What is Digg?86 Comments
- cybernetic798, on 10/12/2007, -6/+38This article really highlights how poor the quality of stories on Digg has become of late. We take a random blog entry from one of the tens of thousands of MS employees because it mentions open source, and now decide to talk about it as if matters even though it has a 0% chance of turning into something real. Let's stop picking up articles that mention Google or Open Source like slashdot. Reported lame.
- rolosworld, on 10/12/2007, -14/+31I can predict winXP source:
/**
* Billy Code version 3.1
*/
#include
int main(void)
{
Windows myWindows("XP");
while(myWindows.licensed())
{
switch(myWindows.sheduler())
{
case Windows::BSOD:
myWindows.BSOD();
case Windows::TOO_MUCH_FREE_MEM:
myWindows.memEater();
break;
default:
myWindows.randomStuff();
}
myWindows.sendSecretUserReportTo("public@microsoft.com");
}
myWindows.Crash();
return Windows::Miracle;
} - andy2005, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18For all we know, "Microsoft Employee" could mean the office cleaner.
- SanityInAnarchy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19XP is written in Perl?
This changes everything! - jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Windows Vista Open Source Edition = Microsoft going out of business
Still interesting they want to use Open Source sounds in Vista, maybe they will even build ogg support into WMP 11... or so we could hope... - i440, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Actually, you're right. Open source fanatics can keep dreaming on that one.
...Unless ReactOS (www.reactos.com/) makes an unimaginable amount of progress. If it gains any amount of popularity, however, I'm sure Microsoft will be serving them never-ending lawsuits and the like. - rolosworld, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10SanityInAnarchy, Perl? It's suppose to be C++... the #include should be
#include <windows.h> - Celsius032, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11The only problem that I can see with this, is that many families buy the cheapest software they can buy, OS wise. Microsoft would loose a lot of money because the low end PC users wouldn't be buying their software, but instead getting it for free.
- Quactaur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Agreed. It'll never, ever happen. If microsoft open source the basic windows elements, then they've given away the sole two advantages that windows has; driver support and application monopoly. The instant it goes Open source, every OS from linux to OSX will integrate it and GUIs and system security will be the only things seperating operating systems apart to the average consumer. Who is going to buy windows on merit of its visual appearance, it's bundled software or its security?
- JamesWilson, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10You think they would release it under the GPL? HAHAHAHAHAH
More like Shared Source *****.
If linux and windows ever have a baby, I don't want to see the pictures. - i440, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8"a open source Windows sounds interesting but it is something that hard to image with Steve Ballmar as the CEO."
I liked Bill Gates. But Steve Ballmer seriously strikes me as someone who is mentally ill. Did you see him in the "developers" video?
And that fact that he doesn't even let his kids use Google is disgusting. - kalleanka, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10I completely agree.
It's both due to too many people who actually digg uninteresting stories, but also the algorithm that chooses what that shall be displayed on the front page has to be improved.
And oh yeah, I work for MS too. And honestly, that blog has no news value at all.
Sure, it is his personal blog and he has the right to write whatever he wants in it, but why the heck are digg readers interested in that? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7sorry but you display a complete ignorance thats just hard to comprehend.
i'm sure you must be some kind of anti open source troll because you imply to 2 great misconceptions of OSS - that anyone can edit a projects source code and that it's coded by toddlers.
the fact is, youhave to display significant skills and submit many well coded patches to a project before they will give you commit access on any level.
this means no, 13 year olds can't submit patches to any project, and in fact all major projects are mostly written by full time programmers sponsored to do so.
the chance to hack on windows would be fantastic and you would see many innovative idea's and patching being submitted if MS did this. hell i'd love to see them do it with win98. it's only policitcal reasons for not doing with, win98 is no longer being sold so what do they have to lose (or hide for that matter)?
so why don't you run off get a clue then comment. - kevinski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6The blog mentioned a stripped-down version, not something as limited as Basic. I'd be happy if they just open-sourced the kernel and shell, leaving everything else out. What a lot of people who are bitching about the increased risk of vulnerabilities aren't considering is the fact that the extras are what allow these vulnerabilities to become a problem in the first place.
No open-source Internet Explorer, Outlook Express or Windows Media Player? No big loss. - pkulak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Yea, because open source means that the whole world must have CVS write access.
- tweeto, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7It is matter of days until he will get fired
- motang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5ReactOS looks like it is shaping up nicely, although it has a long way to go. But it has come a long way and when it becomes beta will be something look at for sure. But a open source Windows sounds interesting but it is something that hard to image with Steve Ballmar as the CEO.
- Quactaur, on 10/12/2007, -2/+713 year old hackers? Not very well put, but i agree.
As bits of the W2K source code floating around show, windows' features aren't particularly well coded (not the developers to blame, the project is so monolithic with hangovers from 3.1 still in parts of the system, it's inevitable) and its security is not so much like Unix's, which we can use an analogy of a house with locked doors, as a house with hidden doors. Once we can see where those doors are, we can simply stroll in.
Here are some non-functional quotes from the source (i.e. they're comments):
* !!!!!!!IF YOU CHANGE TABS TO SPACES, YOU WILL BE KILLED!!!!!!!
* !!!!!!!!!!!!!!DOING SO ***** THE BUILD PROCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
* CallProc32W is insane. It's a variadic function that uses
* the pascal calling convention. (It probably makes more sense
* when you're stoned.)
// see if this file is loaded by kernel, thus something we don't
// want to f*** with.
//- The following section was added to support 16-bit resource files.
//- It will just convert them to 8-bit files that the Resource Compiler
//- can read.
(...)
//- I'll be the first person to admit that this is an ugly solution, but
//- hey, we're Microsoft :-). 8-2-91 David Marsyla. - holmes101, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Well, windows is instinctively misguided, bloated and far too corrupt. Anything else?
- i440, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Great idea. Then we can watch Microsoft go out of business faster then Enron...
Unfortunately, jer2eydevil88 is right. Open source is simply not a viable option for Microsoft's business model. - Computer_Kid, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10I bet you in 24 hours after it's release, 90% of all the bugs in windows will be removed.
- fairyliquidizer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+31. Release your source code for Windows XP and Office XP under the GPL v 3 ...lets see where that leaves the DRM schemes :)
- daeken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No, einfeldt, this is not what the "open source community" wants, this is what you want.
Here's what the open source community wants:
1. Quality software written using the bazaar methodology and released under open source licenses.
2. Complete freedom with said software, not complete freedom with any software.
3. That the members of said open source community respect other developers' freedom to release under any license they wish.
4. That people stop begging/threatening existing companies to go open source. In most cases it's not practical and just reaks of arrogance by members of the community.
The open source community needs these things, not the agenda which you push. At least I can't fault you for your consistency. - Quactaur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3What would it matter if it was "last gen"? So long as it's based on NT, we can get support for everything Vista has. Think about it, windows 5 and 5.1 are upgrades of NT, and windows "6" (vista) is xp with frilly-er bits. The meat of windows is its APIs and its driver model. With that open source, every single feature of current gen windows can be "backported", remade from scratch or otherwise fixed. Take WMP10 and 11 for example. The sole reason they don't run on W2K is because they're disabled from doing so. Open sourced, you could make W2K identify as XP and get it going. Same applies to an open source windows, which is why it won't happen.
- kubudubudubuntu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3what happened to "linux is not a threat to windows", or is this another "i feel sympathy for Microsoft so ill give them a break on vista" ,. sry im not buying this.
- darkclarity, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6I think there needs to a user quality rating and maybe a digging limit per user. The quality rating can somehow work out if a user's past diggs were any good and then give their vote more or less priority. Not saying I'm a quality user though. ;)
- antdude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3SUre, but MS will never let that happen.
- Yuffie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In other news, Microsoft fires a local employee for recommending an open source version of Windows.
- rolosworld, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2sorry...
#include <iostream>
int main(void)
{
while(1)
switch(1)
{
case 0:
std::cout << "case 0" << std::endl;
break;
default:
std::cout << "default" << std::endl;
}
return 0;
} - smtelegadis, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6There's one in the makings already. An off shot of the WINE project. Called ReactOS?:
http://www.reactos.org/xhtml/en/index.html
Besides the "Stripped Down Version" he's referring to is going under the name " Windows Vista Starter Edition." Why do I know the product line better then a M$ guy? Scary part is he works in Technical support. - elephantdog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Anything to piss of customers is a good thing, for free and open software. If people don't like DRM, they can use Linux or BSD. To everyone complaining about MS, Microsoft is not a democracy- you don't like it shut up and move on.
- panique, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7I'm with you. Reported as LAME.
And in passing, I have to say this is the result of giving "power to the people". The problem is that most people are idiots, and this is the result of idiots having the power to promote a story to the front page. - combatchuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'd bet somebody said the exact same thing when they open sourced Netscape. Netscape's code was so bad, they had to scrap the entire code base and start from scratch. Now imagine that, but 500 times as big, with thousands of developers, over nearly 20 years. No, all the bugs in Windows wouldn't be worked out. In fact, it'd probably stall for quite a few months, maybe years, just so people can clean things up and learn just what the ***** is going on in there.
- fairyliquidizer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There is supposed to be PASCAL code still buried inside Windows. There's code in their that time forgot. Not unless it's all getting removed for Vista but I doubt it. It may be too embarrassing to Open Source it.
- krewemaynard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2they wouldn't go out of business...they'd cripple it, make it nearly useless, not unlike the Starter Edition they offer in developing nations. actually, SE would probably be an upgrade for anything like this.
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6@nyxeroster
With petty insults as your weapon of choice its no wonder people are digging you down.
@Computer_kid
nyxeroster may be a jerk but he did point out that the complexity of a Windows codebase alone would prevent all bugs from being fixed in 24 hours. I am sure that we would see on thing happen in the first 24 hours after Microsofts released Windows source code, the stock would tumble dramatically and people would lose jobs. - zachws, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I disagree. Microsoft isn't 'evil', that's rather simplistic. They are just opportunists following a proven business model. Just because they have cornered the market with an inferior product does not mean they renege free-speech. If they have learned anything from the google boom it is to embrace 'outside' ideas.
- williamdyer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The blog entry is lame, and the author doesn't get it.
What he is suggesting is as lame and ineffective as Sun's previous attempts at making Java and Solaris "open source."
What open source really means is that people can repackage remix and redistribute. Microsoft would never allow that. They don't even allow anyone to do a Windows build to ensure that there are no NSA or law enforcement backdoors in Windows.
Microsoft is stuck being Microsoft. - nickster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What if they did something like this but similar to a red hat model. They would still make money, and most businesses (which I think a majority of there money is) would still purchase licenses of Windows just for the support and the added features.
Microsoft could also make it to where vendors are forced to sell the purchased version of windows. - SanityInAnarchy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If it was a BSD-like license, or something else compatible, this would be really cool to improve Wine with.
This raises some new questions:
1) Is a Wine that can emulate XP perfectly better than Vista?
2) What about copy protection for programs which run on Windows? I know any game that has a Linux port usually has off-the-shelf copy protection on Windows, but not even an attempt on Linux. Just copy the files off your Windows install disk and download the binaries.
3) Would MS actually do this? If they did, it might be a statement about how much better they think Vista is. It would be pretty cocky -- they'd essentially be saying, we don't care about lock-in anymore, our stuff really is better. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Making Windows open source would probably reveal more insecurities than there already is.
- motang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Could be, just have to wait and see how ReactOS will shape up when it's done.
- nathanrobinson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1very good point. MS only edge over other software applications is that they can control what is bundled with their OS, which I would begrudgingly say that 85% of machines use for an OS. Should Windows become open source, they would lose that advantage, and as a result, lose their edge in the market for apps like IE and WMP.
- Gatesophile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If Microsoft makes an Open Source Windows, which would be AWESOME, I'll [insert something crazy here].
- natmaster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@rolosworld
Is that default SUPPOSED to not have a break? I mean, I can understand why they'd want to call memEater for BSOD, but for the default case? (This would also call myWindows.BSOD(); for the default case...which seems even weirder.) - awhiteflame, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Followed by
Kwinbuntu
Xwinbuntu
etc.. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Done? Hah. Look at WINE, is it "done?" They're not at 1.0 yet, and they've been working for over a decade.
Can you ever be done when you are trying to reproduce a constantly evolving software project, especially one as complex and unfathomable in design as Windows? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This may come as a suprise to many in the Linux/Open Source community. Many people at Microsoft probably use Macs and/or Linux at home. Why? Because their jobs at Microsoft are just that, jobs. They aren't lifestyles. They recognize that Microsoft products are the right products for many users. They hold no ill will towards Linux/Open Source users or proponents. If only Linux/Open Source proponents had this same healthy outlook on operating systems.
There are far more Linux Zealots out there than Windows Zealots. I wonder why that is? - unibomber999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1come on, you think that's going to generate enough revenue for them? Right now MS's grip might be slipping a little bit, but they are still hugely profitable. The amount of money they would make selling support contracts compared to the amount they make now off of almost every living human being with an OS pales in comparison. They are going to be changing their business a bit to keep up, but I think that's just in applications, not the OS market. There's no reason to give up a monopoly unless a government prohibits it.
- combatchuck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There's a WMP 11? I stopped checking for updates after I found Media Player Classic.
-
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