Microsoft Seeks Open Source Certification

eldavojohn writes "Microsoft is applying for OSI certification for its Shared Source Initiative. The move is described in a blog post by an MS OSS lab worker: 'Today, we reached another milestone with the decision to submit our open licenses to the OSI approval process, which, if the licenses are approved, should give the community additional confidence that the code we're sharing is truly Open Source. I believe that the same voices that have been calling for Microsoft products to better interoperate with open source products would voice their approval should the Open Source Initiative itself open up to more of the IT industry.' According to PC World, reaction from the community has been mostly positive."

Re:My Apologies & Thoughts

[jawtheshark]

turn a cold shoulder towards them whenever they even mildly reach out, you're essentially becoming them on the other side of the mirror.

Are we? Sure we are, but it is self-protection. For now, Microsoft has proven themselves to be untrustworthy. Let them prove themselves to be trustworthy, then we'll talk again. I'm not going to make the same mistake of trusting Microsoft once again. I've been bitten once, I won't be bitten twice.

wtf?

[jkiol]

I thought we already had an april fools this year!??!

Re:My Apologies & Thoughts

[Frizzle Fry]

If MS is interested in becoming part of the OSS scene and playing nice with everyone else, why can't they use an existing license? What makes their new licenses better than the established ones?

I think this is what they need to address in order to be trusted because it looks to me like the only reasons they would need to create a new license are to try to get away with something the existing licenses wouldn't allow or (more likely) to try to cast a shadow of doubt on the appropriateness and safety of the licenses everyone else in the community uses.

Show me the Freedom or Go Away.

[twitter]

the same voices that have been calling for Microsoft products to better interoperate with open source products would voice their approval should the Open Source Initiative itself open up to more of the IT industry.

What a pile of M$. The only barrier to products that interoperate better is them. Everyone else has bent over backwards for years, only to treated as a pawn in the quest for M$ dominance of everything [slashdot.org]. M$ is the only organization using such sleazy language. The goal is not some kind of imperfect interoperation, it's the use of real standards, the end of M$'s silly games and the beginning of real freedom. Without the four freedoms, everything M$ does is just another game.

If M$ sends the OSI software freedom, great. If they don't and the OSI certify it, the OSI will not have raised M$ in anyone's opinion, they will have disgraced themselves and further diluted the terms "free" and "open". We will all be able to judge for ourselves, but I don't expect anything useful from a company that's rabidly threatening everyone with patents.

At this point, M$ has very little of value to offer and the best thing they can do is cease hostilities and start to repair the damage they have done. It would take the community a decade to fix the mess Windoze and Intel BIOS are. It will take even longer to undo the DMCA, software patents and other evil stuff they have promoted. The market itself is doing a better job of fixing the problem by ignoring them.

Why apologize? - Because I was wrong.

[eldavojohn]

I apologize for submitting a dupe.

Are you an editor?

If not, I don't see any reason for you to apologize. Even if you are, it's not like you're duping an article within a couple of days or less.

Because I've bitched about dupes many times before. Many times. Which implies that I hold the editors to a high standard. If I can't be a standard candle for them when I submit stories, how can I expect them to hold these artificially high standards I force them to?

Too many times, I've said that if they just went to Google or Google news and typed "site:slashdot.org Microsoft OSI [google.com]" they would find the dupe from a few days ago about a story with basically the same keywords. I mean, you could even build a link on the admin page for them to click and do that search.

I apologized because I submitted before taking my own advice, leading to what I considered a dupe.

I apologized for being a hypocrite. It's a basic idea of not contradicting yourself that was ingrained into me when I was a child & seems to be lost these days. You act like you would want someone else to act (the ultimate maxim) and it's clear to me that everyone hates a dupe so I apologize.

Re:My Apologies & Thoughts

[Shados]

Its called compromising. MS is a large company with conflicting interests from the inside. So they take baby steps. There are shareholders that will (try) to stop certain things from happening if it goes too fast: when you are the size of Microsoft, you can't do bold moves, ever. Little, progressive changes, one by one, is how things work. Anything else and you end up like Novell.

On top of that, in the inside you have the ideas of the project managers, architects, developers, etc, all conflicting. People with different backgrounds give different opinions (which was, btw, the source of why .NET is the way it is, supporting multiple languages: from the inside, they couldn't get a consensus as to what would be the real .NET language, so they allowed em all). Some are for GPL3, some are for close source only, and there are people everywhere in between. So they compromise, and that means that (for now), they won't use existing open source licenses across the board. Give em time.

Exactly!

[syousef]

In other words open source that REQUIRES closed source to use is not open source at all.

First they ignore you

[fyoder]

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then they pretend to join you and stab you in the back at the first opportunity. Never trust Microsoft.

Gandhi (somewhat adapted)

PR stunt at the most.

[miffo.swe]

This is just a PR stunt so that Microsoft can reap the benefit of open sources good reputation. If they wore genuinly interested in working with the community all they had to do would be to release current specs for their various document formats and network protocols. I really hope the OSI take a long hard gander and turn every single stone before agreeing to anything. Microsofts history tells you to watch your back. Microsofts shared source license should not in any way be let in without complete abolishment of the windows platform clause. OSS licenses should not tell you what platform you can use the code on.

the farmer and the snake

[Anonymous Coward]

the farmer found the snake freezing in the winter

the snake said 'please help me out, pick me up in your coat and i wont freeze to death'

the farmer said 'but you are a snake, you will kill me...'

the snake said 'no, i promise i wont. please help me'

so the farmer picks up the snake and puts him in his coat. after a while, the snake warms up.
his natural instincts take over. the snake bites him.

as the farmer lays dying, he says 'what on earth has happened. you rascal!'

the snake said 'you knew i was a snake when you picked me up!'

Re:My Apologies & Thoughts

[heinousjay]

Looks like the truth hurts. Definitely an unfair moderation here.

Re:Like GNU before Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU software doesn't say "Thou shalt (and always will) use specific proprietary xxxx software to bootstrap this." It just happens to be an expedient way for it to happen.

What if GNU required you, in the licence to run in on proprietary UNIX systems... where would it be today?

That's the difference.

How about actually, you know, interoperating?

[argent]

I believe that the same voices that have been calling for Microsoft products to better interoperate with open source products would voice their approval should the Open Source Initiative itself open up to more of the IT industry.

I think they'd voice their approval much quicker should Microsoft make a concerted effort to actually interoperate better with other products, open source or not. It's interoperation that is really the key... for example: back in the early '80s the yet-to-be-named open source community embraced UNIX not because it was open source - in fact at the time it wasn't - but because it was designed to be easy to interoperate with at every level.

It's not good enough to provide open source components that only actually work on top of your API, or to provide libraries that allow people to talk to your protocols through the cut-out of your system software, you need to open the black box and commit to supporting documented and non-proprietary wire protocols and file formats.

Otherwise what you've got is better described as an "open pit-trap".

You're missing the point

[Wabbit Wabbit]

Once you start to blame Microsoft for everything, turn a cold shoulder towards them whenever they even mildly reach out, you're essentially becoming them on the other side of the mirror. What's worse is that this attitude will ensure that there will never be a point in time in the future when Microsoft can reconcile with OSS.

They aren't "reaching out" at all. If they really wanted to reach out, they would open the APIs for Outlook, Exchange, SMB, and who knows what else. Until they open these products, they're merely hand-waving. It's that simple.

difference

[pak9rabid]

You know, Ballmer, there is a difference between being labeled an open source company and actually acting like one.

Re:My Apologies & Thoughts

[HermMunster]

If you don't agree with the GPL (any version) don't use it. Don't use the code. Don't try to get something for nothing. It is the abuse of the GPL that has resulted in the changes to the GPL. Guess who has been abusing it? Microsoft.

No right minded programmer is going to join Microsoft unless they are just stupid.

Don't blame Microsoft's failing on the GPL. The GPL is a choice not a requirement. You choose to not support the contract of the GPL then don't try to get free code to use. What's so viral about that?

You sound like a Microsoft shill, it is just sad.

Re:My Apologies & Thoughts

[bonefry]

MS's complaint isn't with Open Source (tm).

From all 3 official shared source licenses [microsoft.com] only MS-PL [microsoft.com] can be OSI-certified under the current Open Source definion [opensource.org] ... and that's also questionable considering the blurry distinction between source code and object code that it makes.

They've made source code available (shared source, etc).

We, as engineers, like clear definitions.
What would happen if half of the chemical industry started to use the word proton [wikipedia.org] to denote a neutron [wikipedia.org], and vice-versa ?

Open Source is not a synonym to "source code available" by any stretch of imagination, and it didn't had an exact meaning until it was properly defined in 1998 in response to Netscape's release of the Navigator source code.
Until you can prove otherwise, open source is defined by OSI [opensource.org], and the Shared Source licenses are largely incompatible.

They released rotor for *BSD.

First of all, the star prefix of *BSD is to denote the various distributions based on a BSD kernel (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc...)
There is only one BSD license, and you can view a sample here [freebsd.org].

Microsoft released Rotor under the Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure License [microsoft.com], and its in no way a BSD-style license or an Open Source license, as defined by OSI.

Their complaint is with the viral nature of the GPL (something many people are concerned with).

Only leaches that want to use other people's work without giving back are concerned with the GPL.

And the GPL is a copyright license, and only redistributes have to be concerned with it.
End-users (those people that actually use the software) are unrestricted by the GPL.

Re:FOSSies desperately fear MSOSS

[e2d2]

You know that is all true. But why don't we see the same virulent comments when IBM does something like this? They are also past criminals. Do they get a pass because they aren't "evil" anymore? Is there some time limit they've exceeded for personal bias? Or did they pay penance via open source contributions?

Seriously, it's gone beyond common sense and being skeptical of MS and it's tools and ventured into the world of group think. Certification of a license with OSI is a bad thing? I'm not grasping this.

Re:FOSSies desperately fear MSOSS

[I'm Don Giovanni]

I stopped reading here:
"FOSS just wants their freedom. They don't want to have to be shit upon by a criminally convicted monopolistic company that has a reputation of stealing other's intellectual property."

Microsoft has never been "criminally" charged with anything, let alone "criminally convicted".
Learn the difference between civil law and criminal law.

Since you can't even understand that simple concept, or can but still choose to toss around the false "criminally convicted" rhetoric, it's safe to assume that the rest of your post has no credibility and isn't worth reading.