Microsoft Donates Code To Apache's "Stonehenge" Project 184
dp619 writes "Several months after joining the Apache Foundation, Microsoft has made its first code contribution to an Apache project. The project, known as Stonehenge, is made up of companies and developers seeking to test the interoperability of Web standards implementations."Reader Da Massive adds a link to coverage at Computer World.
Nothing to lose, only to win for Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Interoperability simply means that Microsoft stuff that was not used (or possible to use) with OSS projects, will be used now. Which leads to more sales.
Microsoft still charges for its products, it just has opened doors to more customers.
Re:so, is it safe? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the company itself, i.e. the patent holder, donates the code, then it is probably safe. I'm not in a position to judge how useful it might be. But MS has long taken the position that it supports the BSD license, and other similar licenses that allow it to take code contributed by others, close it, modify it, and sell the closed & modified version under a new name.
I can't say that I know that they actually support such projects, but that's been their official position for over a decade.
Re:How will this turn out? (Score:3, Interesting)
Silly me, thinking Billy being gone and Ballmer's comments about OSS interest [slashdot.org] meant Microsoft would start supporting open source without any ultimately evil intentions.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a lot easier to fix IE than to ditch IE and shoehorn Gecko/Webkit into the IE programming model. If developers miss their COM objects, there will be riots in the street. When I say easier, I mean for a company that would have to throw away a huge investment as well as have many people around who know so much about a product that doesn't behave like that any more. Plus, not invented here.
Re:Other notable contribution (Score:5, Interesting)
It allows the apache developers to do compatability testing on MS os's without having to go to the store and buy a copy of each OS for each developer.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:3, Interesting)
I never understood why some companies avoid even LGPL in a proprietary development environment as well, but recently someone pointed out one interesting bit in LGPL:
You may convey a Combined Work under terms of your choice that, taken together, effectively do not restrict modification of the portions of the Library contained in the Combined Work and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications
Note that debugging such modifications, as any developer well knows, may not be restricted to dealing with just their code... so this text can be understood in one of its interpretations as a general prohibition on restricting reverse engineering. Which, as you surely know, is a standard bit of legalese in EULAs (I never really understood why, but there it is). Perhaps this explains it.
Re:You did it wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
I do believe "Embrace" was covered when Microsoft joined the Apache foundation....
Microsoft did *not* join the Apache Software Foundation, companies cannot be members in any shape or form. I have written about that before at http://grep.codeconsult.ch/2008/07/26/hey-el-reg-microsoft-is-not-becoming-an-asf-member/ [codeconsult.ch]
the idiot, please, explain (Score:2, Interesting)
how long do we have to endure fanboyism ? when will the win7 hype pass ? im new at this. does it take long ?