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Top 25 Hottest Open-Source Projects at Microsoft Codeplex 306

Posted by Zonk from the kind-of-a-coole-name dept.
willdavid writes "Via CNet, a link to a blog post with the top 25 most active open-source projects on Microsoft's Codeplex site. As the CNet blogger notes, 'Codeplex is interesting to me for several reasons, but primarily because it demonstrates something that I've argued for many years now: open source on the Windows platform is a huge opportunity for Microsoft. It is something for the company to embrace, not despise.'"
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Top 25 Hottest Open-Source Projects at Microsoft Codeplex More

Top 25 Hottest Open-Source Projects at Microsoft Codeplex

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  • Open source projects? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @06:33PM (#20312157) Homepage Journal
    One things is for sure - they all rely on proprietary Microsoft produts (.Net, sharepoint, SQL server, etc) to run. They're not particularly useful to the Open Source community, just the Microsoft community. (In Debian, they would sit in the non-free repositorty).

    open source on the Windows platform is a huge opportunity for Microsoft. It is something for the company to embrace, not despise.'"

    Some open source is good for MS - the sort of not particularly open software that relies on MS's OS & libs. Any software that can be easily ported to another platform is a threat.

    Oh - and Open Source? Pah-lease. A license that governs USE [microsoft.com] of the software sounds neither permissive nor open:

    Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL)

    This license governs use of the accompanying software. If you use the software, you accept this license. If you do not accept the license, do not use the software.
    • Oh - and Open Source? Pah-lease. A license that governs USE of the software sounds neither permissive nor open:

      Exactly what restrictions are they putting on your use of it? It looks more like a GPL click-through license agreement (which is pretty common) than something with any teeth.

      • Re:Open source projects? (Score:5, Informative)

        by iluvcapra ( 782887 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @06:53PM (#20312361)

        Exactly what restrictions are they putting on your use of it?

        The issue is not that it restricts use, but that it's triggered by use. The GPL does not apply to people who USE GPL software, only to people who redistribute it; a major principle of F/OSS is that no legal encumberance should be placed on users at any time, to use a piece of software in any manner for which it may be suitable.

        • Re:Open source projects? (Score:4, Informative)

          by david.given ( 6740 ) <dg@cowlark.com> on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @06:58PM (#20312407) Homepage Journal

          The issue is not that it restricts use, but that it's triggered by use. The GPL does not apply to people who USE GPL software, only to people who redistribute it...

          Spot on; which is why it's so annoying when people insist on using the GPL as an EULA. That's like asking employees to sign a script of Spongebob Squarepants instead of a contract, before they start work --- not only is it completely meaningless and useless, it brands you as someone who doesn't know what you're talking about.

          A redistribution license (like the GPLv2) is NOT an EULA. They are totally different things.

          • Re:Open source projects? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @07:03PM (#20312459) Homepage Journal
            It's probably because of braindead installers that expect an EULA.

            I actually filed a bug about this on FileZilla and it was fixed (I think I filed against 2.29 and it was fixed in 2.30).

            If it's happening to $YOUR_FAVORITE_FLOSS_PROJECT, then file a bug stating that the installer violates GPL.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by djmurdoch ( 306849 )
              Don't blame the installer, blame the person who wrote the install script. The EULA is generally optional (e.g. with Inno Setup, you have a choice between doing nothing, using "InfoBeforeFile" to show something, or using "LicenseFile" to show something that requires agreement).

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by djmurdoch ( 306849 )
          Try downloading just about any binary installer of free software on Windows, and you'll be asked to agree to the license before you install it. For example, the GTK+ library, available here [sourceforge.net], is LGPL licensed. But if you don't click "I agree" to agree to the LGPL, no install. That looks to me like a requirement for use, even though the LGPL doesn't apply to use.

          I think the silly MS license has the same sort of logical error in it. It has boilerplate language that says it applies to use, but it places no

          • Re:Open source projects? (Score:5, Informative)

            by RelliK ( 4466 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @07:25PM (#20312659)
            I think the silly MS license has the same sort of logical error in it. It has boilerplate language that says it applies to use, but it places no restrictions on use. If it's not free, then GTK+ is not free.

            There is a difference. You get GPL/LGPL "EULA" because of brain-dead installers that assume there must be EULA, and/or people who write the install scripts. However, the license itself explicitly states that you do *not* need to accept it merely to use the software. Microsoft's "license" explicitly states exactly the opposite. And while MS-PL does not actually restrict use, MS-LPL absolutely does. Therefore, MS-PL is a trojan horse: it's purpose is to make people accept the idea that controlling how the supposedly "open source" software is used is ok. I do not believe this is a logic error, as you say. I believe it's intentional.

            • You get GPL/LGPL "EULA" because of brain-dead installers that assume there must be EULA, and/or people who write the install scripts. However, the license itself explicitly states that you do *not* need to accept it merely to use the software.

              Yes, I understand that you are allowed to lie when using that GTK+ installer and click on the "Agree" button even if you don't agree, and you still won't violate the license. I am claiming that you are also allowed to lie when using the MS-PL: even if you don't agree
            • "I do not believe this is a logic error, as you say. I believe it's intentional."

              "MS-PL is a trojan horse: it's purpose is to make people accept the idea that controlling how the supposedly 'open source' software is used is ok."

              MOD PARENT UP.

              It could be another instance of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". Eventually, Microsoft's "open source" will be mixed in some programs with real open source, perhaps unintentionally, giving Microsoft control over real open source.

              Someone will say, "I need a ro

              • Some licenses must be used under Windows. (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @09:55PM (#20313829) Homepage
                More about the issue in my parent post: There is more than one license.

                The Microsoft Limited Permissive License (Ms-LPL) [microsoft.com] says, in part: "(F) Platform Limitation- The licenses granted in sections 2(A) & 2(B) extend only to the software or derivative works that you create that run on a Microsoft Windows operating system product."

                Be very, very careful. If some of the Ms-LPL code is mixed with real open source code, there can be a license violation.

              • Microsoft licenses are ALREADY causing confusion. (Score:4, Insightful)

                by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @10:18PM (#20314029) Homepage
                Another addition to my parent post: The Microsoft licenses are ALREADY causing confusion and dissension. See the anger and hostility in the discussions below.

                The Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) [microsoft.com] says in the sub-heading: "This license governs use of the accompanying software. If you use the software, you accept this license. If you do not accept the license, do not use the software."

                Some of the people commenting in the discussions below are reading only what they believe are the license terms, and not seeing the sub-heading quoted above, which is ANOTHER license term, even though it is not formatted that way.

                Again, the license says, "If you USE [my emphasis] the software, you accept this license."

                Microsoft's multiple licenses with confusing formatting are already causing harm to the open source community. And Microsoft is just getting started with this.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jrumney ( 197329 )

            But if you don't click "I agree" to agree to the LGPL, no install.

            When I complained to a developer once (I don't recall what, but I don't think it was GTK+), he responded that it was a standard part of the installer package he was using which he couldn't bypass.

            • Re:Open source projects? (Score:5, Interesting)

              by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @07:59PM (#20312911)
              Why put the GPL in that box then? Why not put a simple concise message in there stating that "There are no restrictions on the use of this software, only on the distribution. For restrictions on distribution please see the GPL at http://..../ [....]". Then you're making it clear to the person that they aren't restricted in any way from just using the program. A short little message like that sure would be an eye opener to most people who are used to seeing license agreements that are thousands of words long.

          • Re:Open source projects? (Score:4, Informative)

            by killjoe ( 766577 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @07:45PM (#20312819)
            That has nothing to do with the license and everything to do with the installer.

            Things you apparently are incapable of thinking about.

            1) This only happens if you download the installer. If you download the zip or the source you don't have to agree to jack.
            2) This only happens for the windows version, people who use linux just use their package manager.

            I don't know why it is so difficult for you to think about these things but perhaps you should push yourself and actually try to understand when a license applied to you and when it doesn't.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by NMerriam ( 15122 )
            As rellik says, that's a problem with the installer, not the license. You can just download real open-source code from CVS and compile it and have no requirement to ever even see the license if you like. The only thing you need a license for is to redistribute it.

      • I can't believe people still don't get this (Score:5, Informative)

        by RelliK ( 4466 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @07:10PM (#20312525)
        Microsoft "permissive license" attempts to control the mere use of the software:

        This license governs use of the accompanying software. If you use the software, you accept this license. If you do not accept the license, do not use the software.
        So it is neither a "license" nor "permissive". It is unilateral contract, no different than click-through EULA.

        In contrast, Free software licenses (BSD, MIT, GPL, etc.) cover only the distribution of the software. You do not need to accept any "license" just to use the software. For example, here the relevant paragraph from GPL:

        You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program. Ancillary propagation of a covered work occurring solely as a consequence of using peer-to-peer transmission to receive a copy likewise does not require acceptance. However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so.
        So Free software licenses are indeed licenses: i.e. they grant you more rights than what you get by default under copyright law. EULAs, including microsoft's "permissive license" attempt to restrict your rights by controlling how you can use the software.

        So it is difficult to see microsoft's "permissive license" as anything but a trojan horse. Especially since it has an uglier brother, the "limited permissive license", which sounds confusingly similar to "permissive license", but adds a completely ridiculous restriction: you can only run the software on windows.

    • A license should govern use. At least it should limit you in the way that you may not disallow the use by anyone else.

    • Re:Open source projects? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ushering05401 ( 1086795 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @06:47PM (#20312301) Journal
      Have you read the rest of the license? No MS fanboy here, but it is not exactly a draconian piece of legalese.

      There are much better ways to attack MS. Try citing the company's track record of failing to observe laws, failing to deliver promised functionality, and failing to promote innovation in their dedicated developer base through patent threats, aggressive devaluation->buy-out tactics, questionable attempts at political influence (open standards in California anyone?)...

      Then pose a question like, "Why would an open source developer choose to get into bed with a company like that?"

      Just citing the license is a pretty weak argument especially if you have read it.

      Regards.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      One things is for sure - they all rely on proprietary Microsoft produts (.Net, sharepoint, SQL server, etc) to run. They're not particularly useful to the Open Source community, just the Microsoft community. (In Debian, they would sit in the non-free repositorty).

      I think you've confused the "Open Source community" with the "Linux community". While there's a fair amount of overlap, "Open Source" does not imply simply Linux.

      Oh - and Open Source? Pah-lease. A license that governs USE of the software sounds

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nmb3000 ( 741169 )
      Oh - and Open Source? Pah-lease. A license that governs USE of the software sounds neither permissive nor open:

      Troll status: Failed.

      I picked a project at random that sounded neat (the multi-RDP tool) and here's the limits imposed by the license (MS-CL):

      3. Conditions and Limitations

      (A) Reciprocal Grants- Your rights to reproduce and distribute the software (or
      any part of the software), or to create and distribute derivative works of the
      software, are conditioned on your licensing the software or any larger wo

      • I'm no expert on it,

        Clearly. Comprehension status: Failed.

        but it sounds strikingly similar to the GPL in terms of limits and goals.

        Totally incorrect. You don't have to accept the GPL to use the software. Honest to god, try to at least understand the discussion before accusing others of trolling.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by man_of_mr_e ( 217855 )
          Considering that *ALL* the terms of the license are distribution terms, it's clear that the term "use" is in reference to distribution. Neither the Microsoft Permissive License or the Community license put any restrictions on the use of the software as a user.

      • ...it sounds strikingly similar to the GPL in terms of limits and goals.

        Then why doesn't MS just use the GPL? Or if not the GPL, the BSD license? Maybe the Apache license? Mozilla license? MS has demonstrated time and again they are not to be trusted. For some reason they felt it necessary to trot out their own license rather than use a license we know is safe.

        • Re:Open source projects? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by man_of_mr_e ( 217855 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @07:55PM (#20312889)
          I think it's pretty obvious. Microsoft wrote their own licenses because they don't want to be at the mercy of the FSF, and their willingness to alter license terms to suit their political agendas. This is the same reason Apple, Sun, Mozilla, Apache, and many others have their own licenses as well.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            If you use the GPLv2 or even the GPLv3 without the "or later versions" clause, like many software projects do, how exactly are you at the mercy of the FSF?

          • Re:Open source projects? (Score:4, Informative)

            by Chandon Seldon ( 43083 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @08:26PM (#20313097) Homepage

            Umm... no.

            The FSF has no ability to alter the text of existing versions of the GPL. If you want to use only the GPLv1 and no other version, you can say that and the FSF has no way to magically change the license text that you distribute with your code. If you want to say "Version X or later", then you're leaving an opening to the FSF to change things (which might even be a good idea), but including that text or not is your choice.

            The creation of a new copyleft license at this point in time is simply not-invented-here syndrome on the part of some corporate lawyers, and the result is license compatibility issues. Any full copyleft license is innately incompatible with any other, and that's caused enough hassle over the last 18 years that there's no reason to do it again now.

            Non-copyleft permissive licenses aren't really a problem - the only annoyance is having to read yet another license that's basically equivalent to the X11 license and be sure that that's what it really says.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jrumney ( 197329 )

        2. If you distribute the larger work as a single file, then you must grant all recipients the rights set out in sections 2(A) & 2(B) for the entire larger work. You must also provide recipients the source code to the larger work along with a copy of this license.

        So iso's are out then. Trust Microsoft to come up with something more viral than the GPL.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          no, isos aren't out. You do have to include the source code in the iso, though.
    • A number of the projects on CodePlex use GPL v.2, no mention of the Ms-PL that you link to on a completely different site.

      Here is an example from one of the projects cited in TFA: http://www.codeplex.com/ddotnet/Project/License.as px [codeplex.com]

    • One things is for sure - they all rely on proprietary Microsoft produts (.Net, sharepoint, SQL server, etc) to run. They're not particularly useful to the Open Source community, just the Microsoft community. (In Debian, they would sit in the non-free repositorty).

      I thought "free, but depends on something non-free" was what contrib/ was for?

    • Besides Ms-PL, others such as GPL, LGPL are used (Score:5, Informative)

      by I'm Don Giovanni ( 598558 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @08:50PM (#20313301)
      I know slashdotters loath Ms-PL, but not all of the projects use Ms-PL anyway.
      If you had bothered to check the license of the listed projects you'd see that some of them use GPL or LGPL (the only licenses that slashdotters appear to respect).

      For example, the PHPExcel [codeplex.com], which allows PHP code to read/write Excel 2007 files, uses LGPL.
      Still other projects use custom licenses, like the GoTraxxx [codeplex.com] project.

      Microsoft's own projects use MS licenses like Ms-PL and Ms-CL (both pending OSI-certification) but non-MS projects can use any license the devs choose to use.

      • If you had bothered to check the license of the listed projects you'd see that some of them use GPL or LGPL (the only licenses that slashdotters appear to respect).
        Well, no, you often see on Slashdot people defending the BSD license over the GPL.

        However, you are correct, CodePlex projects use various licenses, it seems, FWIW.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Phleg ( 523632 )
      Actually, they would be in contrib. Projects that are themselves open source, but depend upon non-free components.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ale_ryu ( 1102077 )
      Ok, they rely on propietary products, but that doesn't mean they are useless to the Open Source Community.
      See, it's open source, so porting any of those projects to other systems is quite simple and it's nothing compared to having to reverse engineer everything.

      ---------------
      Ale

    • Oh - and Open Source? Pah-lease. A license that governs USE of the software sounds neither permissive nor open
      I take it you're not a fan of the GPLv3 then?

  • Disburance in the force (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @06:36PM (#20312181) Homepage Journal
    Anyone else have a bad feeling abut this?

  • Control? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @06:36PM (#20312183)
    There are already many other sites such as sourceforge that have provided Windows OSS for many years.

    MS is harly breaking new ground here. So, what is their interest? Control?

    • So, what is their interest? Control?

      If you look at the projects, they all rely on some MS proprietary protocol. So, yes, I think they're after control, albeit discreet.

      • This seems like an appropriate time to bring out that old gem: "I don't think that word means what you think it means." I can't say I found their approach particularly discreet. I think the word you were looking for was "obvious". ;)
    • Developing free software for their pay-for and ubiquitous operating system. If people can save money on cool software, maybe they won't mind the $10-$400 cost of Windows. AND, MS isn't paying the developers to write it. It's not just free marketing, it's free labor (in the Open Source sense of free).
    • Basically, to jump into the OSS bandwagon which, while it's not an actual threat to Microsoft outside the server arena, has been steadily gaining popularity for the past years. The idea is, IMHO, to shift the perception of open source from the more "common" licenses to their own, which, yes, can be quite restrictive [microsoft.com]. It's a smart move - either you get into the OSS club with your own rules, or you fail... but atleast appear supportive.

      FWIW, i don't like their shared source licenses. In a way, they could be t
    • Well, also note that the Source Control for the projects are Team Foundation Server, and other functionality builds off TFS like Work Items. So I'd say it is also a chance for them to really exercise their own product.

      But ultimately I'd guess it is about control. Although they used to host stuff on GotDotNet, it wasn't particularly reliable, and they do get a lot more say into how much uptime this thing has.

  • Interesting, i've never heard of IronPython before (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @06:37PM (#20312195)
    Wow. [codeplex.com] Cool proyect.
    • And even more interesting, it is the one and only (to my knowledge) piece of Microsoft-developed software in the Ubuntu repositories, and universe (meets open-source standards) at that.

  • Embrace... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Daimanta ( 1140543 )

    It is something for the company to embrace
    First embrace Then extend And last but not least extinguish Technology, the Microsoft way!

  • Open for Closed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @06:45PM (#20312277)
    I guess it is no surprise that I didn't see a single one of those "open" projects in the top 25 list run on anything other than MS-Windows. Reading through the list, I see ".NET", and "C#", "Vista", "Excel", "IIS", or "Sharepoint", etc, on just about every single one.

    So, it is hard for me to get excited about a collection of projects that only serve to continue to lock people to a single platform.
    • Nobody but you and the SlashDweeb brigade cares all that much about platforms. It's about the software that runs on those platforms.

      You can spend the time to either get them working in Mono, or port them to another language if you really care. Half of those primitive ass apps you find on FreshMeat only work on Linux, you don't hear me whining about it.

      • Re:Open for Closed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @08:14PM (#20313033)
        What's the point of using open source software if you have to buy some expensive closed source package to use it. Such as SharePoint, Excel, IIS, Vista, etc. Open source only gives you all the advantages of open source if the entire software stack is open source. Otherwise, you can't modify the software, and you aren't free to fix all the bugs that you encounter.
    • Yes, since none of those things work [mono-project.com] on [gnu.org] other [novell.com] platforms

      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by markdavis ( 642305 )
        .net

          isatrap

      • Re:Open for Closed (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @09:11PM (#20313499)
        Have any of you people that constantly bring up Mono as a solution actually ever tried it? Sure, Mono covers a lot of the libraries, but practically every .NET application of significant size steps into some of the libraries that Mono doesn't cover. Very few .NET applications will run on Mono without significant changes to the code.

        Very few of the applications which the article refers to have even the slightest chance of running on Mono since they both use libraries that Mono hasn't implemented, and rely on proprietary applications which are not written with .NET and only run on Windows.

        The fact of the matter is that Mono will never be a solution unless Microsoft decides to support it. What's perhaps even worse, is that by its mere existence it allows Microsoft and Microsoft fans to make ridiculous claims about being "cross-platform".
        • I wish I could mod you up, Mr. Anonymous.

        • Re:Open for Closed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by HeroreV ( 869368 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @01:15AM (#20315031) Homepage
          Why do you think Mono needs to run programs written for .NET/Windows? G++ can't compile many programs produced by Visual Studio, but I doubt you think G++ "will never be a solution unless Microsoft decides to support it". Why do you treat Mono differently?

          Mono isn't intended to run programs written for .NET/Windows, just like G++ isn't intended to compile working programs that use the Windows API. Mono is great for Linux-only or cross-platform software projects, just like G++ is great for Linux-only or cross-platform software projects. Mono works great for projects that aim for compatibility with it, and G++ works great for projects that aim for compatibility with it.

          You're biased against the Common Language Infrastructure because it was created by Microsoft. I understand, because I hate Microsoft too, (I use only Linux on my desktop) but the CLI is a really great idea, and Mono is a really fantastic project. Give it a fair chance! Don't write it off just because it can't do something it's not intended to do!

    • Re:Open for Closed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by I'm Don Giovanni ( 598558 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @09:06PM (#20313465)
      At least one of the listed projects, IronPython, runs with no problems on Mono.
      I assume the same can be said for much of the other .NET targetted projects.

      BTW, mose projects on SourceForge run on Linux ONLY. I guess the reason is to lock people into Linux, according to your dufus logic.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by markdavis ( 642305 )
        >BTW, mose projects on SourceForge run on Linux ONLY. I guess the reason is to lock people into Linux, according to your dufus logic.

        No, most of the projects are *POSIX*, which doesn't "lock" you into anything. All the tools are open and free, as are the libraries and compilers. And, last time I checked, POSIX Linux, although Linux is one of many POSIX compliant Operating systems. There is nothing "dufus" about my logic.

  • Won't accept GPL3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Saint Stephen ( 19450 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @07:00PM (#20312415) Homepage Journal
    I wrote some C# Visual Studio addins and tried to upload them to codeplex. The only GPL license choice was gpl2, but I put in the comments "don't download this if you don't accept GPL3." Some code-monkey unpublished it because the license didn't match the chosen license - but GPL3 wasn't an option!

    So I won't host it there.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      Can you publish Visual Studio addins as GPL'd code (any version)? As I recall, the only proprietary code a GPL program is allowed to depend upon is:
      • Distributed, as standard, as part of the OS, or
      • Implementing an open standard.
      The Visual Studio addin API doesn't seem to meet either of these requirements. You would possibly be able to use the LGPL, but not the GPL.

  • Close mindedness. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @07:15PM (#20312577)
    You all should really look around Codeplex. Look at what MS is doing with Enterprise Library. Look at what they're doing with WCF. Pretend you're software developers, for just a minute, and not OS kooks obsessed with ridiculous ideals. They are doing some cool shit on the technology side of things for developers. If I have to go back to developing in Perl/Python/PHP or even Java I'm going to put a pencil through my eyeball - most of it's just sloppy, primitive shit compared to what MS is doing.

    Cry all you want about their OS's - they certainly have room for improvement. Their development tools are top notch. To be honest I do with they'd port an industrial strength CLR env to Linux along with all their class libraries, and Visual Studio/Orcas. It would be a ridiculously large undertaking but it would be god damn sweet to develop with MS tools on other OS's.

    • OS kooks obsessed with ridiculous ideals made the internet, web, pc, I.t. what they are today. all the rest were bureaucrats.

      • all the rest were bureaucrats.

        An awful lot of the early internet documents were written by bureaucrats. Ever read an RFC? There's plenty of "design by committee" stuff in them, and obscure features that usually end up being headaches. Oh, and the ARPANET was a creation of the DoD bureaucracy.

        IIRC, Larry Wall, creator of Perl, which was really the only server-side option for a few years, was a GSer too.

        Of course, if youre definition of bureaucrat is something other than "works for the government,

        • and all the lightbulbs are being produced by engineers.

          yet an inventor invented it. without the inventor, engineers would just be producing other stuff. so engineer is not the ingredient here, inventor is.
        • definition of bureaucrat here is 'non visionary' or 'non creative'.
      • OS kooks obsessed with ridiculous ideals made the internet, web, pc, I.t. what they are today. all the rest were bureaucrats.

        Some anarchists are creative. Not all creative people are anarchists.

        And yes, I'm saying that OS kooks obsessed with religious^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiculous ideals are anarchists.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MrCawfee ( 13910 )

      most of it's just sloppy, primitive shit compared to what MS is doing.

      Everytime i have seen "sloppy, primitive shit" written in those languages, it is because the programmer only writes sloppy, primitive shit. I am as open minded to technology as anyone, and i agree that you should use the best tools for the job, but to throw off some tools because of the actions of their some moronic developers IS closed minded.

      Crap is still crap even when your IDE formats the code for you....

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by killjoe ( 766577 )
      It's important to remember that anybody who says anything negative about MS is by definition a kook or insane.

      Microsoft Corporation rules, it's the best corporation on the planet bar none. Corporations rock!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tom9729 ( 1134127 )
      Clearly you are a little biased, so I'm not sure why I'm replying... But please, enlighten me on how Perl/Python/PHP and Java are "sloppy primitive shit" compared to what Microsoft is doing. Especially considering Microsoft's creation of programming languages has pretty much consisted of making clones of preexisting languages (ie. Java --> C#, PHP --> ASP). A programming language is a programming language, what you can do with it depends on how skilled you are as a programmer. There are very few limit

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Vexorian ( 959249 )

      and not OS kooks obsessed with ridiculous ideals
      dude, fuck off.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Look at what MS is doing with Enterprise Library. Look at what they're doing with WCF.

      The Enterprise Library [wikipedia.org] is just Microsoft's version of a "Perl Cookbook," or a "Python Cookbook." Cookbooks have been a pretty popular and useful tool well before MS created an Enterprise Library. Though I'm sure theirs is just as helpful.

      WCF [wikipedia.org] is what? SOAP + a proprietary "optimized binary format" version of SOAP, rather than XML-encoded?

      This stuff is interesting, and useful I'm sure, but by no means blows me away. None of it can make up for the fact that you're stuck on one platform, or using a second-clas

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      Microsoft development tools are not top-notch. They have a few nice features, like intellisense, which Microsoft developers get addicted to and then can't live without.

      Since you mentioned Orcas, am I going to be able to use it with VS2005 solution files? Or will it convert the solution files into it's own format, preventing me from working with people who haven't upgraded yet? Backwards compatibility is the Achilles heel of Microsoft dev tools. Will it work with VS6 projects?

      Speaking of solution fil

      • They have a few nice features, like intellisense, which Microsoft developers get addicted to and then can't live without.

        If programmers can't live without a feature, that's a problem with the programmer, not the feature.

        Since you mentioned Orcas, am I going to be able to use it with VS2005 solution files? Or will it convert the solution files into it's own format, preventing me from working with people who haven't upgraded yet? Backwards compatibility is the Achilles heel of Microsoft dev tools. Will it work with VS6 projects?

        Oh, c'mon. You can't have developers using different dev tools. Why don't you try working on a c++ project with multiple developers, some of them using gcc 4.x and the others using gcc 3.x, and see what happens. Hell, I had to update autotools the other day to compile a program I downloaded. For some reason, debian had a really old version of autotools installed by default.

        And why on earth, when I have two 21 inch LCD screens, do I still need to have all my project files in a single window? X-code lets me separate them and scatter them all over the screen.

        "Scatter" them all over t

    • It would be great if MS indeed ported their runtime environments and toolchain to Linux and Mac, maybe even Solaris, HP-UX and AIX. But no, I figure they'll keep all that stuff bolted to the millstone around their neck that is Windows. Besides, if they released all that stuff for the other OSes, do you really think they would be able to make as much money selling Windows? That OS is bought for everything that must run on top of it, not the OS itself.

      In the meantime, Java allows the company I work for to acc

  • A fact of life (Score:4, Interesting)

    by stacey7165 ( 1081097 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @08:12PM (#20313017)
    I've long been saying to those goliaths, like Microsoft and IBM, that it's not a battle of who will win - closed source or open source companies, but that both are on a collision course to become one, evolving and taking on the best parts of each. Open source companies and projects need some level of commercialization to fund innovation and development. Closed source companies need to open up more to be trusted and stay relevant in today's fast moving market.

    I work for an open source company, Hyperic http://www.hyperic.com/ [hyperic.com], and we make systems management software. Early on Hyperic embraced the fact that there is a demand to manage Microsoft techonologies, and we built our open source software to do just that (in addition to everything else we manage) - and not with some archane NRPE remote-watered-down mechanism. Natively against Microsoft's APIs - WMI. So we work with them.

    True, their open source labs with channel25 and their codeplex efforts are very much behind the rest of the company. They are relatively new compared to the rest of Microsoft, and there's a lot of ballast to turn that steamship around. But it is making some inroads, and open conversation and criticism is getting attention. These companies have to listen or become irrelevant. True, Microsoft waited a long time to accept and embrace open source, but they are not that foolish to not make efforts in today's market. And with the amount of usage of Microsoft products out in the market, it would be even more foolish of us not to pay attention.

    • Re: Microsoft a fact of life? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jeremy_Bee ( 1064620 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2007 @10:25PM (#20314071)
      You might have a (weak) point, but doesn't most of what you are saying boil down to "there are some open source advocates in the belly of the beast that should be encouraged."? That's not really saying much IMO.

      Microsoft has such a long history of deception and other bad practices it should make any intelligent person suspicious of their intentions here. It was only a few months ago that they were threatening to sue the open source community. I know it's been said to death, but the bottom line is that if Microsoft as a company really wanted to embrace open source, and work with the open source community, the very first step is open file formats and cross-platform compatibility.

      How can anyone trust Microsoft's open source efforts when at the same time they are fighting tooth and nail to eliminate any hope of open file formats and tying all of their open source projects to Windows? I know you are trying to be positive here, but isn't this just a tad naive of you as well? There simply is no reason to believe that this isn't just the same old divide and conquer marketing game from Microsoft. At least not yet.

      Windows might have to go open source eventually just to remain relevant, but Microsoft will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to this conclusion, and it will likely take years. At a bare minimum, my expectation is that major structural and managerial changes will have to occur at Microsoft before any of that comes to pass, if it ever does.

      Balmer would have to be fired for starters.
  • Microsoft is so big these days that they have to walk up to developers openly and embrace them. It's the only way to get into a position to get the knife firmly in their back.

    I freely admit that I am paranoid about Microsoft's intentions, I am also paranoid about jumping out of planes, both for good reason.
  • But, i would like to know from someone intimately familiar with the site, what happens if you code something covered by an MS patent (or MS partner patent, etc)?

    To me, thats the big deal breaker really. People can whinge all they like about the site, but it is what it says it is "open source". There are plenty of project on sf.net that rely on proprietary api's (even some MS ones!! OMG).

    Also, to say MS are doing some "kewl shit" with their enterprise library and having to code php/perl/python or java would
  • It's a battle about how to make money, isn't it?

    Microsoft has found a way to make a boatload of money from closed source software. And I know we will hear the arguments of people who say that open source is better -- but tell me why? I am an open source proponent for lots of things, but it has to make sense. Business sense. And I think that fact is lost on a lot of people.

    If you can have code reviewed by people be it open source, or closed... how is it different? The open source projects that are best, are

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