MS: Use the Source, Luke! 480
McSpew writes: "The WSJ (via MSNBC) has an article about Microsoft's upcoming push to get universities to use .NET code in programming courses. Their code-sharing initiative is all about winning hearts-and-minds at the university level, where Linux and open-source rule the day. The article does a good job of explaining the issues and why MS may yet fail in spite of their push. I wish the article had discussed the reverse-engineering issues of needing 'virgins' who have never seen the product being reverse-engineered and how MS's newly broad distribution of its code makes finding virgins much more difficult."
How hard can finding virgins be? (Score:5, Funny)
--riney
Code, or free XBOX? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Code, or free XBOX? (Score:3, Funny)
College seems like a fun [mit.edu] place.
I saw the push... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's one thing if a school jumps on board with this, but for the love of pudding, please mention there are other things out there, and what is sometimes just a teaching tool isn't always something for use in industry.
Re:I saw the push... (Score:2)
I guess you won't be using GNOME anytime soon?
Re:I saw the push... (Score:2)
Re:I saw the push... (Score:2, Interesting)
It also seemed to me that MS encourges using the style for C, C++, VB, Access and FoxPro. Which is to say that MS makes some decent tools, but it scares me that people are using them to learn to program. After all, programming is more about logic, structure, and use, rather than which menu puts a button on the screen.
Re:I saw the push... (Score:2)
Also, any decent programmer shouldn't have to worry about what language is being used. While Win32 may be more cumbersome when you write a GUI, all the ideas should be fundamentally the same. Besides, the backend code tends to be the stuff that needs fine-tuning, and that is usually more or less language independent: the important level there is the algorithms used.
Re:I saw the push... (Score:2)
/Brian
What's interesting... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Say what you will about them, but I've always found MSNBC to be QUITE impartial when it comes to reporting on Microsoft. And believe me... whenever I read Microsoft stories on MSNBC, I always have my eyes wide open for signs of bias. Haven't found it yet though- I must say they've done a damn good job in the articles I've seen.
Re:What's interesting... (Score:2)
Non-compete (Score:3, Funny)
Here is your diploma and FYI, M$ owns all of your future work.
Re:Non-compete (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Non-compete (Score:2)
Re:Non-compete (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhh... no (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, I used Unix (not Linux) in programming courses when I was in college, but most colleges now-a-days use Win2K labs and are phasing out their Unix labs (same programming courses in my college are using Visual Studio's version of C++).
Sorry to burst your bubble, but lately Linux and open source aren't "ruling" at the university level.
Re:Uhh... no (Score:4, Interesting)
The room we dream of is some sort of lab where the kids would be allowed to play around with OSes and play with hacking tools - something not allowed to touch our unniversity network, so we'd like to go disjoint.
Re:Uhh... no (Score:2)
You misunderstand (Score:5, Insightful)
85%: Microsoft Word (Sure beats tex for the average student)
15%: Telnet to the *nix server to code.
5%: Using in VB for their IS course in GUI design.
They still keep *nix labs for the serious geeks, and they always have SGI labs for the graphics stuff. Occassionally Macs. But the Pcs are there to fill the gap of cheap, nearly disposable clients. The real R&D is still on *nix.
Re:You misunderstand (Score:3, Funny)
85%: Microsoft Word (Sure beats tex for the average student)
15%: Telnet to the *nix server to code.
5%: Using in VB for their IS course in GUI design.
University students giving 105%?! Are the seas boiling over?
Re:You misunderstand (Score:2)
I'm surprised it's not higher. I would think that more than 25% of the coders use Word as well.
I've had courses where I was required to submit papers, having used Word to create them.
The usefulness of these figures reminds me of a Monty Python skit:
Re:You misunderstand (Score:2)
Most of the unix machines at my school were actually PCs running FreeBSD or Linux, which have the advanatage of being very cheap to put in the lab. The other Unix machines were DEC Alphas, but they were old, slow, and crusty.
Still, this is about using the right tool for the job. TeX isn't a particulary good choice for those CS students writing small papers for the Philosophy course, and VC++ is still pretty expensive in the bookstore, and it's hard to get a VC++ project to compile under GCC (incompatable makefiles for one), which may cost you your grade when the TA can't get your program to compile on his Linux box to grade it.
So true. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Having tried to do some homework for advanced classes on the Win2k workstations in the computer labs, I can only agree. . . with the minimal access student accounts get on the workstations, activities as simple as getting third-party libraries to work sometimes have their difficulty ratings upgraded from "routine task" to "black art."
Uhh... no (and yes) (Score:2)
But the CS lab has a bunch of sun workstations. All courses other than the freshman C++ and elemantary Data Structures course require use of those machines. Upper level OS courses require linux on the student's home machine so that they can do their own kernel hacking. The research labs in the CS dept all have Linux (and other open OS's) running somewhere, too.
Re:Uhh... no (Score:5, Funny)
Mind you, I had no trouble under g++. My prof, an emacs junkie, later reversed the grading decision.
Re:Uhh... no (Score:3, Insightful)
CS graduate students and even "professors" for lower-level programming classes often don't know what the hell they are doing anyway. My professors for both Java 1 and Java 2 were like this, and it's not like I go to a small university (I go to Oklahoma State).
Re:Uhh... no (Score:2)
Re:Uhh... no (Score:3, Funny)
-Erik
Re:Uhh... no (Score:5, Insightful)
The "bad guy" in this case is usually non-cs management who think theyre doing the student a favour while actually ruining the possibility for the student to receive a solid academic education.
One thing that would be valuable to me would be a directory that lists all universities that do windows only training in their computer science classes. This would be efficient for me as I could redirect these applicants to the round filing cabinet under my desk without having to waste my time reading their cvs.
/m
Re:Uhh... no (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll second that. My university [iit.edu] was a hodgepodge of technologies, but almost all lab computers were NT boxen and the compiler of choice in the low-level courses was VC++. As an instructor of some of the 100-level courses there, however, I can attest that nobody was learning MS-specific stuff (like MFC) in those courses, but the technology was there.
You may not want to believe this, but most students are looking for the skills/terminology that will get them the most coin, not necessarily the ones that are the "purest" or "most interesting," from either a theoretical or aesthetic standpoint.
Note that I'm not condoning any of the above. I couldn't wait to get out of a university that presented such a confused picture to its faculty and students.)
Re:Uhh... no; more data (Score:2, Interesting)
There's a Solaris cluster in the basement of our building, and an MS NT lab; four out of every five times I walk down that corridor, the NT lab is empty. The Solaris cluster is never empty.
Re:Uhh... no (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a sad, but true phenomenon. And the root cause of it is not anything that Microsoft did-- it's the takeoff of Java. This is particularly ironic, because many of the Unix machines being tossed were made by Sun.
The strange thing about the Windows migration is that it's not necessary, unnecessarily expensive, and probably counterproductive. Installing Windows partititions in labs provides little benefit to students, whether they're programming in Java or C/C++. What it does allow for is a whole lot more gaming. It costs a lot more to pay for those Windows licenses (or, at least, Windows development tools), and in the end you graduate a class of students who never get comfortable with a shell, with C, or with many Open Source projects (which are a great way to develop programming chops).
None of thost last things need be required as part of a CS education, but they make a major difference in your skill level by the time you get out of school. Being steeped in Linux/BSD, C and X-Windows added a lot to my education.
Re:Uhh... no (Score:3, Informative)
1) Haven't used xemacs enough to form an opinion.
2) MSVC++ is better than either (as an IDE). It comes with a built in debugger, a class browser, and little knickknacks like color formatting. To imply otherwise is like implying that Linux is a better desktop for endusers.
3) FORTRAN is better than C in non-text handling situations and in performance. A math oriented problem coded in FORTRAN by a sharp programmer will blow away a similar coded C program. (This is because of C's overhead, and math libraries in FORTRAN benefit from 50+ years of fine tuning.) It sounds like she will still be a better programmer than you.
Re:Uhh... no (Score:3, Informative)
Something things MSVC++ doesn't have that Emacs does:
1) Keyboard macros - anything can be assigned to a keyboard macro and macros can be executed n number of times. I used to work with a traditional IDE and I cannot even begin to tell you how much time this saves. This is usually the thing that makes people love Emacs.
Tools -> Record Quick Macro
Tools -> Play Quick Macro
That gives you simple ones. They can be assigned to specific keys using Tools -> Customize...
You can also write your own macros in script - which can do a lot more than the keyboard ones.
You can also write your own add-in tools (in any language you care to use) that plug into the IDE and allow you to customize it at such a level that you can do *ANYTHING* with it.
2) Built in commands for navigating the source by statements or keywords. This lets me write really advanced macros that can say skip five parameters in a function and then do something.
This isn't in there that I can see; but I'm certain that you could write a macro to do it. Certainly, you can use the source browser to walk through it instead.
3) Regular expression searching.
What kind of crack are you smoking? This is built into BOTH the *STANDARD* Find box and the Find In Files box. Check the "Regular Expression" checkbox, and hey presto - regexp searches.
4) Fully customizable via LISP. There are incredibly things that can be done with LISP. We have commenting standards at my work and someone just wrote a quick LISP script that inserts the proper comments in all the right places in a C/C++ source file.
Fully customizable via VBScript, C++, C, Visual Basic, PERL, Java, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. Just write an addin. Or any other script.
Sheesh.
Simon
Re:Uhh... no (Score:2, Informative)
And now, I don't want to hear that "I'm at the console" crap. I'm sure you can find a computer with a web browser in the vicinity.
Re:Uhh... no (Score:2)
Why would I care what language is or is not being taught in the curriculum? When I was in university, I was taught Fortran and Pascal in my first year. I was expected to learn any other languages needed for my subsequent courses, which included C, APL and Lisp. At that time, object oriented programming wasn't even part of the curriculum.
A good developer can learn new languages quickly; in fact, I wouldn't feel comfortable hiring a developer who felt that he needed formal training in a language in order to learn it.
Today, I do most of my programming in C++ and Perl, languages that I had no exposure to in university, and I haven't touched Fortran or Pascal since 1987. None of my employers have every seriously thought that I'm not qualified just because I didn't learn those languages in university.
they may win... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Microsoft has it.
You know... (Score:2, Funny)
;-D
linux and open source rule the universities? (Score:5, Interesting)
While I can agree that many students (especially comp-sci majors) do use and appreciate open source (specifically linux, but also freebsd) products, the departments themselves typically do not.
At my college, and three others I have visited, the departments themselves prefer Sun servers running solaris. This is typically for three reasons:
True, students may like linux. But a vast majority of their coursework is still being done on solaris.
Re:linux and open source rule the universities? (Score:2)
Sun offers universities very favourable pricing on hardware and software. Sure, Linux is free, but Sun hardware rocks and Solaris is quite stable and robust. Sun has a rock-solid hold on the academic (at least Comp. Sci) environment as a result.
Re:linux and open source rule the universities? (Score:2)
But I don't think the "Hearts and Minds" bit is for normal coursework, at least at the underclassmen level. For your beginning "this is how you program" level of work there's no need to look at the source code of a compiler/runtime environment.
What I think MS are going for is more upstream. Graduate level R&D type stuff. That's where having access to source is much more important. Someone doing research on new P2P schema / compiler theory / networking protocols are much more important *in terms of R&D* than someone with a bachelors in CS who's going to grind out in house apps for some company.
Street cred... (Score:5, Funny)
Pat
Re:Street cred... (Score:4, Funny)
No... my father came away better informed about drugs (and for that matter sex) after he talked to me. Somehow I don't think MS will take to things as easy.
Re:Street cred... (Score:2)
Microsoft trying to talk to students about "the source" is like your dad wanting to "rap" with you about drugs.
Hmm, what about those of us who have dads who design drugs [merck.com]?
Re:Street cred... (Score:2)
My two cents... (Score:4, Interesting)
First, in what course exactly would an instructor want to say "Well, here's a whole bunch of code from a commercial (or any) project. Study it." I agree it's good to have an example around for some things, but if MS thinks the Universities are going to create a course like "The .NET Code", they're dreaming.
Second, if I did want a large code example, I'd want a good example. I'd want to be able to point to almost any part of the code and say "That's the right way to do it." I've never seen any MS code, but I'm going to idly speculate that you couldn't do that with it. Probably MS isn't shooting for the .NET code being used as a cautionary tale.
Re:My two cents... (Score:2)
D
Re:My two cents... (Score:2)
uh, what about courses in Software Maintenance and Reverse Engineering?
Non-compete clause? (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose I enroll in one of those programs where the exposure to
The use of "sponsored" material in classes has always been dangerous, but when it can influence where you can or can't work after you graduate, it's just plain Not a Good Idea (tm).
Modify and suggest improvements? (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: Microsoft hopes professors and students will improve their work, so it can be sold back to them at a grossly inflated price.
Why only in programming courses? (Score:3, Insightful)
Three reasons:
1) Control over how the universities use the code. Universities are notoriously underfunded, so any help coming their way from a company like MS is a godsend. I'd love to see the restrictions placed on any code developped in university labs on
2) Good PR. MS looks like a saint for helping out the struggling education system.
3) The student programmer is in just the right stage to be brainwashed into thinking
Re:Why only in programming courses? (Score:2)
But you're reading it just right- the schools want the money. The students just learn what they're taught, they generally don't care what it is, so long as it's something..
Politics unfortunately run many parts of the world that they shouldn't, and academia is one of them. Like it or not, MS is good at politicking.. they'll do OK at least with this initiative of theirs. Hopefully that's all the better they do, but I can see them getting a lot of people out of this with just a little effort. And their usual pack of lawyers..
.
"Uh, boss? All the new coders hate us." (Score:2, Interesting)
It is a shame that it will be harder to find people who have no experience with the
-il cylic
Finding virgins in a CS curriculum is hard? (Score:2)
- A.P.
We had a name for CS students that didnt like UNIX (Score:4, Funny)
Re:We had a name for CS students that didnt like U (Score:2, Interesting)
Its a difference between people who just want to know how to use something vs the people that want to understand it. A shame they don't realize that if they understand how it works, they won't have any trouble using it, or anything like it, ever again.
Re:We had a name for CS students that didnt like U (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's worse than that. It's the difference between people who want a certificate to show a prospective employer that *says* they know how to use something versus the people that want to understand it.
Chris Mattern
Differences in schools (Score:5, Insightful)
A college or university is not, nor should be a place where flavor of the day propritary platform should be taught. The focus of a college should be to give the student a broad enough understanding of the basic workings of programming and computers that the graduate can have enough background to quickly adapt to any platform.
If you want to focus on something like
===
Re:Differences in schools (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know about anyone else here, but I don't think Microsoft is exactly a flash-in-the-pan, flavor-of-the-day, fad kind of beast. Judging by their actions and perseverance over the past decades, they appear to be as strong as ever, and as strong as anyone could expect to be. Seeing as people going to college are probably planning to apply for a job in the industry corresponding to their major, they should learn the operating system used by the majority of companies. And by majority, I really mean majority, don't get confused and put yourself in that category, before remembering which side of the 95% barrier you are on.
Re:Differences in schools (Score:2, Interesting)
"basics" they are expected to learn all the other necessary languages they'll need by themselves (C, C++, Java etc.).
At Harvard, where I got my CS degree, we learned C++ (an imperative language) and LISP (a functional language). Everything else was theory.
MIT just gets straight to the point and only teaches the functional language, because that is *pure* CS. After thinking about it, I realized that this was the way to go. You can teach someone how to use some piece of technology which may be obsolete soon, or you can teach them how to think.
For people who are really majoring in Computer Science, it shouldn't be about "programming languages" but Computer Science - that is computability, algorithms, data structures, operating systems, electronics, E&M physics, math,
foundations of networks, graphics, compilers, databases, cryptography etc. Any decent CS major will pick up the rest himself.
Damn, I should have gone to MIT...
Re:Differences in schools (Score:5, Insightful)
I fully agree. But
Gotta love reporters who do research... (Score:2)
Microsoft historically has been extremely protective of its intellectual property and has vehemently opposed some tenets of the open-source movement. It has particularly attacked the "general public license"
(emphasis added by me)
I suppose in an article discussing m$ and open source, it was hardly necessary to check the acronyms out first. I assume it passed the proof readers as well. It just goes to show that dilignce is alive and well in the popular press today!
Re:Gotta love reporters who do research... (Score:2)
It's the GPL, not the GGPL though it might more properly be called the GNU GPL. But calling the GPL the "General Public License" is just fine, regardless.
Obligatory MS Paranoia (Score:5, Interesting)
MS Lawyer: "What? Product X functions like MS Y.NET? Obviously you had access to our copyrighted source code!"
Open Source Group: "WTF are you talking about?"
MS Lawyer: "Programmer Joe Collegekid over there, he saw our source in his college class. He obviously used it. Stop producing your software, or you'll lose everything you own! Oh, and give it to use, because we own all the copyrights on it!"
Might this backfire in the long run... (Score:4, Informative)
At least this is the conspiracy theory, which may have some merit.
But look at the flip side... When you start sharing a "secret" that widely, doesn't it start looking like mis-using the work "Kleenex" instead of "Kleenex-brand facial tissue"? The Kleenex trademark was lost that way, and the Windows trademark appears to be lost.
Unless every CS course begins with a legal session, explaining how, "This stuff is *secret*, and will compromise your capability to work on any project Microsoft doesn't like in the future, and they can sue you @$$es off because you've seen it," this looks like a recipe to lose the license terms.
I was once involved in a proprietary memory chip design my company purchased for us to base our design on. Very early on, the lawyers brought the whole team into a room and read the riot act to us, explaining what we could and could not do, based on the "pollution" of looking at that design.
There was also a nifty term called "residual knowledge" that applied then, and applies now.
the .NET CLI sourcecode is released today (Score:3, Informative)
More Information: Taken From My K5 Submission (Score:5, Informative)
Features
- An implementation of the runtime for the Common Language Infrastructure (ECMA-335) that builds and runs on Windows XP and FreeBSD
- Compilers that work with the Shared Source CLI for C# (ECMA-334) and JScript
- Development tools for working with the Shared Source CLI such as assembler/disassemblers (ilasm, ildasm), a debugger (cordbg), metadata introspection (metainfo), and other utilities
- The Platform Adaptation Layer (PAL) used to port the Shared Source CLI from Windows XP to FreeBSD
- Build environment tools (nmake, build, and others)
- Documentation for the implementation
- Test suites used to verify the implementation
[This is mostly cut & paste from the MSDN page]A few semi-interesting threads have started about this on K5 including this one [kuro5hin.org] and this one [kuro5hin.org].
Multiple Languages (Score:2)
Take one real computer scientist, give them a computer with a compiler, a book on the real programming language they need to use, and a day, and they will be coding up non-trivial programs no problem. C/C++, Java, BASIC, Perl, Cobol, Fortran, APL, LISP, whatever. It shouldn't take a real computer scientist or computers science student too long to adjust and move on.
The theory of programming computers transends the language used.
What an outright lie! (Score:2)
Then why are you giving away source code? Isn't it that you want students to learn, and become hooked on, MS products? Isn't this just another attempt to extend the MS monopoly on operating systems? Do you really expect that college students will believe that Microsoft, the company that has exploited the American consumer and been found guilty of felonies, has suddenly become altruistic?
What strikes me about Microsoft is that they really have no clue! Giving away source code is not going to curry favor with college students who are given to idealism. They can see through the hype. They would rather contribute to society at large than become pawns of Corporate America.
Wake up Microsoft! No one with a conscience wants to help you extend your monopoly - we in IT are tired of seeing our ideas and talents used to bully ordinary people into spending inordinate amounts of money for inferior products. We want to work for positive change in society, and you aren't it...
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
In short, it's marketing, and good marketing in that the misdirection is well-concealed. But then, they know that the money guards in most companies respond better to pretty picutres and unsubstantiated graphs rather than real-world tests.
This newest .NET push is simply more of the same. At last, the people who know technology are being allowed to have some say in purchasing decisions (in my company anyway), and they're not deciding on MS as much. So, MS has to get to the people who know, now. Sadly, their reputation is so tarnished with developers and tech-savvy people, they have to catch them young, before the truth gets out.
Where is .NET anyway? Anyone using it in a production environment? Last I heard, it was pushed back because of security concerns. Again.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What is .NET? Arstechnica tells you. (Score:2, Informative)
textbooks and useful half-life (Score:2, Insightful)
The main problem I see is that a given MS buzzword (.NET now, was DCOM, COM+, COM, OLE, blah blah blah) tends to have a 12 month or less half-life. Professors aren't going to like to have use modify a course heavily every time they teach it.
Vendor Lies... (Score:4, Funny)
This definitely belongs in the Most Outrageous Vendor Lie Ever Told? [slashdot.org] article
What's the difference? (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, source access to the Java2 platform under the SCSL has onerous "contamination provisions" and I think using it in a computer science course is irresponsible because it may contaminate students for the rest of their professional lives.
What we really need is better open source, non-proprietary implementations of either language that colleges can use. These then give students access to tools they can use after they graduate wherever they work, and they can work with the full source code without selling their souls. And, besides, colleges shouldn't focus so much on just one language anyway.
So what. (Score:3, Insightful)
CS is not about tools, it's about concept and design and problem solving. Any good CS major knows how to develop software independant from any specific language. So if they want to learn about software using MS stuff, then go right ahead.
Just because students aren't forced to use GCC is not a bad thing.
MS misunderstands the university chain of command (Score:5, Funny)
Whereupon the five guys in the basement of the engineering building (all campuses have such a building, with such a basement, with five slashdot readers in it - you know who you are) who actually maintain the campus computers say, depending on the rank of the personage and other political concerns-
1) "Run it by the chair of the department" (who is a crank with a zany axe to grind, 100% guaranteed.) Surprisingly, this works even if it has been run by the chair of the department three times already.
2) "Sir, we would start if we could, but these orders haven't been approved yet." (Have him sign some stuff, making the pompous blowhard think things will be "expedited" with his signature, then throw them away.) This is always the response if the prof. or admin. has officious looking documents with him.
3) "Fuck you, Dan." At a public university.
Regardless of what these five guys SAY, they DO the following set of things: {}.
And the students keep working on SPARCs, b/c the faculty don't have the wherewithal to push through an upgrade of the computers actually used for instruction.
The people that this
Just my $0.02 US ($3.00 Canadian)
A Caveat. (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to make a difference while you're in college? Convert two or three business/accounting/marketing majors to Linux. Set them up, provide free support, make them comfortable. Keep up said support. Recruit your geek friends to do the same. Do for the future stuffed shirts what Microsoft does for the present stuffed shirts. If and only if this is possible(no idea if it is) will it be possible for Linux to make REAL progress in infiltrating Microsoft's home world....the working world.
Takeover of engineering education. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Public domain success story (Score:2)
What has made Matlab so entrenched and valuable is the network effect: some people are using it, and therefore other people have to use it, too. This does demonstrate something about the "commercial viability" of free software: it can be highly profitable to establish a standard by giving away free software and eventually making the project proprietary and start charging huge amounts of money for it. That's a lesson everybody should learn--before they start using "free" software that is somehow enmeshed with commercial interests or comes with non open-source compliant licenses.
All your homework are belong to us. (Score:2)
At the very least I imagine that students would be bound to a non-disclosure agreement.
The very language of computer science becomes compromised when you let MS in the classroom.
MS Software Distribution (Score:2)
Everybody loves the idea of free office, but it's amazing how people can be so naive to think that MS is doing this as a public service(well I guess it is a state University). It's also amazing how many people gobble up every thing they can get their hands on, including VStudio.net, probably only 1/4 of those ever end up getting any use.
As far as student perceptions go, the CSE people tend to favor *NIX and open standards while the MIS & IST people tend to favor MS. There are quite a few exceptions; there is a sizable CSE element that are ardent MS fans. Especially those kids who go to Redmond for an internship and succumb to groupthink and come back ranting like Hitler youth. After talking to few MS interns, it's almost as if the employee's believe the company's PR. My favorite quote was in this week's eweek:
"Microsoft has always had a focus on security" -- Steve Lipner Director of MS Security Assurance
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
Monsanto have announced a new series of videos for Biology undergraduates. Called "The ethics of genetic engineering", the series examines subjects such as how having patented gene sequences allows companies like Monsanto to help feed starving children in the Third World.
Disney-trained lecturers will be visiting art faculties all over the country in the coming weeks. The lecturers will be giving fun and thought provoking demonstrations about how to draw Disney-style characters. Before attending the lectures, students will have to sign a contract which stipulates that any Disney-style characters they draw in the future will be automatically copyright of Disney Corporation. They will also be encouraged to send any characters they draw directly to Disney, and not to show them to anyone else.
Environmental Studies students are all to receive a free study pack from ChevronTexaco Corporation. The study pack includes a text book "The Truth About Global Warming", as well as a t-shirt, stickers, felt pens, a colouring pad and a fridge magnet.
NOOOO! (Score:4, Funny)
I have a hard enough time with this as it is. Damn you Microsoft! DAMN YOU!!!!!
C programming 101 (Score:5, Funny)
int main()
{
printf("Hello, Microsoft EULA.\n");
return 1;
}
Open source will hold out in class (Score:2, Interesting)
But not only is both the department and university deeply rooted in Unix (especially for Comp classes), we're already incorporating Open Source directly in the curriculum. In a software engineering course I'm in right now, we're using Sourceforge to develop DrJava [sourceforge.net], a GPL'd Java development environment that is particularly useful for teaching beginners. We're seeing that open source and extreme programming (complete unit tests, rapid releases, etc) are a very effective approach towards building software-- and Microsoft isn't about to woo us away from that with money. I expect that any use of .NET here (if there is any) will be
strictly complimentary to our existing approaches.
Mono (Score:5, Informative)
Get your bits now!
Miguel
Shared Source License (Score:4, Informative)
From my brief review, it appears that they are primarily concerned with someone selling their code and patent problems. No mention of the GPL, although obviously several provisions in here are incompatible with any decent open source license.
So here it is:
MICROSOFT SHARED SOURCE CLI, C#, AND JSCRIPT LICENSE
This License governs use of the accompanying Software, and your use of the Software constitutes acceptance of this license.
You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, subject to the restrictions in this license. Some purposes which can be non-commercial are teaching, academic research, and personal experimentation. You may also distribute this Software with books or other teaching materials, or publish the Software on websites, that are intended to teach the use of the Software.
You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for commercial purposes. Examples of commercial purposes would be running business operations, licensing, leasing, or selling the Software, or distributing the Software for use with commercial products.
You may modify this Software and distribute the modified Software for non-commercial purposes, however, you may not grant rights to the Software or derivative works that are broader than those provided by this License. For example, you may not distribute modifications of the Software under terms that would permit commercial use, or under terms that purport to require the Software or derivative works to be sublicensed to others.
You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information.
In return, we simply require that you agree:
1. Not to remove any copyright or other notices from the Software.
2. That if you distribute the Software in source or object form, you will include a verbatim copy of this license.
3. That if you distribute derivative works of the Software in source code form you do so only under a license that includes all of the provisions of this License, and if you distribute derivative works of the Software solely in object form you do so only under a license that complies with this License.
4. That if you have modified the Software or created derivative works, and distribute such modifications or derivative works, you will cause the modified files to carry prominent notices so that recipients know that they are not receiving the original Software. Such notices must state: (i) that you have changed the Software; and (ii) the date of any changes.
5. THAT THE SOFTWARE COMES "AS IS", WITH NO WARRANTIES. THIS MEANS NO EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WARRANTY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR ANY WARRANTY OF TITLE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. ALSO, YOU MUST PASS THIS DISCLAIMER ON WHENEVER YOU DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE OR DERIVATIVE WORKS.
6. THAT MICROSOFT WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES RELATED TO THE SOFTWARE OR THIS LICENSE, INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT THE LAW PERMITS, NO MATTER WHAT LEGAL THEORY IT IS BASED ON. ALSO, YOU MUST PASS THIS LIMITATION OF LIABILITY ON WHENEVER YOU DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE OR DERIVATIVE WORKS.
7. That if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software or anyone's use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically.
8. That your rights under the License end automatically if you breach it in any way.
9. Microsoft reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this license.
Re:Shared Source License (Score:3, Interesting)
That if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software or anyone's use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically.
What does that mean, exactly? So if I create a modified version, patent the modification, Microsoft infringes my patent, I sue Microsoft, then I lose my right to use the software in the first place, therefore... What? Any lawyers out there can interpret this?
Re: License - what's up with this? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would focus on the "derivative works" provisions, which share some of the characteristics MS has characterized as "viral" in the GPL. Query what happens if in a few years, MS files a series of lawsuits claiming that various developers improperly created a "derivative work" of the shared source, without giving proper attribution to MS. Although it would be hard to prove that a particular individual had seen the code, given the uncontrolled access, note that it would be equally difficult for the individual to prove s/he had not seen the code. And MS would likely interpret the "derivative" language along the lines of the "one click ordering" and "hyperlinking" patent holders, claiming that anything using a distributed model was derivative of theirs. So in order to fend off the lawsuit, the developer would have to launch legal attacks on the "viral" part of the license: the derivative works definition is too broad and vague, this similar concept isn't really derivative, free public distribution negates the contractual nature of a license, etc. That is, the developer would have to make the very sort of arguments that MS has publicly proposed against the GPL.
Am I just too too paranoid, or is this rather a clever no-lose situation MS has created? If MS wins one of these lawsuits, it gets to tie up Jane Developer's project for years and then stick its name on it. But if it loses, the loss establishes a legal precedent that will help it launch future attacks on the GPL, the success of which attacks could possibly allow MS to thwart open source projects. And MS accomplishes this with at least superficial protection from accusations that it is wielding improper monopoly power - how can licensing provisions modeled on the GPL be monopolistic? And how can anyone criticize poor MS for lawsuits arising from the open release of their source code, when that's exactly the antitrust punishment the states were seeking?
I'm sure there are a lot more scenarios to explore here, and I don't purport to be a great legal expert on the GPL so I defer to anyone who is. But in any event, I hope that schools do not widely succumb to this until the implications have been thoroughly considered.
OSS & The Power of Organization (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft could win it.
Imagine the software world as a big ocean. OSS is like coral. It's cooperative, works for the common good, shares its resources to build a community. As a result, a structure is built for the good of all.
Microsoft appears as waves in that ocean. None of these waves, paradoxically, are good for MS, the wave generator. Sometimes the waves are small and help to move the OSS coral's spores along to form other colonies (apps). In the case of the tidal wave known as
A wave is as strong as its organization. Microsoft has succeeded (and unjustly much of the time, but that's another topic) because it is very organized at a corporate level and can utilize resources that other groups, particularly disorganized cooperatives such as OSS groups, find hard to counter.
OSS is mostly organized at the software level, writing code. But code writing doesn't "sell" the work to the business--marketing does. And that's the front where Microsoft is working. Microsoft thinks, "Why debate the facts where we can just act like the 800-pound gorilla and flood the schools with free stuff to boister interest?"
Unfortunately, no one group or person appears to speak for OSS. Without a bona fide, consolidated group that fights MS at whatever level it wants to move to,
The OSS/MS fight is akin to hand-to-hand combat vs. carpetbombing. OSS can't fight without a general--an organized group that can move to counter MS and use its powers of hacking virtually ANYTHING into compliance or existence for UNIX systems without fee.
What .NET does so wrong (Score:2, Flamebait)
2. It's a way to trap everyone into their code. If you start using
3. "It's Microsoft, so it's Evil" (TM). They want everyone to use it, so it must be bad. Look at their history of embrace, extend, extinguish. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out it's a Faustian deal, no matter how you do it.
--Mike--
Re:What .NET does so wrong (Score:3, Funny)
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 3,736,589,132 times, shame on gullible consumers sucked in by manipulative marketing.
.NET is free!! (Score:2)
--Mike--
Staying in the stone age (Circa 1998) (Score:2)
We have yet to find a single file from any of our customers that requires a newer version to open, which tells me that Office97 is the defacto standard for file exchange, and will be for a VERY long time.
You can get a legitimate copy of NT4 with 10 client licenses for $20.00 or so, and it's not hard to find Exchange 5.5, etc. Office 97, etc... are all cheap now. 8)
The future is not Linux, nor is it XP, the future is Windows 98SE, Office97 Pro, and NT Server 4.0.
--Mike--
MS-DOS 6.22 (Score:3, Funny)
--Mike--
Re:probably won't happen in the near future (Score:2)
Just about all beaurocratic organizations (and universities are among the top of those) take forever to adopt new technologies and phase out old ones.
Re:A few problems with this ... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's funny. When I was in college [purdue.edu] the idea was to teach us to solve problems using computers in any language. I wrote code in PERL, Java, C/C++, and LISP.
The point of college isn't to learn to program in different languages, but to acquire and hone basic problem solving skills that you can apply to whatever language/tool/solution best fits the bill.
Re:Microsoft Deflowers virgins, More at 11! (Score:3, Funny)