Codeplex 100 Day Deadline Passes Unremarked 106
Andy Updegrove writes "As you may recall, Microsoft announced back on September 10 that it had launched a new, open source organization called the CodePlex Foundation. Since then, it has announced Project Acceptance and Operation Guidelines, its first 'Gallery' (a project area), supporting Microsoft's ASP.NET, and two projects in that gallery. But it had also launched in a 'less than open' state with an interim Board of Directors, and a promise to elect a permanent one in 100 days. Problem is, December 19 — the 100 day mark — passed quietly, with no announcement of a new Board or a status update on the other goals it had set for the launch period. So what's up with the CodePlex Foundation, and its pledge to promptly transition into a more independent organization?"
Lessig on what plex is really important (Score:5, Insightful)
Larry Lessig has put out a video explaining that FSF is the organisation which is really helping computer users: fsf-2009-larrylessig.ogv [fsf.org].
Code Plex was always just a PR move, let's not get caught up in the hype.
Re:Lessig on what plex is really important (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a ring of truth to what you say. Microsoft does hire a lot of people, and pays them pretty well. They have proven they can do at least second-third best compared to similar products in most fields, even if it takes them a while to get there. Yes, MS is in it for the money, and they do play dirty pool, but they are not exactly a raging demon out to consume your soul just for spite.
However, on the front of Open Source? FSF is a leader, Microsoft is not.
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"...out to consume your soul just for spite."
No, just for profit which is worse.
Re:Lessig on what plex is really important (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has filled homes, offices and universities with software that the billions of users can't change. How many jobs would be created if all the offices, homes and universities had the option to pay someone to add a feature or make whatever changes? Or to organise themselves as a company to make the changes themselves and offer support or further development?
How much progress would be made if software development wasn't bottle necked by having only one company in the world able to do development of that operating system?
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Now tha'ts just silly. there are tens of thousands of Microsoft development partners around the world, and developing modifications to Microsoft products is a multi-billion dollar industry. Every product the sell has a robust API.
I've competed against Microsoft products relentlessly for the last 17 years, but the very first thing they are guaranteed to do on any project is create an extension API and provide thorough documentation on it.
Re:Lessig on what plex is really important (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exemplified by the London Sock Exchange trading system built by a consortium of M$ and Accenture which (a) was non performant and (b) wouldnt stay up: Just for once the Right Thing (TM) happend and both the CIO and the system got shit canned.
What this tells us is (a) the extension API game is a con, (b) where there is enough riding on it corruption of CIOs and vendor bullshit get swept aside.
Amusingly I saw a Journalist piece blaming problems with SAN system on the POSIX api while ignoring the fact that the vendor's SAN protocol would not support the extensions he was complaining were missing. The fact is the IT press is 98% full of stuff written by people who dont know what they are talking about.
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This is exemplified by the London Sock Exchange trading system built by a consortium of M$ and Accenture which (a) was non performant and (b) wouldnt stay up: Just for once the Right Thing (TM) happend and both the CIO and the system got shit canned.
Its amusing, but sadly not exactly surprising that the LSE's systems failure and resulting switch to Linux in October 2009 was heavily covered here on Slashdot, with much mirth directed at Microsoft, but the serious systems failure and several hour outage in November (26/11/2009 - after the switch to the Linux based system) was never mentioned here...
The replacement for the MS system is not without its own issues.
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The replacement for the MS system is not without its own issues.
By saying that you miss the major point: what are the risks?
Issues might and do happen in every piece of software different from the helloworld.c.
If you go with closed source solution, you are at the mercy of a 3rd party. If you go with open source system you have an option to replace the 3rd party if it is not delivering. Or even hire full-rime people to run the operations.
N.B. Note that "closed source" != "proprietary". Some commercial systems used to run infrastructures of the scale often come
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Some commercial systems used to run infrastructures of the scale often come with the source code. Users are not allowed to distribute it, but patching/optimizing/etc is perfectly fine.
We run two of such systems. We don't have all the necessary tools and manpower to actually change anything big, but the one first really BIG great thing about them is that whenever you have an unexplainable problem that even the support is not able to track down is that you can just LOOK at the code (and maybe add some small additional debugging output) and try to figure out what causes the problem yourself.
Also, the most problematic things are not usually "outages", since they can be resolved reasonably qu
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Now there's a good reason for hiding your code - embarrassment.
(And yes, I do feel embarrassed about some of the things that I hack together to do my job. But since I'm paid as a user, not a developer, I don't feel too embarrassed.)
LSE, Windoze and Linux (Score:2)
The CIO was 'persuaded' to go with a greenfield solution bases on M$ technology which she should have known would fail, but that has never dissuaded PHBs. The FOSS solution, done in Sirilanka, is far less complex and already well debugged and was available at the time of the CIO choice. It is already in use at other markets and hedge funds which have essentially the same
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Exactly:Date separators, please use them correctly (Score:2)
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Which is exactly why the FSF's philosophy on calling it "GNU/Linux" has some merit -- "Linux" as a catch-all term for operating systems that use a Linux kernel causes massive confusion. I happen to use Fedora, but I still frequently get questions about Ubuntu, many of them completely unanswerable for someone who is not an Ubuntu user (e.g. things related to configuration, pack
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Which is exactly why the FSF's philosophy on calling it "GNU/Linux" has some merit
Thanks, and here I thought it was just RMS's way of attaching the FSF to someone who could actually finish a kernel.
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What are you talking about? Windows isn't a closed eco-system, beyond the 50,000 employed directly by Microsoft there are hundreds of thousands if not MILLIONS of jobs created to implement, maintain, enhance, extend and embrace Microsoft products. MS doesn't lock you in to anything and in the case of schools and businesses those businesses are choosing to lock-in to a specific vendor for business reasons - not ideological ones.
Believe it or not, the world wants accountability and you don't get that with o
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People want a large resource pool, people want a stable business, support they can rely on and an infrastructure than can grow with their business.
You apparently never ran an IT department but read too much MSFT's PR.
Microsoft's support is well known to be one of the clumsiest (unless you are an extremely important customer to them).
Their licensing model also often limits the growth of the business.
Believe it or not, the world wants accountability and you don't get that with open source since the accountability falls squarely on your own resources in most cases.
That's silly. Accountability doesn't depend on software type. It does depend who's you have hired as a your integrator. There are plenty of integrators who would install and help you operate whatever software you wish to have - either closed source
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I work for a defense contractor and you bet your beans MS provides top notch support. We also use open source software however it is "at your own risk" and no project manager or implementation team jumps on the open source bandwagon because of the risk of having to to it yourself or find your own resources to handle it above and beyond what can be accomplished via a support contract or phone call.
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I work for a state government, and we also get (as far as I know) top notch support from Microsoft. I suppose it helps that we're also one of their biggest clients (presumably) for Bing Maps.
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Uh, I add new features to Windows every day. They're called "applications" written in vb.net or C# using nothing more than Window's free Express IDEs.
Darn that evil Microsoft! Giving away free development tools and application samples. Communists! Communists, I say!
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Yes, MS is finally providing free dev tools, now that they've been in direct competition for several years with a platform that has always had free dev tools. Never mind that their free dev tools are limited (the competition's are not) and you don't have access to any of the important source code (the competition makes all source available, free of charge)...
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How many jobs would be created if [people] had the option to pay someone to add a feature or make whatever changes? Or to organize themselves as a company to make the changes themselves ...
Not many. The largest percentage of people are followers/consumers; not creators or leaders. Microsoft, and other similar companies, provide a product which most people want: a tool which requires no thinking or effort on the part of the user.
To use a car analogy -- when was the last time your created and attached a custom part to your automobile engine?
Monopolies minimize jobs & inovation (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm . . . have you considered how many jobs, and how many innovative projects (companies) the MS MONOPOLY has killed . . .
I think we have seen how much MS innovates when they don't have competition, all one has to do is to look at how much R&D they put in to internet explorer prior to Firefox presenting a threat to IE. Look at the history, MS has been convicted of innovating by taking/stealing others work, and copying good ideals of other. I don't have a problem with them copying others within the la
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The only monopolies i deal with every day are my Electric Utility and Cable company. MS isn't the only choice out there however PPL and Comcast are. yet PPL and Comcast continually rape me on pricing, services and features and somehow microsoft comes off as the evil company? MS has innovated many products from operating systems to keyboards, mice and hardware systems to their cool ass research department that many companies simply don't bother with anymore.
MS got busted yeah, they paid the price, yeah, th
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Then pay more attention. Microsoft was convicted of various illegal monopoly behaviors.
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The fact they were initially going to stop with IE6 on XP just goes to show what state they put browser software in. They didn't feel the need to compete any longer.
They do generate a lot of money for the local economy and create j
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Java would have died years ago if it wasn't for IBM, Oracle, and (to a lesser extent) Red Hat propping it up for the past 5+ years.
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The utility companies are bad, but they only rape their customers. MS rapes their entire industry, so yeah, that's a whole different level of evil.
And by the way, you've so far managed to not mention a single thing that was innovated by MS. They're constantly being sued for "stupid things" like screwing over all of the actual innovators who are stupid enough to partner with MS, taking the tech for themselves, and leaving the actual innovators bleeding in the metaphorical ditch. It may be true that all multi
Re:Lessig on what plex is really important (Score:5, Insightful)
Given Microsoft's history of embrace and extend, and the resulting interference with open standards such as Java and Kerberos, and their gaming of open standards for OpenOffice, saying that they "provide jobs" is like saying that the Mafia support the local police. Microsoft has a history of software development, but it's not founded on innovation. It's founded on theft. Take a good look at the current Microsoft Word and XML lawsuits with lfj: they stole wholesale from developers who shard information with them as business partners. And this sort of thing is _typical_ of them.
The FSF is very cautious in order to keep its hands clean. Involvement in obviously "tainted" projects such as Codeplex could put free software projects at risk of Microsoft's litigious behavior, and at risk of losing the "free as in speech" part of FSF software by having the code "extended", without source code or with patent encumberment, by Microsoft, and forcing free software developers to play catchup. That's been happening with Samba for years, it happened with Kerberos in Active Directory (described here at Slashdot at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/02/0958226&mode=thread [slashdot.org]), it happened with Java (which was finally settled out of court in Sept. 2009), and it keeps happening.
Trusting Microsoft and cooperating in Codeplex to "help create jobs" is like buying heroin to "stimulate the economy in Afghanistan".
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Agreed! OSS is pathetic in this regard, providing almost no jobs in malware authoring, virus removal program writing, independent PC technicians removing said malware, and books helping users understand the problem. The OSS people prefer to let some kernel code wipe out all those opportunities. They don't understand how valuable these jobs are in an
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virus removal program writing, independent PC technicians removing said malware, and books helping users understand the problem.
You know, it suddenly occurs to me that this is the real world equivalent of "telephone sanitizers".
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You think that if Microsoft wasn't around they'd suddenly lose all interest in their industries? You think that computers aren't a commodity? Someone or something would _have_ to fill the space. And that something and those companies would provide jobs.
The only way that argument holds is if the size of the industry was completely dependant on Microsoft, and that if they were not here people would sim
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because these days, Stallman comes off as an anti-progressive luddite.
No, seriously, by his own admission, Stallman prints off web sites to read them! I can understand this
M$ Providing Jobs (Score:2)
The billions come from american business and are used, inter alia, to corrupt governments and international organizations eg ISO
An the point & click mentality has held development of really useful application back two decades while all the major components of Office are used to foster undesirable working practices. One of the things that make me despise this way of working is how many daft documents, Excel spreadsheets filled with errors a
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WTF??
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Couldn't the same argument be made for a king or dictator?
"This guy has 90% of the money in his country, and controls a government that employs tens of thousands of people. Without him, they would have no government, no roads. They would all be poor and unemployed. Long live the King!"
Power!=Philanthropy
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>Microsoft making some great products is a *GOOD* thing
Could you expand on this? What great products do they make?
Re: What great products do they make? (Score:2)
MS is a bad actor (Score:2)
Well, as owner of 5 Macs at home and a person who can't think anything rather than *BSD or XServe for servers, I respect MS and their inventions.
In fact, even the entire Windows OS line (including Win95) has my respect to bring GUI OS to common people, including poor people.
Issue is, MS doesn't evolve like Big Blue of 1990s, they try to act and they are a very bad actor. They also work with some really disgusting people who have no kind of personality and despised universally. If you mix the both, it is the
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Typical Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
it is a standard MSFT tactic, announce something awesome and deliver something that is barely good enough. Not even slashdot is big enough to list every product MSFT has announced but failed to actually implement. It has been in use for so long it is the reason most people are tired of MSFT. It is also why the Opposite of MSFT Apple gets so much free press for product that they haven't even announced yet. Apple lets the rumor mill drive forward occasionally shutting down one source only to fuel the frenzy even more. However apple only announces real products with the feature sets fixed. (there are exceptions)
Next week MSFT engineers will announce an FTL drive coming in the next 10-20 years just to stay ahead of the stuff they have already promised.
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How is this funny or even on topic? Codeplex already exists.. the foundation appears to be seeking a new director and thats about it. As far as answering the question regarding the 100 days why not email the existing board and ask them directly? The info is on the foundation website.
Duh.. (Score:3, Funny)
It's a site for programmers, sure it isn't 0x100 days?
Maybe they're waiting... (Score:2)
Re:Maybe they're waiting... (Score:4, Informative)
Its on the front page of: http://codeplex.org/index.aspx [codeplex.org]
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Whats the big deal (Score:1, Interesting)
Give me a break, this is news? Only to those desperate to bash Microsoft.
I code in C#, I use Windows. I do not feel welcomed at SourceForge. I will use CodePlex because regardless of it's backers, it is a friendlier community to me.
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That is funny. I programmed a C# project (for Windows) and submitted it to SourceForge, with no problems at all.
If you check the list of the top SourceForge projects, most are for Windows only, or have a Windows version available. If there are few C# projects, it is because it is perceived as a language to write in-house business app crapola by developers and users.
CodePlex does not support GPLv3. Why? Is it really that different from Eclipse Public License or Microsoft Public License? Or is this some
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The GPL3 is what Stallman wanted to make in the first place, he just didn't go far enough.
His original issue was the printer driver. Obviously if he had a driver with full source but the machine prevented the fixed driver from working, it wouldn't have been any better.
Personally I like the GPL3 and will preferentially support companies that don't have a problem with it. I want hardware I can mess with. I will pay for that. I won't pay for closed Apple-like systems.
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Haha, wha
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Well, it's pretty hard to extract meaning from your ranting. You've even managed to somehow include Reagan in a discussion about software.
Though given your reaction maybe you're the trolled one, though that'd be mostly of your own making.
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Meh. It fits my requirements, I'm not speaking of anybody else's. If it doesn't work for you, then it doesn't, don't see what's there to argue there.
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This is somewhat OT: I own a TiVo. I followed one of these tutorials (Galleon, and Direct Show Dump). I am able to get all the content off my TiVo and burn it to anything I want (which is really just the hard drive; my Xbox can watch it from there via XBMC).
TiVo is not goi
Have fun at Codeplex until it is closed (Score:2)
Sourceforge top 10 projects are sometimes dominated by windows only software and they have damn good respect from community, enough respect to spend huge time to convert them to "freak" platforms like Symbian. PuTTY is a good example for instance.
Sourceforge also survived darkest days of dotcom disaster, nothing happened to it. What will you do when Codeplex EOL announced? Am I joking? What happened to Windows Market? They _made_ money from it, they didn't spend money. Codeplex, like Silverlight will join f
They just couldn't find any suckers. (Score:2)
Somehow I don't think being a buffer between corporate interests of Microsoft and anarchistic open source community is a dream job of anyone.
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Weird, if you ask me the open source movement always comes off communistic not anarchistic.. too much organization and ideology mixed into the movement to come off as anarchistic. Unless you're speaking of BSD open source licensing :)
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Not really. Many small groups of various organization - communistic, authoritarian (kernel: Linus=GOD), oligarchic (Mozilla: the core group deciding the important stuff plus many random contributors with a reduced power) capitalistic(RedHat), and the groups have a various degree of cooperation - some cooperate, some don't, some rebel and create a branch from ones who don't cooperate.
Like real anarchy which has no chance to stand on its own as always small localized communities of various types of government
Is it news or isn't it? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think for everyone on all sides of the matter of the public opinion of Microsoft, it is quite safe to say that Microsoft is not of one view or of one voice. Microsoft is a highly conflicted company that, perhaps, wants to serve its customers but continues to serve its own interests first.
Each and every time there is a story like this, on how Microsoft fails to live up to its hype and/or promises, it leaves me saddened that my opinion of the company continues to be unchanged.
Microsoft is a company that cannot "let go" of anything. Take .NET for example -- it is a miserable failure that they won't let die. They claimed they would use it exclusively going forward and have they? Nope. The only applications written in it are by 3rd parties and I can't say that they are all great programs to use. Even when threatened with tremendous sanctions and punishment, they can't let go of the ways that get them into trouble. (And now that the US government is under a less sympathetic party's control they should be especially careful! Their oversight period has expired and they have not changed. I expect 2010 to start off with announcement of yet another action by the DoJ against the unrepentant MSFT.)
Still. Is it news? Microsoft's promises are not to be believed under any circumstances. You just have to wait for their actual actions, inactions and reactions. Anything they say should be disregarded.
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The only conflict at MS is their usual one: the conflict between what they say and what they do. This conflict is always found where there is a total lack of ethics. You'll find it in every liar you meet.
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Which makes this job a trap. "Linux and Open Office Compete Lead, US Subsidiary (CSI Lead)" is supposed to change perceptions of Microsoft in the open source ecosystem. But it's an impossible task because every slight misstep will put them back at zero. While part of the company wants to do the right thing, the other part is tethered to its old ways, and can't be moved.
Do a good thing like CodePlex, then essentially forget about it (or intentionally let it drop) and you have a net NEGATIVE on the percept
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Take .NET for example -- it is a miserable failure that they won't let die.
Uhm, I'd seriously love to see your metric by which .Net is a miserable failure - comments like that just make you look like a fanboi lunatic.
hey claimed they would use it exclusively going forward and have they? Nope. The only applications written in it are by 3rd parties and I can't say that they are all great programs to use.
MS are using it - large portions of Exchange 2007 onward, SharePoint 2007 onward, Windows 2008 onward, and other of their business apps are built in .Net, and have rich .Net interfaces - they never said they would solely use .Net on an ongoing basis, but they are using it to a great extent, you are just choosing not to see it.
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.Net miserable failure? stopped reading right there..
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Take .NET for example -- it is a miserable failure that they won't let die."
WTF? So creating a platform in the top 5 of the most popular development platforms (Java, C/C++ and PHP being the only that compete with .NET's popularity) is somehow a failure?
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If you think .net is a failure, I suggest you look at the replacement statistics compared to Java and talk to a few developers. .Net has made my life much easier. That's all I need to know.
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Microsoft is a company that cannot "let go" of anything. Take .NET for example -- it is a miserable failure that they won't let die.
A few web sites that use .NET technology:
Costco - http://www.costco.com/ [costco.com]
Crate & Barrel - http://www.crateandbarrel.com/ [crateandbarrel.com]
Home Shopping Network - http://www.hsn.com/ [hsn.com]
Buy.com - http://www.buy.com/ [buy.com]
Dell - http://www.dell.com/ [dell.com]
Nasdaq - http://www.nasdaq.com/ [nasdaq.com]
Virgin - http://www.virgin.com/ [virgin.com]
7-Eleven - http://www.7-eleven.com/ [7-eleven.com]
Carnival Cruise Lines - http://www.carnival.com/ [carnival.com]
L'Oreal - http://www.loreal.com/ [loreal.com]
Remax - http://www.remax.com/ [remax.com]
Monster Jobs - http://www.monster.com/ [monster.com]
USA Today - http://www.usatoday.com/ [usatoday.com]
ComputerJo
Ah that list is getting old (Score:2)
Perfume companies and some real big MS puppets who can't even function if Windows stopped working tomorrow. That is the best you got? And is that some template in some PR company we have to read even single fscking time .NET is critised?
They use .NET since if MS goes real mad at them, they can render millions of dell laptops useless tomorrow with a wrong windows update. All they would have to say is "ooops". Dell uses Windows only framework while their 99% of end user products runs Windows only... What a da
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Yea, I forgot to take them today (Score:2)
Is it all you got? Are we really supposed to be impressed with whatever junk Loreal uses? Should I really stay silent when I notice same idiot under different name posts the exact same post to .NET/Mono stories?
Number 1 MS puppet Dell uses .NET at their servers, wow! I should be impressed or I need my pills right?
As your signature has OS X mentioned, may I ask where the hell is .NET 3.5SP1 for OS X? Where is the XCode plugin? We don't have "rms" or open source fanatics right? So, where are them?
Loreal uses
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Microsoft is a company that cannot "let go" of anything. Take .NET for example -- it is a miserable failure that they won't let die.
Be more specific. What about it is a failure? Definitely not the adoption rates, at least.
The only applications written in it are by 3rd parties ...
Visual Studio and Expression Blend beg to differ.
For older apps, of course they aren't being rewritten in .NET from scratch. Do you seriously expect to throw away millions of lines of existing, working, debugged and tested C++ code and rewrite it all in .NET just for the sake of it? There's no business case in that... what happens, rather, is that new features are written in .NET, where architecture permits it, and whe
A PR Stunt (Score:2)
That's all it was in the first place, and when it didn't get them as much love as they expected, it was forgot about.
It's Microsoft after all .. (Score:2, Informative)
i mean come on :)) you didnt take them seriously now did you ?
Happy new year :)
Ric
The Bridge to Nowhere... (Score:2)
I'm impressed. Someone actually found a way to provide a link for an announcement that was not made.
This is a classic.... (Score:2)
This is a classic example of what happens when you let Marketing lead Development. FAIL.
It fails because there is SF, Google Code etc. (Score:2)
There are several successful open source windows code at sourceforge and as far as I have seen, the "trendy" types or the people hating SF for some other reason moved to Google code and github.
MS fails again since they try to re-invent a working thing with very shadowy, untrusted and despised people at lead. I know several _windows_ developers who won't touch anything with some people at Codeplex mentioned.
On the other hand, some people at MS are clever so they advertise at SF site, including mailing list s
Be careful (Score:2, Interesting)
Fast forward to today: Windows 7 Home edition has had the ability to join domains REMOVED (this was available back with Win 95 through XP). A new networking capability, HomeGroup is available. HomeGroups can only have Windows 7 members. Windows XP, Macintoshes, even Windows Vista, need not apply. In short, rather than implement a cheap (fre
How's this a story? (Score:2)