msdn are saying "as far as I know, yes"

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/Vsexpressinstall/thread/e471aff6-90fd-432b-8388-0d9a65a394b0

But it's not in the FAQ, and I can't find the actual license agreement.

Regardless, express is not the full compiler; it is a somewhat stripped down entry-level version.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[amliebsch]

Actually, I believe the *compiler* is identical, it's just the IDE that has been feature-limited. But, given that most of those limitations are irrelevant to the hobbyist, it's a pretty good deal at $0.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[amliebsch]

To add, from your own link, 2008 *could* be. The clause asked about in your first link applied to the IDE itself, not binaries created using the IDE. It's a basic anti-reselling clause.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[forkfail]

I think that the key word here is "hobbyist".

If you want professional level developers writing for free for your platform, you gotta give them the tools for free to do so. Or at least make it cheap enough that it isn't a boundary.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[forkfail]

Except for where Microsoft themselves says no for 2008 in once place and gives a non-committal AFAIK while removing references to commercial publication from their FAQ.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Except for where Microsoft themselves says no for 2008

Huh? Read the entire link including the answers. It's standard legalese saying you can't redistribute VSEE.

non-committal AFAIK

Nothing wrong with saying you are unsure and giving contact information for people who would know for sure.

The third link seems to be a forum index.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[forkfail]

Yes, there is something wrong when the point of contact between the company and the rest of the world cannot give a definitive answer on whether or not it is legal to redistribute works generated with their product.

The forum index is what MS points to as their FAQ on all things express in various threads. Not really a FAQ in the traditional sense, but what is referred to as such by forum moderators.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Check again, the guy making the post isn't a Microsoft employee.

Re:Visual Studio Licenses Ponderings

[JohnnyBGod]

ATL, MFC, etc. are in the Platform SDK, which is also free, and compatible with VS Express.

Re:About turn?

[TheCycoONE]

Of course the 'about turn' happened a long time ago. CodePlex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodePlex) is pretty definitive proof that MS Supports Open Source, at least when it coincides with their business goals.

Why a store?

[Darinbob]

Ok, I'm naive and over 19. Can someone explain what these stores do and their purpose? There's one in Macs now but it seems pointless. We've already had online stores for applications. Maybe it's because these are "apps" and not full applications, a place to sell demos? Maybe this is the updated version of DOS shareware community (awful programs promoted as shareware because people thought they could get rich). I visited the Mac store and can't figure out the appeal, mostly mini games of the sort you'd see on facebook or g+ for free. So why would MS want to replicate this idea?

Re:Why a store?

[Anonymous Coward]

The app store paradigm is to shift respponsibility. In the classic desktop model of software, the user had to decide who to trust. In the pre-internet days this was a task with the same difficulty as deciding if that guy selling prozak out of his truck was trustworthy. With the increased speed of downloading over time, now the user has to determine what freeware, shareware, adware, and payware online is trustworthy and which are not.

In comes the app store model, all software present in the company approved store has to pass some version of testing designed to catch destructive behavior (intentional or unintentional) and only after a testing period is something allowed to go on the store.

Re:Why a store?

[JoeCommodore]

If you are a Linux person think of the store like a commercial+ software repository, where you can buy and then download/install via the internet, and if it is a perfect world you will be pushed timely updates on what you bought, so things don't break due to incompatibility. This does include full blown commercial programs, and all the restrictions that come with them (if not more as it is internet delivered/maintained.)

Some of the most obvious benefits:

a) can offer some cool software right at the get go (FOSS is a good bait, by slapping their corporate branding around the store -even if they do credit the creators- and people will start to assume that the company is responsible for those.)
b) reduce cost in packaging/distributing said software - of course that also means less manuals, and physical media for backup purposes.
c) get a piece of the commercial software pie from the publishers, through commissions, advertising, etc.
d) control the market to make their system shine by influencing who gets seen on the first page, etc.
e) Also with the draw to be the place to get software they can push their new products, and favor their stuff over the competition.
f) have an inside track on innovative and trending technologies of 3rd party products that are doing well at your store.
g) restrict unwanted access via through DRM or marketplace guidelines

Re:Why a store?

[nightfell]

Apple has sold over 100 million apps on the Mac App Store in less than a year, so clearly people find value in the store.

The point isn't all the apps you don't want (what are you expecting? To want every single app you see? How would that even make any sense?), it's the 3 or 4 apps that you do want.

For example, iLife, iWork, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Plants vs Zombies, Peggle, Photoshop Express, Pixelmator, Trillian, Angry Birds, GeekTool...

And these are all in one place, with one login, with one billing system, so it's very simple to find, purchase, install, and update your apps, instead of having an assortment of individual store logins and passwords and licensing schemes, etc.

Re:Why a store?

[BitZtream]

Provide a common place for Apps that meet a certain level of professionalism.

You can buy pretty much anything you want from some random website somewhere, but Apple and Microsoft are doing a bit of vetting before unleashing it on the world. Its not the end all be all of protecting users from rogue apps, but its a start in the right direction.

Grandma doesn't know how to Google for some random app, but she can probably figure out the OSX app store fairly easy, and she can safely assume that the really bad evil shit is weeded out from the start, all thats left is apps that sneak something in, and those get terminated as soon as someone notices.

Its the opposite of a virus scanner. Virus and Malware tools blacklist code, the App stores are more like a whitelist of reasonably safe apps in one consolidated location with a specific set of common guidelines so its easier to compare and contrast them.

While there are plenty of little craplets out there, you can get pretty much any app you want on the mac app store except for a few notable exceptions. I go look there first, and if not go somewhere else. You won't find too many Adobe products on the Mac AppStore as Adobe simply isn't capable of producing quality applications that meet Apples requirements, but pretty much everyone else does.

Re:Why a store?

[jedidiah]

...and it was already done before on MacOS too: Bodega.

This isn't even new on the platform in question. Bodega also still seems to be superior and more inclusive. It seems to be more complete in terms of what a user might actually want to install.

The App store is just Apple's walled garden. It's more like if Canonical had it's own store and universe and multiverse weren't available and no 3rd party repos were available either.

Re:Why a store?

[Darinbob]

I get Adobe apps from adobe.com (I thought of this example before you lambasted them). I can't think of other apps that grandma would want except a browser and an antivirus anyway. Maybe I'll get asked to name one and I'll say "go to avg.com" or something like that. I don't need Apple or MS as censors, and I know they're using the store to gain an advantage for themselves and not to gain an advantage for actual consumers.

And why integrate this into the OS instead of just having a web site?

Re:Why a store?

[Darinbob]

But I don't trust Apple, or Microsoft. I don't buy that many applications anyway and when I do I won't trust those bozos to tell me who's better than who, because I know that they're biased. This is going to be yet another way to keep third parties in line it sounds like. Microsoft is already a monopoly and this feature is just going to exacerbate their control.

Re:Why a store?

[Ixokai]

Umm. You either didn't visit the Mac App Store, or you just glanced and saw pretty pictures and let your eyes glaze over. There are numerous full applications -- and powerful ones at that -- on the store. It also has a number of small applications, and yes, a significant portion of it is games.

For developers, the primary appeal is advertising / access to users.. An online store for applications doesn't have anywhere near the access to people an "App Store" tied to a platform would have.

For users, the appeal is ease and simplicity of both getting apps and keeping them updated; they also can feel safer -- they don't have to give their credit card # to /yet another/ company, since Apple handles that and hey, they already have an Apple Account... and because the apps are screened, they are more likely to be what they claim to be and halfway functioning. I know more then a few people who are totally sold on the curated App Store model and feel very uncomfortable with buying apps from other sources now. (Yes, I know the app store review is not perfect and buggy things get through -- but rarely if ever apps that are not what they claim or are malicious).

For Apple, the appeal is the growth of the ecosystem. They get a cut of the apps, but that's largely meaningless to their bottom line -- they want their users happy. Happy users get apps they love that are of a high quality, are trivial to get, update, and delete. Happy users don't get confused about what an app does, aren't lied to about what an app does, and don't have to /worry/ about apps. Any particular itch that a happy user has, they should be able to easily find something to scratch it. Googling for something to solve their problem, trying to figure out what app is best for them, and buying/downloading/installing is a /fine/ way for people to get software -- but its not a pleasant experience.

I'm not sure what the appeal is for Microsoft, except maybe they think they want users to have a similar experience on Windows. Maybe they want it as a revenue source -- its not like Windows needs its ecosystem to grow. There are a bajillion windows apps out there to solve any random need practically. But maybe they feel they're suffering on the /experience/.

But yea, "mini-apps" and "demos"? No, lol. There are certain kinds of power-user apps you /can't/ get on the Store because of its policy limitations -- but there are a LOT of VERY powerful and VERY complete apps on there, in a wide range of categories.

And a crapton of games, yes.

Re:Why a store?

[BitZtream]

Great, so will you do tech support for my grandparents too? And my wifes parents and grandparents? We'll you make sure they only get apps from good, safe places?

Whats that? No? You aren't going to give free tech support to everyone in the world?

THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU PRETENDING YOUR SOLUTION IS VIABLE?

You may have plenty of time and nothing else to do other than fuck around with friends and families computers, I have more enjoyable shit to do.

Also, if you're buying directly from Adobe - Congratulations, you're getting ripped off, even CDW sells it cheaper to the general public with no corp account or discounts. But thats not why Adobe isn't on the app store, Adobe isn't on the Apple App Store because its incredibly shitty software and won't install on a good portion of Apple machines used by real developers ... you know why? It some how manages to NOT support case sensitive file systems.

Re:Why a store?

[marcosdumay]

For a customer, if you ever used Linux you'd know the value that there is in a repository full of software. If not:

Makes instalation procedures consistent;
Removes the problem of making sure you are downloading your software from the right source;
Makes it easier to search for software, searching only the app store removes all the noise you get from a full web search (mostly software for other plataforms and talking without a binary to download);
Makes it easier to pay for your software without trusting random people with your data (that you'll not get from a Linux repository, for obvious reasons).

For a developer there are some advantages too:

Makes instalation procedures consistent (yep, everybody gains from that);
Removes the problem of billing your consumers;
Makes the consumers always hit the right source (only malware writers lose here), and thus more trustfull to random software;

There are probably other advantages, for both parties. The advantage to the store owner is obvious, they get money, altough there may be other ones. The app store (also known as software repository) is just a great way to distribute software. Also, keep in mind that DRM is not required, it is a completely orthogonal concept.

iOS and Mac App Stores are GPL/LGPL incompatible

[CritterNYC]

As the iOS and Mac App Stores have restrictive licensing terms and are setup in a way which are incompatible with the GPL and LGPL. And as the GPL and LGPL represent the majority of open source software (about 57% combined). Yes, Apple does indeed restriuct open source apps from their app store.

How funny that I already corrected you

[SuperKendall]

Remember how I said that VLC was pulled NOT because it was open source but because a copyright claim was made by one of the VLC developers?

I guess you do not.

The reality is there are, as I said, a ton of apps in the app store that are heavily based on Open Source, some are even open source themselves (like the WordPress app).

EVEN IF the GPL caused a problem for some apps being released, that still leaves a LOT of other open source licenses.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[Hatta]

The VLC developer made the claim because Apple's TOS is incompatible with the GPL. Apple is 100% to blame for that incompatibility.

If that's not obvious, try a thought experiment. Apple could change their TOS to be consistent with the GPL pretty easily. Apple would still have an app store, and VLC would still be free software. Clearly Apple can do something to resolve this incompatibility, so they bear at least some responsibility for it.

Now consider if VLC changed their license to be consistent with the app store TOS. VLC would be allowed on the app store, but it would no longer be free software. In that case, Apple's app store is still incompatible with free software. Nothing the VLC developers can do can change that, so they bear none of the responsibility for it.

P.S. A lot of folks are using "Free Software" and "Open Source" interchangably here. This is one of the times when the distinction matters. You might be able to get open source apps on the app store, but you'll never be able to exercise your fundamental software freedoms.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[jedidiah]

...sure.

Make sure that the only "open source" licenses that are left are those that companies like Apple can freely steal from.

That's kind of the point of this whole argument.

The industry's great satan appears to be less hostile to authors being able to control their work than the current "golden boy". It's terribly ironic.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[Hatta]

Except that VLC wouldn't be free software if you changed the license.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[Goaway]

Guess what: They just did that thing you said they couldn't do.

http://www.videolan.org/press/lgpl.html

Pretty rich of you to accuse others of "bullshit", then.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[ceoyoyo]

Instead of writing "free software" which can have a variety of meanings outside of Stallman land, be specific. Apple's App store is (possibly) not compatible with the GPL version 3.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[Super_Z]

The VLC developer made the claim because Apple's TOS is incompatible with the GPL. Apple is 100% to blame for that incompatibility.

Actually, the VLC developer that made the claim was unaware that Apple had actually changed it's TOS to accomodate FOSS licenses. See discussion on the VideoLAN list around October / Novemer 2010. Also take a look at Jean-Baptiste Kempf's legal analysis in the latter link.

It turns out that the last stumbling block - as explained in a comment above - is that the GPL license specifically dictates you can’t block the user's ability to redistribute binaries himself. This is conflicts with the iOS security model of only allowing software that is signed by a special certificate (or other enterprise certificates).

Now consider if VLC changed their license to be consistent with the app store TOS. VLC would be allowed on the app store, but it would no longer be free software.

This is plainly wrong, as only GPL licensed software has trouble with this model. Fres software under e.g. Apache, Mozilla or BSD licenses are easily distributed through the App Store.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[BitZtream]

So FreeBSD isn't free software? The BSD license isn't free? The Apache License? MIT? X11? All of the hundreds of others that aren't part of Stallman's hippie political agenda ... those all aren't free software licenses?

You're an idiot.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[msobkow]

I don't think you grasp the app store and DRM subtleties.

Because you cannot replace even an LGPL library at will with a DRM-encombered platform, the changes VLC has made do not deal with the Apple incompatibilities. They merely elevate the VLC library from a product-specific library to a shared vendor-neutral source library that anyone can use in their own media players.

Certainly VLC video player itself is still restricted from iOS deployment by the GPL covering the main product itself.

Blame Apple. The GPL beat their iOS devices to market by almost two decades, and has served the software industry as a whole rather well. While you're at it, blame Apple for blocking Java deployment to iOS devices, and for trying to abandon Java support for OS/X devices.

Apple wants a walled garden for their users. Good for them. They've locked me out, and I could care less. It just means their users will never see anything better than a web form interface, and that not for at least another year or two, while any Java/GPL compatible platform will have support in a few more weeks. I will not subject my software to the anti-freedom clauses of the Apple kool-aid company.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[firewood]

The VLC developer made the claim because Apple's TOS is incompatible with the GPL. Apple is 100% to blame for that incompatibility.

Actually, the authors of GPLv3 were perfectly aware of the concept of a tivo-ized app store when they designed the license. So those GPL authors are 100% to blame for the incompatibility. Not Apple.

BTW, there is no absolute App store restriction on the distribution of open source apps. Any user who purchases the standard iOS developers tools (comes with the $99/annum iOS Developer enrollment) is free to (re)build an App store app from source and install it on their iOS devices without going near the App store.

Re:How funny that I already corrected you

[Goaway]

The media player also doesn't run on iOS anyway, so the license is the smallest problem there.

All that's resusable for an iOS version is the core libraries, and those have been re-licenesed.

You are not the customer

[Anonymous Coward]

With the app store model, you are not the customer.
You are not even the product. You're just a dumb bitch who's going to bend over and take it up the ass for $0.99 at a time.

Licensing Violations

[CritterNYC]

The licensing for these open source was done years ago. Two decades at this point in the case of the GPLv2, the world's most popular software license... well before iOS even existed. Apple designed their licensing for the iOS and Mac App Stores so that they are incompatible with said license. That's their own fault. So, even though a couple VLC devs tried to put it in the store, they didn't get the permission of all the copyright holders to violate the terms of the GPL and do so. Thus, those devs and Apple themselves violated the GPL.

Re:FACT: GPL IS NOT ALLOWED !!

[jockm]

Well if it is a FACT, perhaps you could provide some proof?

Re:FACT: GPL IS NOT ALLOWED !!

[BitZtream]

Uhm, no, thats not a fact.

GPL is most certainly allowed, Apple doesn't care. No where do they say 'NO GPL SOFTWARE!'

In fact, I know of several GPL software packages ON THE APP STORE.

On the otherhand, ignorant GPL zealots seem to forget that it was designed to fail in these situations so that users maintained 'freedoms' they couldn't otherwise.

So you got your freedom, you are free to not have apps on an iPhone, or you can change GPL to allow for it, but lets be realistic, you're just going to FUD it up instead and pretend its someone elses fault you can't always get your way.

Then don't make the broad claim

[SuperKendall]

There are some issues with a very specific open source license and the Apple App store.

In practice I have seen no issue. However, as you note there's a potential problem only with a specific license (the GPL) which certainly dismisses the original claim that Apple disallows open source apps from the app store. You'd have to make the claim Apple disallows GPL apps from the app store, but you can't even make that claim since it is not true to date.

All apps in the app store have a non-obtrusive DRM in them, this means you canâ(TM)t hand someone a copy of the free app you downloaded.

Sure you can, you can send them the source. However this is not an Apple issue. This is technical issue related to redistribution. Again Apple is not stopping you from doing anything, it's the terms of the GPL if anything.

a version of the GPL license specifically dictates you canâ(TM)t block the user's ability to redistribute himself.

Once you have the source you can re-distribute to anyone.

Re:Then don't make the broad claim

[Tharsman]

First note I actually agree with you in that Apple is not anti-open source. Heck, look at webkit!!!

But there is something you are wrong there about, and not because of any apple issues but because of GPL wording.

I don’t know the exact details, but from all I have gathered the point is that anything you do with a GPL licensed codebase needs to be redistributable in its final form, on top of granting access to the source code. Giving access to the source code and telling the user he can compile and then work around Apple's restrictions to get the app running in their devices does not seem to be acceptable.

For the App Store to be GPL compliant, they have to allow developers to opt out of the DRM, and allow the apps that were originally downloaded from the app store to be installed in anyone's device, even if they were received via email.

I'm not saying they HAVE to do this, though. As you note, the GPL compliance issue is only an issue in large open source projects where at least one contributor has an issue with the software being in the Apple store. If all contributors agree, the software can be re-licensed for the purpose of Apple App Store current form of distribution.

Re:Then don't make the broad claim

[ceoyoyo]

I don't think it's even the GPL, it's the GPL v3, and the problem is that even if you send someone the source, they can't install it unless they pay Apple to be developers, which, if I understand correctly, runs afoul of the anti-TIVOization clause in the GPL v3. Now, you CAN install the app on Apple's simulator... I wonder if that gets you around it?

Re:Most likely

[BitZtream]

It's hard to be clear if the whole "EFI only boots Windows" scandal was real and Microsoft backed down or if it was simply a misinterpretation

Whats hard about it? At no point did anyone say it would be windows only, nor did anyone imply it. Some ignorant people made stupid assumptions. These are the same people who are continually making excuses for why Linux isn't the desktop dominator.

Its also a rather stupid assumption that mobo manufactures would all capitulate and not give an option to boot another OS. Non-Windows OSes are rather common OUTSIDE of the desktop, they aren't going to cut off a massive portion of income to play with Microsoft.

You really have a slanted view on the world if you ever think there was any doubt as to what is going to happen.

Wow, direct proof and you cannot see

[SuperKendall]

As the iOS and Mac App Stores have restrictive licensing terms and are setup in a way which are incompatible with the GPL and LGPL

Say what terms there are SPECIFICALLY that disallow this.

Yes, Apple does indeed restriuct open source apps from their app store.

You do realize you are responding to a post with a list of open source apps in the app store? And yet still you are willing to post under a real userID to make that broad claim which the very post you are responding to shows to be wrong?

Incredible.

Semantic Argument

[Comboman]

It's a semantic argument. No, Apple doesn't specifically outlaw open-source programs from its app stores; however, its license agreement is in direct conflict with the GPL (and probably other open-source licenses). That doesn't mean there aren't GPL programs in the app store, but it does mean the people that put them there are violating the GPL.

Re:Semantic Argument

[BitZtream]

but it does mean the people that put them there are violating the GPL.

Please don't speak.

I publish my app, which I license to others under GPL. 100% legal and not in violation of anything. You are bound by the GPL when using MY GPL software, I am not. I can do what the fuck ever I want with my source, making it GPL doesn't take ANYTHING away from MY rights, only YOURS.

Apple's terms *are* contrary to the GPL

[pavon]

I haven't read Microsoft's new terms, so I can't comment on them, but the iOS app store is incompatible with the terms of the GPL.

The App Store terms and conditions does allow for a third party license agreement (including FLOSS licenses) to be substituted for their default LICENSED APPLICATION END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT. However only that one section of the terms and services is substituted; the rest of it remains in force. The GPL prohibits you from placing any further restrictions than those in the GPL, and the App Store terms and conditions does just that: In particular

USE OF APP AND BOOK PRODUCTS AND THE APP AND BOOK SERVICES
You agree that the App and Book Services and certain App and Book Products include security technology that limits your use of App and Book Products and that, whether or not App and Book Products are limited by security technology, you shall use App and Book Products in compliance with the applicable usage rules established by Apple and its principals (âoeUsage Rulesâ), and that any other use of the App and Book Products may constitute a copyright infringement

CHANGES
Apple reserves the right at any time to modify this Agreement and to impose new or additional terms or conditions on your use of the App and Book Services. Such modifications and additional terms and conditions will be effective immediately and incorporated into this Agreement. Your continued use of the App and Book Services will be deemed acceptance thereof.

Other FLOSS licenses are compatible with the app store, and other GPL developers don't care about the incompatibility, and thus don't press the issue, but the VLC developer was correct in his claim that the GPL was being violated.

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Re:Not FUD, just lies

[JAlexoi]

Nope, the EULA ads restrictions that clash with GPL. Thus any project that doesn't have the permission of all contributors to publish will be yanked due to licensing reasons.
True that they don't disallow, they implicitly don't allow GPL.

Re:FUD - again.

[JAlexoi]

+100000 on that comment

Re:iOS and Mac App Stores are GPL/LGPL incompatibl

[JAlexoi]

GPL is very much explicit what is not allowed - additional restrictions to GPL. Maybe you should read it.
As for authors of the software - they are not bound by GPL in any way.

And of course it's not Apple's fault that they chose to lock down their platform all the way to hell and back. /s

Re:FACT: GPL IS NOT ALLOWED !!

[markkezner]

There was an incident with the GPL app GNU Go. Here is the FSF's take on the matter.

Re:OK Here we go again.

[jellomizer]

You know, I haven't really heard of anything Evil that Microsoft has done lately. It is like they need to compete to survive.

Over 50%

[CritterNYC]

As the licensing terms Apple chose to use deny access to the app store for over 50% of open source software worldwide by including language that attempts to place restrictions on software above and beyond what the contributors intend, there's really no other conclusion to come to. Apple and their lawyers know the GPL very well and were well aware of what they were doing. As to their intentions, I won't hazard a guess, but Apple's intentions are seldom honorable.

Re:Over 50%

[yabos]

Except you are forgetting that that 57% means absolutely nothing because it includes software that can't even run on the Apple devices.

to get out of anit trust issues?

[Joe_Dragon]

to get out of anit trust issues?

This may be just about that.

Re:FUD - again.

[toriver]

Again with the "open source == GPL" wrongness.

Can any iOS dev choose to provide the source to their iOS app to anyone? Yes. Therefore: Open source is fine on the App Store. You just won't get the source from Apple, but need some other mechanism (like a URL).

Re:Not FUD, just lies

[toriver]

So what? Does the GPL now have a monopoly on the "open source" definition?

Re:iOS and Mac App Stores are GPL/LGPL incompatibl

[jedidiah]

Why does a freeware app of any kind "need" to be Tivo'ed.

It's simply an unnecessary bullshit constraint that doesn't serve the owner of the hardware, or the end user, but only serves the company that "owns the platform".

The crass control freak ads an extra layer of nonsense. So of course there is going to be some collateral damage. You don't get that kind of nonsense for free.

The only real question is whether or not "discriminating consumers" will put up with it or even better yet defend it.

Don't worry!

[AdamJS]

There are plenty of people like you!
For instance, I've talked plenty of people into getting Xbox 360s (or assembling their own PCs for gaming) instead of getting a PS3 due to the great Sony company's shenanigans over the pat two decades.

Re:Most likely

[jedidiah]

A locked down bootloader is very much like the Apple store.

It doesn't explicitly ban certain things but it makes it harder for them to exist and less likely to exist with perhaps the requirement that certain other parties give up their rights.

The "side effects" are obvious to most of us. Although Microsoft could be forgiven for not being fully aware of such things given their track record. They could merely be incompetent rather than malicious.

GPLv2 vs. GPLv3

[DragonWriter]

Apple does add additional terms which violate the GPL (and especially v3)

The additional terms violate GPLv2 at least as much as they violate the GPLv3, since one of the changes made in GPLv3 was creating some allowance for additional terms, whereas the GPLv2 expressly disallowed distributors from adding restrictions (without exceptions.)

Any DRM platform can resolve this

[msobkow]

All any DRM-enabled platform has to do to solve the GPLv3 incompatability is to allow their users to install non-DRM applications within the framework. With C#/.Net or Java this is achieved by deplying unsigned DLLs, EXEs, and Jars. Where Apple falls down on GPLv3 compatibility is in mandating that you must sign the code.

I didn't see the Microsoft article clarifying their position on unsigned code distribution and installation for Windows 8. The fact that they want to allow FOSS doesn't mean that they haven't stepped in the same DRM puddle as Apple.

Re:Not FUD, just lies

[Your.Master]

No, but it's a member of the set "open source" and the statement in question is:

"Apple doesn't restrict open source apps from their app store."

If Apple restricts GPL, and GPL is open source, then Apple restricts open source.

Let's draw an analogy:

"Mom doesn't restrict the foods that go in my lunch box"

If Mom says you can't have a chocolate bar in your lunch box, and a chocolate bar is a food, then Mom restricts the foods that go into your lunch box.

Re:Not FUD, just lies

[ceoyoyo]

That depends on how much of Stallman's Cool-Aid you've been drinking.

True, but I would say this

[fireylord]

If you wish to use an Ubuntu Distro for Production work, then you really should stick to the LTS releases, because at least this way major function providers will remain stable. Using the bleeding edge releases as they come out, particularly without verifying precisely what is changing on a new release, on anything other than a box for fiddling about with/web browsing and email only is bound to cause you unwanted headaches.

MIcrosofts stance eh?

[fireylord]

There's not always correlation between what they say, and what they actually corporately think. That statement is rhetoric, nothing more.

Re:MIcrosofts stance eh?

[Eyeballs]

Actually, Microsoft is big enough (more than 600 different product groups) that you need to ask: Which part of Microsoft are you talking about when discussing open source?

And this is why

[fireylord]

There are multiple foss licenses out there, you use theone that suits your needs. The GPL exists for this reason: Software released using it is meant to be free as in speech, free as in beer, but NOT free as in a free lunch for developers wanting to rip off the code and repackage it as something else. If you don't mind people getting rich off of your own work, you can use one of the many fine BSD licenses, or even lgpl. If you want to contribute without someone taking advantage, you use GPL. If the code is all your work others who want to license your code for other uses can always approach you with an offer.

Weird....

[ulzeraj]

"differentiate itself from Apple, which famously restricts open source-licensed apps from being sold in its iOS and Mac App Stores."

I've downloaded open source software such as mplayerX and growl from the mac app store.

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Re:Not FUD, just lies

[BitZtream]

Lets follow your ignorant statements one step further.

GPL software is software.

Apple restricts GPL software, therefore Apple restricts software!

Yes, thats how fucking stupid your statement is.

GPL is not the definition of open source, in fact to A LOT OF PEOPLE it IS NOT considered truly free in the libre sense.

Re:Most likely

[BitZtream]

And when you go into the EFI settings and turn off secure boot ... what is locked down again?

Re:About turn?

[BitZtream]

Parasites too have their uses. Leeches are useful for medical treatment. Tapeworms are a great way to lose weight.

Unfortunately for you, ignorance isn't a parasite, virus, cancer or anything else, but hopefully you're ignorance will still result in your life being shortened to the point that you stop wasting useful energy and oxygen.

Re:FACT: GPL IS NOT ALLOWED !!

[jockm]

UM OK but that is about the Apple App Sore, and its terms and restrictions. The TFA us about MS's App Store and how they do accept GPL. I am challenging the poster I replied to back up his post with proof. Maybe the situation will be the same, and ultimately not possible, maybe it won't. I don't know, he doesn't know, and yet asserted it as a "FACT", but without a shred of evidence.

Open source app will raise the bar on apps

[BlueCoder]

Open source apps will set the standard and it will be up to the commercial developers to make apps with the added functionality customers are willing to pay for.

But expect individuals applying more and more for patents for simple obvious features.

The Apple App Store...

[CapuchinSeven]

...has a load of open source software.

Both are incompatible

[marcosdumay]

You try to attribute incomatibility like it was not a reflexive chearacteristic. I have some news for you, both are incompatible. That means you can't put GPL software at the Apple App Store. There is no blame to be assigned.

Microsoft would be smart to simply do that, reduce their DRM requirements and let GPL software be available at their store. That would give them a huge competition advantage against Apple, and help level the plying field against Google.

Anyway, I don't trust them to keep their word here, as the only way to do that would be to open Windows 8 for other app stores.