It just seems like another excuse to prop up our bloated military-industrial complex.
A limited missile defense system can be cost effective under certain circumstances. The Israeli Iron Dome system, for example, provided effective protection against ballistic rocket attacks during the recent conflict. Israel is a nation of limited resources which takes a practical and pragmatic view of its defense spending. If Israel can demonstrate a practical and effective missile defense system then I would argue that a similar system can also be a practical and worthwhile expenditure for the defense of the western United States and the Pacific. Indeed, cooperation amongst the United States and friendly allied nations on these types of systems might further improve standardization and reduce costs. It doesn't have to be wasteful.
Do they really think NK will launch a missile our way
It's a possibility. Their leader, Kim Jong Un, is young and unpredictable. He isn't yet a fully known quantity. Under these circumstances it's right for the United States to spend a portion of the allocated defense budget to mitigate the consequences of plausible North Korean attack scenarios, including a ballistic missile launch against US allies or protectorates in the Pacific, Hawaii, Alaska or the the lower 48 (although at this time only the west coast is presumed to be within range).
or is this just another example of security theater?
I don't think so. The system actually does work, even if individual interceptors are only successful about half the time. There is also the example of the Israeli Iron Dome system which proved to be successful under combat conditions. So, the concept and some implementations of missile defense interceptors appear to be militarily viable and useful. I wouldn't categorize such things as security theater.
This wouldn't be nearly as dangerous if we didn't live in a society where a significant portion of our law-enforcement feel like above-the-law gung-ho cowboys looking to shoot now and ask questions later
And why do you suppose that is? Could it be the arrogant over confidence that comes from knowledge that they outgun the average citizen? I submit to you that were the police to face citizens armed equally as well as them they would have a greater degree of humility and respect for the people whom they claim to protect and serve. The 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution was put into the Bill of Rights, immediately following protection of speech, for a reason; it wasn't a coincidence or an accident. No, the founders wanted to ensure that any future government and it's agents were properly fearful of "the people" and thus would think twice and thrice before abusing those powers granted to them by "the people" in tyrannical ways. It's also worth mentioning that an armed society is a polite and civil society where people treat one another with respect and dignity instead of hurling insults and treating those who doesn't agree with them rudely and disrespectfully.
Cops are trained to approach every incident as a potentially dangerous or life-threatening one and it's pretty much to the point where citizens need to treat every encounter with the police as a potentially deadly one.
It's wise to limit one's dealings with the police in any case because they're here to keep the peace generally, not to protect you as an individual. It's an inherently adversarial relationship and ought to be viewed as such by every citizen who values their freedom. Be respectful and polite when confronted by them, but know your rights and realize that it's not generally in your best interests to cooperate with or volunteer information to them.
I would counter by pointing out that companies are less and less willing to make long term investments in the development and retention of skilled employees. We may not know the details of your active directory deployment or your VMWare cluster and network topology straight away, but we're capable of learning these things and thus providing you a return on your investment in our long term employment. The problem is that companies want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to cheap out on recruiting and training and hire someone who already knows everything necessary to be immediately effective so that they can fire them as soon as the job is done and all for $20 per hour or less. So when nobody is forthcoming at $20 per hour they whine and complain about how they cannot find anyone, but that's what you get when you force workers to shoulder 100% of the costs and risks associated with their own training and development. An independent consultant who spends years honing their skills without certainty of regular reward is going to be in the cat bird seat when it comes time to negotiate the fee for their services. If companies don't like this arrangement then they ought to retain a regular staff of engineers instead and invest in their training and development. In summary, it's time for the CEOs to stop whining and start investing in American workers because we the people are getting awfully tired of bailing out executive asses and listening to inane corporate bullshit, especially at the miserly rate of $20 per hour.
Microsoft was indeed an early promoter of the word. Does anyone else remember their, "Freedom to Innovate" campaign during the DOJ lawsuits right before the Dot Com bust?
You basically only need enough nukes to kill some of the big cities in a country
Not quite. You need to be able to deliver them in sufficient quantity that any enemy defense systems are overwhelmed and your own deterrent or at least part of it must be protected against any plausible first strike in order to guarantee retaliation following an enemy first strike. In practice this requires a quiet and difficult to track ballistic missile submarine force with continuous patrols. North Korea will probably never have these things and so they will never be successful in dissuading a first strike. At best they may deter a limited war type engagement on their own soil which nobody really wants anyway because North Korea has very little of anything that's worth taking.
you can be pretty confident you know which one is real and which is chaff.
I'm no rocket scientist, but it was my understanding that the decoys are deployed from the same bus as the MIRV warheads at the apogee of the flight. This serves to maximize the amount of time that both decoys and warheads spend above 120 nautical miles for maximum confusion of a target attempting to play the warhead shell game. Of course, if the weapon is of the Fractional Orbital Bombardment type (now banned by treaty) the MIRVs and decoys could separate from the missile on separate orbital trajectories until de-orbitng for attacks or feints.
And get Shatner ready to narrate a sequel to Trinity and Beyond.
William Shatner regrets to inform all of you that, due to a previously scheduled engagement, which he simply cannot miss, he will not be able to narrate a sequel at this time. However, I have it on good authority from his agent, whom I have had the pleasure of working with on numerous past occasions, including not less than three feature films, two television commercials and a Broadway production of 'TechWar', that he would be happy to offer his voice over services, provided that production can be delayed another six months, at a price to be negotiated by the negotiator himself of Priceline, at his earliest convenience.
The only solution is to reduce the power of the government as a whole. This entirely opposite to the policies of both the Democrats and Republicans.
The Libertarians have been suggesting this remedy for decades now, but neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem particularly interested. The Republicans at least pay lip service to smaller and more limited government, but never actually do much to achieve it, while Democrats are openly hostile to even the suggestion of it; It's anathema to them. So our problems with large, powerful and intrusive government are likely to continue and increase in the years ahead as they have for decades now.
You do realize that the sort of device that the North Koreans have tested is probably the size of small car right? They have quite a ways further to go before the device is both small enough and light enough to actually fit on the end of their missile which itself is still in the experimental stages due to lack of spares, infrequent tests and poor quality materials. The very idea of a North Korean attack, nuclear or otherwise, is laughable.
After they have him stuffed they fit him with animatronics so he'll jump up every so often to scare the shit out of tourists.
They would need a bobsled ride going through the mausoleum so that he could jump out as the trains go by. I can hear it now, "Permanecer sentados por favor".
The assumption being that a small government will be less corruptible
Government, like the private sector, is inhabited by humans and humans are by nature corruptible. How is it that the humans working in the government are somehow more noble and benign than those working in the private sector? The government enjoys special powers, including the power over life and death, and thus warrants both greater skepticism and scrutiny than the private sector.
and that large businesses will not be able to manipulate markets.
Libertarians are not anarchists. They acknowledge that there is both a need and a proper place for government. However, they view government involvement and interference as a last and not a first resort.
Libertarians also believe campaign finance should be unrestricted
Some do, but not all or even most would necessarily agree.
That they don't see the link between corporate campaign finance and an expanding government
On the contrary, we see it just as clearly as every thinking person does. However, the solution cannot be to ban or restrict speech, as some have argued that we must do. The problem will not be solved by clamping down on speech. On the contrary, limiting speech will only make the problem worse as bribery and corruption retreat into the shadows to remain unseen and uncontrolled.
means they can't be taken seriously
The libertarian solution to this problem would be to reduce the number and scope of things that fall under the purview of the government. The sheer size and intrusiveness of the government is what creates the means, motive and opportunity for corruption. The means because the government is powerful, the motive because there's much to be won by rent seeking and regulatory capture and the opportunity by the sheer number of government agencies, bureaucrats and officials to be approached.
It's not enough to have noble goals, you must have a mechanism to achieve them.
At what cost? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In a way, it's actually refreshing to see somebody take the floor and speak for 12 hours straight, like they had to do in the old days. I especially liked this quote from the last hour:
I would go for another 12 hours to try to break Strom Thurmond’s record, but I’ve discovered that there are some limits to filibustering and I’m going to have to go take care of one of those in a few minutes here
Although it must be said that he had help from some of his colleagues who appeared at various times to recite bits and pieces of pop culture and literature, including at one point a rather lengthy passage from Shakespeare's Henry V, interspersed with a few quotations from the film Patton. It was actually quite amusing, in a quaint sort of way, and definitely reminiscent of Mr Smith Goes to Washington.
That all sounds like good advice if you believe, as the parent seemingly does, that maximizing your career is the highest and most worthy goal that anyone can attain. However, I would recommend taking some time to consider what it is that you really want to accomplish in this life. I know from personal experience that it's all too easy to get caught up in one's career, assuming that there will always be time before the end for other things. Meanwhile, the years pass by and a career that began with such promise and ambition sours into regret over what's been sacrificed along the way. Your career is important yes, but it's not the only important thing. I think that if I could go back and tell my younger self something it would be this: Be sure that you're doing what you're doing for the right reasons, not simply because you can or because others, especially your parents, think that you should. Take some time this summer to sit down and think carefully about what it is that you really want and then plan on how to spend the next twenty or thirty years of your life doing and getting those things slowly and methodically, piece by piece. Keep your list close, but never forget who you are and what you want; otherwise you're likely to end up wasting much valuable time and time is the one thing that none of us have in abundance. Finally, when in doubt, it helps to remember that nobody wishes upon their deathbed that they'd spent more time at the office. That's my two cents anyway, for what it's worth.
So it turns out that the government is inhabited by the same sorts of capricious assholes that one encounters in the private sector. We can ignore private businesses and individuals but the government has ways of forcing the issue, as the DOJ has so amply demonstrated with their handling the Aaron Schwartz affair, among others. Perhaps the libertarians are on to something with this idea of small and limited government? Nah, that would make too much sense. Those who argue for more powerful government and greater government involvement in society and everyday life should be careful what they wish for, lest they actually receive it. The same power that punishes your enemies one day can just as easily be turned against you in the future by the government you empowered.
I'm talking about non-practicing entities that sue everyone
Which is the definition of "patent troll". If you want to blame someone for the present legal situation surrounding patents, blame the US government for running a broken system and the attorneys who take advantage of it.
using patents they get from Microsoft.
You do realize that Microsoft has a very paltry number of patents as compared to say IBM or now Google, right? I'm not sure, but if I had to guess I would bet that very few of the patents that end up in the hands of non-practicing entities were originally granted to Microsoft or passed through their hands in the chain of ownership.
And/or corporate entities that sue everyone
As I've said elsewhere in the thread, most companies don't go looking to pick legal fights because it's a distraction from their core business and it mostly just enriches the attorneys. The recent Apple litigation is an excellent example of a legal Pyrrhic victory, it only happened because Steve Jobs, in his stubborn pride, allowed emotion to cloud his better business judgement. Meanwhile the lawsuits have done almost nothing to arrest the spread of android devices and the damage award has been further reduced. Heads or tails the attorneys win. The shareholders on both sides will force an end to it before too much longer I should think.
No, the investors behind BayStar did that, to the tune of $106 million. Microsoft paid a paltry $6 million for a "license" to settle the matter and sit out the main engagement between SCO and IBM. It was a business decision by Microsoft to not lose any more money than they had to. It probably cost IBM more than $6 million to ultimately win the case. Everyone involved in the SCO lawsuits, with the exception of the attorneys, lost money. The investors at BayStar lost money, although it's hard to feel sorry for them, both IBM and Microsoft lost money and SCO is defunct. Most companies don't go looking for fights in court because in the end it's really only the attorneys who win. So I maintain my original position that Microsoft really isn't interested in suing to stop you from using.NET in your open source project. You're getting your shorts in a twist over what amounts to a tempest in a teapot.
Notice the use of the phrasing, "hasn't always". Codeplex was launched in May of 2006, four years after the initial public release of the.NET Framework. Microsoft has definitely done more to embrace open source in recent years, but it wasn't always that way. That was my point.
Legally binding promises? How can you tell their promises are legally binding?
The Microsoft Open Specification Promise is what's called a "covenant not to sue". Such covenants have legal precedent here in the United States and have been held as binding by the courts.
Microsoft has an history of using proxy corporations to do its dirty work, so it can insulate itself from direct legal reprisals. Do you have some proof that they closed down that possible avenue for themselves?
Anyone can sue anyone at anytime and for anything, simply by paying the filing fees of the court. Nobody can guarantee that third parties, patent trolls especially, wont jump out of nowhere and sue you. However, it's a bit of a stretch to lay the blame for the limitations of our legal system here in the United States at Microsoft's feet.
It misses the criteria I listed above about coming out of the community.
I remind you that the question was originally phrased as, "what has the open source community done" not "what originated completely from within the community". Making contributions to improve an existing project, regardless of where it originated from, is a time honored tradition in open source and ASP.NET MVC has definitely benefited from community contributions. See previous reply for examples of projects that did originate from within the community, especially the dependency injection frameworks.
The grand parent asked, "what has the open source community done", not "what originated completely from within the community". I mentioned the ASP.NET MVC project because the team at Microsoft benefited substantially from community input and even directly from the contrib branch of the project and I believe that the quality of the work is largely under appreciated outside the.NET world. If you look through the code you can see that many contributions, or code based upon ideas and concepts that first appeared in the contrib branch, eventually made their way back into the main trunk, albeit in modified forms. However, if you're looking for examples that came from the community first then have a look a the dependency injection frameworks: Castle, StructureMap and Ninject. The Microsoft version of a dependency injection framework is Unity, but the community projects, especially StructureMap, were first in this area.
Slashdot Mirror
It just seems like another excuse to prop up our bloated military-industrial complex.
A limited missile defense system can be cost effective under certain circumstances. The Israeli Iron Dome system, for example, provided effective protection against ballistic rocket attacks during the recent conflict. Israel is a nation of limited resources which takes a practical and pragmatic view of its defense spending. If Israel can demonstrate a practical and effective missile defense system then I would argue that a similar system can also be a practical and worthwhile expenditure for the defense of the western United States and the Pacific. Indeed, cooperation amongst the United States and friendly allied nations on these types of systems might further improve standardization and reduce costs. It doesn't have to be wasteful.
Do they really think NK will launch a missile our way
It's a possibility. Their leader, Kim Jong Un, is young and unpredictable. He isn't yet a fully known quantity. Under these circumstances it's right for the United States to spend a portion of the allocated defense budget to mitigate the consequences of plausible North Korean attack scenarios, including a ballistic missile launch against US allies or protectorates in the Pacific, Hawaii, Alaska or the the lower 48 (although at this time only the west coast is presumed to be within range).
or is this just another example of security theater?
I don't think so. The system actually does work, even if individual interceptors are only successful about half the time. There is also the example of the Israeli Iron Dome system which proved to be successful under combat conditions. So, the concept and some implementations of missile defense interceptors appear to be militarily viable and useful. I wouldn't categorize such things as security theater.
Would people waste their time and get their panties in a twist over a gadget that doesn't live up to their snobby expectations.
This wouldn't be nearly as dangerous if we didn't live in a society where a significant portion of our law-enforcement feel like above-the-law gung-ho cowboys looking to shoot now and ask questions later
And why do you suppose that is? Could it be the arrogant over confidence that comes from knowledge that they outgun the average citizen? I submit to you that were the police to face citizens armed equally as well as them they would have a greater degree of humility and respect for the people whom they claim to protect and serve. The 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution was put into the Bill of Rights, immediately following protection of speech, for a reason; it wasn't a coincidence or an accident. No, the founders wanted to ensure that any future government and it's agents were properly fearful of "the people" and thus would think twice and thrice before abusing those powers granted to them by "the people" in tyrannical ways. It's also worth mentioning that an armed society is a polite and civil society where people treat one another with respect and dignity instead of hurling insults and treating those who doesn't agree with them rudely and disrespectfully.
Cops are trained to approach every incident as a potentially dangerous or life-threatening one and it's pretty much to the point where citizens need to treat every encounter with the police as a potentially deadly one.
It's wise to limit one's dealings with the police in any case because they're here to keep the peace generally, not to protect you as an individual. It's an inherently adversarial relationship and ought to be viewed as such by every citizen who values their freedom. Be respectful and polite when confronted by them, but know your rights and realize that it's not generally in your best interests to cooperate with or volunteer information to them.
I would counter by pointing out that companies are less and less willing to make long term investments in the development and retention of skilled employees. We may not know the details of your active directory deployment or your VMWare cluster and network topology straight away, but we're capable of learning these things and thus providing you a return on your investment in our long term employment. The problem is that companies want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to cheap out on recruiting and training and hire someone who already knows everything necessary to be immediately effective so that they can fire them as soon as the job is done and all for $20 per hour or less. So when nobody is forthcoming at $20 per hour they whine and complain about how they cannot find anyone, but that's what you get when you force workers to shoulder 100% of the costs and risks associated with their own training and development. An independent consultant who spends years honing their skills without certainty of regular reward is going to be in the cat bird seat when it comes time to negotiate the fee for their services. If companies don't like this arrangement then they ought to retain a regular staff of engineers instead and invest in their training and development. In summary, it's time for the CEOs to stop whining and start investing in American workers because we the people are getting awfully tired of bailing out executive asses and listening to inane corporate bullshit, especially at the miserly rate of $20 per hour.
Microsoft was indeed an early promoter of the word. Does anyone else remember their, "Freedom to Innovate" campaign during the DOJ lawsuits right before the Dot Com bust?
Sink the submarines?
I7, no? Ok what about E6? No, darn. How about A8?
How does Star Wars handle cargo containers?
Simple, it goes pew pew pew!
If you have a sufficiently advanced "Star Wars" system
I know what sound that makes! Pew pew pew!
You basically only need enough nukes to kill some of the big cities in a country
Not quite. You need to be able to deliver them in sufficient quantity that any enemy defense systems are overwhelmed and your own deterrent or at least part of it must be protected against any plausible first strike in order to guarantee retaliation following an enemy first strike. In practice this requires a quiet and difficult to track ballistic missile submarine force with continuous patrols. North Korea will probably never have these things and so they will never be successful in dissuading a first strike. At best they may deter a limited war type engagement on their own soil which nobody really wants anyway because North Korea has very little of anything that's worth taking.
you can be pretty confident you know which one is real and which is chaff.
I'm no rocket scientist, but it was my understanding that the decoys are deployed from the same bus as the MIRV warheads at the apogee of the flight. This serves to maximize the amount of time that both decoys and warheads spend above 120 nautical miles for maximum confusion of a target attempting to play the warhead shell game. Of course, if the weapon is of the Fractional Orbital Bombardment type (now banned by treaty) the MIRVs and decoys could separate from the missile on separate orbital trajectories until de-orbitng for attacks or feints.
And get Shatner ready to narrate a sequel to Trinity and Beyond.
William Shatner regrets to inform all of you that, due to a previously scheduled engagement, which he simply cannot miss, he will not be able to narrate a sequel at this time. However, I have it on good authority from his agent, whom I have had the pleasure of working with on numerous past occasions, including not less than three feature films, two television commercials and a Broadway production of 'TechWar', that he would be happy to offer his voice over services, provided that production can be delayed another six months, at a price to be negotiated by the negotiator himself of Priceline, at his earliest convenience.
The only solution is to reduce the power of the government as a whole. This entirely opposite to the policies of both the Democrats and Republicans.
The Libertarians have been suggesting this remedy for decades now, but neither the Democrats nor the Republicans seem particularly interested. The Republicans at least pay lip service to smaller and more limited government, but never actually do much to achieve it, while Democrats are openly hostile to even the suggestion of it; It's anathema to them. So our problems with large, powerful and intrusive government are likely to continue and increase in the years ahead as they have for decades now.
You do realize that the sort of device that the North Koreans have tested is probably the size of small car right? They have quite a ways further to go before the device is both small enough and light enough to actually fit on the end of their missile which itself is still in the experimental stages due to lack of spares, infrequent tests and poor quality materials. The very idea of a North Korean attack, nuclear or otherwise, is laughable.
After they have him stuffed they fit him with animatronics so he'll jump up every so often to scare the shit out of tourists.
They would need a bobsled ride going through the mausoleum so that he could jump out as the trains go by. I can hear it now, "Permanecer sentados por favor".
The assumption being that a small government will be less corruptible
Government, like the private sector, is inhabited by humans and humans are by nature corruptible. How is it that the humans working in the government are somehow more noble and benign than those working in the private sector? The government enjoys special powers, including the power over life and death, and thus warrants both greater skepticism and scrutiny than the private sector.
and that large businesses will not be able to manipulate markets.
Libertarians are not anarchists. They acknowledge that there is both a need and a proper place for government. However, they view government involvement and interference as a last and not a first resort.
Libertarians also believe campaign finance should be unrestricted
Some do, but not all or even most would necessarily agree.
That they don't see the link between corporate campaign finance and an expanding government
On the contrary, we see it just as clearly as every thinking person does. However, the solution cannot be to ban or restrict speech, as some have argued that we must do. The problem will not be solved by clamping down on speech. On the contrary, limiting speech will only make the problem worse as bribery and corruption retreat into the shadows to remain unseen and uncontrolled.
means they can't be taken seriously
The libertarian solution to this problem would be to reduce the number and scope of things that fall under the purview of the government. The sheer size and intrusiveness of the government is what creates the means, motive and opportunity for corruption. The means because the government is powerful, the motive because there's much to be won by rent seeking and regulatory capture and the opportunity by the sheer number of government agencies, bureaucrats and officials to be approached.
It's not enough to have noble goals, you must have a mechanism to achieve them.
At what cost? The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In a way, it's actually refreshing to see somebody take the floor and speak for 12 hours straight, like they had to do in the old days. I especially liked this quote from the last hour:
I would go for another 12 hours to try to break Strom Thurmond’s record, but I’ve discovered that there are some limits to filibustering and I’m going to have to go take care of one of those in a few minutes here
Although it must be said that he had help from some of his colleagues who appeared at various times to recite bits and pieces of pop culture and literature, including at one point a rather lengthy passage from Shakespeare's Henry V, interspersed with a few quotations from the film Patton. It was actually quite amusing, in a quaint sort of way, and definitely reminiscent of Mr Smith Goes to Washington.
That all sounds like good advice if you believe, as the parent seemingly does, that maximizing your career is the highest and most worthy goal that anyone can attain. However, I would recommend taking some time to consider what it is that you really want to accomplish in this life. I know from personal experience that it's all too easy to get caught up in one's career, assuming that there will always be time before the end for other things. Meanwhile, the years pass by and a career that began with such promise and ambition sours into regret over what's been sacrificed along the way. Your career is important yes, but it's not the only important thing. I think that if I could go back and tell my younger self something it would be this: Be sure that you're doing what you're doing for the right reasons, not simply because you can or because others, especially your parents, think that you should. Take some time this summer to sit down and think carefully about what it is that you really want and then plan on how to spend the next twenty or thirty years of your life doing and getting those things slowly and methodically, piece by piece. Keep your list close, but never forget who you are and what you want; otherwise you're likely to end up wasting much valuable time and time is the one thing that none of us have in abundance. Finally, when in doubt, it helps to remember that nobody wishes upon their deathbed that they'd spent more time at the office. That's my two cents anyway, for what it's worth.
So it turns out that the government is inhabited by the same sorts of capricious assholes that one encounters in the private sector. We can ignore private businesses and individuals but the government has ways of forcing the issue, as the DOJ has so amply demonstrated with their handling the Aaron Schwartz affair, among others. Perhaps the libertarians are on to something with this idea of small and limited government? Nah, that would make too much sense. Those who argue for more powerful government and greater government involvement in society and everyday life should be careful what they wish for, lest they actually receive it. The same power that punishes your enemies one day can just as easily be turned against you in the future by the government you empowered.
People in America think they are free and moral.
More free still than most, but definitely losing them. As for morals, we gave those up years ago.
I'm talking about non-practicing entities that sue everyone
Which is the definition of "patent troll". If you want to blame someone for the present legal situation surrounding patents, blame the US government for running a broken system and the attorneys who take advantage of it.
using patents they get from Microsoft.
You do realize that Microsoft has a very paltry number of patents as compared to say IBM or now Google, right? I'm not sure, but if I had to guess I would bet that very few of the patents that end up in the hands of non-practicing entities were originally granted to Microsoft or passed through their hands in the chain of ownership.
And/or corporate entities that sue everyone
As I've said elsewhere in the thread, most companies don't go looking to pick legal fights because it's a distraction from their core business and it mostly just enriches the attorneys. The recent Apple litigation is an excellent example of a legal Pyrrhic victory, it only happened because Steve Jobs, in his stubborn pride, allowed emotion to cloud his better business judgement. Meanwhile the lawsuits have done almost nothing to arrest the spread of android devices and the damage award has been further reduced. Heads or tails the attorneys win. The shareholders on both sides will force an end to it before too much longer I should think.
most famously having bankrolled the SCO lawsuits.
No, the investors behind BayStar did that, to the tune of $106 million. Microsoft paid a paltry $6 million for a "license" to settle the matter and sit out the main engagement between SCO and IBM. It was a business decision by Microsoft to not lose any more money than they had to. It probably cost IBM more than $6 million to ultimately win the case. Everyone involved in the SCO lawsuits, with the exception of the attorneys, lost money. The investors at BayStar lost money, although it's hard to feel sorry for them, both IBM and Microsoft lost money and SCO is defunct. Most companies don't go looking for fights in court because in the end it's really only the attorneys who win. So I maintain my original position that Microsoft really isn't interested in suing to stop you from using .NET in your open source project. You're getting your shorts in a twist over what amounts to a tempest in a teapot.
What do you call codeplex then
Notice the use of the phrasing, "hasn't always". Codeplex was launched in May of 2006, four years after the initial public release of the .NET Framework. Microsoft has definitely done more to embrace open source in recent years, but it wasn't always that way. That was my point.
Legally binding promises? How can you tell their promises are legally binding?
The Microsoft Open Specification Promise is what's called a "covenant not to sue". Such covenants have legal precedent here in the United States and have been held as binding by the courts.
Microsoft has an history of using proxy corporations to do its dirty work, so it can insulate itself from direct legal reprisals. Do you have some proof that they closed down that possible avenue for themselves?
Anyone can sue anyone at anytime and for anything, simply by paying the filing fees of the court. Nobody can guarantee that third parties, patent trolls especially, wont jump out of nowhere and sue you. However, it's a bit of a stretch to lay the blame for the limitations of our legal system here in the United States at Microsoft's feet.
It misses the criteria I listed above about coming out of the community.
I remind you that the question was originally phrased as, "what has the open source community done" not "what originated completely from within the community". Making contributions to improve an existing project, regardless of where it originated from, is a time honored tradition in open source and ASP.NET MVC has definitely benefited from community contributions. See previous reply for examples of projects that did originate from within the community, especially the dependency injection frameworks.
They did not come out of the community.
The grand parent asked, "what has the open source community done", not "what originated completely from within the community". I mentioned the ASP.NET MVC project because the team at Microsoft benefited substantially from community input and even directly from the contrib branch of the project and I believe that the quality of the work is largely under appreciated outside the .NET world. If you look through the code you can see that many contributions, or code based upon ideas and concepts that first appeared in the contrib branch, eventually made their way back into the main trunk, albeit in modified forms. However, if you're looking for examples that came from the community first then have a look a the dependency injection frameworks: Castle, StructureMap and Ninject. The Microsoft version of a dependency injection framework is Unity, but the community projects, especially StructureMap, were first in this area.