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Open Source Windows
Kazen sent us
a link an an InfoWorld story where Balmer talks about
Open Source for Windows 2000.
Is he serious? What would it mean? Betcha it would mean
YAOSL (yet another Open Source License).
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I have always wanted to see the billion lines of bloat. Maybe a real OS can be created from the ashes.
If they really do this then they will be giving WINE a huge boost. Humm... Even if WINE did'nt copy any of the code, just seeing out it works should be benificial.
Code is code. The main reason MS has lost its touch is because the code just exploded without weeding out the old stuff. Plus, all this backward compatibility to Win 1.0 junk. By being able to see the code, it could be useful in furthering Linux by seeing how certain routines are done in Windows and creating similar features in Linux.
Simple. It's a pre-emptive strike. Microsoft, if they are smart, knows they are going to lose and be branded a monopoly. Once that happens, it's all over.
:)
Look at Intel. They were smart enough to settle, and one of the key settlement points was they were not branded a monopoly.
If Microsoft is branded a monopoly, it's the kiss of death for them. They are going to then have to follow a whole new set of rules. So, if they are smart, they will settle, and this is the beginning of that. They will wind up giving in everything the DOJ wants (most likely) in order not to be branded a monopoly. If they are smart. No one ever said they were...
That is it could be for what you know as Linux and its purity. This could be a way to snatch back the movement of Linux.
This idea was covered already by an alternative OS advocate.
All I can say for now is watch your back.
'til dawn...
Silver Surfer
he needed a tax break probably.
Samba using the kernel code? Not likely. There's very VERY little in the kernel that relates to smb. Nice try, though.
It would be simple to make a super-restrictive license and charge a lot of money for it when your lawyers are the ones interpreting "open source"
It looks like their trademark phrase is in serious danger of dilution to the point of worthlessness.
Hate to say it, but Bruce Perens is looking more and more correct with his hardline "Free Software" only stance.
A prof could show Linux and NT kernels to see what not to do in the desgin of a kernel...
"And here is where MS intergrated the GUI into the kernel of a server OS...."
Y'know, one _could_ look at this as a cry for help. Think about it. How many lines of code is in an average Linux distro? How many in NT? And Win2000 is supposed to be even more bloated, right? So what Ballmer is saying is that the MicroSofties can't cope with the bloated, misbegotten monster they've created, and they need help.
I work for a software company whose product line is MS focused, and our software engineers and architects would jump at the chance to see just how NT does what it does, so we could improve our product. And they'd gladly share bug fixes with the boys at Redmond. (We have a good relationship with them, actually; most of the programmers are decent sorts.) We're just one of thousands of companies doing this sort of thing. Something like this, if MS does it right (and there's no guarantee of that) could actually turn Windows into something people could count on.
But maybe I'm raving.
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but...
If Microsoft releases source code to any part of Windows, they may claim _later_ that the source code was used in other projects...say GCC or X.
Using that _claim_ they could attempt to sue -- and thus crush -- a specific Open Source project.
It's FUD on a whole new level.
People would copy the source the same way they copy Windows. People would ignore the EULA the same way they do with Windows. So what's the point here?
I want to take apart his brain and figure out what makes him tick. I'm not sure he's quite human.
If I ever get enough free time I'm gonna write a package to analyze C and C++ source code every which way, to make some sense out of badly written code.
Something like cxref, but a lot more thorough. It would even spit out UML diagrams in Postscript. Plus some scientific-ish metrics so we can say exactly how bad a given hunk of code is, with numbers and diagrams.
And maybe something to automatically re-write code into a more maintainable form. The ultimate pretty-printer. Or at least makefiles that always work.
Someday.
Thanks to ESR, we probably will get to see all kinds of source code, possibly even from Microsoft, but don't count on any of it being free as in "free speech", and probably precious little will even score as free as in "free beer".
I don't know that it would fare any better than Open Source(tm), but perhaps we need an official, trademarked "Free Software(tm)" that refers exclusively to the GPL, LGPL, and Berkeley licenses, and not to these self-serving corporate licenses that mean "free" chiefly in the sense of "free programmers for us". To work, companies wishing to receive Free Software(tm) certification would have to pick from one of those three licenses, entirely unmodified, rather than submit their latest legalese to an overeager and accommodating committee like ESR's.
Most of these high profile "Open Source" cases remind me of the old Native American complaint that white men know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Intellectual property hoarders are the Custers of the electronic frontier. Let us hope they meet the same fate.
In the Halloween document, M$ correctly ascertained the debate as not a question of M$ vs Linux, but Closed Source vs Open Source.
:)
And what do they do now, to fight the Open Source bunch? They're considering Open Source. Alright, I think it's BS, but what this reminds me of is the Mandarins. You may remember them either from Chinese history, or from Wing Commander II.
"If you can't beat 'em, fake joining them, subvert them from inside, then turn them into you." If M$ goes through with this, you can bet they'll start tinkering with the Open Source rules. They'll turn it into a nondisclosure form, all that shit. Guys, the Borgs' anal probes are getting nearer!
Of course, I think there is hope: watch M$ as they slowly transform under the Open Source impetus... Soon, M$ will be a bunch of fun-loving hackers who read Slashdot, bitch Katz, marvel at portable lasers and buy cuddly penguin mascots.
Heh heh... There's a happy thought!
That was my first thought upon reading it.
Graphics performance in 3.51 was fine until they tried to bolt the Win95 user interface onto it. The explorer upgrade for NT3 provided a rather nice 'before and after' effect.
I thought if Micros~1 (or anyone) files a lawsuit against a person, and it fails, then ms would have to pay the person's legal fees.
That's just what i've heard. actually i can't stand legal stuff.
What would you think if MS threw a big "Open Source" Bash à la Mozilla, and nobody came?
This is Zontar The Mindless posting as AC because he's using Mozilla and /. won't let me log in with it... :-( (Or maybe I've just forgotten my password, I dunno...)
Now, if they open sourced the Win32 APIs, it could be fun. yes, the APIs suck, but Windoze in general sucks. However, if those APIs were open sourced, within a year we'd have perfect Windoze runtimes for Linux, Darwin, BSD, what have you - much better than WINE - and people who needed to run windoze apps could just avoid windoze completely. Microsoft knows this, they know that the ONLY strength of Windoze is the number of apps (and the perception that anyone needs all those apps), and thus they will never open source the Win32 APIs.
They might open source the NT kernel, but so what? So the OS community, if it gives a damn, irons out some nasty kernel bugs. It is still really just using the OS community to give microsoft a better product, without really giving anything useful (like Win32) back to the community. Why would I want linux to run on the NT kernel? Why would I be interested in the NT kernel at all, except maybe some technological advances that could be applied to Linux?
Fuck microsoft.
I think the whole idea here is that Microsoft wants to be able to say to its customers, "Don't buy Linux--just wait for Windows 2000; it'll be Open Source, too." It's just another take at the vapor-ware strategy they've used (quite effectively) in the past.
Yeah, let's stop developing Linux, shall we? Let's just go on vacation for a couple of years, I mean, after all, soon we'll have the Windows source code, so we can fix all the bad things in it and have a great open-source OS which everyone will use, instead!
NOOOOOOOOOT!!!
Microsoft would take a HUGE amount of risk by doing this. There are enough security holes in the operating system already.
Imagine if everyone had the source for NT? We would see a tidal wave of security exploits. Melissa would be nothing compared to what would take place if the source were open.
That is just another reason I don't think M$ will every TRULY open up their source. They may grant source access to a few selected "premier" customers or something like that.
They are just contemplating their age-old strategy of "embrace, extend, extinguish", this time with their eye on the whole open-source movement. I don't think it'll ever happen.
Interpreting the vast sprawl of MS code could be a marathon, shared task just like the Human Genome Project. Maybe in 5 years, we'll have mapped out what the majority of the code does.
Don't you guys see? They're giving us bs, they are not considering putting windows 2000 on open source the same way they're not considering porting office to linux. They're saying those things to freak out the competition that might be building up if . While the "Office 200 for linux" vapourware was intended to freak out Businesses tinking of porting their applications to linux, "open source windows 2000" is intended on freaking out those businesses that are thinking on putting their products on open source.
Remeber Microsoft's goal is to attack the open source way of doing things, the process, not linux itself.
And beware.
Daniel (helenos@mail.telepac.pt)
Something like this has been proposed once before. Search for windows and liberation and front in the subject with a DejaNews power search to find the discussion.
Kinda sounds like X.
Does X performance suck?
Or any GUI, for that matter?
NT Kernel code, may or may not be of big academic interest (I did not see the actual code, and don't want to give an opinion on it), but it has *at least* one interest :
Thousands of drivers for NT are shipped for almost all devices you can find on the market.
I agree that NT Kernel interface to device drivers is far from being the nicest on earth, but any new operating system would surely gain from being able to use this incomparable library of available drivers.
Writing an NT kernel emulation layer is almost impossible without looking at the source code. NT kernel API is surely one of the most badly documented part of Win@#!%.
Just my $.02
Microsoft is really going to have to scrub their code if they don't want a repeat of those Stacker and QuickTime lawsuits.
I wouldn't be suprised if there's some other "borrowed" code in there.
actually copyright law is responsible for all restrictions. a license can't be used to add restrictions beyond what copyright law defines. well... most licenses do add restrictions that can't be enforced mainly just to scare costumers into believing they have no rights. Licenses can really only grant rights to the licensee.
I'm basically in agreement with you here, but I think the GPL is necessary in some instances, if not quite as many as RMS thinks. It is good that Linux and many of the core GNU tools are GPL'ed, else an entity like Microsoft can come along, embrace and extend, and beat the free software community over the head with its own stick. The more important and widely used is the tool, the more it needs the GPL. Conversely, it doesn't matter nearly as much if your MP3 player under the GPL, a Berkeley license, or the public domain.
The term "free software", as the FSF uses it, is annoying, but what what else could you call it? Mandatorily-redistributable-and-source-inclusive software doesn't quite have the same ring.
Just because you flunked out of VisualBasic Jr. 101 doesn't mean that the rest of us don't know how to code. Get a clue.
where's the fear? fear that windows will all of a sudden stop the linux surge because of some "open source pixie-dust" ? please.
Where's the uncertainty? Well, Microsoft never can make up its mind, so I'll give you that.
Where's the doubt? there is none. Microsoft is thinking of doing something that people apparently want. (of course, once they get it, it'll be another story).
in essence, yes MS is doing this primarily as a PR stunt, they after all are a marketing company, not a technology company. however, the benefit is more personal freedom for windows developers - isn't that the name of the game?
Oh wait, I forgot that open source advocates tend to be "selective" in their beliefs.
ok, i'll stand in the paranoid line.
facts:
MS *is* feeling the pressure of the
free software evolution.
MS owns a $#!+pile of patents.
paranoia: (heightened awareness?)
MS releases some source code. maybe even
useless crap code to distract many developers
of valuable free software... maybe they'll
use their openness as ammunition against
other companies -- patent violations! --
since there could be no easy 'clean room'
argument for similar acting code. ok, so
they couldn't get at developers since development
is very distributed, but they could really
put pressure on packagers/vendors of code
that is a patent infringement.
more paranoia??? yes, but this should be
enough to make you close your eyes *real*
tight when even hearing the words 'microsoft
source code'.
brent
It's actually pretty trivial if you get the DDK. But then again this undermines your argument, so I don't expect you to admit it as fact.
The problem wasn't threading, it was context swaps. Graphics performance was improved something like 40% (in terms of bitblits and so on) by the creation of Win32K (the kernel-mode portions of the GUI). However, you're right in that it produced a possible destabilization in the kernel as a result. Speed versus stability is ALWAYS a trade off, unless you beef up the hardware or are simply trimming the fat...
Utterly, absolutely, and completely wrong. WinNT4SP3 works just dandy with Win95/98 using several flavors of SMB. If you trace it, you'll see that the connection handshakes to determine which flavor of SMB both OS's support, and then they use that.
The most frustrating thing about the rabid anti-MS community is that they don't usually bother to check their facts before distributing FUD.
Of course, the possibility you're conveniently ignoring is that MS may learn from the O/S movement, figure out how to get their thousands of programmers really working in unison by carefully studying how the GPL works in the real world and release an ass-kicking product.
;)
But of course your arrogance would never let you admit that
Actually, having looked at the source for both NT and several Linuxes, I'd say that NT's design goal was MORE modular than Linux. However, they've failed in the execution so far, primarily due to the drive to ship.
And that's the crux: MS is a BUSINESS. They have to produce, and sell, a PRODUCT. The O/S community has no need to sell a product. They can just implement and test incremental improvements. This is a superior design model. The problem is not specific to MS -- they have some damned good coders. Unfortunately, the drive to ship tends to supercede, say, making the TCP stack absolutely BULLETPROOF, or making the resolver the fastest on the market.
Businesses have to make tradeoffs that non-commercial enterprises have the luxury of dodging. The flip side of this is that business-developed products tend to be more widely accepted than their freeware counterparts because of the business's focus on support and marketing.
2cents.
Close but not quite... I was playing around with Samba on FreeBSD about a year ago, and it couldn't talk with a couple of WinNT bugfix3 systems. Microsoft changed the default behaviour of the NT networking system to not accept plain-text passwords anymore. This broke Samba, and required a registry change to un-screw-up the NT boxes.
That's not pointless, because code can be a documentation good enough. If Microsoft releases NT source, you can expect people to try to make a Linux or FreeBSD subsystem to run unmodified executables. This is not possible today because the core kernel isn't documented (I think).
These sound like the precise arguments made by Microsoft against open source, and condemned by open sourcers. Open sourcers say Open code = greater security, not vulnerability. You're just being anti-Microsoft for the hell of it, not for any plausible reason!
> Microsoft would take a HUGE amount of risk by doing this. There are enough security holes in the operating system already.
>
> Imagine if everyone had the source for NT? We would see a tidal wave of security exploits. Melissa would be nothing compared to what would take place if the source were open.
Obviously, Microsoft is preparing for April Fools Day 2000...
;-)
While opening the source to windows makes some interesitng things possible, I doubt it would change much. Microsoft's obsessivly controlling nature is more a symptom than the real problem.
The real problem is that they are so effective at maximizing their investments that the needs of their customers are no longer a factor in their decision-making process. They extract the most money from the rest of the world with the least effort. That's why their products are pathologically unstable and otherwise broken. The less effort they can put into their products and still get people to buy them, the better for their bottom line. As long as the product sufficiently gives the illusion of value and gets you to open your wallet, the actual quality doesn't matter to them.
Unless they can change the nature of the way they operate at a fundamental level, opening the source up won't do anything. They'll still want be the central point of control for the source, so they will have veto power over any bug fixes submitted and almost zero incentive to implement them.
Ken Schalk ( xorian@tiac.net)
This article at the SJ Mecury site gives a little more insight into Microsoft's thinking on the licensing issue, in short, licensing and royalty payments are being considered. Methinks BP and ESR should fire up their text editors and get busy firing off some preemptive letters warning about the use of the term "Open Source."
From the article:
`There would be all kinds of issues that we would need to address first,'' noted David Cole, vice president of Microsoft's Web Client and Consumer Experience Division. ``We would have to find out how willing companies would be to give us the code they developed, how we would incorporate that code into our products, and what the licensing and royalty payments might be.''
slashdot broke my sig
For the record, since some people still seem to not realize this, The Register is a tabloid. Please don't take anything they say seriously.
I think the main reason that not many people have contributed to Mozilla is that the version they released source for was (is) very much unuseable.
This was also one of the reasons that jwz pointed out recently. I do not think the size of the source is such a big problem; you do not need to understand all of it to dive into a part of it.
If they had released source for the version 3 that I actually use (due to resource considerations), I definately would have spent some time trying to fix a few of the problems I have with it.
I do not want to be a major Mozilla contributor and therefore I have no reason to develop a product that I do not use. I want to fix what bothers me and then get on with other stuff, using a version with that problem fixed. Mozilla cannot do that for me, so I do not contribute to Mozilla.
--
Considering microsoft is a a $40 billion international cooperation employing tens of thousands of people, and Red Hat is still basically a small, privatly held startup (although this is certainly changing) employing only a little over 100 people, such a challange does not hold water. Gates has something like $6 billion to his name - if charities were really paramount to him, he could easily give far, far more than he has so far...
Posted by JoeyRamone:
It's like all opposition is vanished within Microsoft. Maybe the borg invaded them (now there's a nice thought).
Well at least it could offer us a change to see how crappy the programmers at MS really are (I'm thinking spaghetti). I applaud it...
BTW:
What could prized operating system mean?? Are they serious?
"thinking with great interest" about opening up Windows source code means that they are happy to grab some positive publicity by talking about nice friendly concepts without actually putting a time frame on any activity or specifying what that activity will be.
Ballmer said there were some drawbacks to making Windows code widely available because he wants to make it sound like his main concern is for the customer. Microsoft's main concern, of course, is how to leverage, decommoditise, cut off air supplies, and rake in millions, and going truly open source will undoubtedly cause more substantial problems for these corporate goals than the horrors a typical corporation faces by receiving source code to software it already uses. Microsoft is well aware that for the purposes of PR, one must pretend not to have such introverted concerns, especially if they might not be in perfect harmony with the good of the customer.
He offered no further elaboration because it might have meant actually committing to a concrete course of action, rather than scoring cheap positive PR points.
They are looking at opening the Windows NT kernel, which means they aren't so foolish as to make the source to an entire operating system available. They know the value of secrecy, and they aren't going to give away more secrets than they feel will be best for them on the whole. Opening up the entire operating system would merely attract hoards of programmers who wanted to make a free compatible version, a la WINE.
Valentine characterized Linux as "momentum without a lot of design wins," because (and this information comes from a highly reliable source -- my imagination) it is official Microsoft policy to mention Linux only in the context of FUD, combined with the reassurance that they are making all the possible real advantages of Linux available in Windows, only better because it's Microsoft in control.
If the company continues to see Linux "popping up everywhere," Valentine said, it will move to keep its competitive edge. This is a shot across the bow to Linux-boosters, of course, but it's real significance is not directed to us. The main reason for it is that the market likes to be reassured that their bazillion dollar investments in Microsoft software (and stocks, for that matter) are in no danger of being marginalised. "Please, Microsoft," says the market, "speak words of hope and reassurance to us," and Microsoft only too happily obliges. "Can't they see that Linux is better for them," you may ask. Have you met some of these people? But I digress...
There are all different types of ways you can do open source, such as making the source available to people who already have the license for the software, but under strict nondisclosure and with no right to give away "derived works". That isn't "Open Source", of course, but one could call it "open source" in some plain English sense, just like you could call Internet Explorer "free software" in a plain English sense. Didn't IBM used to provide source to their mainframe operating systems? Didn't this cause troubles because local "fixes" weren't necessarily compatible with IBM's future releases? The systems weren't Open Source, of course, which was part of the problem. This, no doubt, is what Mr Ballmer was referring to when he talked about the disadvantages of open source, which may in turn give us some clues as to how he's thinking.
Executive summary: Linux FUD, and weasel words.
Pardon me memory, but I seem to recall that at the trail they claimed that many lines fo source code we lost for good. It is not really possibal for them to open source something they don't have source for is it?
The most chilling comment is at the end of
the article that M$ is "looking to get into
open source initiatives"...
...I interpret that chilling comment as:
"We're going to see if we can f*ck with the
Apache group and maybe throw a few wrenches
into Perl and the Linux kernel..."
I say let M$ stay the way it is so it can
die a natural death -- otherwise if we
encourage them they'll keep pumping crap
into the market and being the same damn
nuisance to us all.
they use WinMain() instead of main()
This is an excellent point. This is Microsoft at its "innovative" best.
Well, OK. But as someone who does Windows developement by day, I can tell you that I would love to have the source available...most notably comctrl32 and GDI32 source. Not to compile up, or to fix, but just to see what MS is doing in some strange circumstances that would help me better write my code that uses those DLLs.
Basicly, I would no longer have to take their documentation (or lack thereof) on faith!
Pax -- Ob
What IF Microsoft released the source to their OS under an NPL-like licence?
That sure is going to tear up a lot of people who claim they're in favour of open source for the "moral aspects" of it.... I think that if Microsoft does this, we're going to see a lot of flaming akin to the KDE vs. GNOME battle - no matter how much one side tries, the other side continues to aimlessly flame away.
Microsoft is a very competitive company with some questionable businesses practices, and some "less than innovating" products...so what - that doesn't exactly make them evil. I don't like them, nor their products, but I do understand that they (Ballmer especially) are *bright* people. If they see business benefit with open source, they'll use it.
-Stu
So actually, they're using it as a bludgeon against Sun and more precisely Jini, not just for PR purposes.
Looks like M$'s getting some good backing for it though.
didn't jamie zawinski say as much?
microsoft UL gave a million UKP to a children's charity. billg has personally given millions to build school libraries, immunise against diseases, and suchlike.
i challenge redhat to match any donations.
microsoft UK gave a million UKP to a children's charity. billg has personally given millions to build school libraries, immunise against diseases, and suchlike.
i challenge redhat to match any donations.
This will help developers, and especially accademia. Imagine being able to highlight examples in lectures (be they good or bad) by pointing to the Windows Source code! I know you can do this with Linux, but Windows is still the most popular desktop OS, so makes a better example (IMHO :-)
Another advantage is if they release the source for somehting like the NT kernal. AFAIK, and I may be wrong, but the NT kernal is pretty well designed (by that I'm refering to the modularity of the thing). As a researcher in a University working on OSs, I'd be very interested in seeing this.
As for comments that "no one will understand it as it's so large" well, if the day ever happends (and I'm very skeptical) then expect thrid party books on the matter to appear very soon afterward. Imagine having "NT Kernal Internals" next to "Linux Kernal Internals".
-- DougalPlease note this in the message you were responding to from Cassius:
It wold be impossible to comprehend and modify in a useful way unless you had a team of literally thousands [...]
Debain has over 400 developers which mostly just maintain packages. Each of those packages have upstream developers who do most of the non-debian specific work. Think of the number of upstream developers for the Linux kernel, glibc, gnome, XFree86, KDE, gcc, etc. So, Debian does have litterally thousands of people working on it.
That being said, Cassius finishes the line with "[ ... ][ working in very close conjunction with you (i.e. in the same building as you 8 hours a day)." which clearly Debian doesn't have. So, I guess in someways you are both right. You would need litterally thousands of people, but they wouldn't have to be in the same building.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
Fair point. I should have added "in server space" to that. Apps are coming, but I agree - we're not there yet.
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Of any of the above things - I can't really imagine this doing anything bad for Linux. I can however see it as being very bad for Microsoft - their business model just doesn't fit well around open source, and so they are hoping that it will be a magic wand to make the Justice Department leave them alone. I hope the JD aren't that naive.
Matt.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Actually, it often does.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
In
the USA, this burdon is placed on the accusor, not on the accused.
Only when the accuser has less money.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Perhaps all the idiots who cling so tightly to Open Source saying that they won't use windows because "without the source they can't fix something that goes wrong" will finally be able to shut up with that stupid argument.
All the people that go on and on like that - as if they could even have a clue where to go to fix it. Damn zealots.
this coming from an anonymous coward. Face it - you don't know jack.
Never even used visual Basic, I use visual c++
More seriously, there may be code in Windows that is copyrighted by other companies. So that would give like Mozilla where they had to remove Java and others 3rd party thing before releasing it.
Maybe it's just a PR plot to escape the DoJ or something along the same lines... In any case, I'll believe it when I'll see it...
The article suggested that the only part that they're thinking about opening is the NT kernel.
Which probably wouldn't be useful to may people. It's not even clear that you'd be able to rebuild Windows with the modifications you make.
It pretty definitely uses BSD code, but that's allowed by the BSD license. It's not a copyleft. That's why there are commercial BSDs like BSDI and SunOS.
Get the facts straight. BSD or X11-licensed software is Free Software. See the GNU website.
Do not spread false statements.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
I was thinking about this and knowing MS, and their licensing practice this would propably spell doom for wine. If MS releases a strict license then they can claim the wine group infinged on MS intelectual property and copyrights by copying the code. Now even if the wine developers DON'T copy the code but even look at how the MS stuff looks.. they can still be nailed for this.
And it's a LOT harder to prove you didn't peak at the code.. then to lie about how you DID look at it.
-Ex-NT-User
Highly doubtful. Possible, I suppose, since the biggest money-maker MS has is actually Office, not Windows. But even if they did release it, their license would probably make the APSL look like the GPL by comparison.
Note that I still condiser the APSL to be Open-Source, though no GPL (I don't support the FSF's move to specifically exclude APSL by changing the definition of free software), but since it seems many zealots here don't agree I figured the comparison was still valid.
i think this is very excellent news! Windows going open-source would be great for both the windows and linux community. with all these rumors and press releases floating around, the ideas are sure flowing. i think that if we give it some time, we will see the source for windows appearing.
--
Scott Miga
Any more April fool's jokes and I'm going back on medication!!!!!
Reality check. People will also talk about how many applications are available for Windows and how easy they are to use. It makes no difference to the end user whether they are unable to use the OS because it keeps crashing (Windows) or because they don't know how (Linux) or because they can't find an application to do what they need (Linux).
We're on our way, but we're not there yet.
To quote a great statesman:
/., far more than APSL, which will waste time and energy from more productive pursuits for about 72 hours.
"The only thing we need fear is fear itself"
Why do people get into such a frenzy about every statement coming out of Redmond? Should we really care? I think not.
Scenario 1 (most likely):
M releases the W2K kernel source code under highly restrictive licensing to major corporations only. PR move only - see, they say, you have the soruce code too so you can feel warm and fuzzy.
PR Impact on GNU/Linux movement: Positive (hey, Microsoft is confirming the "business model")
Real Impact: 0. No programming talent will be diverted.
Scenario 2: (possible but Less likely) Microsoft releases the W2K Kernel source code under YAOSL
PR Impact on GNU/Linux movement: Ibid, but even more so. Of course, when no one jumps on the bandwagon, M will declare Open Source a failure and that may have some FUD impact. (notice how little permanent FUD impact wassisname's noisy resignation from Mozilla has had).
Real Impact: -.01 Alot of heat and flames on
Prediction: ESR embraces Microsoft YAOSL as true Open Source. In which case up this to -.03
Scenario 3: M releases W2K kernel with an NPL-like license. Likelihood: In this case, I suggest you all stack up on survival kits, 'cause Armagaddon will surely come and the dead will rise from their graves.
Note I have the only code mentioned at all is the W2K kernel. M might release some other minor, useless stuff (like DOS 2.1) using YAOSL. The impact in this case will be similar to scenario 2 above.
The reason people can violate the EULA and give copies to friends is because there is no fear of repurcussion. However, if you violate an NDA and publish code widely (say in WINE), then I guarentee there will be lawyers as soon as the CVS tree is up. The difference? The scope of people involved. Giving a copy to a friend is illegal, true, but it only involves two people. Publishing source? That could involve, hundreds, nay, thousands of people. Trust me, they would notice and take action.
Gordon
Not ALL kernel code is useless. Just NT's kernel code. I doubt there is anything in the NT kernel which is substantially more interesting or useful than the myriad other Open Source kernels available now.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Who knows? Maybe this'll be the straw that breaks ESR's back. The fact that MS can legitimately talk about "open sourcing" any part of their code raises a lot of questions about what open source actually means, and exactly who benefits. It is already a little bit ridiculous to claim that in some way, the APSL benefits the community as a whole. The blatant absurdity of the position will become obvious once MS applies to use the Open Source trademark.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
It seems opening up the API's would be the best since that would let projects like WINE work really well.
support gun control: take guns from cops
A small group of developers have brought forth the idea that because the Netscape code for Netscape Navigator was so large and pondersome to comprehend that a minority of programmers wanted to help on the project, much less than Netscape had planned on, and this was because the code was so large and so complex. If the same is true for Microsoft code, who is ever going to want to use it? Besides, who would want to taint Linux by using Microsoft code ..
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
Didn't Bill give like $3 million to some world fund to vaccinate children in third world countries a while back? :-)
(By accepting this vaccine you agree to have your brain replaced by Microsoft Brain Explorer 5)
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
"...they'd also be breaking WfW, DOS clients, OS/2, and everything else that's ever used SMB."
Microsoft making old MS products which they no longer sell or support unusable? Yeah, you're right, they'd never do that.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Hate to say it, but Bruce Perens is looking more and more correct with his hardline "Free Software" only stance.
Well, duh. RMS has been telling us this from day one. Algor (or is that spelled "All Gore") and Microsoft have, in less than 48 hours, done more dillute Open Source's meaning than years of infighting could have ever managed. If things like this don't convince people that pure Free Software is the best way to protect ideas such as freedom and community, what will?
Why the heck should they do anything from abstract
altruism? They have enough shareholders to care
of.
And they do their job well (too well in eyes of DOJ). Microsoft is just a company which is
out for profit, and it satisfies their customers
better then any other company around.
They don't play fair with competitors, and this
is only point to blame them.
Technically, their programmers do quite a good
job by making software which works at all,
given such uglu and self-contradictory specifications (probably written by somebody
in marketing department, who just compilied
thousends feature request from lusers).
It is lusers, which are not inclined to learn, who are responsible for hell which happens now
in software industry and internet.
Only thing which Microsoft can be blamed for
is that they made computers accessible not only
for people who are willing to learn, but for
average persons. Would you blame them for this?
Now they are moving toward people who are able
to learn, giving them something to learn about there from. While there are about hundred lusers
per one power user, not mention hacker, they
wouldn't loose their profit, but may make life
for us a bit happier, allows us to interoperate
with their users without resorting to their
"fool-friendly" and "clever-person-unfriendly"
tools.
Yes, it's true. The WINE developers would be forced *not* to look at the code. However, I think you have it backwards when you say "it's a LOT harder to prove you didn't peak at the code". In the USA, this burdon is placed on the accusor, not on the accused.
That said, there's nothing that prevents the Micros~1 layers from filing lawsuit after lawsuit, until the WINE developers finally give up for lack of funds for their defense.
If you want to develop for WINE, make absolutely sure you never look at the Windows code...
--Be human.
It all depends on the license the person agrees to in order to look at the code. US contract law states that, unless a clause specifically violates an existing law, anything that a person signs in a contract is contractually valid. That person can, in turn, be sued if he or she violates the terms in the contract.
It really has nothing to do with intellectual property law. IP law covers such things as copyrights, trademarks, and patents.
--Be human.
This depends on the country. In the US, the loser of a lawsuit does not have to pay the winner's legal fees, unless it is part of punitive damages as part of a frivelous lawsuit.
In short, in the US, the loser does *not* pay.
--Be human.
If you violate a contract that you agree to, you can be sued. A simple check of the CVS tree would indicate which user(s) checked in code in violation of the MS license agreement.
If you aren't in the US, but you sign the agreement, you are still liable (unless the terms of the agreement violate the laws of your local country). However, pursuing such lawsuits can be extremely difficult.
You're right to say that it can be hard to surpress code that has been open sourced. However, distribution of such code is also against the law. Microsoft, with its armada of lawyers, would undoubtedly sue any of the larger FTP sites that distribute illegally obtained code (code that violates their copyright and/or their license agreement).
As long as Microsoft did not *copy* lines from WINE's code, then they can look at WINE's code all day long, without repurcussions. The source code license for WINE, as with most "open source" efforts, is very liberal in this area.
All I'm saying is, "Be careful". If you want to develop for WINE, don't look at *any* of the MS code. People like Phil Zimmerman, author of PGP, know very well what it is like to live in the wrath of never-ending lawsuits (others, outside the US, allegedly distributed copyrighted code that he used in early versions of PGP).
-dan
--Be human.
If you violate a contract that you agree to, you can be sued. A simple check of the CVS tree would indicate which user(s) checked in code in violation of the MS license agreement.
If you aren't in the US, but you sign the agreement, you are still liable (unless the terms of the agreement violate the laws of your local country). However, pursuing such lawsuits can be extremely difficult.
You're right to say that it can be hard to surpress code that has been open sourced. However, distribution of such code is also against the law. Microsoft, with its armada of lawyers, would undoubtedly sue any of the larger FTP sites that distribute illegally obtained code (code that violates their copyright and/or their license agreement).
As long as Microsoft did not *copy* lines from WINE's code, then they can look at WINE's code all day long, without repurcussions. The source code license for WINE, as with most "open source" efforts, is very liberal in this area.
All I'm saying is, "Be careful". If you want to develop for WINE, don't look at *any* of the MS code. People like Phil Zimmerman, author of PGP, know very well what it is like to live in the wrath of never-ending lawsuits (others, outside the US, allegedly distributed copyrighted code that he used in early versions of PGP).
--Be human.
That'd be the day.
:)
Last I heard, MS just buys out a company when it wants to roll their code into Windows. What's this "MS licenses stuff" crap?
What worries me about "Windows 2000 open source" is the idea that Microsoft would try to retain intellectual-property rights to the entire codebase, so you COULD submit changes etc.... you just couldn't use any MS code, even as a reference, in your own projects - which makes it worthless for stuff like WINE (good from the MS perspective).
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
Maybe this is microsofts way of showing how open source fails... they will make a big stink about trying it, set it up so it will fail, and then make a bunch of media anouncements that "Open Source just does not work" probably using netscape as a prime example.
sad,
Federico Grau
What i see perhaps happaning is the windows source may one day be included on the CD with the binaries, but covered under the same EULA (i.e. you can't spread it around :)
Is this a good thing? maybe.......
Is this an ideal thing? no. however.....
Is this a better-than-the-current-thing? I think so.
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
For years I have been posting on their web site and sending e-mail to Microsoft suggesting that Open Sourcing is a good idea. Could they actually be listening? :) Hey, if you think it is a good idea, did you bother to let that position be known to Microsoft? Anyway, we'll see how it pans out, but I will continue with my dual-boot system (Linux for Real Work, Windows for Games) for the forseeable future come what may.
Of course, MS tech support has been more doting over me than ever as of late since I found a real stumper of a bug with their IE 5.0 Japanese Support update (installing it screwed up my video, which now only runs VGA on a 4MB Video Card and a 21" monitor) and pointed out in their response they actually BROKE the licencing agreement (they agree to acknolegde any support request within 24 hours, and it took them over 48 just to tell me it was being transfered to a Tech Support specialist.) Now, if I had the Source Code, sure as hell I'd have fixed it myself by now! C'est la vie -- c'est la Systeme Capitolist.
Time Lord, Dark Horse: The Techno Mage of Gallifrey
One of the main advantages of open-source is the fact that they can't sue "the wine developers". Who on earth would they sue?
If I start developing for wine, and I get sued, someone else will start developing.
If MS put a suit on redhat/slackware/debian to stop the distribution, it will go to other ftp sites.
And AIUI most of the wine developers aren't in the US. I'd be interested to see the US Justice Dept getting an extradition warrant for MS :)
Of course what the wine group could do is claim that MS looked at wine's source first.......
We all seem to forget that we have the source code already available to us ... albeit in x86 assembly. That's right, use the Microsoft executable DEBUG.EXE on any binary with the (U)nassemble command, you get a dump of all of the neato-bandito asm instructions which make the system work.
:)
Sure, it's huge, but so is 35 million lines of C++. And from what I hear, most of those 35 million lines become nop instructions anyway =).
Moreover, Microsoft can't sue you -- assembly instructions are self-evident in the machine code, and any parser to translate asm-to-C (not that any work worth a damn) would make drastically different code in appearance, although similar in functionality.
Personally, I'd like to run the Windows instructions through gnu as to see what would happen -- but oh wait, I've got better things to do with my time
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
One of the most valuable aspects of having the OS source is application and/or driver development. I don't want to modify it--I just want to know how to make my code painlessly interact with it.
I can't tell you the number of times I didn't bother with the Linux man pages and just dropped straight into the code to see the structures I needed to pass down. Linux driver development is much easier when you don't have to fight the OS along the way.
There are times with Windows development where you run into crap that's either so badly documented or completely undocumented that you wish you could just peek at the source to see what the @#!$ they expect you to pass as parameters.
Also check out a similar story on The Register.
http://193.122.103.82/990408-000001.html
(The Register is on a temporary IP address while moving to a new ISP.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This would be the same thing Sun is doing. Windows pricing and runtime/binary licensing wouldn't change. But at least if you're running into a nasty bug, or need to replace an insecure function with a secure one and so forth, you'll be able to.
It's not free beer. It's not free speech. It would, however, mean that IT shops would no longer be hostage to Microsoft's development cycle when they need a feature and need it now.
I do think Released-Source Software is likely to become the norm for most enterprise-scale commercial applications. It makes good sense and makes customers comfortable.
Not having bothered to look at an EULA lately, but I know their ilk tend to have admonishments against unauthorized reverse engineering and disassembly, as well as transmission in human readable and yadda yadda format...
wouldn't the above fall into that territory?
So why do I have eyes? I can feel around perfectly well. Nevermind that something is crashing behind me, and maybe I can hear it, and maybe I'll touch chunks of something falling on me before I get buried.
So why do we use radio telescopes? Visible light shows stars well enough. Or why do we need smell? I would have known that my halogen lamp was starting a fire soon enough, once I saw the flames.
BLah blah blah. "I'm a tough hacker and don't need no WIMP os." Go away.
We have multiple senses. Each one is a channel of information. Any intuitive device should effectively leverage each of those senses to convey information about its state and goings on. And a server OS should leverage those senses most of all, since there is so much information there.
I would have never realized my Linux box was under a successful hack attempt if I didn't have a GUI throwing up dialogs telling me so. And it would have taken me years to discover the config options available to me without a semi-intuitive interface presenting them.
Yeah, yeah, I know. You're a tough hacker and RTFM reams and reams of man pages, FAQs, yadda yadda...
Sorry. I have better things to do, and my machinery should assist me in the use of my time, not suck down as much of it as possible with anti-intuitive interfaces.
"It will move to keep its competitive edge". Why is it that those words send a chill down my spine? Methinks that would have more to do with evil-doing than actually innovating their way past Linux's current popularity.
Then I get to thinking that hell, they can do whatever they want, so long as I can continue to use a viable, secure, open operating system, why should I care whether the rest of the world is using it.
Enough rambling.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
Or so they hope.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
The most chilling thing in this for me was the idea that if Linux "keeps popping up all over", then Microsoft will act to "keep its competitive edge." In the past, that means taking the good parts of a competitor and buying them or making them useless. They can't buy GNU or Linux.
Of course, they can't hurt the GPL or code licensed under it, but they can make it useless. We've already seen how conflicting licenses can make code reuse illegal between differently-licensed code. Even differently-licensed Open Source code.
The worst-case scenario is that Microsoft's army of lawyers comes up with a license that makes code licensed under it ususable in projects using other popular, "competing" licenses (*ahem* GPL *cough*). Then make their code so ubiquitous that the "competing" code becomes useless in practical terms. IOW, it's no longer a mix-and-match "commodity"...sound familiar?
Anyway, why do all the work cleaning up Windows code when you've already got a clean, maintainable codebase from Linux? Netscape has shown us how badly bloated commercial-quality products can be; why go through the effort when you could just polish up Linux some and be done with it?
Disclaimer: I'm using an NT box to write this even as we speak, and I'd be useless for digging into Windows source, unless it's in Perl. (Which would surprise me -- it would have to be pretty badly-written Perl. :) But irresponsible licensing practices can "de-commoditize" even Open Source code. Given MS's track record, it will take a lot to convince me anything significant they do with Open Source won't be an attack.
phil
They're doing it to gain industry acceptance [...] it seems that in this case there isn't even a pretense of them trying to get feedback about the code from regular developers. This is just PR.
I couldn't agree more with this sentiment. This is simply a media spin. We've seen them do this a hundred times before. Likewise, I agree completely with the other comments about 'embrace and extend'. This is jut another MS ploy to maintain their control of public mindset.
They're obviously losing the battle for OS stability. Their credibility in the server market is costing them millions marketing dollars just to stay in the game. This strategy (open sourcing) only makes sense in The MS Way. They didn't want anything to do with the internet until they saw someone else making inroads. Same thing here. They'd never have considered open sourcing anything, if someone else (Linux, et al) weren't already showing a benefit from it.
Resistance is futile. Your distinctiveness will be added to our own.
I question the sensibility of anyone who fails to see this.
~~~~~~~~
Signature illegible, could be somebody else.
For one, releasing the source will truly put their APIs in the open, so it will mean that the playing field for developers is somewhat more level, since MS have no chance of taking advantage of their knowledge regarding undocumented features and bugs of their APIs
I doubt it. The problem with suing open source projects is that the projects are usually international. Also, this kind of thing is very hard to prove in a court. Copyright infringement suits usually tend to target fairly blatant copying.
I very much doubt any Linux hackers will want to touch NT's kernel. What they might want to do, however, is add support for the NT API into Linux. At least in theory, this would let you replace the NT kernel with the Linux kernel, and run NT and Linux apps at the same time.
And maybe then Microsoft completely drops the NT Kernel in favor of Linux's. This gets them a much faster and more stable kernel for free.
The next version of Windows is then advertised as fast and stable and, oh yes, runs Linux apps also. This would be a huge blow to RedHat and other commercial Linux vendors.
Simply releasing 30 million lines of code out to developers isn't going to be of much use to anyone.
It wold be impossible to comprehend and modify in a useful way unless you had a team of literally thousands working in very close conjunction with you (i.e. in the same building as you 8 hours a day). In other words, unless you are working at Microsoft, it is unlikely your organization will be able to make sense of the code.
As for individuals downloading the code, 30 million lines of code might as well be in hex. You'll never comprehend it in your lifetime.
This is a similar dilemma to Mozilla - developers have very little interest in delving deep into cruft, whether it be documented or not.
In other words, this is obviously a PR move.
This is just part of the normal M$ Embrace and Extend tactic...
Adopt all the special features of your counterpart so that the enemys product doesn't seem different than yours...
But they forget that you can't fake stability or sound design, it will be fun to see them fall on their face with this:)
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
When projects are open source from the beginning, it gives programmers a little seedling of code to start with, and then they can work together to shape a program into something special and maintainable and often quite portable too!
Open source code is a lot like manure. A sprinkle here and there can do wonders to make things grow. But dump too much at once and you'll just wind up with a big pile of shit.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
don't get fixed. If M$ lost the source code, you can't very well fix and improve it! But, you can ADD to it. Hmmm.
I haven't read through all of the comments here yet, but my impression is that the M$ Windows is stuck in it's own paradigm, that it would be difficult to move in another direction than M$ has been taking it. I feel that Linux so much farther ahead and designed in a better paradigm (IMHO) that there is not much motivation to look into the Windows source (aside from curiousity reasons).
I'm curious to know how long it would take some other company (already established or startup) to learn the source code and develop a new Windows "distribution". Is that really possible? Will people really buy it if it doesn't look the same as M$-Windows?
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
OTOH, M$ working methods would have to be drastically altered. It all seems like a very long shot for these reasons alone. Would they continue with daily builds? Would these be posted? Near the end when stabilization is the preeminent concern, would they really want outsiders opinions about the hack vs. fix trade-off decisions? How would they handle the product readiness and release to manufacturing decisions? Openly? That would be rich. The outside tinkerers and perfectionists would certainly be an irritation at the endgame. That's one phenomena the Mozilla crew has yet to face.
company CEOs do not want their shops tinkering with the code.
I have harsh words for any CEO who says this. If you want software manufacturers to withhold technical information about their software because you can't stop your programmers from modifying your production system without authorization, then you have a management problem, and you'd better fix it. Plenty of shops have "no modifications" policies, and they work quite well. The computer crashes, the system programmers read the dump, consult the source code, identify the problem, call the support line, describe the problem exactly, and you get a fix really fast.
As opposed to an object-code-only system, where you call the support line, describe the problem, maybe FTP a dump in, and sit on the phone while someone who isn't familiar with your particular operating environment tries to fix a problem that may only exist in your particular computer.
I heard this argument back in the days when IBM was trying to close-source all of their mainframe operating systems.
"We don't want our programmers tinkering with the code."
However, things start to seem a little different when the software is crashed, won't restart, and the system programmers, who are perfectly capable of fixing the problem, if they had the source code, are sitting on the phone instead saying things like "Please escalate this problem to the next severity level" and "I'm on hold". At this point, the corporate philosophy quickly changes to:
I don't care
Of course, if you HAVE the source code, then you have that option. If you don't, then you don't have that option. It's as simple as that. Do you want the option of having your own people ABLE to understand and repair the basic technology that you trust to form the core of your business?
This problem will become particularly acute come the beginning of the year, when all of the missed Y2K bugs start to manifest themselves.
Do you think that any company has REALLY fixed ALL of their Y2K bugs? What do you think that the odds are that you'll even be able to get THROUGH on any software support telephone line for the first week or so of January 2000, much less actually get a bug fix?
How much computer downtime can YOUR company handle before it goes out of business?
- jms
they could release the win9x source instead of the nt kernel!
if they actually do release the nt kernel source.. it would be interesting to see what would come of it. this is of course barring that the eula isn't totally restrictive ( of course it will be ) and that its just the straight kernel with no hooks for integration ( ie4, ie5 needed to compile ) and such. to be able to clean it up and create an Open-NT.
well one could dream, but since this will never happen.. back to recompiling my kernel here.
' god damn this is one wacky game show ' ~ jay in mallrats
This is why closed source open source transitions don't work very well for a while. The code in place just isn't designed for distributed development. It's generally full of get-me-to-market hacks, rather than well-thought stable design.
Open Source is more than just releasing code -- it requires setting up an infrastructure where that code can be used/modified.
As an aside, I'd say that Mozilla *was* cruft. Now it's just a really big project. But hopefully it (is | will be) broken down enough that modules can be hacked easily.
pooptruck
I'm sure we would all like to see that it's just that we have all lost any hope in something like that ever happening. It's not arrogance, it's total disbelief!
According to www.openresources.com, Debian 2.1 is over 70 Million lines of code. And that's managable by a group of volunteeers.
(Not quite an apples-to-apples comparision with Win2000 because Debian's number probably includes all 300 window managers and so on. But Win2000 does include IIS, multi-user, routing, and unix services.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I'm sorry but this one ranks up there with "MS Linux" in the paranoia factor. Microsoft's SMB file sharing backwards compatible with 15 year old networking products from IBM.
Could Microsoft break Samba in some subtle way? Probably, but they'd also be breaking WfW, DOS clients, OS/2, and everything else that's ever used SMB. Microsoft's customers would form a lynch mob.
As for hiring lots of genius programmers, MS may not produce the best products, but they produce lots and lots of products. (Compare this to various grand plans from Netscape, Apple, Lotus, etc. that never got out the door.) I doubt there is a computer company in existance that doesn't compete with at least one MS product.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
AT&T's "LanMan for Unix" product (now resold by Sun and SCO) goes back to the Microsoft OS/2 1.x days in the 1980s. Back then MS only had like 10% of the file-and-print market so it was reasonable to licence the SMB protocol and Domain security stuff to anyone who wanted it. Not much has changed protocol-wise since then.
IBM owns this code too, and could do the same thing in theory. Me wonders why they don't.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Hmmm - this is from Microsoft's web site:
o mplete/boes/bo/winntas/technote/implemntin tegra/dnswp2.htm
Some people might ask, what is the Microsoft DNS and why should I use it? Well let's start out by telling you what it is not. First, the Microsoft DNS server is not a port of the Berkley BIND code (which is currently at revision 10.4 as of the writing of this paper). We made a conscious decision to not port the BIND code, but rather write our own code that was fully RFC compliant and compatible with BIND.
http://technet.microsoft.com/cdonline/content/c
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Gates has given 100s of millions away. The fact that people don't know this only shows that he hasn't been doing it for PR purposes.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Right on. The mindset it takes to believe that Microsoft would intentionally break their own server-client "solution" is pretty bizarre.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well, if they're releasing just thje kernel, then it's not going to be 30 million lines of code, is it?
30 Million appears ot cover _everything_, so if they released just the kernel it would be a lot smaller than that. Also, surely haveing the kernel be open source would make it a lot easier for the people behind WINE and similar things.
My Journal
Remember, those 30 million lines of code are actually an awful lot of smaller programs running together. It almost certianly includes IE, DirectX, COM, Notepad, Minesweeper, Wordpad, Hyperterminal and 5000 other small programs and DLL's.
That would make it a lot easier to play around with than Mozilla was. You could just modify the TCP/IP stack, or just the Direct3D code, or whatever.
My Journal
Understanding assembly output is hard, but maybe we could break it into small chunks. If 1000 of us each took a couple of hours to look our section over, and comment it, we would have something. Repeat this process until we get to a pretty high level understanding of what was done, without really looking at their source.
Blogging because I can...
Yeah, It probably would. I still think it would be fun though.
Blogging because I can...
I see a some possible reasons for this:
/.'er the OS is now a commodity and they have a better chance of selling their other applications on a windoz-platform than on linux/*BSD. So rather than lose the desktop and servers to linux/*BSD they release their own code in an attempt to stop linux/*BSD.
1. M$ just want to look god to the US Department of justice, and plan to find some excuse to discard this idea later.
2. It is a typical M$ fud missile to of the type "no reason to look into porting your apps to linux because we will also go open source, and then what reason do anyone have to run linux/*BSD" or "no reason to chose linux/*BSD for your server, when we soon.....". And they may not have any real plans to do it is just to slow down linux until they get Win 2000 out.
3. They may actually release the code (or parts of it) in a license some were between NDA and APSL, but they still will want to charge for it just like before, and it would probably be almost impossible to use the code in other projects (like wine) even indirectly.
4. They may have become good guy's and release the code under GPL, or as has been pointed out by a fellow
If the company continues to see Linux "popping up everywhere," Valentine said, it will move to keep its competitive edge.
I think there are some moves they could do, but not with out disappointing their shareholders a LOT!
Linux, coming to a desktop near you!
I wanna get my hands on that DNA strand and fix a few bugs.
Open sourcing it isn't going to fix that. Microsoft isn't going to give up control of the evolution of Windows, so people won't be able to fix some of the more broken aspects of Windows. And the ways in which Windows is broken are so deep that I doubt that an open source effort could fix them. Neither are they likely to cut of their operating system revenue stream, so open source or not, you will probably still have to pay for a license.
In addition, on of the reasons why I like open source software is because the frugality and limited resources surrounding its creating necessarily keep it lean and simple. But Windows has its roots in a well-funded, corporate development effort, and it shows a lot of complexities and compromises as a result. (Mozilla is in the same boat, and that's probably why I never really got very excited about it.)
No matter how the Windows OS source code would be released (even if it were released under GPL), it would make things worse because it would mean that more people are going to use it and more people are going to start depending on Windows internals. For this reason, I never understood why the attorneys general considered open sourcing Windows a solution to Microsoft's monopoly position.
Open sourcing Windows would be a great thing for Microsoft, and a bad thing for anybody who doesn't like their technology. I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't done it already.
T H I S J U S T I N ! ! !
Ford is releasing it's new sedan, the Penguin, as Open Source. The release will abide by the rules of the Ford Open Source Sharing Initiative License (FOSSIL)
Exxon gasoline (87 octane only, sorry, we have to make a living too) is due to be released Open Source in May. The release will by guided by Source Publicity International License.
Hood ice cream, vanilla and chocolate flavors, soon to be Open Source. In a move intended to cut off Hagen Daas from equity competition in the US, the flavors will be available under the Digital And Ingestible Redistribution lYcense.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Since OSS is supported by people who are interested in it, here's a chance for the community to show M$ how valuable it's software really is.
Nobody download ANY of it. Let it rot.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
IIRC most of the money he's `given' to Third world nations has been for the dubious prospect of `population management'. One classic quote from Gates I read in the Journal stated that he believes that `overpopulation in the third world is the biggest problem to face America'. While that may sound nice, I think it boilds down to `I-like-my-big-house-and-segregated-neighborhood-a nd-there's-too-many-dark-skinned-people- in-the-world-anyway' mentality. If I were a native of the Third world, I would view mass sterilisation drives (such as armies of nurses to implant IUDs) as a masked form of genocide. Rather than stopping reproduction, introduce the changes to society that give us the American system where people reproduce at a moderate rate.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
I don't know what the real price is, but what you propose is the literal truth. Anyone willing to pay the asking price has, in plain fact, been able to get access to the NT source code for years. Probably going all the way back to pre-release, I would guess. I remember reading about the flap a year ago when MS decided to revoke the source code license it had granted to AT&T. Apparently, MS didn't appreciate AT&T using their NT source code to make NT interoperate better with Unix. :-)
If this story is true....then it is a very interesting step for MS.
But not necessarily an outrageous step. MS is riding the Windows wave...
Just like 10 or so years before it rode the wave a a couple of little programs known as MS-DOS, MS-Excel and MS-Word.
If you think about it....you realize that MS goes on cycles....that is, their plans for their next big thing are in the works, but will not be implemented until, say, 2005...approx 10 years after win 95. Maybe it will follow the way of Java & Jini and have a MS alternative to Object Oriented, Distributed, network computing...just like they did with GUIs and Apple's Mac.
What ever it is, they can stand to do this because EVERYONE uses windows...specifically MS windows...so, if they open source windows, they will still maintain control of windows until their next big thing comes around.
It may not be that big of a stretch to think that MS will release source code because at 35 Million lines of code for windows 2000,
the only people who can really benefit from the release are the hardware vendors which write device drivers....something MS does not do....
and allow then access to specific hardware level areas of code to optimize the drivers. since these companies already
are writng these drivers, it does not hurt MS to do this because the companies will compete with each other and not with MS.
they already allow certain companies access to their source code under NDAs (Non Disclosure Agreements for those not in the know).
this way they can offer the same thing and "look good" in the process
it will not benefit software companies that offer products that compete with windows because the license will PROBABLY include clauses
that require any application which makes use of the open software to release the modified source under the MS open source license.....
which would then allow MS to take advantage of that in their own product.
"...Beer..."
quick get the code into wine, make it more stable and the we can rn all those windows programs in Linux adn they will hopefully not crash X.....
Only 'flamers' flame!
This actually is an active
area of research: automated
extraction of an implicit
design from program source
code...
The only tool I know of is
Womble, and its purely proof
of concept, and it only works
on Java Bytecode, but hey, its
a start.
Womble
-Felix
arvind rulez
It's rude to point and laugh. I can't imagine any other reason to want to look at Micros~1 code.
I do not think that they can or do realistically hope that
OSS community will contribute even if they open up code.
If nothing else, the stigma of being M$ will prevent active
work on the source. They seem to realize this and only claim
that opensourcing will increase confidence level of consumers.
However, if they were to do this, it would effectively negate
their main market advantage, namely the undocumented,
proprietary standards. Imagine having a well-documented
description (i.e. source) of Windows Driver Model. Within
possibly weeks, Linux will have the ability to use Windows drivers.
Likewise, WIN32 APIs will then quickly be reimplemented
in Wine. In short, if we knew what Windows is, there'd be no
need for Windows, and there'd be other systems totally
compatible but better. Thus, open source for Windows would
be very useful.
I'm just wondering why anything under any license is
considered free software. You'd think free software is
strictly that which is public domain. License pretty
much by definition puts restrictions on use.
In any sane country this would be true. Not in the US.
But IANAL.
I also have a related question. If someone looks at M$
code and derives the description of what is needed for
compatibility, something equivalent to IETF specs,
then can this document be used by WINE developers.
In other words, is documenting the standards a violation
of copyright?
In any sane country this would be true. Not in the US.
But IANAL.
I also have a related question. If someone looks at M$
code and derives the description of what is needed for
compatibility, something equivalent to IETF specs,
then can this document be used by WINE developers.
In other words, is documenting the standards a violation
of copyright?
Aside from the license, there are generic copyright provisions.
For example, there are people who provide schoolkids with
shortened transcripts of major novels, so those kids could
ace their tests without reading their books. Do the authors of
such short transcripts have to purchase the right to distribute
their derivative work from original writer? Can they describe
the content without infringing on the copyright?
So when GPL states that one must redistribute code based on GLP'ed
code, that restriction is hogwash?
The easiest thing to do would be to port the Windows API's and give the rest to the smithsonian. The only reason that people do not ditch MS operating systems is because of the applications. Have you every heard anyone say what a nice, stable OS microsoft makes? People would give it up in a second if they could run their other apps for the same or less cost.
--doug
I can't remember the last time MS did anything that WASN'T a PR move or profit oriented. Why the hell can't they do anything for the good of the people? And NO, throwing IE4 in with Windows does not count :)
But now they can try to sue the Wine guys.
I think you underestimate Boies and the team of computer scientists he has behind him.
The other person who mentioned reading the Register was onto something. If you look, this is a way for Microsoft to try to subvert Sun's Jini with their own UPnP (I think these are the two saturate-your-appliances-with-the-network projects). Sun released the code to Jini under the Java Public license (not perfect, but better than anything we'll see from Microsoft, I'm sure). They're doing it to gain industry acceptance, sort of like what the Dvvu release was supposed to do, but it seems that in this case there isn't even a pretense of them trying to get feedback about the code from regular developers. This is just PR. But I think that most of us like Sun better than MS anyway, and this isn't going to change that. On the one hand, this might be good because it shows that Microsoft is admitting that people who matter like open source technology. But then there are all those other hands. . .
That's spooky, besides, why would MS do this? Well, best guess is that it's a tactic to for the DoJ! Besides, who would wanna see MS sourcecode anyways? I bet the WINE guys couldn't use it... I'd be willing to bet no one will be able to use it...
Indeed, MS hires some of the best talent in the world. The result? Comments like "well, MS hires the best talent in the world, so their code must not be that bad." Mission accomplished. MS hires the best talent in the world for one reason: to get them off the street.
How many incredible products have come out of one of these geniuses after MS swallowed them? It's not even in MS's interest to produce genius-quality software. A hallmark of great (or even good) software is functionality. The major source of MS revenue is not functionality; it's upgradeability and hope.
I suspect no useful MS code will be open-sourced. I'm thinking particularly of a comment Linus made that Microsoft's best strategy to "compete" with Samba is not to do anything to improve performance but to change the SMB protocols in the next version of NT and not tell anyone. You can't do this if the code is open-source. No matter how obfuscated the code, it's important enough that it will inevitably be reverse-engineered.
This is a smoke blowing exercise by MS. It won't affect any of the real open source projects out there, but it may (by dilution) turn off some of the clueless suits who are driving the current hype whirlwind and "mainstream acceptance". So what. The beauty of all the Free Software we hold dear is that mainstream acceptance was never necessary to its success.
Graphics performance on NT 3.51 sucked - I know, I supported CAD machines using it. Even 2 processors didn't help - something to do with the threading in the subsystem. Moving the graphics subsystem into the kernel space gained speed for graphics intensive applications and some other benefits as well. The only drawback is if you have a poorly written graphics driver, the whole thing crashes.
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
If they actually made the Windows kernel open & free I'd be very cautious. I wouldn't be suprised if MicroSoft put a clause that if you downloaded a MicroSoft kernel you couldn't work on another kernel without being in violation of a NDA. As for the WINE folks, I'd almost gurantee that MicroSoft would put a restriction on porting their APIs to other operating systems. Call me a cynic, but this is probably just a PR stunt. What I could see happening more readily is MicroSoft selling you the rights to look at pieces of the code as long as you sign 30,000 pages of legal contracts.
I wouldn't put too much stock in what Ballmer said. This is obviously a PR move and Microsoft may or may not actually do this.
/really/ mean by Open Source...I'll bet dollars to donuts that Microsoft's version of open source and the Open Source Community's version of open source are two different things.
Be careful of what Microsoft may
Does anyone remember the early 90s when the *NIX guys were working on "open standards," and Microsoft starting spouting that Windows and OLE were "open standards" because anyone could write programs for them?
If Windows is an "open standard," then why are the Wine guys having such a hard time?
My journal has hot
People do read the code and find GPL or BSD code in there
Don't need to read the source code to prove that. Just take "ftp.exe" from Win95 for example:
%strings ftp.exe
[...]
GetModuleHandleA
KERNEL32.DLL
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved.
ascii
script name = %s
[...]
Obviously from BSD code, but there's nothing in the BSD license that prohibits this.
-- Alastair
The phrasing is usually "Microsoft hires the best talent they can find". The phrase "they can find" carries the implication "that are willing to work for them for what Microsoft is offering".
Well, doesn't every company do that? ("Best" being a somewhat subjective measure here.) Anyone know of any companies that set out to hire the second best talent they can find, or the worst talent?
It's just more of MS is best at: marketspeak.
-- Alastair
That's true, look at what happened to IBM once they got labled "Monopoly".. they got screwed up so bad in so many different directions, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing anymore.
If I was Bill G, I'd be fearing "Sorry Bill, You're a Monopoly Now, Here's the new rules you have to play by" more then "Sorry Bill, but I hate this house, I'm screwing the gardener, and by the way, I've been seeing Rob Malda on the side for a while now too... and he's loaded Debian onto my laptop for me, and, well, to be honest, it blows that hunk of crap you sell away."
Dear God!
Has Anti-MS paranoia and FUD gone this far? I don't like big Bill's business practices either, but I have NO reason to impune him personally. Painting him as a Racist, Elitist megalomaniac bent on genocide is going a bit too far. Saying that giving money to charities to help control population in the third world (read this as birth control and education, NOT forced sterilization and abortion) is genocide is like saying donating to Planned Parenthood to give out condoms is advocating child murder! That's incredibly ridiculous.
You are indulging in an Ad Homenim (sp?) attack and if you have ever studied logic, you'd know it is an illogical arguement. Attack his business, the quality of his products and the validity of his public statements but don't spread falsehoods and attack Gates on such an unfounded personal level. People usually resort to this tactic if they are unintelligent and can't win an arguement fairly or they know the other person is correct and thus cannot win the arguement. Which are you?
Bill Gates is a nasty business person with questionable business practices and strong arm tactics. He is no Slobadon Milosovic.
As for your assertion that the third world become more like the US because "people reproduce at a moderate rate" - I suspect the US population growth rate has more to do with a LACK of Gun Control than an abundance of Birth Control ( or of a society with better control of their sexual urges!).
Grow up.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Yeah, its a literary device called sarcasm. I do not honestly believe that the lack of gun control in the US is the reason for it's birth rate. I also don't believe the US is some how superior due to their reproductive control than the rest of the world (as the previous poster seemed to indicate).
/. yet). Thank you for proving it again...
/., perhaps I can point you to the numerous Ayn Rand freaks that like to post here when ever somebody even brings up a post about the merits of Open Source...
"Ahem. If the US population growth was being held to such low rates by gun accidents/attacks/muggings, you'd be dead by now. 66% of the public would be dead too. "
No I wouldn't. Read my nick...I'm Canadian. We already have gun control...and one of the lowest crime rates in the western world (a lot less than down you way).
My entire point was that attacking the person when you really know nothing about them is ethically and logically wrong. Spreading lies and inuendo only serves to make the entire movement look bad by association (re-read Areapagetica by John Milton to see my point..sorry, no spell check on
As for astonishment at political rhetoric on
As for the MS open source possiblility... sound like a challenge to me. To afraid to pick up the gauntlet?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Hmm posted april 7th... I thought april 1st was april fools day..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Kernal code useless? I don't think so.. Think about it, if linux Kernal wasn't open source, how would people do these cool programs.. The kernal is the heart of the OS. Think about it like this:
The CPU is the heart of the system, you can buy it, then put any body around it if you understand how it works, the body would be the motherboard.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I think that if they do this, it will only be for workstation.. Not the server(s) packages.. But if they were to release the workstation code it would be cool as f$%#.. Linux/Win hybrid os which would be all native.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Why do I get the strange feeling that if they decided to do it, the anti-Microsoft sentiment, and the bashing over not a true Open Source (tm) liscense would change their minds?
Maybe the Samba Team could use it in some way, but it realy seams a anti-DoJ movement
-------------------------------------------- Se você consegue ler aqui então fala português. Óbvio
Maybe the Samba Team could use it in some way, but it realy seems a anti-DoJ movement
-------------------------------------------- Se você consegue ler aqui então fala português. Óbvio
select * from idiots where name "sql*kitten"
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00920: invalid relational operator
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Windows does two things for MS: first, it generates revenue from sales of the OS; second (and probably more important), it creates demand for Windows applications (a large percentage of which are sold by MS). Think about it. Would MS really care about NT Server if it didn't allow them to sell MS SQL Server and BackOffice? If it weren't for sales of MS Office, would MS really make enough money on sales of Win9x to offset development costs?
If MS sees their market share eroding, they will do whatever they think is necessary to correct that. No doubt they see companies like RedHat successfully selling "Free Software" in retail stores for $40+ a copy, largely because "branding" is very important to consumer confidence. If buying Windows became "purchasing a distribution", who's "brand" of Windows would most consumers trust? Sure they'll lose some sales to the more savvy users who can find a distribution for less, but even those users are still potential applications customers.
If the Linux movement doesn't eventually collapse under its own weight, then open source Windows isn't a question of "if" but a question of "when".
With all the hoopla in the press about Open Source, people outside of Slashdot are beginning to take notice. This includes the opportunists. Even Al Gore is joining in without first considerring the consequences.
First off, there is nothing inherently good about Open Source unless it is practiced correctly, just like democracy. Haphazardly claiming every project should be open source without basic redesigns is as dangerous as throwing out an incumbant government in favor of a new democracy.
Without proper treatment, such a farce could lead to anarchy, or worse. Such is the fate of projects (like mozilla) and companies who would attempt to go to open source without changing their business model.
But, just like China, Russia, and even Nazi Germany claimed they were "democracies" , bad people and misguided people will claim the Open Source movement for their own purposes. Make no mistake about it- these opportunists have come to slay Open Source, not to join in and change themselves.
Now, enter Microsoft, which has built an empire on "proprietary information", meaning patenting their software, and "licensing agreements" meaning lawyers and legal tactics. How much can we doubt their intentions? Did they help shareware or freeware by making IE free (as they claimed)?
Did they help the industry in ergonomics by adding that? Do they wish to help anyone but themselves by stealing and deprecating the hard-earned work of others?? No.
They will seek to destroy Open Source by weakenning the definition. They see Apple and Al Gore (stupid blunderrers in the path of a giant) as test subjects for the subjugation of Open Source, and indeed, of proprietary software with a universal tax to Microsoft.
Is this for real? Is it even possible? Yes, and yes. This is exactly the business model Bill Gates has laborred to set up. We may even see more of it in our lifetimes, if the government doesn't step in. Truth is, only the government can stop Bill Gates.
-Ben
That would be worthless code
1. main()
2. {
3. }
-krog
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
"There are all different types of ways you can do open source," Valentine said. "We are looking into whether we should get into open source initiatives."
All different types of ways, eh? Yep, this sounds like YAOSL. And I agree with you Millenium. As much as I like the APSL, I see that it isn't GPL. And MS's license would most likely make all of the people who were critisizing the Apple license wish that Microsoft would take lessons from Apple in openness.
The day that MS goes with a license that the community likes, I will publicly state that I was wrong that MS was evil, and I will start promoting their software. (Please god? Don't let this happen? *wink*)
I particularly found the comments about the 'comfort zone' to be amusing. They make it blindingly obvious that they're only doing this to try and fight Linux. At least Apple wasn't trying to kill Linux. They were just trying to keep themselves alive.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
All MS code is note junk. Remember that microsoft hires leaders and genius's. With the $$$ they pay they do get some of the best programming talent available in the world today.
Their downfall has always been a lack of direction within the company. 2 or 3 groups of people all designing similar products with different goals. Their other downfall is the attempt to reuse too much code.
Releasing the code could allow the development of api's to support more os's: just think releasing a
/.office suite for windows,linux,bsd,sun etc.. with no porting required...
$sig=$1 if($brain =~
I can't imagine that companies, perhaps monitering/transfering hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, are comfortable using a closed-source software. One, which because of a very restrictive license agreement has very limited liability in case anything goes wrong, in cases of negligence or security problems.
It seems to me that the interests of MS and the interests of companies using Windows are at extreme odds. How can this be true:
Its bad for companies to depend, say, on a single supplier of oil. But, for the sake of argument, suppose that I run a manufacturing firm and I require oil from MS. I would be uncomfortably dependent if they were the worlds only supplier. But even in this bad case I can still test the oil for purity in my own labs, filter it if necessary, add required components to the blend and so on. With Windows, you're stuck dependent on a single supplier and you're not even allowed to check the product for quality. (In fact, if the product is bad, you have very limited recourse. You're not even allowed to report how well it works ("no benchmarks" is part of license.)Amazing to me then, unbelievable really, that a CEO is comfortable in this position and in fact, wouldn't want it improved.
Peace.
Actually, this is right along the lines of what I was just thinking...
But, what if, instead of FUD, M$ turns around and sues for the alleged use of their code in that other project. We all know that it's not going to be GPL'ed; there will be some fairly restrictive terms for re-use of the code.
After all, this would be the same sort of thing that the've accused their competitors of doing for years - competition through litigation.
Scary...
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
IE is their NUMBER ONE asset! the browser is the os of the web.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Finally we'll be able to get the source code to the Blue Screen of Death!
I somehow get the feeling that this initiative will hit the Open Source community like a rejected organ transplant. Not only is there a huge amount of animosity toward Microsoft, but I don't really see that anyone would want to get a hold of much of their code seeing as it wasn't designed to be flexible or extensible, as Linux was, but to be exactly what Microsoft wanted. Not much but the really low-level kernel-type stuff would be of interest to anyone.
..companies just aren't going to make much selling operating systems anymore. Selling support/consulting services yes, but code - no.
They might as well open-source IE, since it isn't going to make them a dime. Maybe then it could be ported to Linux.
So, don't expect any useful code to be released any time soon.
No sig.
didn't jamie zawinski say as much?
sorry kitty, i believe he said that you can't "sprinkle magic dust" & open source a project and hope it gets fixed...
point being, microsoft can't bloody well do the same, can they? hmmmphr? time to spend learning something other than microsoft-provided "solutions" kitty...
select * from idiots where name "sql*kitten"
0 records found
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always thought "Open Source" certification had a very specific meaning attached to it.
I'm seeing a trend of companies saying, "Hey, we'll show you our source code. We're Open Source now! No, you can't modify the code without telling us. No, you can't redistribute your modifications. But, hey, you can look at the source! That's Open Source, right?"
IMHO -- no, it's not.
I think companies including source code is certainly an improvement over binary-only distribution, but I'm afraid the definition of "open source" will get diluted in the public's mind. Every time a source-included product is described as "jumping on the open source bandwagon", it creates a misconception of what "open source" means.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Yes this does sound really strange I must admit. But Micro$oft is known for "following suit." That's what they do. They do not innovate. Think "Browser War." This totally fits their business model: blood suck ideas and strategies from everyone else and then outmarket/outmaneuver them. Think internet. They don't want to miss the next "big thing." Damn this is going to be strange. If "Open Source" continues to be a media darling this makes total Micro$oft sense.
nothing excels in every environment
lin ked here...
also in the SJ Mercury article is this little gem:
which seems to suggest that microsoft believes (or wants us to believe) that going open source makes software less stable!NT 3.51 didn't have the GUI in the kernel-space.
And graphics performanced sucked as a result -
so they moved it back. Kind of the same problem
the Mach kernel had originally; the microkernel
was just too slow so they had to move more and
more functionality back into the base code just
to keep speed up.
However, there are advantages that NT's kernel
has over Linux - namely, the whole mess involved
with loadable kernel modules (LKMs) under Linux
is quite a bit cleaner under NT because NT's
kernel is more modular. Linux's being
a monolithic kernel makes some things more
difficult, although speed certainly is better
for a lot of operations.
Oh yes, X performance does suck often.
Try running the Mesa OpenGL demos in a X-Window
sometime.
Or load a big graphic file in Netscape (not a
HTML file, so you can't blame Netscape's
HTML renderer), turn on full-window drag, and start moving it around in front
of and under other windows.
Then do the same thing in Windows, with the same
graphics card, but with the Windows drivers.
95% of the time performance under Windows wil be
much better than under X. Of course, you can
say that XFree86 drivers aren't quite as tuned,
etc., but simple bitblt operations just take
a lot longer under X for most implementations.
Not that I like Windows that much either, but
you run into a fundamental design issue when
deciding to put graphics support in the kernel.
You can't have both speed and stability. Network
drivers under UNIX are an example of the other
way around - network cards are a special case
of driver in the UNIX kernel, and so the code
can be really darn fast. But wedging network
cards have been known to take down UNIX boxes
pretty badly and leave them locked up solid. Pick
your poison.
Well, why does Linux need a text prompt?
/var/log/*, you know.
Or a keyboard/video display driver?
We should all just use logic analyzers to
peek/poke the memory in our machines.
In other words, a UI of any sort is always useful.
Sure, some people find a text UI more efficient.
But just because it's "a server OS" does not
automatically mean it should be hard to use.
Even sysadmins, the people probably interacting
with the "server OSes", don't mind having a nice
dialog box popping up and telling them what is
wrong, and how to fix it, once in a while, instead
of trolling through
Whether it is in the kernel or not, that is
debatable, I'll grant. But as to whether it is
part of the OS, that is a rather pointless remark
you've made there.
"I suspect the US population growth rate has more to do with a LACK of Gun Control than an abundance of Birth Control ( or of a society with better control of their sexual urges!). "
/. forum.
WHAT??!?!?
Ahem. If the US population growth was being held to such low rates by gun accidents/attacks/muggings, you'd be dead by now. 66% of the public would be dead too.
And since Japan's population is actually _decreasing_, well, boy they must have one hell of a crime problem.
I think you need to check your facts before posting crap like this (obviously advocating some kind of political rhetoric) on a
On the subject of Open Source, tho, MS opening up the NT kernel doesn't buy users anything, as we'd simply be fixing bugs that they've decided to ignore for FIVE MAJOR REVISIONS.
Could Microsoft break Samba in some subtle way? Probably, but they'd also be breaking WfW, DOS clients, OS/2, and everything else that's ever used SMB. Microsoft's customers would form a lynch mob.
they already did this. If you install SP3 on NT4 and then try to connect with Win95/98, it won't work. Then some bright guy with a sniffer traced some SMB packets and discovered the format had changed. That's why Samba works again.
(I may be horribly wrong, correct me, people)
Didn't IBM used to provide source to their mainframe operating systems?
Hell, my original IBM PC (8088) came with the source for the BIOS.
Utterly, absolutely, and completely wrong. WinNT4SP3 works just dandy with Win95/98 using several flavors of SMB. If you trace it, you'll see that the connection handshakes to determine which flavor of SMB both OS's support, and then they use that.
Okay, YOU install a copy of the August 24 release of Win95, and see if an NT4SP3 system will talk SMB to it.
Surprise! IT WON'T.
OSR2, Win98, these will work, for exactly the reason you describe.
Thou shalt not embrace and extend a single hair on my body!
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Thou shalt not embrace and extend a single hair on my body!
Seriously,
Who would drop all work on Linux just to play Open Source with M$
Here's an idea. Rob, Poll people working on open source projects whether they'd drop open source projects if M$ came back with "Open Source don't work". C'mon it's like telling a pilot in midair that the plane he built and happens to be flying will not get off the ground.
Anyone have a general forwarding point where info can be sent to be forwarded specifically to news media in bulk?
(is that spamming or are they asking for it?)
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
"There are all different types of ways you can do open source," Valentine said. "We are looking into whether we should get into open source initiatives."
All different types of ways to do open source? I translate to mean "We plan on creating our own proprietary open source license that only applies to Windows and controls the use of the source code just as we control your desktop, your banks, and your lives."
Is it possible that MS would release the source code to the kernel only? For example, the low level stuff such as the HAL, and the code that interfaces with it (Leave out the GUI stuff). This way, they could open source it, it really wouldn't be of much use to anyone, and the DoJ gets off their backs because they wouldn't know the difference anyway...
get nemulator
Is that the thing called pride?
This is my world
Interesting you mention the BSD licenses in your Free Software mark. RMS wouldn't agree with you on that one. To him BSD isn't free software. Shoot it isn't based on the FSF's definitions. Which is fine by me, becuase I don't consider the GPL free in the freedom sense. But at least after a 3 week barage of e-mails with RMS, I finally got him to admit I was right on the points I was complaining about in the GPL. (Basically the GPL doesn't share with other projects, so GPL'd aplication has to be pure GPL). But as a friend of mine mentioned, no biggie, the GPL is so vague that once it gets put in court it will get declared void anyway...
I just want the win32 API to be 100% open as in GNU, allowing WINE to seemlessly run any application :) Then you would have the stable base OS of linux with the enormous amounts of software for windows all in one... Although for me personally I tend not to use commercial software products.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I agree that it would probably be too difficult to sift through even if they did choose to release the code.
The more interesting point to look at here is why they did it. I believe it was an attempt to preempt a DoJ mandate that they do it. They figure (rightly so) that if they release the code they can do it on their own terms; otherwise, they are stuck with whatever the DoJ tells them to do. The downside to this is: they showed a bargaining point too early. They were willing to release the code. If I were Microsoft, I would have bitched and whined about having to do it knowing full well that I didn't care about doing it.
What does this accomplish? It gives the DoJ a sense of accomplishment. If Microsoft is bitching and the DoJ "forces" them do give up their source, DoJ feel like they've won a battle and may let MS off with only that.
Consequences: MS will still be punished in some way, and it may be something they aren't as willing to deal with.
---Ted---
You've got it! That's exactly what they're goal is. Ever since Halloween they've been brainstorming ways to undermine the open source movement and this is their brilliant plan: create a huge, publicly visible failure of an open source project. I use the term "open source" loosely here because, as Valentine said, "There are all different types of ways you can do open source."
You mean like BSDI? I've seen BSDI installed in quite a few places where accessibility to source was beneficial but the admin (or his boss) wasn't ballsy enough to use Linux or FreeBSD.