Microsoft Launches Linux Labs Website

mjdroner writes "ZDNet is reporting that Microsoft is launching a website to 'share the activities of its internal Linux laboratories.' Microsoft says its goal is to foster communication with those who use open-source. The article also mentions that Microsoft runs a 300-server Linux installation to test open-source products." From the article: "Customers will be able to submit requests to Microsoft employees. For example, a person could ask how to best test the use of Linux desktops working with Microsoft's directory software. In addition, Port 25 will do video interviews with Microsoft employees with experience in the open-source or Unix world, Hilf said."

Actual Link

[Ctrl+Alt+De1337]

Since the summary did not provideth, here's a link to the actual site: http://port25.technet.com/ [technet.com]

Re:Then stop breaking things

[psocccer]

Actually it was apparently a security fix, I recently went through this since we're migrating to XP and samba 3.x + ldap. There is a setting in the group policy editor for checking ownership of roaming profiles in SP1. You have to disable this check by enabling the "Do not check ownership" thing. There are details here [rmschneider.com], but once you're done it all works fine.

In other news...

[init100]

...Microsoft urges UK PC vendors to not sell PC's without an OS, since this is a missed opportunity to market their software and services. They also claim that so called naked PCs are often used to install pirated copies of Microsoft software.

Note that they do not specifically mention that this OS is Windows, but I think it is implied between the lines. It is also common knowledge that BSA counts systems sold without a commercial OS as using a pirated OS, which means that computers running Linux or other F/OSS OS'es are included in their piracy statistics.

Re:Port 25?

[Quizro]

The answer is on the site itself, in a post titled Welcome to Port 25 [technet.com]:

"On a server, the port for SMTP is 25. When you open a port on a server, such as to allow for SMTP traffic, it is commonly referred to as 'listening' on the port. Port 25, therefore, is a metaphor for how we are opening the communication lines to for a discussion around Open Source Software and Microsoft. Cute, huh?"

Re:Documentation!

[Changa_MC]

How is a standardized protocol for sharing files over network the same as innermost secrets of an OS?

Re:who do you want to sue today?

[tshak]

Actually MS is *very* sensitive about employees looking at open sourced code (particularly viral licenses such as the GPL). I would imagine that the employees looking at things like Linux source are doing so for reporting purposes only, and do not share their knowledge with the product groups.

Re:Then stop breaking things

[TekPolitik]

When the Samba developers do not maintain close communication with Microsoft about potential changes to roaming profiles and implement support for those changes, it is not Microsoft's fault when things break. It is the Samba team's fault.

The open source projects that in an ideal world would be working closely with Microsoft (most notable are Samba and Wine) are perfectly happy to do so and even occasionally approach Microsoft. Their discussions are of course conducted on open mailing lists and Microsoft could easily establish this co-operation any time they wanted, but with Microsoft on the other hand the discussions are secret, the identity and contact details of the people who need to be involved are closely held, and requests through the available channels hit a brick wall.

Re:Documentation!

[MemoryDragon]

Maybe because they stole it from IBM extended it embraced it and closed it. SMB once was an open well documented protocol, and now IBM has to pay the samba guy s to keep the documentation and implementations intact to something which once was their baby.