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Microsoft

Josh Ledgard On MS's Future Open Source Efforts 427

Posted by timothy from the inspect-gift-horse-carefully dept.
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!
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Josh Ledgard On MS's Future Open Source Efforts More

Josh Ledgard On MS's Future Open Source Efforts

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  • Office.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by GoMMiX ( 748510 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:01AM (#10054558)
    Open source MS Office. :)

    • Re:Office.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kg_o.O ( 802342 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:06AM (#10054581)
      ...or at least give .doc format(s) specifications (if they even exist)
      • Hasn't M$FT been filing patents for XML based document structures? I really doubt M$FT will give the keys to the castle or in the case of word formats the keys to the outhouse.

      • Re:Office Specs.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by gagravarr ( 148765 ) * on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:35AM (#10054737) Homepage
        They do. You can license them. Trouble is, once you have, you're bound by quite a number of restrictions One of the POI developers (Jakarta Word/Excel project) recently had to stop, as he'd changed employers to someone who'd licensed the specs: leaving email [gmane.org] What would be nice is getting those docs without all the heavy licensing

      • Re:Office.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) * on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:54AM (#10054864)
        ...or at least give .doc format(s) specifications (if they even exist)

        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:
        1. The "standard" is the class that represents the document (i.e. the code of it + the generic object serialization code)
        2. The "standard" changes between versions because the document classes change as new features are added. There is no deliberate policy to "break" things between versions, it is just a side effect.
        3. It is easy to use COM to instantiate Word from your own code and manipulate documents throught the API, so ".doc format" is fully accessible and reusable from your own code, just as it would be if it was "open source".

        • Re:Office.. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Finuvir ( 596566 )

          3. It is easy to use COM to instantiate Word from your own code and manipulate documents throught the API, so ".doc format" is fully accessible and reusable from your own code, just as it would be if it was "open source".

          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, Insightful)

          by egreB ( 183751 ) <berge&trivini,no> on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:16AM (#10055017) Journal
          It is easy to use COM to instantiate Word from your own code and manipulate documents throught the API, so ".doc format" is fully accessible and reusable from your own code, just as it would be if it was "open source".
          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 .doc would be good to have, since quite a lot of documents still are saved in older formats.

        • Re:Office.. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by thelexx ( 237096 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:26AM (#10055110)
          "It is easy to use COM to instantiate Word from your own code and manipulate documents throught the API, so ".doc format" is fully accessible and reusable from your own code, just as it would be if it was "open source"."

          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.

    • Code contribution tracking (Score:5, Interesting)

      by afreniere ( 611999 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:37AM (#10054749) Homepage
      I'm being a weenie and posting this to an early reply because I think it's one of the few thoughtful replies. :P

      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)

      by nova_ostrich ( 774466 )
      How about the 95/98 operating systems? Sure they're more unstable than a schizophrenic, but they're unsupported now anyway. Plus, XP isn't even based on them, so they shouldn't be releasing any secrets... well, in theory. I'm sure the fact that IE is in there might be a problem, but maybe they could release some of the other parts.
  • Were there any past ones?

  • MS has been open source for years (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:02AM (#10054562)
    I remember editing the source for Gorilla.bas
    • Nah. Nibbles was more fun.

      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)

      by FooAtWFU ( 699187 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:10AM (#10054605) Homepage
      I remember fixing bugs in QBasic Nibbles. There were two notable ones, as I recall: First, if you hit Pause, and your target number was located in the same part of the screen where the Pause box showed up, it wasn't redrawn and basically turned invisible. Second was a UI tweak/bug: they turned off Number Lock, but not until all the screens asking you for... numbers. =b

  • Quick and obvious answer ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:02AM (#10054563)
    If not, what could entice you?

    Women. Lots of women. Covered in baby oil, writhing around me as I did the work for Microsoft.

  • OpenSource IE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by drater ( 806171 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:02AM (#10054565)
    Open Source IE. That's what they should do.

    • Re:OpenSource IE (Score:5, Insightful)

      by aj50 ( 789101 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:09AM (#10054600)
      That would be great as it's a well known product that is used by lots of people and desperately needs improving. Since it is released freely anyway, MS arn't going to loose any money making it open-source either.

      • Re:OpenSource IE (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mAineAc ( 580334 ) <mAineAc_____&hotmail,com> on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:22AM (#10054676) Homepage
        Yes,but it is an integral part of the Operatng System. If they open sourced that then it would have to include the the whole ball of wax wouldn't it?
        • No, they own the origional copyright, so they can license what they want under what license they want. They dont have to opensource everything IE touches if they opensourced IE. Hell, they could pick 10 lines from the WINNT kernel and slap an opensource license on those lines of code without having to give up the entire kernel.

          Basically if you are the full copyright owner, the opensource license doesnt apply to you.

        • Re:OpenSource IE (Score:5, Informative)

          by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:53AM (#10055405)
          IE is integrated into the OS in the sense that if you remove it, a fair few things (like lots of functionality in Explorer, also lots of parts of Windows Help and HTMLHelp) would stop working.

          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)

        by cybermage ( 112274 ) *
        That would be great as it's a well known product that is used by lots of people and desperately needs improving

        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:
        1. Develop closed-source for years
        2. Deliver something like a billiion copies
        3. open the source

        It's simply too late to open

    • Re:OpenSource IE (Score:2, Insightful)

      by LousyPhreak ( 550591 )
      hmm there's mozilla... years ahead, only a fraction of ie's bugs, 10M other features, and... open source! so why ie if there's obviously a (much) better choice?

  • Something I noticed... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by queenofthe1ring ( 768698 ) * on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:04AM (#10054570) Journal
    He keeps saying that he wants the users to give him feedback on what MS needs to improve and if people would be willing to contribute to the programming, but no where does the software get mentioned as becoming free, or even discounted, but "improved, repackaged, and resold." This seems more like customer service than "open sourcing."

    • Microsoft needs to truly contribute to Open Source (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dmayle ( 200765 ) * on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:01AM (#10054923) Homepage Journal

      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:

      • Transparency
      • Free rides

      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)

        by Samrobb ( 12731 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @11:43AM (#10056890) Journal

        They started by creating the CPL, getting it certified, and have now been hiring prominent open source developers to work on CPL.

        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].

        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...

        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.

        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... traditionally, with Open Source, the developers receive the source for their project, and any derivative works.

        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.

        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.

        ...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

  • Free beer! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:04AM (#10054571)


    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)

    by prodangle ( 552537 ) <mathesonNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:04AM (#10054573) Homepage Journal
    If not, what could entice you? If so, what would be your motivation?
    Eh, a small slice of the profits they make from selling the fruits of my labour would be nice.
    • Eh, a small slice of the profits they make from selling the fruits of my labour would be nice.

      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?
      • I've written code that IBM are using to sell software - they use CrossOver (and I am a Wine developer) in their documentation for how to administer a Linux Domino server, believe it or not.

        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

  • Office File Formats (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:06AM (#10054583)
    Open up the file formats for Word documents so that other programs (e.g. Open Office) can correctly decode the formatting.

    • Re:Office File Formats (Score:3, Insightful)

      by shoppa ( 464619 )
      You seem to be ascribing the lack of documentation to a Micorosoft corporate policy. But my best guess, based on the incompatibility between Word versions and platforms, is that even inside Microsoft they have incomplete documentation on the file format.

      • Re:Office File Formats (Score:3, Informative)

        by j-pimp ( 177072 )
        No. You are wrong. The file formats are documented completly internally. You can read these documents if you pay some money and sign some NDAs.

        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)

    by torpor ( 458 )

    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 ...

  • Make OSS economically sense ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vi (editor) ( 791442 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:08AM (#10054591)
    I wonder what sense it makes for a large company to produce OSS.
    Basically there are only three points
    1. 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.
    2. To establish own standards and push competing approaches out of the way. Stuff like TCP/IP and XML come into mind...
    3. 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.
    • 1. MS did offer IE for free AND bundled with the OS, so it's by far a more aggressive way.
      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)

    by 59Bassman ( 749855 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:08AM (#10054594) Journal
    Hmm...

    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.

    • I agree 110%. One of the more interesting aspects of this discussion is Bill Gates claimed that if programmers weren't paid for what they write then no software would ever be written (remember the open letter to hobbyists in the 70's?). He's never changed his opinion (publicly). But now his company has such a negative image that many programmers, such as you and me, wouldn't want to write software for them even if we were paid. He's put himself and his company in such a negative light that it'll take de

  • Well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aldric ( 642394 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:09AM (#10054596)
    They could stop being evil for a start. Those sessions in the boardroom that end with Bill Gates going "Bwahahahah" really have to stop.

  • Opensource whatever, I'm not interested (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pingo ( 41908 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:09AM (#10054598)
    I don't see any point in opensourcing any
    Microsoft software except for Windows Media Player series 9 with codecs, perhaps also
    Windows Media Encoder could be of some interest. //Pingo

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:09AM (#10054599)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Don't forget, there's probably a clause in the license which lets them sue you if you ever look at their source and then go on to build something with similar functionality. Nice "open-source" license you got there, pal.

    • Re:Why ask first? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Errtu76 ( 776778 )
      You're right. I mean, it's nice an all that they're starting more open source projects. But it would be even nicer if they said: "Okay, we've thought about this and we're going to make one Microsoft application Open Source. You can say which one." My idea would be the Internet Explorer package. Motivation? Why, just look at all the virii/worms/etc that make non-IE users' life more difficult. They already ship it with all versions of Windows, so they don't have to fear that IE will become an option. In fact

  • Open sourcing bits of code is all very well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Xargle ( 165143 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:10AM (#10054607)
    but I'd rather see them pay more attention to open standards, and "opening" their file formats/protocols.

  • Only read a bit of the article (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CmdrGravy ( 645153 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:11AM (#10054615) Homepage
    This is what I seem to be reading:

    "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.

    • "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)

    by The Cornishman ( 592143 )
    What would be good would be to see the GPL used to cover the 'open sourcing'. The article clearly envisages developments that are not protected against becoming non-free (is that the same thing as enslaved?)

  • Open source (Score:3, Insightful)

    by debrain ( 29228 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:13AM (#10054623) Journal
    The browser. We like standards compliant browsers. Switch to or adopt Mozilla technology. This is an anathema of Microsoft's strategy of usurption, but if you want to extend the olive branch, it's got to be attached to something we care about.

    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)

    by Rumagent ( 86695 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:13AM (#10054624)
    No, really. I don't think that MS needs to release Office under gpl or anything silly like that. If they really wanted to show that they have changed, they should embrace open standards. Free for any to read, understand and implement. They should make sure that these standards were royalty free, that they could be used equally by any and all developers. They should refrain from later extending these standards with closed code. In short - if they cared they would stop being assholes and fight fair.

    Not that I expect it to happen... but it is a nice thought.
    • I'd just like them to try a different kind of "open source" than one where they reserve the right to take your work, change it to break its compatibility with the original, and then sell it to the world.

  • Someone Needs To Sit Him Down (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:14AM (#10054625)
    Someone needs to

    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)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:14AM (#10054628) Homepage Journal
    If Microsoft started open source projects, with "real" open source licenses I would be glad to work on them under two conditions. First, the project has to interest me. That's rather obvious that since open source work is volunteer that nobody is going to work on something that doesn't interest them. The second thing is it has to be software I can use. Since I don't run windows there are probably going to be very few MS OSS projects I would work on.

    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)

      by Tarwn ( 458323 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:00AM (#10054917) Homepage
      Apreche raises a good point, mod him up (I'm mod point-les right now).

      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)

    by mauddib~ ( 126018 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:15AM (#10054631) Homepage
    What I would like to work on is fixing some of the 'standards' Microsoft proclaims to abide. It would allow other products to interoperate with MS software and allow fair competition. But hey, somehow I think that MS won't feel happy for these contributions.

  • Stop reinventing the wheel (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ptaff ( 165113 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:15AM (#10054636) Homepage
    For so many years, Microsoft has brought useless fileformats to complete with those that already exist. Stop trying to innovate and start supporting the open standards. Did we really need BMP? How come PNG is so lamely supported? How about pushing Ogg Vorbis/Theora with your media player?

    Feel ready to own one or many Tux Stickers [ptaff.ca]?

    • Re:Stop reinventing the wheel (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Noksagt ( 69097 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @12:30PM (#10057574) Homepage
      Did we really need BMP?
      To be fair, the device independent bitmap was created in 1988.They are well documented, usually not compressed, and so are perfectly suitable for smaller graphics that need to be opened on slower (such as circa-1988) PCs. It is true that TGA was available in 1984, but I wouldn't say it was any more open or "better" than BMP in 1988. One might as well ask "Why XBM/XPM or PBM/PGM/PPM?"
      How come PNG is so lamely supported?
      PNGs came into being in 1995 because of GIF licensing concerns. It accomplishes something entirely different than BMP. MS didn't really need to be concerned about the GIF license--they had enough money and clout. Support and even specification for some of PNG's neater features is somewhat new & MS was probably at a disadvantage by not starting implementation sooner. MS embraced both GIF & JPG, which weren't invented at MS. They should support PNG more sooner, but I think they are starting to.
      How about pushing Ogg Vorbis/Theora with your media player?
      The RFC for OGG is dated May 2003. Why should MS embrace that format immediately? Especially when most considered it to need too much good hardware when it was conceived (~1998 for Vorbis) & MS knowing that their customers used quite a bit of legacy hardware (at a minimum,they could count the boxes of 'Windows Upgrades' they sold. The stable version of the vorbis codec wasn't released until 2002. I dont see why MS should have started implementation any sooner than that & don't see why they ever should unless their own customers demand it.

      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.
  • software, personally. However, I am incensed when MS takes open software and "extends" it with hidden code to make it unusable. Remember Kerberos?

    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)

    by taj ( 32429 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:17AM (#10054649) Homepage


    Though I would pay attention if they open sourced .net.

    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.
    • Would having over 1000* employees blogging [msdn.com] count as "Show they are changing their culture, come out and play"? If they are censoring it sure isn't [msdn.com] obvious [weblogger.com]. I've said it before and I'll say it again now: perhaps MS is changing, it's the Linux zealots who are so blinded by their religion that they can't see it.

      *(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)

    by CdBee ( 742846 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:19AM (#10054661)
    Opensource the API, then you'lll suddenly have a lot more coders working on your system. The way I see it, Microsoft doesn't need to cpmete for customer base any more.

    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.
    • Well said. There was an article on /. about this. What made MS the juggernaut it was in the nineties was the API starting with Win95. It was new. It was unexplored territory but it employed C++ which many developers had learned. It lured many of them to the Win32 platform. Now MS has abandoned that API and C++ for the .NET/C# platform. But there still exists many applications that other companies want to develop on older, more proven C++ language. Also with MS still refining .NET, most developers
  • I would enjoy working for Microsoft, and applying my experience and skills towards open source, and platform independance. There are few opportunities for an 8-year UNIX sysadmin at Microsoft, but my experience with UNIX and embedded systems might be quite useful.

    Of course, my job applications go unanswered, but I remain optimistic.
  • I think that MS is missing one crucial market that they could be poised to overtake. The Open Source OS market. Think about it, if MS put out a version of Linux that was easily integrated into Windows networks, offered better security, and was less expensive than Windows, they could control the Linux market AND the Windows market. I'm not a huge fan of MS or anything but I think they're truly missing out on a monopolistic opportunity here. Isn't that what they're famous for anyway? As for what would entice

  • Contribute to WINE (Score:4, Insightful)

    by trboyden ( 465969 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:22AM (#10054680)
    As the recent article from ecommercetimes.com [ecommercetimes.com] mentioned on Slashdot states, Microsoft makes the majority of it's profits by selling Windows and MS Office. Even though it would slightly knock their O/S sales, I think it would be a worthwhile venture for Microsoft to contribute to WINE so that Linux users could run MS products under Linux. It would be a big boost to the WINE project and Microsoft would get product sales in return.

  • DirectX (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GuyFawkes ( 729054 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:23AM (#10054684) Homepage Journal

    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)

    by RelliK ( 4466 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:25AM (#10054696)
    So far MS released source for two bits of technology that is absolutely useless to Linux. How about something useful for a change: doc file format. That would be very useful -- it would allow Open Office to be 100% compatible with MS Office. And you don't even have to release any source, just the specs.

    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.
    • Of course this will never happen because the whole purpose of this "open source" work is so that Microsoft can say

      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.

  • Use GPL. Oppose software patents (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Simple really.

  • They'd need to open source visual studio (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzbrain ( 239898 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:26AM (#10054703)

    "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)

    by phrostie ( 121428 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:37AM (#10054746)
    sign all current and future patents to the EFF.

  • Talk about aiming to high (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:37AM (#10054747) Journal
    MS is not exactly known for playing well with others. It is MS way or no way. Opensource is far more relaxed then that. Do you really think MS would ever allow a piece of their work to be forked?

    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!

  • Free versus Open software (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CountBrass ( 590228 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:43AM (#10054783)

    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)

    by NigelJohnstone ( 242811 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:54AM (#10054867)
    When a property developer makes a house, they will often sell the house and the land, but keep ownership of a small strip of land between the house and the street which they license to you.

    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)

      by smithmc ( 451373 ) *

      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)

    by gosand ( 234100 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @08:56AM (#10054886)
    If you want to open your software, do it. It isn't like there are any secrets to it. See, that is the thing - you don't need anyone's help. You publish the source code - that's it.

    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)

    by canolecaptain ( 410657 ) * on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:08AM (#10054962)
    There are a couple of items that would make me want to use open source Microsoft code - and perhaps even target their platform as a primary with Linux / Solaris secondary.

    These would be: .net - Languages want to be sheparded, but based on community standards and open. What that means is that any vendor can publish a compiler / runtime according to a published spec, and they won't be sued by the sheparding company if they truely conform to the spec. Heck, I don't even mind paying some bucks for the spec certification (ala Java). There's still plenty of money to be made on advanced IDEs, tools, support, training, etc. The language itself is not a profit center.

    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)

    by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @09:58AM (#10055468) Homepage Journal
    Since all of Microsoft's profit comes from licensing closed source software, I guarantee they will be EXTREMELY careful of who works on open source software within the company. If one of their developers contributes to a GPL'd project and then gets moved to a closed source internal project they need to be absolutely certain he doesn't "contaminate" the closed project with any open code. They also need to watch that no one working on a closed project looks over at the open code for ideas. If GPL code gets discovered within any of their closed software, that software can no longer remain closed until the "offending" code is removed. So if Microsoft actually does play seriously with open source, they will be extremely careful of licensing (hence the CPL and not GPL) and code cross-contamination. While they may still end up with some open source software their development won't be very flexible or too open.

  • Software Selection (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LilMikey ( 615759 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @10:12AM (#10055629) Homepage
    Stop selecting what you're going to open the source on based on what has the least market impact. Stop opening source under licenses that noone would accept. Stop using open source as an advertising gimick rather than development and community way of life. Open source welcomes alternative competing projects while MS does everything in its power to prevent them. You can't just open the source for 'goofy rarely used tool' and expect developers to turn their cheek.

    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)

    by nickos ( 91443 ) on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @10:22AM (#10055786)
    I'd love to see Microsoft do one thing in particular (well, two really):

    * 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)

    by PlainBlack ( 594355 ) <<moc.kcalbnialp> <ta> <tj>> on Tuesday August 24, 2004 @11:20AM (#10056544) Homepage
    I'll tell you what you should open source, and why it will benefit MS in the long run.

    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.

  • 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...

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