Does Microsoft Have the Best App Store For Open Source Developers? 339
WebMink writes "Microsoft seems to have been in combat against the GNU GPL throughout the history of free and open source software. But that may be changing. They have recently updated the terms of use for software developers in their Windows Phone app store to allow any OSI-approved open source license — even the GPL. They include extraordinarily broad language that gives the open source license priority over their own license terms, saying: 'If your Application or In-App Product includes FOSS, your license terms may conflict with the limitations set forth in Section 3 of the Standard Application License Terms, but only to the extent required by the FOSS that you use.' Could it be that the most open source friendly app stores will be the ones run my Microsoft?"
slashvertisement? (Score:2, Interesting)
MS advertising coffers well spent, looks like.
Enjoy that new surface, timothy.
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No, Bill G's microsoft was growing where it wanted (Score:3, Insightful)
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I'm sick and tired of people applauding Internet Explorers incredible changes. Yes, it's good! So what! The only reason that happened, is because Firefox and Chrome were forcing it off the market and into extinction. Years and tonnes of money later it's good, but still barely competing.
Re:Not Bill Gates' Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's look at the bigger picture...
1) Windows 7 is arguably the best desktop OS out there right now for the vast majority of the public. Even many of the Apple fans I know, myself included, have been forced to concede that Windows 7 is better than OS X in many ways.
I work in a mixed environment, Windows 7/OSX and Linux. I've never heard an OSX user claim Windows 7 is better. Especially on a portable where the gestures on OSX make it absolutely the best experience out there, if you bother to learn it. I've never in fact seen someone with a MacBook Air, for example, switch it to windows. I've never even seen them run boot camp.
I can't think of a single thing Windows 7 has that OSX doesn't but better. Windows 7 is a decent OS, emphasis on decent. It's the best Microsoft seems to be able to do. That doesn't make it good, nor does it make it better than OSX in any way shape or form.
Re:Not Bill Gates' Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
I'd mod you funny, but it's always hard to tell when a mac fanboi is serious.
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I've never heard an OSX user claim Windows 7 is better. Especially on a portable where the gestures on OSX make it absolutely the best experience out there, if you bother to learn it.
You are aware that with just about every current Windows laptop out there for the past, oh, couple of years at least, those gestures work too? Either people figured out how to work around Apple's patents or Apple finally decided to license them, as it was solely multitouch patents blocking Windows from doing it before.
Although I will admit that I've never heard an Apple fanboi admit that Windows is the better OS, even when they end up spending all their time in a Windows 7 VM because they can't actually do
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"You know that feature you've been using for years and you said it's what makes Macs better, Windows does that now, too. So, see, Windows doesn't suck."
Right click.
Also true preemptive multitasking and virtual memory.
Re:Not Bill Gates' Microsoft (Score:4)
I find Windows 7 (and 8) fall seriously short in those areas that actually matter in day-to-day usage: file management, WiFi configuration, software updates, disk management, device driver installation, system cleanup, and a few others. All those are unnecessarily complicated and tedious on Windows.
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If you're doing all those things on a day-to-day basis, you're doing it wrong. Badly wrong.
Re:Not Bill Gates' Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
1) There is this thing called "Linux" out there. Have you tried it? KDE is better than W7 in so many ways... And IceWM is better in other ways.
2) Mozilla throwed IE < 9 under the buss, Chrome started the bus and made it move. MS was just watching all the time, trying to save it. After it was dead, MS released IE 9 (it is still a piece of shit, mind you) out of desperation, and in a way that had the least possible impact. Also, stopping figtinhg against something (because you lost al your forces) does not equals supporting something.
3) Yeah,ok. I don't know about that. (You are talking about Visual Studio, right? Because Word...)
4) That's good news for .Net developers. Not a reason to develop in .Net and not a reason to put MS in a good light. I'll make sure some .Net developers around here know about it.
5) You either have a funny definition for "threatened" or you don't know a thing about Mono. MS threats are what shape the entire project.
6) Yeah, they either do that or peole will use something else. Gotta love a free market.
7) What does that mean?
Re:Not Bill Gates' Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
"Microsoft has started to really become an advocate for open standards to the point of"
No, they have not. Microsoft is an advocate of what benefits them. Have you forgotten already the OOXML problems? They will only support open standards until they can extend and extinguish them. You are confused because right now they've been forced to move back to the Embrace step, but if they could find a way to own access to the internet, they would.
"Microsoft's tools produce standards compliant web output."
Great, maybe they can attempt to implement C99 now 12 years later. I am still required to cripple my C code so it will be accepted by Microsoft's crappy compiler, years after everyone else has moved on. Respecting standards in one place doesn't mean they actually respect standards.
"Microsoft has never once threatened Mono or any open source .NET effort"
OK, but they have threatened patent action against open source. Do you REALLY believe they won't attack Mono if they find it in their interest? They will, whether you believe it now or not. Don't be naive.
"Windows 7 is arguably the best desktop OS out there right now for the vast majority of the public."
OSX is Unix with a usable GUI, that's basically the win right there. Microsoft does deserve credit for respecting backwards compatibility, though.
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Microsoft has never once threatened Mono or any open source .NET effort"
OK, but they have threatened patent action against open source. Do you REALLY believe they won't attack Mono if they find it in their interest? They will, whether you believe it now or not. Don't be naive.
Actually, that's wrong. It was in the very early days of Mono, but a Microsoft vice-president (whatever that means) announced in the press that ".NET is our technology and we will defend it" in a context that was clearly a threat to Mono. There may have been no follow-up, but it was said, and I never saw a retraction.
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Sinofsky? You mean the guy who came up with the clusterfuck that's Windows RT/8? Really?
I'd much rather have J Allard at the helm, the guy responsible for the XBox and the guy who came up with the Courier. Give me the visionary. I couldn't care less for the Jobs wannabe.
Re:Not Bill Gates' Microsoft (Score:4)
MS only ever advocate open standards and interoperability in markets where they are doing badly, or where forced to do so by external forces...
In markets they dominate, they always try to do the exact opposite.
Come back when they start advocating ODF and CalDAV etc.
They may not be threatening mono, but while java code is cross platform by default (and by accident) .net code often only works on mono if specifically written to be cross platform, which is just another way to keep smaller platforms down.
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Microsoft are doing it for the same reason I see Apple doing it - it makes business sense. Microsoft is no-longer able to steamroll standards through by becoming the de-facto standard.
But this was predicted, wasn't it?
What's that Gandhi said? "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
How many boxes has open source ticked off on that list?
Don't hate Microsoft. Just smile and nod. And if they become amazingly successful by using open source because "it makes business sense," and they play by the rules and they quit using dirty business tactics and they compete on merit and open source becomes an everyday part of their business ... congratulate them.
Bill? (Score:5, Funny)
Could it be that the most open source friendly app stores will be the ones run my Microsoft?"
Bill, is that you?
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No (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft is about their bottom line, plain and simple. Even if open sourcing something today is profitable, they would not hesitate to close it tomorrow if it hurts profits.
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That's a bizarre thing to say. They're one of the oldest software companies in history. Companies don't survive (and thrive) as long as they do without some forward thinking. You want to consider doing some reading about this history of the company, especially in relation to other companies that size, and re-consider your admittedly short-sighted response.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
Companies don't survive (and thrive) as long as they do without some forward thinking.
Or a strangehold monopoly on an entire market. That helps too.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
Or a strangehold monopoly on an entire market. That helps too. I'm sure that'd help if it were true, sure. I don't think what you're saying applies in this particular situation, though.
So you cannot fathom how the Windows monopoly on 90+% of all PCs sold for the last couple of decades may have provided them a steady revenue source? Interesting.
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So what are you saying? The Microsoft has been resting on its laurels and doing no long term planning, due to its domination of the desktop OS market? If that were the case, how have they maintained said "monopoly" while successfully expanding into other businesses? Their continued growth is due to short term profit taking? I don't think that any rational
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Maintaining a monopoly is easy, you don't have to compete like everyone else does, you just have to be "not horrendously bad" and you will retain customers. Any competitors have a serious uphill struggle, and have to be significantly superior in order for anyone to even consider them against a dominant monopolist.
Continued growth is also easy when you have a monopoly in a growing market, you will just grow along with it - again, your competitors have to be hugely superior before anyone will even consider th
Your admission, not mine (Score:4, Insightful)
Provide a list of companies that shows more of them succeded by partnering with Microsoft than failed and I'll consider admitting to short-sightedness. Nokia doing away with all but MS based phones is the most blatent result of doing deals with Microsoft.
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Provide a list of companies that shows more of them succeded by partnering with Microsoft than failed and I'll consider admitting to short-sightedness. Nokia doing away with all but MS based phones is the most blatent result of doing deals with Microsoft.
I fail to see how this relates to your original contention that Microsoft would close all their open source products to make a buck. Here it is again:
Microsoft is about their bottom line, plain and simple. Even if open sourcing something today is profitable, they would not hesitate to close it tomorrow if it hurts profits.
Instead of backing up that assertion, you have lept to a different subject and hoped that nobody would notice. But still, I will play. Considering that Windows runs on 90% of computers in the world, that means that by far the majority of computer manufactures are successfully partnering with Microsoft just as Nokia is doing now.
And on your original point, if M
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Doesn't not compute: Microsoft and forward thinking. When? The only thing I would call forward thinking is realizing that if they got PHB's sold, they could force their Crapware down companies' throats.
Apple bites the hand that created them (Score:5, Insightful)
Apples entire software ecosystem rides on top of free and open source software. There aren't enough superlatives to describe the hight of their hypocrisy. Come on Apple, stop the the stupid bullshit. Your business was rescued from the trash bin of history by your decision to refactor your entire operating system strategy around open source components. The very genesis of Apple was the result of communal sharing of information. Now you stiff arm the very same developers who made your success possible. There is no excuse for this.
BSD License (Score:2)
The BSD licencse is to blame for this. Apple could not hide improvements to the open source they improve and distribute under the GPL.
Re:BSD License (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple doesn't hide the BSD code. They freely distribute it as Darwin, which is OSS and freely available. Its the entire under system of the OS. Apple has contributed a great deal to OSS over the years. There is no "blame" for using a license that freely allows them to do what they need to do. The GPLv3 is a non starter in the enterprise world.
Not everyone is a basement dweller like RMS. Some people have lives and families to feed.
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Not everyone is a basement dweller like RMS.
RMS is not a "basement dweller" - he is a man concerned with the rights of everybody, a visionary that sacrifices his life for the betterment of other people's lives. Even yours.
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The GPLv3 is a non starter in the enterprise world.
That must be why Android is such a commercial failure, eh?
Linux itself is famously only GPLv2, and Android itself is under Apache.
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Android succeeds because companies can use it freely, and that only because Google makes their money elsewhere and can afford to give it way.
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So only creating a better product would have given them an advantage.
People seem to forget (Score:5, Insightful)
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that's true - I remember when MS paid Apache and Zend lots of money to make sure PHP and Apache web server was easy to install and worked well with Windows.
I'm sure those guys took the cash and said "stupid Microsoft, our stuff already works well on those platforms" and then built nice installers and walked away.... leaving Microsoft able to say that you can run all your PHP-style webapps on Windows. Around the same time they made Windows for Web (ie a cut-down version that web hosts could use instead of Li
Don't they all? (Score:2)
Maybe I haven't woken up all the way, but I don't get the point of this article. All app stores (Amazon's, Google's, Apple's) have open source apps to some degree or another, and tons and tons more apps are built on open source libraries. So Microsoft's app store is on par with ... everybody else? Ok, great.
Ha ha ah ahaahahahahhhaaha, this is rich.... (Score:2)
for now... because it's empty (Score:5, Insightful)
I have yet to find any useful app in the Microsoft app store. Microsoft is probably desperate to get anything in there.
But they can change their TOS at the drop of a hat, so just because they may be "open source friendly" right now doesn't mean that they won't become quite open source unfriendly again when their app store picks up.
Can you pass the binaries around? (Score:2)
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GPL says nothing about being able to distribute binaries, just providing source when you do.
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Is this even serious? (Score:2)
I was actually only going to post a LOL...
Does Microsoft Have the Best App Store For Open Source Developers?
Even if they do have the "best" "app store" for Open Source, all it really says is that the other app stores are terrible... and somehow or another, I strongly suspect that Google Play is a far more Open Source friendly app store than anything Microsoft deigns to allow Open Source in/on.
In other words, the question is wrong on so many levels that all it deserves is a LOL. I mean really, it seems to even presuppose that an "app store" is even a viable model for distr
Aptitude/Yum (Score:5, Insightful)
Does China have the best prisons for dissidents? (Score:3)
A bit hyperbolic perhaps; but the analogy is direct. As a developer, I wouldn't want an "app store". The PC inspired me to write software when I was younger. App stores just make me go, "meh!". Have fun jumping through proprietary hoops in the (usually) vain hope of some little morsel. The rest of us have already said so long and thanks for all the fish.
Best App Store? (Score:2)
so they can censor and pull your apps like apple does?
MS is desperate cause no one gives a shit about their product. Same with nokia and there free case designs.
Does Microsoft.. (Score:2)
..Have the Best App Store For Open Source Developers?
No, due to Betteridge's law of headlines.
Betteridge's law of headlines (Score:2)
Uh, F-Droid? (Score:3)
The F-Droid [f-droid.org] app store, to use its own description "is an easily-installable catalogue of FOSS applications for the Android platform". They even do most of the work, like building your app from source, for you. And F-Droid doesn't even include non-FOSS apps to compete with the FOSS ones. How is Microsoft's thing more FOSS-friendly than that?
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I'm a widow, you insensitive clod!
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Re:Microsoft and Open Source don't mix (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally would never code open source software for Microsoft APP store to benefit... #deathtowidowsphone #longliveandroid
Microsoft has published some of its software as open source, including their F# compiler and several .NET libraries like Entity Framework and ASP.NET MVC. They have also contributed to the Linux kernel.
Microsft and Open Soure clearly mix; what could be said is that Microsoft is not (yet) open source first.
Re:Microsoft and Open Source don't mix (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a bit deceptive. Microsoft contributed code needed for its VMs to host Linux, nothing more.
I don't see what's deceptive about it. You either contribute or you don't; they did.
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I don't see what's deceptive about it. You either contribute or you don't; they did.
They also contributed a lot of open standards and that's one of the most evil thing they did (and still do).
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Failure: there is always why the contribution was made to consider.
Microsoft has way too much past history to redeem. The fact that many younger people aren't aware of said nasty history is sad.
That is true. It is terrible that there is a generation of people who judge the company by their actions of today, and not by what the company did before they were born. Oh wait, no it isn't terrible.
Sorry, but that sounds like someone who would refuse to drive a BMW because they hate the Bosch. There comes a time when you start looking like some old fogie from an old peoples home ranting and raving about long dead issues that nobody cares about.
But to avoid problems with companies contributing to Linux in
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If you don't punish companies for their pas behaviour, and they can make a quick present day profit, why would they refrain from bad behaviour? They absolutely should be punished for past evil. If more people had longer memories, they'd need to behave better. This applies to politicions and many other things as well.
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If you don't punish companies for their pas behaviour, and they can make a quick present day profit, why would they refrain from bad behaviour?
I think that the huge fines that they have received for some of their past behaviour would be reason enough to prevent them from doing it again. And if you keep punishing them no matter whether they are being good or evil now, then what is the incentive for them to be good?
Another alternative is to punish them when they do something wrong. And don't punish them for doing things that everyone else does. For example, who doesn't bundle a browser with their OS these days?
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It is different for Microsoft because they've shown they cannot be trusted. Just because you cannot see a downside doesn't mean MS hasn't thought it through and found a new way to screw FOSS.
As to their current behavior, what is it about them shaking down companies for patents on alleged MS IP in Linux that you don't understand. If they were honest, they'd wouldn't be refusing to show what the IP is so that the Linux devs could route around it. It is shameful and we can only assume the worse given their pas
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Just because you cannot see a downside doesn't mean MS hasn't thought it through and found a new way to screw FOSS.
It also doesn't mean that they have found a way to screw FOSS. People keep quoting Embrace, Extend, Extinguish when they create ties with the FOSS community, but nobody has ever been able to tell me how the Extingish part is supposed to work.
As to their current behavior, what is it about them shaking down companies for patents on alleged MS IP in Linux that you don't understand.
But like it or not, that is not bad behaviour. That is the patent system doing what it is designed to do. It is no different than people clamping down on GPL violations.
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That is true. It is terrible that there is a generation of people who judge the company by their actions of today, and not by what the company did before they were born. Oh wait, no it isn't terrible.
Word. My parents never kept any slaves, either. Slavery is a myth.
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You want to deal with their crap, have fun. But don't paint it pink and put bows on it.
Fair enough, but similarly don't paint it brown and flush it down the toilet. Unjust or over-enthusiastic praise for something that Microsoft does would be wrong. Just as wrong as belittling every good thing that they do because decades ago they wouldn't allow a beta version of Windows 3.1 to run on DR-DOS (to use one of the complaints people have).
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Ah yes, the alledged "evil" open document standard that inconvenienced nobody, and the UEFI secure boot "fiasco" that wasn't invented by Microsoft and closes a huge security hole. These aren't evil or treacherous. And for that matter, my example of DR-DOS was another example of a non-event beat up. No version of Windows 3.x was shipped that didn't run on DR-DOS.
Re:Microsoft and Open Source don't mix (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but you deal with Microsoft at your peril. It is in their DNA to "steal", misappropriate,, strong arm, and every other dirty trick to disadvantage technical partners and they do it to this day. Ask Nokia how they feel about their business prospects. Or the legions of companies that have experienced the same rapacious partnerships.
Ask HP how they feel about MS potentially buying Dell?
Oh, and lest we forget, the legal suits against Linux are still winding their way through the courts and it was MS chief in the background backing those suits.
I am in agreement with Admiral Akbar.
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It's way cooler among those who grew up indoctrinated in the Microsoft ecology, I guess. It's remotely possible that I'll forgive Microsoft, some day. I'll never forget.
Re:Microsoft and Open Source don't mix (Score:5, Insightful)
They contributed code that only benefitted their product.
Nothing wrong with that.
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Google probably have more contributions. Great work Google.
Microsoft's contribution may be specific for running it on their VM, but there's nothing wrong with that. It's still a contribution. It's only a problem if you're down-to-the-BIOS everything has to be free. For the rest of us, running Linux on Hyper-V is a feature.
Re:Microsoft and Open Source don't mix (Score:5, Insightful)
They have also contributed to the Linux kernel.
That's a bit deceptive. Microsoft contributed code needed for its VMs to host Linux, nothing more.
If they contributed, they contributed. Does it matter that they did so because there is a demand for their VMs to run Linux, rather than out of the goodness of their hearts? One of the benefits of having something be open source is that numerous different parties can fix bugs or add functionality that may (per consensus) improve the project, but which only one party has the time, knowledge, and motivation for. For folks other than the project's core developers, that motivation will often be "I need it to do X" not "I want to help everyone who uses this and promote open source software."
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They did so because their VM environment is playing catch up, and if it didn't support linux that would be even less reason for anyone to consider using it.
If their VM platform were the market leader, it's almost certain that they would intentionally not support linux and even go out of their way to break it in an attempt to coerce people away from linux.
They only ever do anything that aid interoperability when their own product is coming from behind. If they have cornered a market already, they do the exac
Re:Microsoft and Open Source don't mix (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the why may not matter, but the fact is that the code they contributed did not really improve Linux, it just allowed Linux to run under Microsoft's closed-source Hyper-V. The code was aimed at improving Microsoft's own platform, not Linux.
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Yes, motivation matters a great deal. You can contribute out of altruism, or because you think everybody wins (including yourself) when you contribute, or to advance only the interests of your own, proprietary products. Microsoft has mostly done the latter. (For that matter, so has Apple, since their open-source release have also largely
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WebKit is based on KHTML, and Apple didn't have a choice about the license since it's LGPL. Apple's conduct vis-a-vis the KHTML developers was unfriendly to say the least.
Apple didn't choose to open source those projects, they merely participated in an existing project.
libdispatch isn't really use
Re:Microsoft and Open Source don't mix (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think Apple had the capability of whipping up a working HTML engine from scratch and bring it to market in the time they needed, you're extremely naive. Apple has very limited and focused software development capabilities, and they certainly had nobody capable of creating a browser engine from scratch. They usually deal with this by buying up some company, but there are so few good independent browser makers that they didn't even have that option.
What's offensive is that you portray Apple as some kind of open source hero. Jobs tried to rip off gcc and they tried to force the KHTML team to sign non-disclosure agreements over bug reports, and had a major falling out. That's on top of their generally offensive behaviors, like their look-and-feel lawsuits and their ridiculous patents. Apple has been a far greater bully and threat to open source than Microsoft.
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If they contributed, they contributed. Does it matter that they did so because there is a demand for their VMs to run Linux, rather than out of the goodness of their hearts?
If they contributed solely out of their own business interests, and their contributions add nothing of value other than compatibility with Microsoft's proprietary software, and nobody who doesn't want to use Microsoft's proprietary software will see any benefit whatsoever from any of the changes Microsoft contributed to the kernel, then yeah, I would say it's fair to rate Microsoft's contributions to the Linux kernel lower than those of a company like, say, Red Hat.
Those stories a couple years ago about how
Re:Microsoft and Open Source don't mix (Score:4, Interesting)
If they contributed solely out of their own business interests, and their contributions add nothing of value other than compatibility with Microsoft's proprietary software, and nobody who doesn't want to use Microsoft's proprietary software will see any benefit whatsoever from any of the changes Microsoft contributed to the kernel, then yeah, I would say it's fair to rate Microsoft's contributions to the Linux kernel lower than those of a company like, say, Red Hat.
Speaking of Red Hat it looks like the guest support for Hyper-V is a fairly big feature in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 [redhat.com]. I'm just speculating here, but it is likely that Microsoft's contribution adds business value to companies like Red Hat and eventually to their customers. So I don't get what is so bad with Microsoft contributing to open source.
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I personally would never code open source software for Microsoft APP store to benefit... #deathtowidowsphone #longliveandroid
These changes prepare the way for this http://www.neowin.net/news/vlc-for-windows-8-funding-exceeds-kickstarter-goal [neowin.net]
Re:so they can steal your code (Score:4, Insightful)
They want all the FOSS stuff first to have the first crack at stealing your code. That's what they've always been good at
Stealing FOSS code? What does that even mean?
Re:so they can steal your code (Score:5, Informative)
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Although d33tah may be correct (dependant on the licence behind the code being "stolen"), your reply is exactly why I don't describe copyright/licence infringement as "stealing". Quite a few people seem to forget that the word has for a very long time had multiple meanings. Would you steal yourself away to steal a kiss? Ever stolen a look at something in the hope of stealing an idea?
Re:so they can steal your code (Score:4, Insightful)
To steal yourself away is to deny yourself from the current location
When you steal a kiss, you deny someone else that kiss
When you steal a look, you're looking at something before others do.
When you steal an idea, you gain its advantages before the original creator
There never were other meanings to 'steal'
A woman has stolen my heart. Now my heart is not mine to command any more
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"Stealing implies that you don't keep your copy. You still do." is that the same for downloading music?
The act of downloading music is not called stealing. If the download is done illegally then it may be called copying or sometimes more loosely piracy.
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"Stealing implies that you don't keep your copy. You still do." is that the same for downloading music?
The act of downloading music is not called stealing. If the download is done illegally then it may be called copying or sometimes more loosely piracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-wwqW37-gg [youtube.com]
Re:so they can steal your code (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. A select few started using that word "steal, in relation to copyright infringement. A very select few. It's not a "language evolves" thing at all. It was a deliberate form of indoctrination. Non-savvy people read news articles about "stealing music", and they believed that nonsense.
The indoctrination continues. I refuse to be indoctrinated, thank you very much.
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So the corporations who are taking shortcuts by copying and improving FOSS code without releasing the improvements back to the FOSS community are actually engaging in piracy?
It depends on the license under which the FOSS is released. If that's not acceptable under the license then it could be possible to call it a form of piracy.
In that case it's interesting how piracy is just victimless copying when John Q. public does it but alluvasudden become 'stealing' when Company X is pirating FOSS code. After all John Q public would never have bought that CD, even if he hadn't been able to torrent it. But then would penniless startup X have bothered to produce product Y if they had not been able to take massive shortcuts by pirating and improving FOSS code? Illegal downloads result in some lost revenue for the artist, and one could say that re-release of FOSS code improved by some company constitutes recompense for the FOSS community so in a way the FOSS community, after doing a whole pile of volunteer work, is being cheated out of its 'compensation', (i.e. the improvements Company X is not releasing).
Sincerely, Advocatus Diaboli
I don't understand what it is that you're saying. It doesn't matter if it's software or music, the license should be respected.
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Again - nope. Copyright infringement has historically been a civil matter, argued in civil court. This "felony" nonsense must stop.
Re:so they can steal your code (Score:4, Insightful)
So why did swat teams descend on Kim Dotcom's house, and why did the federal government take down the site with all our phone modding ROMs
Re:so they can steal your code (Score:4, Informative)
Improving the code in a proprietary product without releasing the patches to the public. That's stealing. And that's what Microsoft had already done at least once: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ms+gpl+violation [lmgtfy.com]
??? those google results show that Microsoft *DID* release their derived work to the public under GPLv2.
Re:so they can steal your code (Score:5, Informative)
The code was "written" by a contractor, and MIcrosoft immediately took action. I think turning that into "Microsoft has already stolen code" is unfair. Much as I dislike Microsoft and their business practices, I'm pretty sure they don't make a habit of "stealing" GPL code themselves. It would make very little sense for them to do so.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-admits-its-gpl-violation-will-reissue-windows-7-tool-under-open-source-license/4547 [zdnet.com]
violation (Score:2)
As far as I can tell Microsoft accidentally violated the terms of the GPL. When they were made aware of this they immediately ceased violating and worked hard to bring themselves into compliance. They might very well if there is a small damages claim by someone with standing pay.
That's what you would want violators to do.
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It means grabbing it, possibly but not necessarily changing it, and then releasing only the binaries regardless if one charges for those binaries or not.
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And here I thought that Linux's package managers were the best place for FOSS software. Guess I was wrong.
They are often not app stores, they are software archives which are usually not directly controlled by the software author. App stores are based on the idea that you publish a software product on the store for download in exchange for a fee or for free. You can submit updates at any time, sometimes with a review time. You can also stop distributing the software on the store if you so like.
The traditional Linux package manager is usually managed by the Linux distribution community. The original author is usu
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Linux's package managers are the best place for FOSS software.
I completely agree, but I would also put in a good word for compressed tar files on ftp.
App stores are based on the idea of sell you stuff.
Selling software is obviously i feature, but the main idea would rather be to consolidate software distribution channels.
When the only way you have to install software without void your warranty is the App Store, the idea is abuse the consumer.
It can also enrich the user by simplifying software distribution and installation, which could be a benefit to the user. The average iOS user has somewhere between 20 and 40 third party applications installed; many of which would never install any software at all on a regular computer, where they would
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Absolutely. Ubuntu has the best software store right now because you can plug external sources directly into it and have them kept up to date with the same mechanism as the OS components. As for open source friendliness, Microsoft obviously doesn't even approach the best store.
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Because users are idiots who can not decide for themselves weather to pay.
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I hear rumors that Fedora and Argh have similar solutions.
I run Arch myself, and like it a lot - but perhaps I should give "Argh, Linux!" a go sometimes, it sounds interesting.