OSS on Windows the Next Big Thing?

Lam1969 writes "Linux geeks and Microsoft have similar interests, says Computerworld: They both are interested in seeing open-source software succeed. Linux geeks admit that the open source OS isn't necessarily a better platform for important applications, and Microsoft recognizes that many of its customers are using open-source applications, and doesn't want to alienate them." From the article: "Faced with the allure of inexpensive open-source applications among its core customer base of small to midsize businesses, Microsoft has toned down its rhetoric. 'It's a myth that open-source and Windows can't work together. Customers just aren't religious about these things,' said Ryan Gavin, a director of platform strategy for Microsoft."

what's happening

[argoff]

Whats happening is that as scoiety enters the information age, the service value of information is becoming more valuable than the content value. That's causing the rules to change up and down the board, and is making it so that the industry is starting to rotate around information services instead of content controlls like copyrights. While Linux is very nicely positioned for this future, Microsoft isn't, and they know it. Microsoft needs to be friendly with Linux because they need that to make it in this future. They're not like the RIAA, whose crap mostly has no commercial service value at all. Miscosoft is eventually going to need to compete in the service area head on with the likes of IBM, Oracle, and Sun. Each of these companies are positioning themselves with strategies to deal with and benefit from open source, while maximizing the revenue coming from their current core.

Microsoft will probably try to milk the OS, Office, and the dominance of IE for all they can get with the right hand, while pushing a full end open source service assult with the left. While this is nice, to me it's a day late, a dollar short. There are already companies deeply entrenched in this space who can provide for my needs far better. Also, it is a dangerous strategy. Not only is the company likely to go skitso as profit center butts heads against its service center. But they are also likely to reach a point where they can't increase their service core as fast as their licensing core is decreasing. When that happens they will likely go into panic mode and all freakin hell will break loose - making SCO look like the tooth fairy.

My messg to Microsoft. If you really want to play in our playground - open up your damn patents!

Re:MS Grasping for Straws

[Mad Merlin]

I know there's plenty of OSS going on for OSX and it's even got the bash kernel so you can compile pre-existing OSS apps that were written for it but man these Windows OSS programs are slick and super easy to install.

The bash *kernel*!? It's a shell, not a kernel. There is a world of difference.

I don't see OSS as a big thing on OS X, despite the fact many things can simply be recompiled for it, Mac zealots demand "native" (read: not using X11) ports of software, which is significantly more work than simply recompiling. If Apple was smart, they would either 1) have used X11 for everything in the first place or 2) figured out how to actually make X11 integrate nicely with it's proprietary GUI.

Re:MS Grasping for Straws

[Quarters]

And there's nothing OSS unfriendly about the Windows APIs. The APIs I have access to and documentation for in VisualStudio work equally well regardless of whether or not I create a proprietary or open application.

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Re:MS Grasping for Straws

[spatley]

Yes, but you have VisualStudio. That investment is a significant barrier to many...
No you don't, M$ does give away Visual Studio tools in fully functional and free Express versions like C# Express [microsoft.com]

Granted, that would not help you with connecting VB6 access applications to mySql ODBC source, but that kind of interoperability is a tall order on any platform.

Re:MS Grasping for Straws

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit trolling already. MS gives away lots of dev tools. There are lots of express edition IDEs (which are quite good really, and you can't say the price is right either). And they have lots of offers where they give away VS 2005 standard (just watch so many webcasts or such), or they give some away at some events. Also, the compilers are 100% free, and are installed on many machines - just like GCC - as it's part of the .NET framework. You can code in any text editor and compile using the compiler, just like one would with GCC. Anyone can code patches with any text editor or IDE, and compile for free if they want to, and it's quite easy. There is also a couple freeware IDEs. And if you want, you can use other compilers and dev tools and enviromnents just like one can on Linux (often the same ones) - which actually vary very much ("because it is the norm and everyone has pretty much the same toolchains"? LOL! Good joke!)

Windows is no more OSS unfriendly than Linux. Your post is 100% FUD.

Re:MS Grasping for Straws

[Anonymous Coward]

gee, i wonder if the documentation for format specifically says that /u means unconditional, and zeroes every sector in the partition (which alone makes recovery pretty much impossible, so even bothering with fdisk is overkill), and that post-dos-6.0 versions of format (win2k+) default to unconditional formats.

and gee, i wonder if \\.\PhysicalDisk0 and \\.\PhysicalDisk1 are the win32 equivalents of /dev/hda and /dev/hdb.. you know windows is a real, live, capable operating system, if you went ahead and researched it you might find out that yes, it CAN do many things that you seem to think only linux is capable of.

and did you bother to read the documentation for the win32 dd build? or learn about what the NUL device is in windows? nope, thought not, you'd just go ahead and assume it couldn't do what you want and give up, chalking up another win for linux.

RTFM. what do they teach linux people these days..