And how much do you figure the Mozilla Foundation paid Google for the cross-licensing? The probable answer is zero dollars. Now that's what one would call "anti-competitive", no?
So I guess the unwashed masses (contrast with 'uneducated public') that descend on just about every 'interweb' forum or comment-accepting black hole running a Microsoft article to kindly regale us with their "OMFG M$ IS TEH SUXX!!1!! LOLOLOLOLOL!!!" bullshit must leave you breathless and speechless as well?
There are people out there that don't equate software with religion and, believe it or not, there are people out there who happily run Windows day in and day out and they get their job done with it. So it's not surprising that there are also people out there that don't share your (and by 'your' I mean 'the average slashbot's') irrational, virulent and immature hatred and disdain of Microsoft Corporation.
They're just another fucking company. I'd rather waste time hating racism, poverty and all the other ills of this planet than hating the makers of my VCR or my bedsheets. Personal computers are commoditized appliances, not interesting toys.
It's no secret that the posts here in/. seem to lean a little to the left.
If you define "a litte" as the way a gravitational well on a black hole's event horizon sucks all matter and anti-matter into its unfathomable infinite void then... I agree.
Likewise, a corporation cannot have "rights", just privileges extended by individuals
That's interesting, because if that's the case then Microsoft can't have flaws. Correct? That's a very convenient position - no coporation or "community" (open source, free software, whatever) will ever have any flaws. And yet we constantly hear about "the open source community coming together" and so on. Interesting, eh?
Adjust your vocabulary accordingly, then apologize.
Pompous, petulant. At least we know what your character flaws are.
Wow, yeah. And let me be the first to thank you for uncovering this explosive evidence. It rates right up there with your hard-hitting expose on the CULT TO SACRIFICE VIRGINS AT MOUNT SAINT HELENS piece.
I'd begin to buy your theory if the guy had ever posted anything positive about Microsoft beyond not being actually derisive/negative like anyone else who has a chip on their shoulder and an axe to grind with the company. He posts because he has unflattering things to say.
He is an MSFT employee. He knows way too many things only insiders would be familiar with - not even an ex-employee. But he's very careful not to reveal internals that would get him in trouble. Very clever. He's also an above-average writer, FWIW.
It's been theorized he's (yes, he) is a mid-level guy in PSS. A few of his posts bear this out, but a few others don't. Like I said, he's very careful with what he gives away.
Having said that... yes, this is another opportunity for the slashbots to come out of the woodwork to post their ever-hilarious "M$ is teh suxx" jokes.
So who knows how much "open source code" has "found its way" into MS releases?
You don't have to guess - a lot of it was leaked a few years ago. The zealots descended on it like vultures, salivating at the thought of finding "all that GPL code" in Windows.
It's been a couple of years and I expect at least someone already went through the whole thing. The silence was deafening, I think.
Ah, but because the leaked code was mostly userspace stuff (IE, the shell, etc.) then maybe "all that GPL code" is actually in the kernel. Yes, that's where it must be. All that GPL code. In the kernel.
In the 1.0 CLR the C# compiler produced slightly (and I emphazise slightly) better-performant IL under certain conditions. We created a whole bunch of test harnesses (loop unrolling, exception handling sequences, type casting, etc) to profile the generation of IL. Much of this gap (that again, wasn't significant to begin with) was narrowed in 1.1. I expect it should be gone by now.
VB.NET/C# are choices. Choices for developers, for IT departments, for commercial software companies. In the WinDNA days, you could have really expert, expensive C++ folks cranking out the critical parts of your product and a bunch of less-qualified VB devs writing features to spec and it all came together using COM as a binary-level glue. Microsoft gives you the same option today, albeit VB is less crippled now. There will always be differentiating features (VB is less verbose, C# has more 'power' syntax) to keep them apart.
If you're not willing to pay them, stop whining about how they're not doing exactly what you want.
Fine. Just don't blindly ("yeah, we got that!") offer what they do as alternatives to commercial software that already works and feel like you've advanced the state of open source in the world.
I think maybe (and my recollection does not go back that far) these concepts were pioneered back in the day when computing resources were scarce and expensive. I think it made sense back then to say "hey, you're playing with this really cool machine on our dime, so don't work on your own stuff". Nowadays computing power is cheap ($499 from Dell buys you something far more powerful than the big Unixen boxes of the 60s and 70s), the hardware has become commoditized and the ideas simply don't apply anymore. But IP holders surely don't mind that they continue to be artificially relevant.
It's more complicated than that of course, but I think maybe that's part of where these legal concepts come from.
That's misleading and sensationalist. Miguel de Icaza knows perfectly well what INETA is, what they do and how they operate. They do not "cower under the hand of Microsoft", they are very much married to Microsoft. BOF or no, the presentation would have taken place in the context of the PDC. Miguel de Icaza works for Novell. Whatever yahoo at INETA that thought it was a good idea to bring in an employee of Novell to the PDC didn't clear it with Microsoft. They didn't "lie" to Icaza, INETA probably raised the issue with the MSFT people late in the game and got reamed for it.
It's disingenious of Icaza to cry himself a river when he knows very well how things work. He's no stranger to Microsoft satellite orgs like INETA, and I expect he hasn't forgotten Novell pays his salary.
I'm not trying to prove Icaza 'deserved it', this whole deal still sucks. I'm making the point that he should have seen this coming and should have cleared it with someone other than some teenager at INETA. He knows enough people at Microsoft to do that. A simple email to friggin' Robert Scoble would have sufficed.
The PCD is Microsoft's event. It's for people who work with Microsoft technologies on the Microsoft platform. Maybe if Icaza had not sold the shop to Microsoft's competition then maybe they would have had a chance to get in there. Gawd knows Icaza has a lot of fans within Microsoft - he's respected by a lot of people in the mothership, especially those working with the most interesting technologies, such as Indigo/WFC.
But when the guy essentially works for Novell, what the fuck did he expect? They didn't let the Oracle folks in either, eh?
The zealotosphere will of course take this personally and another round of "OMFG TEH M$ IS TEH EVIL!!1!" is forthcoming. That's fine. Just remember that Microsoft is not into giving competitors slots on their conferences just so they can come across as being nice. The PDC is not an all-access proletarian gig. If Icaza was still independent I'd put good money on him getting into the PDC to demo his stuff. With the Novell t-shirt however, things are a little different.
Oh, and BTW... OS News and every two-bit blog out there had this days ago. Slashdot is late to the party - again.
You might want to ask the Mozilla folks about that as well... it seems they've taken to "quarantine" vulnerability details until after a patch has been released. Well, that's when they can. Sometimes someone will release the details without giving them a chance to hide the problem until they can fix it. And of course afterwards they whine about it. Does that remind you of someone?
Firefix is still a safer browser than IE, and even moreso because it's not so deeply encrusted into the operating system. But these types of "OMFG LOOK AT WTF MICROSOFT IS DOING!!!" comments have no credibility anymore if the Mozilla foundation is doing essentially the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
ROFL, thanks.
ad hominem circumstantial.
You go on hating a company all you want. I was only pointing out how utterly stupid it is.
You so totally rock. Thanks ever so much.
I lost you at 'dumbass', fucktard.
Thanks for your insight into the inner workings of monopolies, and next time try to exercise some reading comprehension.
And isn't that the argument used to justify Netscape's death at the hands of Microsoft?
Of course not, but that's not the point.
Lack of competition when you have no competitors is not exactly my idea of monopolistic behavior.
Heck, I'm almost ready to make the case in favor of MSN - at least if Yahoo goes down Google won't have a search monopoly.
There are people out there that don't equate software with religion and, believe it or not, there are people out there who happily run Windows day in and day out and they get their job done with it. So it's not surprising that there are also people out there that don't share your (and by 'your' I mean 'the average slashbot's') irrational, virulent and immature hatred and disdain of Microsoft Corporation.
They're just another fucking company. I'd rather waste time hating racism, poverty and all the other ills of this planet than hating the makers of my VCR or my bedsheets. Personal computers are commoditized appliances, not interesting toys.
If you define "a litte" as the way a gravitational well on a black hole's event horizon sucks all matter and anti-matter into its unfathomable infinite void then... I agree.
That's interesting, because if that's the case then Microsoft can't have flaws. Correct? That's a very convenient position - no coporation or "community" (open source, free software, whatever) will ever have any flaws. And yet we constantly hear about "the open source community coming together" and so on. Interesting, eh?
Adjust your vocabulary accordingly, then apologize.
Pompous, petulant. At least we know what your character flaws are.
Wow, yeah. And let me be the first to thank you for uncovering this explosive evidence. It rates right up there with your hard-hitting expose on the CULT TO SACRIFICE VIRGINS AT MOUNT SAINT HELENS piece.
I'd begin to buy your theory if the guy had ever posted anything positive about Microsoft beyond not being actually derisive/negative like anyone else who has a chip on their shoulder and an axe to grind with the company. He posts because he has unflattering things to say.
Gotta go. The black helicopters come...
It's been theorized he's (yes, he) is a mid-level guy in PSS. A few of his posts bear this out, but a few others don't. Like I said, he's very careful with what he gives away.
Having said that... yes, this is another opportunity for the slashbots to come out of the woodwork to post their ever-hilarious "M$ is teh suxx" jokes.
Anyway... must get some sleep.
Yes, he seems to think software products like Exchange or Outlook are trivial. Personally I don't think so. But that's just me.
All the applications you mentioned are clearly non-trivial...
No shit, sherlock.whereas exchange/outlook seems to be nothing more than a few entries in a database...
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you? Or are you just retarded? "a few entries in a database"? WTF?
I mean, Photoshop is also stupidly simple, right? It's amazing no one has managed to clone it successfully.
And Quark/PageMaker/InDesign? Stupidly simple!
CorelDraw? Illustrator? *cue Howard Dean scream* STUPIDLY SIMPLE!!!
Seriously, you oughta try and look at things from another angle. Sometimes it helps.
I hope not, 'quartz' was the codename for DirectShow and the runtime library is still named 'quartz' as well.
Proud Mac user
Good for you.
Wow, and here I thought I could hear the black helicopters in the distance.
You don't have to guess - a lot of it was leaked a few years ago. The zealots descended on it like vultures, salivating at the thought of finding "all that GPL code" in Windows.
It's been a couple of years and I expect at least someone already went through the whole thing. The silence was deafening, I think.
Ah, but because the leaked code was mostly userspace stuff (IE, the shell, etc.) then maybe "all that GPL code" is actually in the kernel. Yes, that's where it must be. All that GPL code. In the kernel.
And so on.
Microsoft has never had any problems with BSD-licensed code. It's the GPL with its viral all-or-nothing social agenda that they dislike.
VB.NET/C# are choices. Choices for developers, for IT departments, for commercial software companies. In the WinDNA days, you could have really expert, expensive C++ folks cranking out the critical parts of your product and a bunch of less-qualified VB devs writing features to spec and it all came together using COM as a binary-level glue. Microsoft gives you the same option today, albeit VB is less crippled now. There will always be differentiating features (VB is less verbose, C# has more 'power' syntax) to keep them apart.
It's all just choice.
Fine. Just don't blindly ("yeah, we got that!") offer what they do as alternatives to commercial software that already works and feel like you've advanced the state of open source in the world.
It's more complicated than that of course, but I think maybe that's part of where these legal concepts come from.
It's disingenious of Icaza to cry himself a river when he knows very well how things work. He's no stranger to Microsoft satellite orgs like INETA, and I expect he hasn't forgotten Novell pays his salary.
I'm not trying to prove Icaza 'deserved it', this whole deal still sucks. I'm making the point that he should have seen this coming and should have cleared it with someone other than some teenager at INETA. He knows enough people at Microsoft to do that. A simple email to friggin' Robert Scoble would have sufficed.
But when the guy essentially works for Novell, what the fuck did he expect? They didn't let the Oracle folks in either, eh?
The zealotosphere will of course take this personally and another round of "OMFG TEH M$ IS TEH EVIL!!1!" is forthcoming. That's fine. Just remember that Microsoft is not into giving competitors slots on their conferences just so they can come across as being nice. The PDC is not an all-access proletarian gig. If Icaza was still independent I'd put good money on him getting into the PDC to demo his stuff. With the Novell t-shirt however, things are a little different.
Oh, and BTW... OS News and every two-bit blog out there had this days ago. Slashdot is late to the party - again.
It makes me safer, yes. Of course.
Firefix is still a safer browser than IE, and even moreso because it's not so deeply encrusted into the operating system. But these types of "OMFG LOOK AT WTF MICROSOFT IS DOING!!!" comments have no credibility anymore if the Mozilla foundation is doing essentially the same thing.