After years of railing against open source, Microsoft Corp is preparing to shift its stance by releasing code to the open source community. A member of Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative has told ComputerWire open source code is “coming”. Stephen Walli, platform’s business development manager, added Microsoft would likely release “non core” code.
Microsoft Preparing to Release Code to Open Source
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Just because you show your source doesn’t mean it’s necessarily open source. Open source isn’t just about releasing code, but also about having an open development model, allowing others to take your work and improve upon it.
While it’s nice to see Microsoft allow people to view code and hopefully ease the pain of interoperability (disregarding licensing/patent issues), whether they really open source their code remains to be seen.
The calendar says March 30. There are still 2 days.
“A company spokesperson said code would likely be released under Shared Source.”
Microsoft’s Shared Source license is most definitely not an Open Source license.
Among other things, it doesn’t grant the right to redistribute the code. Check http://opensource.berlios.de/advocacy/shared_source.php for a more detailed analysis (from the point of view of an Open Source advocate).
MS is full of smart people, and despite the fantasies of those who oppose it it did not get to be large by being stupid or slow. If it looks like the market is shifting MS will make a turn in company direction and adapt – usually doing it brilliantly.
The thing abbout this is how wonderfully it locks Linux out in many cases. Companies get source they can look at and fix, they can check it for security issues (not that they willl, but they weren’t goign to check Linux either) but MS still maintains their licenses.
It takes away 99% of the advantages of OS for most users, and still maintains the cash flow a large company needs.
Once again, there was a window of vulnerability – a tiem when Linux was technically superior and MS slammed ti shut before the OSS community could really capitalize… and now it is happening with source code access.
The article says the code will be released under the shared source license. As far as I can see nothing new…
If the source code is released under Microsoft Share Source License, I think it’s unlikely to attract current open source developers.
It’s not like it was their goal, anyway… It could interest many programmers currently developing for MS Windows, though.
“Companies get source they can look at and fix”
They can’t fix it. You can look at it but you can’t modify or compile it. Not only that – everybody who ever looks at the source code is damned for eternity. You can never write another piece of software again because then MS might be able to sue you for (subconciously) copying their code.
You’re giving MS way too much credit.
“Once again, there was a window of vulnerability – a tiem when Linux was technically superior and MS slammed ti shut before the OSS community could really capitalize…”
What? MS software is still full of leaks dispite all the “Trustworthy Computing” stuff. OpenBSD’s security is far superior to Windows’s. When it comes to security, OpenBSD is simply the best tool for the right job.
You zealots are only making a fool out of yourself by religiously worshipping MS.
I can finally get the source to notepad!
I remain skeptical of MS intentions behind this, but it should be interesting nonetheless. What I find fascinating is even after the Win2k SP1 source leak, the windows world didn’t come to an end as so many people preached that it would. I came across more sites than not that actually said the code was of good quality…and win2k SP1 is 4 years old, so I am guessing the newer code would be even tighter.
we’ll see what happens.
Maybe they just liked the responses to the IE 5 leak so much that they decided to test the water with more source :-).
After all, the OSS community went over that code pretty closely, and did find several signifigant bugs that MS has surely fixed since then.
The OSS community also made some pretty positive comments about the quality of the code in general, so that is signifigant marketing plus as well.
Without releasing some good chunk of the source code, Microsoft will not be trusted. And if Microsoft doesn’t find a win back the world’s trust, the company has no long term future.
Beyond basic trust, it is Microsoft’s hope and bet that if they show their source code, it will help them in marketing Palladium and other police state technology to the corporations and governments of the world.
Microsoft is also hoping to get people to contribute to Windows — fixing bugs, adding features, etc. It is another way for Microsoft to get free help in their quest for total world domination.
It will be interesting to see how much source Microsoft ends up releasing and under what terms. It may end up being a “non-event” if Microsoft puts their usual draconian “if you read this code” license on what they share. And a harbinger of what is to come for what Microsoft views as “clones” of their software — namely Linux, Mono, etc.
>> MS is full of smart people, and despite the fantasies of >> those who oppose it it did not get to be large by being >> stupid or slow.
You are damn right on that one.
>> The thing abbout this is how wonderfully it locks Linux
>> out in many cases.
I’d say the jury is still way-out on that one. Why do you think people choose Linux in the first place? Why do you think huge companies find it easier to co-operate around linux, and how do you see MS replicating that?
But hey, Microsoft is definitely very welcome to Open Source any day. I still don’t see it happening, its not like they are threatened or anything, but if Microsoft ever goes open source in a real and significant way, that would be something to really cheer about, and definitely one huge step forward for the technology world. And never imagine for a second that it wouldn’t change the competitive landscape.
I will not look at Microsoft source code.
I believe that by Microsoft _sharing_ source code they are protecting their IP, a kind of
“look this is what you cant do”
and
“hey see how they’re copying us they must have seen our code”
I believe for Microsoft to remain king of the hill they will need open source projects to _adopt_ coding ideas and strategies or especially patented algorithms that will kill projects through IP law, kind of like how if SCO won their case (not going to happen) they would have more ability to kill off the competition.
As soon as I heard about the Win2k code leak (use the term loosely) I immediate thought the benefits to a company like Microsoft who have a “renewed focus on securty” in their development process, far outweighed any costs. Think free code review!
“Bill Gates went on to describe the GPL as “Pac-man-like”, claiming ISV code that came into contact with GPL-licensed open source code must be given away to the community.”
I dont know about anyone else, but I really enjoyed pac-man. I wonder if anyone will port some of the arcade classics to x-box. I guess pac-man might not be left out. Sorry Atari.
I got the Namco Museum game for the XBox for Christmas, it has Pac-Man, Mrs. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Galaga, Galaxian, Dig Dug and a couple other games.
“Companies get source they can look at and fix”
They can’t fix it. You can look at it but you can’t modify or compile it. Not only that – everybody who ever looks at the source code is damned for eternity. You can never write another piece of software again because then MS might be able to sue you for (subconciously) copying their code.
Even without considering the fate of my mortal soul ;-), I can’t allow my resources to fix code in the Windows environment (even if they were provided the source code), since it means we will have to devote man-hours to it with every patch from Microsoft. Imagine that – on a daily basis having someone re-implement the changes, just because the source code was available – now how does that reduce total cost of ownership???
so they can try to see if they can use less resources at maintaining them.
I dont trust Microsoft.
And I suspect this new ‘open’ source initiative is more sinister than it appears.
Its a move too far away from their usual practices..
“MS is full of smart people, and despite the fantasies of >> those who oppose it it did not get to be large by being >> stupid or slow.”
Well, no, they’re not stupid. But to be fair, they haven’t had much competition on the desktop either, and once they got all the OEMs lined up, it just snowballed.
By all the MS FUD, I was led to believe that letting people look at your code was everything that was wrong with the world. How mad was MS with the last code leak? Now, they are going to be sharing some? Maybe they should make up their minds.
It’s just another log on the conspiracy fire that all the previous “leaks” were on purpose.
People are selling Microsoft stock and buying Redhat and Novell. They had to do something. Here’s a quote from the article.
“There’s a lot [of code] that’s just infrastructure. Why wouldn’t we sponsor a community? We are getting to deeply engage with the customer,”
The “just infrastructure” comment was mind boggling considering the effort MS puts into their server OS. Here is the info that I think finally broke the camel’s back.
“As of version 3, samba not only provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients but can also provide domain services, either as a Primary Domain Controller (PDC) or as a Backup Domain Controller. It can also be part of an Active Directory domain.”
“Companies get source they can look at and fix” [Italics mine.]
Huh? How they fix it?
if you can see the souce its open source. its not closed, its open you just cant take it and use it how you want..
Hi
NO. NOT AT ALL
Read the definition
http://opensource.org/docs/definition.php
regards
Jess
Read the definition