Josh Ledgard On MS's Future Open Source Efforts 427
prostoalex writes "Josh Ledgard from Microsoft, the developer responsible for open-sourcing WiX and WTL, is looking for opinions on what Microsoft should do next in regards to the open source movement that he himself established within the company. "Would you have interest in working on these types of projects with Microsoft? If not, what could entice you? If so, what would be your motivation?", asks Josh." Update: 08/24 19:04 GMT by T : As Ledgard writes on his site, "I am NOT the person responsible for the WIX/WTL projects. I cite them as examples and am working with people who where responsible for those projects to enable more of the same for the groups I work in." Sorry for the misattribution!
Office.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Office.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Office.. don't hold your breath. (Score:2)
Re:Office Specs.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Office.. (Score:5, Informative)
MS Office files are actually miniature filesystems in their own right, containing serialized objects that are the in-memory representation of a document. There is no intermediate step between the objects that are the document in-memory that translates it into ".doc format" on the disk - it's just the object itself.
So:
Re:Office.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't you need to pay for office to get that COM object? Or pay bigtime to be allowed to distribute it? Lastly, why did you put "open source" in quotation marks?
Re:Office.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Office.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Flamebait.
I don't know about distributing it - you just list Office among the requirements for the application. It's been a long time since I've seen a Windows PC without Word and Excel at least.
Not everyone uses Windows and further, not everyone is willing to pirate Word and/or Excel. If you took out all the pirated versions, I'm sure your statistic would have a few holes. And more importantly, your st
Re:Office.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Which, of course, don't count a bit on any other platform than Windows.
That said, Microsoft claims [microsoft.com] to offer "open and royalty-free documentation and licenses for the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas." I haven't looked at them myself, but it looks like the real deal. The FAQ [microsoft.com] states that the "license is not restricted to particular individuals or entities. It is available for customers, governments, academics, hobbyists, and IT companies."
Granted, the download is available as a Windows executable, but I imagine someone will boot up their Windows boxes to look at it.
This is big plus in my book for Microsoft. Still, the specification for good'ol
Re:Office.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Having to instantiate the word processor that originally created the document in order to use it doesn't strike me as 'fully accessible', 'reusable' or anything remotely like open source.
Re:Just as if it were open source... (Score:5, Informative)
Hahaha, I guess you've never read the DOC specs. I read a very old version of them that was distributed/leaked one time on MSDN many years ago - you can get it from the WvWare homepage.
Basically the Word specifications are nearly incomprehensible to human beings, let alone the code. Given that the specs actually partly consist of copy/pasted code I think even if Word were open sourced we'd only be a bit further in having OpenOffice and the like able to read them.
The Word developers use structures with members names like fcPlcffldHdrTxbx. It's hungarian taken to the logical extreme. Here's a line from one of the struct definitions:
FTC rgftcStandardChpStsh[3]; // ftc used by StandardChpStsh for this document
Helpful, isn't it? I'm convinced the Word team are actually robots from the 23rd century, no people could have produced this.
Mind that the specs appear to be internal documentation yet are still incomplete!
Basically it would not surprise me if the internals of Word are like the internals of Windows: the people who truly understood them left or retired years ago leaving a mess of interlocking systems and hacks that nobody can fully comprehend.
Code contribution tracking (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the major potential benefits of contributing to open-source projects is that, when searching for a future programming job, one can point to one's open-source contributions and say "Here's some of my code, and people are using it." This works especially if one has contributed to a project with prestige - something that a Microsoft-sanctioned project would certainly have in the closed-source corporate world.
However, it can be difficult to pick out the code that one has contributed from a large project and say, "yeah, download this tgz and look at kluge.cpp lines 377-421, that's my code!" So I would propose, as a carrot to your future open-source contributors, that you design a system that keeps a database of who contributed code, how old it is, and maybe some other statistics about it. You could post a summary page for each contributor with browseable links to the code and statistics.
-Ansel.
Re:Office.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Future Open Source efforts? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Future Open Source efforts? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Future Open Source efforts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Outside of source with bizarre licenses, source that clearly furthers a Microsoft agenda (such as the Installer SDK Wix), etc..., does anything substantial exist?
Is there a single Open Source project out of Microsoft with a reasonable license that is worth anything in and of itself?
Re:Future Open Source efforts? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Future Open Source efforts? (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people would call the GPL a "bizarre license".
I don't see why open-source furthering Microsoft's agenda makes something any less open-source. The whole point of the GPL is to further the Free Software agenda.
Let's not have double standards here.
Re:Future Open Source efforts? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Future Open Source efforts? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Future Open Source efforts? (Score:2)
Re:Future Open Source efforts? (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe that is 'cross platform' instead.
MS has been open source for years (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MS has been open source for years (Score:3, Interesting)
Hacking in cheat buttons for pass-through-walls, free points, change speed, etc... Pass through walls was a mistake, though. People went off the map and it crashed. There were some interesting side-effects when the score overflowed, too ;-)
Fixing bugs in QBasic Nibbles! (Score:4, Informative)
Quick and obvious answer ... (Score:3, Funny)
Women. Lots of women. Covered in baby oil, writhing around me as I did the work for Microsoft.
Re:Quick and obvious answer ... (Score:2)
OpenSource IE (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OpenSource IE (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OpenSource IE (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OpenSource IE (Score:3, Informative)
Basically if you are the full copyright owner, the opensource license doesnt apply to you.
Re:OpenSource IE (Score:5, Informative)
However, most of the IE related code is in several seperate files, specifically:
hlink.dll (HyperLink Library)
iexplore.exe (main program exe)
imgutil.dll (Image Decoder API)
mshtml.dll (HTML rendering engine)
jscript.dll (JScript runtime)
shdocvw.dll (Internet Explorer core)
wldap32.dll (Win32 LDAP implementation)
msxml.dll (XML parser)
pngfilt.dll (PNG library)
and probobly a few others as well.
Microsoft would have nothing to loose and probobly a fair bit to gain if they were to Open Source those bits that are "IE" (and not the other bits connected to, related to or used by it e.g. Windows Media, Shell, Windows Core, Outlook, OLE, COM, Common Controls etc)
Especially if they then took the best "user changes" and put them into the official tree and future IE updates.
Re:OpenSource IE (Score:3, Interesting)
If MS did open IE, would anyone but hackers care? I think we'd see exploits way faster than we saw patches. People are finding holes in IE fast enough without looking at the source code!
I know that OSS should be more secure (many eyes and all that) but the process shouldn't be:
It's simply too late to open
Re:OpenSource IE (Score:2, Insightful)
Something I noticed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft needs to truly contribute to Open Source (Score:4, Interesting)
As I'm sure many of you noticed, Microsoft has been making some 'Open Source' pushes as of late. They started by creating the CPL, getting it certified, and have now been hiring prominent open source developers to work on CPL.
For those of you not in the know, the key distinction between CPL and the GPL, is that I can incorporate a CPL'ed project into my code, whole, without contributing back, as long as I don't modify the CPL'ed code. If I do, I have to publish modifications to the CPL code in the same way I would for the GPL.
I'm of the opinion that the CPL has two serious flaws:
First, the transparency. How often have we all seen companies violating the GPL? I can assure you, it's a whole lot more frequent than even we hear about. I've known many Windows developers, who had no clue about, or respect for, the GPL, and would download bits of code from anywhere to incorporate if it made their lives easier. (Often because they didn't understand the task at hand, and they just wanted to get it to work.) It's not normally a matter of policy, but I've definitely seen it knowingly overlooked at companies I've worked for previously.
Right now, if we find a company using GPL'ed source, we have a smoking gun we can use to ensure license compliance. When someone incorporates CPL code, there's no way to prove that they modified it themselves, and so CPL compliance is based entirely on the goodwill of corporations, and we've seen how generous that goodwill is...
Second, there's the free rides. The CPL is designed so that companies can take advantage of the work of open source developers without having to compensate them in any way. With proprietary code, developers receive fiduciary compensation, and, traditionally, with Open Source, the developers receive the source for their project, and any derivative works.
With the CPL, companies get a free ride, which in the end screws the developers out of any benefit of their hard work.
Now, the reason why I bring this all up is that, as mentioned above, Microsoft has been hiring prominent open source developers, having them release their source under the CPL. It is my belief that Microsoft wishes undermine the Open Source movement. They hope to get the CPL to be popular, so that they can freely incorporate works developed by others without having to contribute back. They've hired 'evangelists' to show the benefits of CPL, without showing the downsides. (Because, of course, Microsoft is currently releasing software, and they want us to believe that's not going to change.)
So, in conclusion, Microsoft, what I'd like to see is Microsoft projects released under the GPL as well, so that we can see a benefit to the Open Source movement, not just to you.
Re:Microsoft needs to truly contribute to Open Sou (Score:5, Insightful)
The CPL was not created by Microsoft - as mentioned here [ibm.com], it was created by IBM, and is essentially an updated and generalized version of IBM's original Open Source license, the IBM Public License [opensource.org].
Irrelevant - there's no way to prove that someone has incorporated GPL code into a closed source product, short of obvious indicators like embedded strings, etc. GPL compliance is also "based entirely on the goodwill of corporations". The long and the short of the matter is that a company that's willing to knowingly violate the CPL will probably also be willing to knowingly violate the GPL.
As is the GPL. Neither the CPL nor the GPL are concerned with the origin of software, they're concerned with the distribution of software. They're both designed to ensure that the recipient of a piece of software has access to the source code. That's it. Nothing in either license about compensating the original developers, or having to give back source code to the original developers. Even you recognize this - while it's "traditional" to contribute back changes to an GPL'd project, it's not required. In fact, the FSF considers this kind of requirement onerous enough that they explicitly classify licenses that have this requirement (for example, the Open Public License [gnu.org]) as non-free.
...which is bad, why? We're talking about Microsoft's own code, here - it's their choice as to what license they want to release their code under. The CPL is recognized by the OSI [opensource.org]. It's acknowledged as a free software license [gnu.org] by the FSF, albeit one incompatible with the current GPL because it addresses patent issues that the GPL does not.
In fact, at this point, if there's anyone that's getting a "free ride" off of Microsoft's actions, it's everyone except Microsoft, who now has access to - and can use - Microsoft's CPL software, as is, without any obligation.
Overall, I think this is a positive event. It appears there are OSS advocates (not juse Josh!) within Microsoft who seem to be trying to convince the corporate culture there that OSS is not neccesarily a threat to Microsoft, and they're going about it in a very reasonable way. They selected an existing OSS license instead of coming up with Yet Another License. They released code for a couple of trial projects under this license, and have been following the OSS philosophy of "release early, release often" [sourceforge.net]. They've apparently met with enough success with these projects that they feel they have a good reason to actively encourage the release other projects under OSS licenses, and they're asking the community for input on what else to consider releasing
Re:Something I noticed... (Score:3, Insightful)
The main difference with Linux/*BSD and other OSS software is that _all_ user contributions such as coding, graphical work, documentation, etc goes back to the community so that _anyone_ can use it. With MS, any work you do for them is just working for free since MS will keep all rights to the work and just resell it. If I am going to spe
Free beer! (Score:3, Funny)
If he wants free-as-in-speech contributions, he should dole out some free-as-in-beer. Everyone knows that beer looseneth the tongue.
Do work for MS - for free? (Score:4, Insightful)
Eh, a small slice of the profits they make from selling the fruits of my labour would be nice.
Re:Do work for MS - for free? (Score:3, Interesting)
But people happily write code that IBM later sells (or sells support for, at any rate) without seeing a penny for their efforts. Why would MS be any different?
Re:Do work for MS - for free? (Score:3, Insightful)
So I guess they're making money out of what I did for free. These days I get paid to do it, I did the support for IBM Lotus Notes 6.5.1 on Wine.
But, the money and code IBM has given to the Linux community and that I benefit from far, far outstrips what I've done for them. While I did get paid to do Notes, that money w
Re:Do work for MS - for free? (Score:3, Insightful)
I am constantly amazed to hear that people actually believe this. IBM is in this solely for IBM's benefit; if they saw more financial advantage in sucking up to MS, they'd drop Linux in a hot second. (See Sun and ther $2 billion settlement for a milder example)
Office File Formats (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Office File Formats (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Office File Formats (Score:3, Informative)
Back in the day most programs stored data in binary format. it was how things were done. XML wasn't a dirty look in the W3C's eyes yet. They changed the format between versions because everyone did it that way. Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
No Interest Whatsoever. (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft has overstayed its welcome. Their past litany of cut-throat misadventures has piss-tainted this sand-box far too many times.
The only thing that would entice me to contribute to their efforts to get even more richer, and even more powerful, is if they were broken up into smaller companies, their mass wealth redistributed, and Windows gets open sourced.
Honestly, not a flame. I've been completely Microsoft-free for 5 years now, I intend to keep it that way
Re:No Interest Whatsoever. (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft got this way because they were exceptionally vicious and predatory, destroying all competitors, caring not one single iota about quality, just like your average crack dealer
They have ruined the computer industry. Why shouldn't they be punished?
Re:No Interest Whatsoever. (Score:3, Interesting)
M$FT pays a dividend of 0.29%. For the biggest corporation in the country to pay such a low amount is stock fraud. The poster is correct that they should be forced to divest of their money promptly and forth with to their stockholders. The orginization should be disbanded because it poisons the water for decent businesses. This isn't communism it is the height of justice and Capitalism.
You might call yourself a capitalist but you are not unless you insist that investors get paid.
Re:No Interest Whatsoever. (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Microsoft is not the largest corporation in the country. The company's market value is $295b right now. This is behind General Electric's market cap of $342b.
Moreover, its enterprise value is only $235b. General Electric's is $669b, Citigroup's is $644.95. These companies also have many times the revenu
Make OSS economically sense ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically there are only three points
- To push competitors out of the field by offering their products for free. This is a more agressive version of what MS did with Netscape. SAP and IBM are using this to attack Oracle and MS.
- To establish own standards and push competing approaches out of the way. Stuff like TCP/IP and XML come into mind...
- To grab control of a competitor's standard base by offering free tools for a modified version.
That's the main point of the Eclipse project targeted at SUN.
So, OSS can strenghten/enlarge your own market share greatly but I don't see people making money by OSS directly.No, RMS getting donated money to get a shower doesn't count.
Re:Make OSS economically sense ? (Score:3, Informative)
2. Open standards and Open source software are two different things. Proprietary software may still support open standards like HTML and XML, I fail to see your point.
3. Sun also supports the Netbeans project, which is OSS. Their Sun Studio is a more advanced version, but they do offer an open source solution to it as well
What would get me interested? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Microsoft quit funding "independent" bogus TCO research to discredit OS operating systems. Oh yeah, and call off SCO.
2) Microsoft quit attempting to make all of their file formats dependent upon the OS/software that they write. The data is MINE, and I should be able to use other software to read the data. Commit to open file formats and I'd look a lot more favorably on MS.
3) Microsoft quit using draconian EULAs that make me fear that any contribution I made to a MS effort would be locked away for good once MS got a hold of it.
4) Money. Truckloads of it.
Well, maybe not so much 4, but the first 3 would be a good start.
My problem is that I've got such a bad image of Microsoft after working with their stuff for the past 12 years or so that at the end of the day I'd rather contribute effort to a "real" open source effort than anything funded by Microsoft. I just don't trust them to "do the right thing" with anything that came out of an OSS initiative.
Re:What would get me interested? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Opensource whatever, I'm not interested (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft software except for Windows Media Player series 9 with codecs, perhaps also
Windows Media Encoder could be of some interest.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why ask first? (Score:2)
Re:Why ask first? (Score:2, Interesting)
Open sourcing bits of code is all very well (Score:5, Insightful)
Some light on your two items (Score:5, Interesting)
This is not going to happen. Linus himself already told innumerous times that he thinks this would make unnecessarily hard to change the kernel APIs, and that, notwithstanding the point "2", below, he is not interested in binary compatibility for kernel-space things between versions of the kernel. This is right, and if you did not get it yet, I'll explain it to you: it leads to Big Bad Difficult Bugs, trying to get kernel modules to work in various kernel versions. Many things evolve from one version of the kernel to the next, many assumptions change.
2. and the 'grey' area of binary modules sorted out as well. I dont think it will happen.
This one has already happened, (*) but many people still want to pretend it didn't. Some binary modules are derived works of the kernel, and such, to be distributed at all, they must be distributed under the GPL. Some binary modules are not derived work of the kernel, and as such, they can be distributed under any license that the author seems fit. What determines if a work (in the case, a binary module) is a derived work of another (the kernel) is copyright law.
In the USofA and in Brasil, the copyright law states that a derived work is the result of some non-automated transformation of the original work. USofAn case law established the method of "abstraction, filtration, and comparison" [AFC] to determine derivation of works.
There is a myth, spread by the last paragraph of the "postamble" of the GPL, "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs": I will repeat here the position I have after carefully studying the GPL, copyright law, and case law: the GPL regulates the licensing to derived works of the GPL'd work, but it cannot regulate the licensing of encompassing "anthology" works. Linking does not make a work derived on other work: to see if some work is a derived work, apply the [AFC] method. Some (not all) linking, non-derived, non-GPL'd, works can be even distributed along with a GPL'd work, because they would be covered by the "mere aggregation" clause in the 3rd paragraph of section 2 of the GPL.
And one more funny stuff: the section 6 of the GPL states: This basically means that you can't even clarify the license further than copyright law would restrict the rights of the recipient of your work (**), without rendering it undistributable by others (and even by yourself, if your work is derived from another GPL'd work).
But, OTOH, IANAL and TINLA. But I am a paralegal. IMMV and the others TFFLAs
(*) Google for: "linus torvalds" abstraction filtration comparison binary
(**) Google: "hans reiser" derivative plagiarism
Only read a bit of the article (Score:4, Insightful)
"Wouldn't it be great if you all improved Visual Studio or whatever for us free of charge between releases and then wouldn't it be cool if we kept your improvements and then sell them in our next version of Visual Studio."
I'm not sure that is a standard definition of Open Source Development.
Re:Only read a bit of the article (Score:3, Interesting)
"Wouldn't it be great if you all improved Visual Studio or whatever for us free of charge between releases and then wouldn't it be cool if we kept your improvements and then sell them in our next version of Visual Studio."
I'm not sure that is a standard definition of Open Source Development.
Actually, assuming they keep the whole development source open and not just snippets that need to be improved, and assuming they don't yank it out from under us using some ridiculous license once they start selling,
Enticements (Score:2, Interesting)
Open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Seeing as Microsoft essentially stops developing the browser after it's done with it anyway, it might as well take advantage of the free maintenance costs, continual renewal and compliance adherence inherent to projects like Mozilla/Firefox. Instead of a whole team of Internet Explorer programmers, sponsor some open source programmers, as it feels fit.
Also, incidentally and less idealistically, by involving itself in something like the development of Mozilla, Microsoft could garner some support for proprietary technologies, that would otherwise fall upon deaf ears. Control comes with money. If Microsoft is on the outside, they have no control. The ideals of Mozilla/Firefox right now are precisely aligned against Microsoft's dominance; to curb or curtail that alignment requires involvement.
Screw open source. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I expect it to happen... but it is a nice thought.
Re:Screw open source. (Score:2)
Someone Needs To Sit Him Down (Score:3, Funny)
1) sit him down
2) quietly cup their mouth as they bend down to whisper something in his ear
3) then scream at the top of their lungs...
"WE DON'T LIKE, WE NEVER LIKED YOU, AND WE NEVER WILL!!!"
I would (Score:5, Interesting)
What MS SHOULD do is appeal to all the Windows developers out there. Yes, there are people out there who live in Visual Studio and love windows. They should get these people to fix all the bugs in windows and IE and such. There are people out there, willing and able to do work which the internal MS developers have failed to do multiple times over. Give someone else a try.
Re:I would (Score:5, Interesting)
The best source of Open Source developers your going to find that will work on developiung MS products in their freetime are going to be found in the Windows user groups. These are the people that run into the little problems here and there, consistently, over and over, for weeks and weeks on end. Some of them would probably bribe you to let them get in there and fix the problems. I say some because it doesn't matter wat community your part of, there is always someone who would prefer to whine to doing real work.
So start with a small windows groups of developers. Maybe give them IE as a starting place since it is not an essential product, but rather a bundled one (ie, it doesn't directly have a price). See if you can get them interested in implementing some of the newer standards, or re-implementing CSS or the JScript DOM to match the standards. Don't ask them to help, offer limited access to a SourceShare archive and a tasklist, let them work on it as they please. I'm willing to bet you'll find a lot of work getting done, especially after one of them comes back from an especially painful application install or intranet development.
I have been in the grey area, ie not a fanatic about either Linux or Windows, for years. I develop (for work) primarily with VS.Net, with occasional Web Devel mostly aimed at IE. I prefer Linux these days simply because everything happens for a reason. With Windows it's all black magic even when I kind of know what is going on under the hood based on how the system acts. It's the difference between training Gorillas based on watchng them for several years or training chimps after being given Gods notes on how and why he built them.
-T
Standardize the 'standards' in MS software (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)
Feel ready to own one or many Tux Stickers [ptaff.ca]?
Re:Stop reinventing the wheel (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you expect them to implement every specialty codec? They have to draw some line in the sand & it is good that third-party software can easily pick up the slack--even by extending what formats WMP can read.
I don't really think MS sets out to make the best anything--they set out to make a useable default choice.
I agree whole heartedly that other proprietaty binary formats should be better documented (especially the Office documents), but I guess I can see that doing so would give MS very little.
I am not bothered by MS having proprietary ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Contribute what you wish to contribute, but better yet: open your file formats or allow open formats to interoperate with your preferred file formats.
For me that would more than suffice. Note, however, I am not holding my breath in expectation.
No need to open more. (Score:5, Interesting)
Though I would pay attention if they open sourced
What they should try doing is participating with the community rather than trying to harvest/divide it. Ship perl, python, apache... Work with some of these open source projects. Show this isnt headed the direction of mosaic, embraced and extinguished mit licensed works.
Show this isnt just some game. Otherwise, have fun.
MSFT's culture is bankrupt. They have little to bring to the table. Show they are changing their culture, come out and play.
Re:No need to open more. (Score:3)
*(Yes, I know there's only 900 or so bloggers on MSDN, but many host on their own site).
Should be obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
They need to compete for coder base, as we're approaching a time when the system will be sold not on its own merits but on those of the applications it runs. This is already the case in enterprise computing and can only grow.
Re:Should be obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
I would enjoy it! (Score:2)
Of course, my job applications go unanswered, but I remain optimistic.
Open Source Slightly Off Topic (Score:2, Interesting)
Contribute to WINE (Score:4, Insightful)
DirectX (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it is the one area where MS completely and utterly destroys Linux and the one are where Linux really needs to grow up.
Course, it won't happen, ever.
How about releasing the specs on the doc format? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course this will never happen because the whole purpose of this "open source" work is so that Microsoft can say "look, I'm supporting these hippies", when in fact what they released has no effect on Microsoft business or Open Source movement.
Re:How about releasing the specs on the doc format (Score:3, Interesting)
My belief is that this will never happen, because even deep in the bowels of Microsoft they have no complete documentation of the file format. This is the only explanation I have for the lack of compatibility between different platforms, or even different versions, of Word.
Re:How about releasing the specs on the doc format (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, to be young and naive again :-). In my youth I often thought "they're a big company, all they have to do is put a few guys on it and it'll be usefully documented". Some companies are scared to even document their stuff internally out of fear that the document will leak out.
I still feel the empirical evidence is the s
Use GPL. Oppose software patents (Score:2, Insightful)
They'd need to open source visual studio (Score:5, Insightful)
"Wouldn't it be cool if there was a process whereby passionate Microsoft developers could work officially with engaged members of the community to build these missing features on top of the VS Platform, then these missing features could eventually be included as part of an additional install step as a part of the product? Microsoft wins because Visual Studio gets extended functionality between releases, the community wins because these would be provided for free and more officially supported, approved, and tested by Microsoft. Ideally the license would work such that Microsoft could eventually include these as part of future shipping products and the contributors could take the source and use it for their own purposes commercially."
Sounds a little like the process with Eclipse doesn't it? The difference of course is that with eclipse the core is open source (well everything except java but apparently it's possible to run eclipse with gcj). Why would an active community contribute work to a project which is at its root closed source? I still don't think they get it.
patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Talk about aiming to high (Score:5, Insightful)
But if this guy is serious and he really does mean it and he really does have any say in the company I got 2 simple opensource projects for him. Samba and OpenOffice. If he wants to prove MS can play nice after all get him to work on these 2 projects and make sure they are compatible whenever MS decides to "rework" their code and "accidently" break compatibilty.
When the next windows version does not break samba, when Microsoft Office opens OpenOffice files and vice versa without problem THEN I will be willing to believe MS can be just another IT company and not the IT company from hell.
At the moment it is like a rapist asking what will help to get him accepted back into society. STOP RAPING!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Free versus Open software (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this fully vindicates RMS's objections to Open software. It can easily be subverted in the manner that MS are doing: they come up with something entirely self-serving and closed and still call it Open Source.
In contrast they couldn't call it Free Software and get away with this crap because Free Software disdanes the pragmatic crap associated with Open Software (eg Linus' famous "Bitkeeper" defence.
And as an aside to the many posters that have made this mistake. Open Software does not equal software that runs on Linux!
Ransom Strips (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want further access (e.g. for a garage, a second garden path etc.) then they'll happily sell it to you for a huge amount.
Those are called 'ransom strips'. They hold you to ransom for access to your own property by controlling a small strip of land around it.
Microsoft is just open sourcing stuff it has surrounded by ransom strips. The GPL would protect against these tricks, but Microsoft don't use the GPL.
So it's not a real open source effort, its just MS playing its little word, license and patent games.
Re:Ransom Strips (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are called 'ransom strips'. They hold you to ransom for access to your own property by controlling a small strip of land around it.
And if you don't like it, then you can choose not to buy the house. Just like you can choose not to use MS products. There's no "ransom" involved in either case.
Thanks, but no thanks. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is, you can't do it. It goes against everything you stand for. You don't get it, you never will. There are no angles to be had, no strategies to follow. Regardless of how well-intentioned this guy at MS may be, he is not the faceless company that has implemented horrendous business practices over the last 20 years. Microsoft, you aren't part of this community, don't pretend like you are. We are a cancer, remember? Piss off.
Actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
These would be:
Avalon - Honestly, I want an open slick UI to program with. Flash and Shockwave do some pretty slick things in an efficient manner (compared to other mechanisms), and I'd truely like to have an open codebase to do the same things on every platform - in any language I happen to be using. I've seen the transition effects it can handle, and it's pretty decent. Let others help update it, and it will shine far faster, and with less bugs, than you doing it yourself.
These next 2 aren't open source, but just open documentation items.
Document formats - All document formats should be immediately opened so that anyone can read / update them. I know this is one of your bread and butter pieces, but face it, either do that, or Open Office is going to cut your office revenue in half.
Protocols - Open up them all so that true interoperability can exist between Windows / Linux / Unix. Show the strengths of your platform, but atleast allow efficient communication with others.
Doing these four things would go a long way to reducing the "evilness" persona that surrounds Microsoft. Honestly, their UI engineers do a fantastic job of pushing the envelope - even if they get their ideas from sundry locations occassionally.
Where they would have to tread carefully (Score:3, Insightful)
Software Selection (Score:3, Insightful)
I applaud Josh and what he's trying to do but he's fighting MS's entire business model and as soon their jaunts into open source no longer look profitable, you can bet they'll drop the initiatives like a bad habit.
the Windows "window manager" (Score:3, Interesting)
* split the "window manager" part of the GUI into it's own executable
* open source the code for the new exe
Within months there'd be a myriad of different Windows window managers, just as there is in Unix-land. This would also benefit MS by helping users of different GUIs to migrate to Windows more easily.
what and why (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Internet Explorer
IE is free anyway, so there's no money to be lost. But what you are losing is marketshare to Mozilla and Opera-based browsers. This is due mainly to the security problems in IE. You could save developer resources AND marketshare by just releasing the source of IE so that it can be fixed/expanded more easily and quickly.
2) Visual Studio
There's nothing that will get developers rallying around your product like allowing them to customize the development tools they have to use every day. In addition, more people could/would write apps for Windows if they didn't have to spend a bunch of money purchasing compilers that they can get for free on Mac/Linux/Unix. You're already dominating on user-level market share. Having free development tools will undoubtedly convert developers, and the universities that are teaching those developers.
3) MSN Messenger
Instant messaging is a hot topic everywhere. AIM obviously dominates the market now, and open source systems like Jabber are starting to take a small foothold in businesses. A quick way for you to crush all of that is to open source your IM client and it's protocols. It's already in use by a lot of people, but it could be in use by a lot more. In addition, you'll likely get a lot of free ports to Mac/Linux/Unix and draw customer-base from there as well. This will give you more ad revenue, and may also lead to people getting MSN internet, hotmail, as well as purchasing your server products.
4) Virtual PC
I know you guys just paid a lot of money for buying it, but the whole purpose of buying it was to get Mac and Linux geeks to start using and relying on Windows apps, wasn't it? By providing it as open source you'll get faster adoption than ever before, which will only increase the number of Windows apps in use by these non-Windows markets.
5) Direct X
This is likely to be the most controversial one internal to MSFT. I know that a lot of people in MSFT believe that the gamer market is the second biggest reason people are holding on to Windows (2nd to MS Office). You're losing that war though. More and more games are being developed to Open GL and other open standards to make them more portable. Giant games like Unreal Tournament, Savage, and America's Army ship with Linux versions these days. And others like Doom 3 and Neverwinter Nights put out Linux versions shortly after their release. In addition, MSFT has become a huge publisher in the gaming market. Releasing Direct X as open source would allow more of your games to be played on more systems, which will increase the profits of that division. In addition, it may help you to hold on to your lead role in the game technology world, instead of losing it to other open standards.
A lot of people fault you for developing your own standards. If you take some of these technologies, and open source them, you can permanently make them become the standard.
Do the same thing they always do: copy Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft, if they're really interested in getting involved in open source, should pay attention to some of the things Apple has been doing for the past few years.
Apple hasn't gotten everything right, but they have made a lot of the right moves. They built their system over CMU's Mach kernel, build everything with the GCC toolkit, and bundle a full suite of familiar tools with their products like Perl, Python, Ruby, Apache, Samba, PostgreSQL (it's embedded in their new Apple Remote Desktop), etc. They participate in the right mailing lists, and they generally try to submit useful patches -- even if those patches don't end up being accepted, they're at least putting in an effort to play nicely. They share what they've done with technologies that they either developed in house or adopted before most others, like Rendezvous (or OpenTalk or whatever it is now), Firewire, Bluetooth, 802.11, etc. All of this ends up coming back to them favorably in the long run.
That isn't to say that Microsoft should slavishly copy everything Apple has done, but they should look at how the moves Apple has made have enabled Apple to move farther much more quickly than they could have alone. Once Microsoft understands that, then they can start picking & choosing what they want to open up, what they want to pull in from outside the company, and what they want to leave unchanged. For example, Microsoft probably wouldn't gain anything if they dropped the NT kernel for Mach or Linux, but they might want to consider scrapping the IE engine for KHTML or Gecko if it's really as gnarly as some of the rumors suggest, and a lot of people would appreciate truly open & understandable file formats for Office the way Apple has done with Keynote & XML.
On a different level, the moves Apple has made have encouraged others to bring their offerings to the Mac when they never would have before. Microsoft could do the same. A lot of people would be happy if they deprecated cmd.exe and instead offered up a fully functional bash / ksh / tcsh / zsh shell, complete with all the expected command line tools and system facilities (grep, cron, /etc config files, and so on). If Microsoft made it easy for Linux software developers to port to Windows just by changing GCC's target platform, knowing that autoconf (etc) would work on Windows, they could bring in thousands of developers overnight. Moreover, if they gave away (free beer, but maybe or maybe not free speech) at least a lightweight-but-complete version of their development tools, the way Apple does with XCode, that too would encourage open source developers to start messing around on Windows in a way that they currently do not do.
Microsoft has spent the past 20 years ripping off ideas from Apple. I don't see why they're having such a mental block about doing it again now...