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Microsoft WiX Code Released to SourceForge.Net
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Apr 05, 2004 10:00 AM
from the download-yer-code dept.
from the download-yer-code dept.
nberardi writes "On Monday, April 5, 2004, as part of the Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft released the source code for the Windows Installer XML (WiX) developer tool to SourceForge under the IBM Common Public License or CPL. The WiX project is the first Shared Source Initiative to go "public" on Source Forge rather than a Microsoft site. It is also the first to use an externally created Open Source license. Microsoft supports the idea that a software developer should be free to choose how they license their work and for the goals of WiX, the CPL was the right fit. Is this another ploy from Microsoft to not look like the bad guy, or do you think they are embracing on the Open Source movement?" Slashdot and SourceForge are both part of OSDN.
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Microsoft WiX Code Released to SourceForge.Net
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Is my calendar wrong?! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.fokke.net/)
Re:Is my calendar wrong?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is my calendar wrong?! (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.backdrifter.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday August 28 2003, @11:21PM)
You mean the April Fools from two years ago, right?
Re:And now for something completely different... (Score:5, Insightful)
business.
plan b) 1000s of eyes don't trust their purity if they look at the code, bugs don't get fixed in the installer, opensource proven again to be bad, ms still better(tm). good business.
and the other side of the coin, now it will be easier to create software that will install on ms, so why bother learning the complex and difficult rpm or deb formats, ms install is right there, complete with 10 different free guis to setup.
ms gets more software to install on it. good business.
bonus round: perhaps someone will port port, apt-get or yum features to MSInstaller, dll hell either gets fixed or goes away.
personnally i'm failing to see where this is a 'bad idea'(tm) for ms
Hmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday November 09 2006, @12:02PM)
I wonder what the open source landscape would be like if Microsoft were not regarded as the great satan.
It would certainly be interesting.
Uhm (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday November 08 2004, @10:00AM)
Someone send Lucifer some mittens and one of those funky Russian hats... Must be mighty cold down there right now...
This is not news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is not news (Score:5, Funny)
(http://oralse.cx/)
Funny, most of the spam I get tells me that 5 isn't big enough!
Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone here who's posting actually downloaded it and tried it yet?
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Funny)
(http://jedidiah.stuff.gen.nz/wp/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 04 2007, @02:51PM)
Come on now, most slashdotters don't even manage to read the article, let alone read, download, extract, compile and execute the article. I think you're pissing into the wind with this one.
Jedidiah.
Re:Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
MS first tried their "shared" source initiative, and it was basically a flop because of the very restrictive license which basically only allowed you to look at the code. Now they are taking another shot with a real Open Source license, though as I suspected, they are releasing a low profile, and uninteresting project. There are tons of installers for MS windows already, including freeware, Open Source and commercial. To me this suggest that MS is only doing another PR stunt. They are not taking OSS seriously, and have this little project there to say, "look, we do open source as well". The "leaders" at MS have _always_ stressed their position on "IP", and MS will not give anything away or share it with _any_ community.
If MS wanted to show people that they were serious about OSS and wanted to actually try to build a community of loyal developers like with OSS, they would release something more significant, yet not one of their big "IP" projects. For example, why not release windows explorer (not IE)? That code _needs_ some serious fixing. When you are trying to user explorer.exe as a file manager, it constantly locks files and directories and makes it a pain to use. The only "fix" is to either log out or run taskmgr and kill and restart explorer.exe. The problem with that is that your shell is restarted and you often lose many of your notification area icons.
MS has the potential to drastically change their public appearance and even possibly build a community of loyal developers working in their own free time similar to OSS. However, to achieve that, MS will need to give something as a good faith token gesture to the community and not keep their hands on it. This is where MS will fail based on what they have shown us in the past. MS has tons of smaller applications that they do not sell that they could release and have people work on these applications in an _open_ fashion without MS trying to keep their controlling hand on the project. How about notepad, wordpad, HyperTerminal, ms paint, cmd.exe, backup, sound recorder, volume control, windows movie maker, calculator, freecell, Hearts, Pinball, Solitaire, etc. All of these apps MS could release and allow the community to develop further. MS would still include them into their release by grabbing the latest stable build and putting that through testing.
Re:Prediction (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.hexagon.tk/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 15 2003, @09:48PM)
Jonah Hex
Re:Uhm (Score:5, Informative)
(http://rav.realitybytes.tk/ | Last Journal: Friday December 23 2005, @12:53AM)
Embrace and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rob Mensching comments on (Score:5, Informative)
(http://altinoren.com/)
Now, let's talk about why WiX was released as Open Source. First, working on WiX has never been a part of my job description or review goals. I work on the project in my free time. Second, WiX is a very developer oriented project and thus providing source code access increases the pool of available developers. Today, there are five core developers (Robert, K, Reid, and Derek, thank you!) regularly working on WiX in their free time with another ten submitting fixes occasionally. Finally, many parts of the Open Source development process appeal to me. Back in 1999 and 2000, I did not feel that many people inside Microsoft understood what the Open Source community was really about and I wanted to improve that understanding by providing an example.
After four and a half years of part-time development, the WiX design (and most of the code) matured to a point where I was comfortable trying to release it externally. So, last October I started looking for a means to release not only the tools but the source code as well. I thought GotDotNet was the place. However, at that time, none of the existing Shared Source licenses were flexible enough to accept contributions from the community. Then, in February, I was introduced to Stephen Walli who was also working to improve Microsoft's relationship with the Open Source community. Fortunately, Stephen was much farther along than I and had the step-by-step plan how to release an Open Source project from Microsoft using an approved OSS license.
Today, via WiX on SourceForge, you get to see the results of many people's efforts to improve Microsoft from the inside out. I'm not exactly sure what is going to happen next but I'm sure there are quite a few people who are interested to see where this leads. Personally, all I hope is that if you find the WiX toolset useful then you'll join the community and help us improve the toolset.
Re:Obligatory "not GPL" rant (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.smtps.net/)
Everyday I find myself more in agreement with that sig that says "Linux is good, but I can't stand the users". Or to put a common bumpersticker saying in context "Linus, save me from your followers".
Re:Obligatory "not GPL" rant (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday December 06 2004, @10:11AM)
Not true.
From the CPL version 1.0:
The CPL is a 'copyleft' license, just like the GPL. The main point of difference is that the CPL has a software-patent protection clause, which the GPL does not.
(However, Eben Moglen has indicated that this may be included in the next version of the GPL, which would make it compatible)
How about neither? (Score:5, Insightful)
This means nothing. MS is simply trying to look good, and it's well worth it to improve their image, which I fear has suffered of late... (funding SCO).
Re:How about neither? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Confuse "Shared Source" vs. "Open Source" (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Yet another anaology (Score:5, Funny)
Bill Gates: Your friends up there at the sanctuary website [indicates sourceforge] are falling into a trap.
Linus reacts. Bill Gates notes it
Bill Gates: As is your open source community
Bill Gates: It was I who allowed the Open Source Community to know the source code of Windows Installer XML (WiX) developer tool. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best Coders awaits them.
Linus' look darts from Bill Gates to Steve Ballmer and, finally, to the Tablet PC in Bill Gates hand.
Bill Gates: Oh...I'm afraid the Trusted Computing Architecture will be quite operational when your friends arrive.
To be continued
OMG (Score:5, Funny)
Linus: NOOOOOooOOOOoooOOOoooOOOooOOooooo........
embracing open source? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:embracing open source? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.boozepoint.com/)
If it's no big deal, then why is it nearly impossible for me to get a standard way for installing softwre on linux? I understand that most distros come with a packaging manager, but if I want to write a program, allow downloads from my site, then (to the best of my knowledge) there's no way for it to easily be installed and have menu shortcuts etc set up....
Re:embracing open source? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday February 16 2004, @11:20AM)
Re:embracing open source? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://jedidiah.stuff.gen.nz/wp/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 04 2007, @02:51PM)
Follow this [freedesktop.org] and your menu entries will show up for KDE and GNOME. Users of other DEs normally have enough nouse to add menu entries themselves (or their DEs can load GNOME/KDE menus).
As for installers, at wort you can just statically compile into an rpm - no dependency issues then. As long as you provide a source tar ball as well then most everyone will be happy (and if your program is any good, it'll get included in the package repositories of the various distributions).
If that doesn't appeal, you could always support autopackage [autopackage.org].
Jedidiah.
Re:embracing open source? (Score:5, Informative)
Autopackage is a cross-distribution installation system for Linux, mostly designed for desktop apps. With Autopackage it's very easy to create packages that automatically integrate with GNOME and KDE and support non-root installs.
We're close to 1.0. We've recently changed our plans a little to reach 1.0 earlier so we can have more users ==> which means more developers.
Autopackage 1.0 will not be perfect, it will just be a "it works, and works well". The really cool features such as RPM/APT/YUM integration is scheduled for post-1.0.
Please lend your hand and support us. The more users/packagers we have, the better, because that means we'll probably also get more developers who can help us with the post-1.0 cool features and make Linux installation even better.
Re:embracing open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.fufme.com/)
-B
Re:Don't know about motives (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.zocalo.uk.com/)
The fact that the tool concerned is a rather niche tool that is probably of only of interest to a relatively small number of developers is not going to factor in the press at all. Even so, I think that Microsoft is to be applauded for this, not slated; it's a big first step into a brave new world for them. Now is not the time to slap them in the face and deter them from making potentially more magnanimous releases in the future.
That's not to say I'm not still looking for the "embrance and extend" though.
Re:This is /.! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday November 26, @06:13PM)
There would be and it would be justified. Why you ask? The hatred of Microsoft (at least in my case) doesn't stem from the fact that they use closed source software. As much as I like open source software I do recognize the fact that companies exist to make money -- and they believe (whether this is correct or not remains to be seen) that they will make more money with closed source software. I don't have a problem with that.
My dislike of Microsoft comes from their business practices. Crushing Netscape, RealPlayer, Wordperfect, Eudora, etc etc by levering their monopoly position on the desktop has nothing to do with closed or open source software. Watch their conduct in the coming search engine wars -- they will tie everything in with the OS in the name of "innovation" and "helping the end user" but in the end it's really just a ploy to exterminate Google and Yahoo. Just as IE was a ploy to exterminate Netscape. Microsoft can't stand the idea that they might actually have to compete on merit -- so they use their monopoly.
I can't really call them evil because I'd probably be doing the same thing if I was in their shoes. I will call my Government evil for allowing them to get away with it however. WTF is the point of anti-trust laws and the Sherman act if it isn't enforced?
Question (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the difference between IE's integration into the Windows shell and Konquerer's integration into KDE?
I don't see the big fucking deal. I run Windows XP at work yet--gasp--choose to run Firefox. Believe it or not, Microsoft isn't holding a gun to my head...
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Konqueror can be removed without taking the entire system down. On Windows, you can remove the shortcuts for IE at most.
2. KDE and Linux don't have a monopoly. When you're a monopoly, the rules change (why do people *still* don't know this after all these years?). With great power comes great responsibility - Microsoft has great power, KDE does not.
"I don't see the big fucking deal. I run Windows XP at work yet--gasp--choose to run Firefox. Believe it or not, Microsoft isn't holding a gun to my head..."
Yeah that's great. How much % market share does Firefox have again?
And that's the problem. As competitor, even though you can exist, the chance that you get a big enough market share is almost zero.
For example, you're the developer of BonchBrowser. BonOffice is smaller (only 500 KB!), faster (renders 10 MB HTML in 2 seconds), uses much less memory than IE (1 MB only), is 100% standards compliant, has popup and ad blocking, is secure, etc. etc.
Can you get more than, say, 40% of the browser market share? I don't think so! IE is already installed on all Windows computers, people will not switch to BonchBrowser even if it really is better than IE. As competitor you simply has no chance to beat them no matter what you do, simply because MS has a monopoly.
Re:Question (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The KDE team Produces a desktop environment overlayed on an existing operating system, not an entire turnkey solution as MS does.
2) You can pick and choose which components of KDE you want to use. It is my understanding that you don't even have to have Konquerer installed to use KDE, but I could be wrong.
3) KDE is free and open. You are in charge when using KDE and not the other way around.
4) The KDE team has never (to my knowledge) been responsible for signing OEM deals where the vendor is restricted from installing other software from competitors as MS has been.
Next!
Re:This is /.! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday October 11 2004, @09:43PM)
They gave a product away for free, thereby rendering the commerical product at such a great disadvantage that no-one had a reason to use it.
And how is this different from software released under OpenSource?
Re:This is /.! (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://phorm.phormix.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 19 2003, @12:08PM)
questionable... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://katzgraber.org/)