Microsoft Seeks Open Source Certification 220
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."
My Apologies & Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
I apologize for submitting a dupe.
From that blog posting:
But this blog is written by someone who's genuinely interested in Microsoft becoming part of OSS efforts. Will it happen? Probably not as a good many of you pointed out.
The real question is, when it doesn't happen, what was the real reason? This is tough, because Microsoft is a large company. I felt the pain of using their products when I had to stay at work until midnight on Wednesday trying to get AJAX (that worked fine in Firefox) working in IE. But this is only one of their many products. Is it fair for me to condemn their application for hundreds of other products for OSS certification based on a few tools I've used?
My answer to that is that "I don't think so."
What I'm trying to say is that the open source community is a community. 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. I think the fact that even one person inside the company is reaching out says that Microsoft as an entity is not 100% against opening a code base. They have great marketing and business tactics, they are hear to stay for as far as I can see. I think that the attitude should be open arms under the right conditions instead of a persistent never ending cold war or middle east-style conflict in software today.
Will I be jumped on as not being a hardliner open source advocate? Probably. Because I care far more about the success of everyone than I do the success of either side.
The people running the accreditation will no doubt be very stringent on the licenses passing OSS certification. I'm not a lawyer but I doubt any of the MS-GL/SL/RL licenses will pass. I hope it's not an outright rejection. I hope there's talking between the OSI and MS, I hope there's negotiations, I chances are given, I hope for compromise, I hope that some of the projects end up as OSS, I hope to use Microsoft's software, whether I pay for it or not, and to be able to see the source in the future.
Everyone needs to make money, I need to make money. This is a capitalistic society. I don't blame Microsoft for making money, I blame them for failing to see the folly of their position. I believe a different pricing scheme could net them billions more dollars & millions more users. I believe that slowly opening up the code on more and more of their products can only improve it. I believe that people will steal it one way or another if they want to so your job shouldn't be to catch them but to take away that motivation.
In the end, if you rail against Microsoft for doing this, you're only building the barrier higher. I wouldn't recommend an "you're either with us or against us" attitude, I personally do not feel that has gotten anyone anywhere before. The world is not black & white, software is no different.
Re:My Apologies & Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft may hold out an olive branch from time to time, but just remember what's on the other side.
Re:My Apologies & Thoughts (Score:1, Interesting)
FOSS Vs OSS (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux is open source to an extent. You only have to release the source code to those who you distribute it to. Take Google, for example, to my knowledge they run a stripped down Red Hat kernel on hundreds of thousands of machines. Have they released this modified code that runs the core of their search engine? Nope.
The same could be true of Microsoft. Say I'm using the
Their software system & security is broken. Unfortunately their marketing and business divisions are top notch world class--that means we have to put up with the former. I hope they get as close to making me happy as possible. Would it be out of the question for them to release at least some of the Windows source code or IE's source code? I hope not, I would dearly like to see what the hell that rendering engine is doing sometimes
Their fears are obvious, people scanning the code for bugs
I seriously hope you change your mind about Microsoft. I mean, I hope that the community--those who make the decisions--are willing to work with Microsoft or at least hear them out. The open source community and licenses should be safe enough that anyone can use them or take part in them without finding a haft of a knife in their back. If they aren't, they need to be changed, hence all the debate on the GPLv3. If you're telling me that Microsoft is exploiting the Open Source Initiative for their own good, I question who's at fault here--Microsoft or OSI? Because Microsoft excels at making software make money, open source should excel just at making software work for everyone.
FAIL (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FOSS Vs OSS (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, but MS is very, very hard to trust. They'd be willing to let you look at Windows/.NET/whatever code alright. Only I would expect this would come with strings attached that'd ensure you'd be "contaminated" for the purpose of contributing to anything related. Say, they let you look at MS SQL, and then the moment you try to contribute to MySQL/Postgres they'd claim you're stealing their IP or something of the sort.
Personally, I wouldn't touch any source from MS with a 10 foot pole, unless BSD or GPL licensed. What do they need their own license for anyway? Like there aren't enough already.
source vs object code... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My Apologies & Thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
At least when I look at Balmer [pocketpicks.co.uk] , I think Ferengi...
Beware of large wooden horses (Score:3, Interesting)
The other possibility, if all the OSS folks assume the above and don't take the bait, is that Redmond cues the violins about how they made oh, so great an effort to meet the other side and act in "good faith" to promote interoperability, and use it as an excuse to continue going their own way.
No. More. Licenses. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, we're way past the point that new licenses are tolerable. It seems like every major project demands its own license, even if the result is 99% similar to other common ones. Is there really a need for the Apache, CDDL, Mozilla, and Artistic licenses and their countless derivatives?
If you want other developers to use your code, no strings attached, pick BSD or maybe MIT. If you're more interested in end users but want the developers to still have a few avenues to lock the code down, there's GPLv2. If you're really into end users and care about patents, etc., then pick GPLv3. Repeat after me: no new licenses!
Really, I think OSI needs to pretty much reject all new submissions unless they are substantially different from the pre-existing major choices. Fragmenting codebases by writing Foo License and Bar License that are almost identical but incompatible in some subtle way can only appeal to Microsoft and other proprietary vendors. Just say no!
It's called "Embrace and Extend" (Score:3, Interesting)
Like GNU before Linux? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:FOSS Vs OSS (Score:3, Interesting)
It might be a hard to install, and still be fairly unstable, but you can run X and people are using it.
So, GNU is an operating system.
Re:FOSS Vs OSS (Score:3, Interesting)
Like all corporations the personality of M$ is the personality of it's management, in the case of ballmer a lying insurance salesman. So the question is not whether you can trust M$, obviously replace the current pathetic liars with decent and honest management with integrity as their defining characteristic,and you could trust them, but can you trust ballmer, the communist, viral, terrorist, cancer man, absolutely not.
The reality is of course, if they completely open the source code for windows or office, it would not alter their copyright or patent protection in the US, however it would high light all the bad code, accidental and purposeful incorporated there in.
I look forward to Microsoft making genuine contributions to Source Forge and genuine non-proprietary contributions to OLPC, and even to Linux and I dare say they will, once ballmer is gone and instead of looking back into the past they start reaching for the future and launch successful new products that the marketplace wants rather than a string of ballmer lead failures.
Re:FOSSies desperately fear MSOSS (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
FOSS has not slammed anyone except to say that it makes no sense to pay money to a criminal monopolist is to continually bury your head in the sand. If you continue to use a product that locks you into continued purchases then it isn't FOSS that is shitting on others. It is Microsoft shitting on you. To continue to pay for something that locks you in is silly. To use a product that costs you money when there's a free nice alternative, well that's crazy. On top of that it was the Office zealots that dumped on Open Office (in prior threads on
How on earth can you not see what they have done and how harmful that has been to the whole industry? The opportunities for strong competition in the OS market are essentially non-existent due to Microsoft's criminal behavior.
The FOSS movement has done absolutely nothing wrong. They've stolen from no one. They've hindered no one. All they want is to keep a criminal monopolist out of their home. I'm sure you would feel the same way about allowing a criminal into your home.
On top of that you fail completely to understand that Microsoft is spying on you. They have 47 programs in Vista that collect information about you and return that information to their servers for analysis. They also have programs that essentially search and can seize your computer (refuse to work if they believe it is pirated, even if it isn't). They do this without most people's knowledge. They spy on you after having stolen from you for so many years. And you let them continue while essentially attacking the benevolent group of people who just want to have a fair free competitive market. Something that Microsoft has denied so many for so long.
On top of that you also fail to understand some of the largest companies in the world support FOSS and Open Source. What the FOSS industry doesn't want is Microsoft tainting the waters. Microsoft is already extorting cross licensing from other companies upon threat about IP violations that have never been proven nor the IP ever been identified. How would you like it if I stood in your neighborhood and told your neighbors that you were stealing and that I had proof of X number of thefts. You, and they, would demand that I tell them what you stole (what crimes you committed). They wouldn't put up with it.
Microsoft is like the big oil company that threatens all car owners that drive because they buy gasoline from one of their competitors. They say that the gasoline is refined using IP that they own. On top of that they are threatening any large company even more so if they don't agree to not just pay them money but give up their own intellectual property. It doesn't seem to matter that no proof is offered nor evidence of any sort yet they still claim that all car drivers will have to pay a price to them.
Don't you think it is silly that they threaten their competitors customers because they aren't using their gasoline? They can't compete on their own merits?
And your attitude is appalling. You have no idea, you have no knowledge, you have no eduction in this matter and you have never taken the time to actually understand what is happening. Then you come here and abuse everyone else who differs in opinion to you. Its rather sad if you ask me.
Re:FOSSies desperately fear MSOSS (Score:3, Interesting)
Bingo! As good an example of any is the DR-DOS debacle, the court filings of which may be found at http://www.courttv.com/archive/legaldocs/cyberlaw/ microsoft/msnsued.html [courttv.com]. The point is that Microsoft lied to their customers, over-sold their own 'coming soon' versions of DOS, and built checks into Win 3.1 startup code to refuse to start over DR-DOS, even though their was no technical impediment to running Win 3.1 over DR-DOS.
And per-processor pricing was the real kicker - if you didn't sign into the multi-year per-processor license agreement, you couldn't get product and even if you could the dollars would kill you. It was brutal.
I've no doubt their are very competent, bright people doing good work at Microsoft; look at Mark Russinovich, who is a freakin' genius, and whose work has brought me much joy at critical moments when his tools saved my day.
But collectively, Microsoft is a predatory marketing machine that will kick the fsck'ing shit out of you without slowing down. I have, honestly, met members of the [insert internationally known motorcycle enthusiast/club here] who are interesting and intelligent, but get in a conflict with one of them and the whole club will stomp you, without a moment's hesitation before, nor any remorse after the fact.
And that's Microsoft business character. So if /. is a little corner of the world where Bill et al takes it on the chin, fairly and even unfairly, then that's okay with me.
Microsoft "can't embrace" Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
In that light, this move only looks even more suspicious to me. If they're not going to embrace OSS, what are they doing here? Hoping to strangle it?