Microsoft Releases FlexWiki as Open Source

davemabe writes "Microsoft is apparently releasing its FlexWiki wiki implementation as an open source project. FlexWiki is the software used to run the wikis over at Channel 9. My question is: Is this software as good as the ever-extensible Kwiki implementation?"

Re:Service Unavailable

[Guus.der.Kinderen]

The site works fine for me. Try Google's cache: http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:AToSccLZKkwJ: www.flexwiki.com/+flexwiki&hl=en

Uses the IBM Public License

[ashpool7]

Sheesh, RTFA and click on the SF link.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

GPL Incompatible due to patent clauses. Draw your own conclusions...

Get out of here n00b

[Anonymous Coward]

And go here [wikipedia.org]

Re:Why Not?

[eviltypeguy]

Does RedHat "Open Source" everything they do? Why yes, actually. I'm not aware of any product they sell that isn't "Open Source".

Re:Uses the IBM Public License

[gr8_phk]

The FSF has stated that the CPL (is that the one they're using?) is not GPL compatible due to patent issues. They did not express an opinion about the patent requirements of the license, just that it makes it incompatible with the GPL.

ASP.NET

[News for nerds]

As it's implemented in ASP.NET, you are recommended to use IIS to host it with best performance. If you are an OSS-oriented, mono + Apache may be an option. Anyway, comparing it to Perl-written Kwiki is nonsense IMHO.

Microsoft Released?

[enkafan]

I'm not totoally sold on Microsoft releasing this software as open source. It was written by David Ornstein [asp.net], who works at Microsoft. While this tool is used internally at Microsoft, and I'm sure MS has the rights to the software too, I just don't think it's fair to David to classify this as a Microsoft Product.

BTW, David's weblog has a bunch of info on FlexWiki being posted to SourceForge [asp.net].

Vandalism

[e.colli]

Clicking on rename [flexwiki.com] it shows the message:
"Due to excessive vandalism, the rename function has been disabled. Once the vandals get bored, we'll reenable"

License?

[Bob9113]

Candera's FlexWiki Contrib [sourceforge.net] uses the IBM license, but the FlexWiki Core [sourceforge.net] project has no license listed. I didn't know you could start a project on SF without selecting a license, I thought it was a mandatory part of the project submission form. Does anyone know what license they are using?

Re:Information about the CPL

[Elwood P Dowd]

Uh, no, I don't think so. From that discription, it sounds like a totally acceptable license. In fact, from the FSF's page [gnu.org]:

Common Public License Version 1.0

This is a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL.

The Common Public License is incompatible with the GPL because it has various specific requirements that are not in the GPL.

For example, it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)

This is the same issue with the latest Apache license. It's good, it's just GPL incompatible. If they ever make a new version of the GPL, it might contain identical requirements.

Re:Information about the CPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmh? But doesn't Apache Foundations's ASL 2.0 also have (similar?) patent clause? And in that isn't it generally a Good Thing (tm), except for the incompatibility it causes with (L)GPL? But GPL is not the end all Free/Open software license; one of more influential, and certainly most grand-standing of them, but not the only one.

To me CPL seems close to ASL 2.0, which is pretty decent license. It's based on bit different ideals than GPL, but they are close relatives.

If any other company on the planet chose CPL (which, after all, was NOT created by Microsoft), we wouldn't even be having this discussion. I'm beginning to despise this consistent "M$ sux0rs" group think around here...

RTFA :)

[pavon]

Depending on where you read, it is released under either the IBM Public License or the Common Public License, which superceded the IPL and which is simular to the LGPL. It is approved by the OSI as an open source license and the FSF as a free software license. However, it is incompatible with the GPL because of some clauses about patent restriction. The FSF is not opposed to these clauses in principle - in fact they are concidering putting something simular in the next version of the GPL. But as things stand now, any IPL or CPL code cannot be combines with GPL code (unless of course, the author dual licenses the code under both).

Personally, I tend to side with the FSF when some software developer invents his own open source license which has not had the same legal scrutany of existing licenses, is incompatible with existing licnenses, causes fragmentation in potential codebases, and then accuses the FSF of being inflexible when they try to help the developer resolve these problems. I mean what is the the FSF foundation expected to do - change thier license according to the whims of every new license that comes around? It is the newcomers that are causeing incompatibility not the FSF.

But the CPL is becoming very popular among business, is a very fair Free Software license, has had the scrutiny of IBM lawyers, and does include some good ideas that are not in the GPL. So I really hope that the FSF makes it a top priority to work on the new version of the GPL which solves the patent-based conflicts with the CPL and other licenses.

Hats off to David Ornstein

[Shimmer]

David is the primary author of FlexWiki. See his blog here [asp.net].

FlexWiki was open source long before this.

[Talonius]

I've got copies download of the source code that were hosted on GotDotNet.

This might be Microsoft's implementation of FlexWiki (FlexWiki is a BSD license type, if I remember correctly) but FlexWiki has been available for a while.

Re:Information about the CPL

[Elwood P Dowd]

I can't tell whether your post is a farce.

And it's possible that this release will never be exploited by Microsoft some day.

No, what I'm saying is that if the FSF says "We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL." then that means they do not think Microsoft can exploit this license.

Re:kwiki vs mediawiki vs twiki vs....

[Jamesday]

I'm one of the Wikipedia team (looking after the database servers mostly) so I can't commment on others but MediaWiki includes these properties which make it interesting:

Very widely used and understood (Wikipedia and many other places).

Uses normal words, not CamelCase, for links.

Supports most human languages (a broad range at Wikipedia places).

Current version supports MySQL as the database, next version expected to support PostGreSQL as well.

GPL license, PHP (including safe mode PHP)

Extreme caching to help scalability (Squid and Memcached for that, also a file-based cache)

Supports limited database load sharing in the current version, more later. Wikipedia uses a master and two slaves for normal work, a couple of slaves for backup only.

Proved able to scale (so far) to a top 400 web site using 5 Squid caches, 15 web servers. Three machines were enough for top 1200 or so - equipment needs start to rise vey rapidly as you get into the top 1,000. It'll do more, we just haven't proved it in practice yet.

Re:make microsoft bob open source

[Chess_the_cat]

Does everyone realize that his name isn't Clippy? His name is actually Clippit.

Good discussion on open source at Microsoft @

[Skim123]

http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/archive/2004/09/26/23 4591.aspx [msdn.com] - an entry from the MS employee who released one of those MS open-source projects (WiX).

More commentary... [msdn.com]

Another Wiki Implementation worth looking at...

[bteeter]

I've actively used TWiki (http://www.twiki.org/ [twiki.org]) for a while now and its pretty slick. Its a Perl Implementation and it has a built in versioning system, so it saves all of the revisions of the TWiki docs.

I definitely recommend it for anyone looking at running a Wiki. :-)

Take care,

Brian
--
Linux Web Hosting [assortedinternet.com]

Re:Wiki spam.

[metacosm]

Finally, a good wiki, before the release of this, I couldn't find a wiki if I wanted one *sigh*. MS needs to just buckle down on getting the little jpeg issue under control.

Honestly, if you are looking for wiki software, there is lots of great stuff out...

OpenWiki -- Windows, easy to edit, featureful, fast, good. My favorite.
http://www.openwiki.com/

PHPWiki -- Cross Platform, easy to setup, fast.
http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/

KWiki -- The king of Wiki's!
http://kwiki.org/

Re:WiX and WTL are CPL

[Dr. Evil]

Imagine I add code to Apache that contains a patent I hold. Now, I wait a few years for it to become popular, and then start suing left, right and centre).

You can't do that under the GPL. By attempting it, you've given up your rights to distribute the software.

The GPL's wording on this is, IMHO poor. But the subtlety of the wording is very very important, and may provide better protection than the CPL... (which I haven't read)

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html [gnu.org]

"7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. . . ."

The odd part about this is that 1. if you contribute the patented code and don't implicitly grant license to use it, you violate the GPL and are guilty of copyright infringement.

More interesting, and this is where it might beat the CPL (or at least your example), is in situations where somebody notices a patent violation in a GPL'd product which they didn't write, there is absolutely no way they can profit from exploiting the patent while simultaneously allowing the software to be distributed.

This is a double-edged sword, and, IMHO a very sharp one. There's no incentive to persue patents on GPL'd products... except to stop their distribution and hold the author of the patented system guilty of violating the GPL.

Now the patent holder might persue the author punatively, but the copyright holders will probably not care.

The GPL is tricky and subtle.

IANAL of course.

one of the mowt easy wiki-engines:

[N3wsByt3]

Is just called 'wikiserver' and you can find it on http://www.wikiserver.org [wikiserver.org]

It has all the basic needs without the bells and whistles nobody uses, but, for most the wikiserver is very, very easy to use and to maintain. Contrary to almost all wiki's you don't have to know anything about webservers, php or other programlanguages, nay, not even detailed knowledge of a wiki is required. It just installs and works out of the bow, everything is straightforward, and I would say this wikiserver is what Ford was to the automobile-industry: it brings it into the grasp of everyone interested.

The latest version of Rian, wxwikiserver has all what it takes, unless your requirements are ultra-high, and it's coppled with an astonishing ease-of-use - and for once, this is no exageration. I have tried several others, but this one is truelly the most easy one to install and run.

Re:Actually MS is NOT anti-open source

[omicronish]

Most excellent post. I've talked to some MS employees and they don't seem to have anything against the concept of open source itself. I feel that the fear of the GPL is purely because of legalities, and probably a bit of misunderstanding as well. It would be terrible from MS's standpoint if some GPL'ed code accidentally made its way into Windows, which results in the open-sourcing of some component they don't want open. And yes, I am confident they do not steal GPL code; it's made very clear internally that such code (and I think other outside code) is unacceptable in Microsoft products because of possible legal issues. Note that I do not mention something like "because GPL sucks ass!" To reiterate, my impression is that it's purely legal with a bit of misunderstanding.

About your example, a similar thing has happened with .NET. The .NET Framework SDK and compilers are freely available, but the Visual Studio.NET IDE is not. Although the VC++ compiler wasn't free in the past, the SDKs for Windows development have been free for as long as I can remember. Actually, I don't know if this is related to what you've said anymore, but it's an interesting example of how Microsoft places closed, $$ functionality on top of a layer of closed but free functionality.

Re:What Wiki engine suitable as PIM?

[aCC]

Have a look at this list:

Easiest Installable Wiki Contest [c2.com]

Excellent resource to find easy to install Wikis.