What is Digg?122 Comments
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -18/+89Except their license has at least two identified flaws that will keep their license from ever becoming certified. So no, Microsoft isn't going Open Source, they're trolling for media coverage. The instant anyone hears "Microsoft going Open Source" is instant media buzz, even if it's a lie.
- birdadderley, on 10/10/2007, -4/+43Good. We were having trouble finding you.
- jsd8cc, on 10/10/2007, -6/+45IT'S A TRAP
- bangmalley, on 08/30/2008, -4/+26microsoft will never ever go open source.
- GerryBot, on 10/10/2007, -2/+22Whether MS is going Open Source or not (and I suspect not), they're capitalizing on a lot of negative Google PR at the moment. And I think they're starting to succeed. I can *almost* see them pitching as a hungry startup rather than a multi-mega-zillion dollar behemoth.
- RogerStrong, on 10/10/2007, -14/+33Uh huh. If anyone else does it, it's a smart business move. If Microsoft does it, it's "self-serving". Right. Gotcha.
- nuclearpenguins, on 10/10/2007, -8/+23Buried for "M$"
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -6/+20There's not 'a single' license, three were submitted to OSI for approval,
Educate yourself here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/sharedsourcelicenses.mspx
Then speak up.
MS-CL and MS-RL don't have a chance, but MS-PL (Permissive License) is basically a BSD-style license.
MS-LPL ( Limited Permissive License ) is limited to 'Windows' , but you don't have to use the limited one. - Philluminati, on 10/10/2007, -3/+16Like the article says, it's marketting spin designed to make people question what open source really entails. If Microsoft were truely going open source I would expect them to offer something bigger, perhaps Access or Powerpoint or one of their games. Of course they'd never offer any of their "jewels" (Word, Excel, Windows, DirectX) but something more substantial than they have. And if they did, surely they would want to choose an open source license that stops someone else closing off their open source product.....GPL anyone?
- RogerStrong, on 10/10/2007, -4/+16Phocion55,
They're "more notorious" because, being everyone's largest competitor, they're under the microscope. Ask anyone who was in the computer industry before Microsoft made it big: FUD (Fear, uncertainty, and doubt) was coined to describe IBM's tactics. There was a time when Microsoft's reputation compared to IBM was the same as Google to Microsoft today. The folks in the open source community don't seem to remember this.
When it comes to FUD and anti-competitive behavior, Microsoft is an amateur compared to IBM, Apple and Sun - all three of which seem to get a greater welcome by the open source community. - Phocion55, on 10/10/2007, -4/+16Roger, can you BLAME people for being a bit sceptical about Microsoft's intentions?
They're notorious for stuff like this. And they've spent years trying to discredit open source software.
If Microsoft's intentions ARE genuine, I say good for them. - quiksliver, on 10/10/2007, -4/+15i logged in just to say this: shut the ***** up
- Vorsuc, on 10/10/2007, -4/+14"Microsoft is open source?"
Their MSDN teams have been punting out open source code and encouraging MS devs to follow for a while now. (www.codeplex.com)
Might help if you guys read a site *other* than digg occasionally for news on MS. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10From MS-PL license:
"The copyright and patent grants in this license are both royalty free, meaning that licensees do not have to pay anything to licensor to make use of the source code. There is no obligation for licensees to publish any changes they make in either binary or source code form. The licensee is required to keep notices in the code for copyright, patent, trademarks, or other forms of attribution." - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+12I suspect you didn't even read my comment, there is "MS-PL" and "MS-LPL" , where LPL is limited PL and NOBODY forces you to use LPL. On the other hand PL is just BSD. You are with the ignorant side.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Oh, come on, take a brief look at OSI approved licenses:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical
Many are almost identical, it's just the fact that every company/project (IBM PL, Intel OSL , Apache L/SL , MPL, EPL, etc etc ... ) want their own license for their own projects. What's wrong with Microsoft having their own? - stox, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8The "Real Microsoft Strategy": Years ago, when I worked on what was then the world's largest software project, we used to joke that if we wanted to eliminate our competition, we would send them a copy of our source code. They would go bankrupt trying to figure it out. If Microsoft's OOXML is an example, Microsoft is attempting to do the same to the open source world.
- Darkyuubi, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Shareholders would roll over in their graves before Microsoft go open source.
Forget it. Not happening, period. There is simply too much money and politics to be had that no one wants to deal with. - finezapa, on 10/10/2007, -5/+12sort of like how "we're at war in iraq to fight 9-11 terrorist". its just all a front.
- atrus123, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Sorry, but the day Microsoft releases the Windows core and the Windows userspace under the GPL or BSD/MIT license is the day I take notice. Until that, it's just a political move, and I trust Ballmer about as much as I trust Dick Cheney.
- Murdats, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6uh, if I am not mistaken microsoft has released a few chunks of code under open source licences
and they host codeplex
http://www.codeplex.com/ - Urusai, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6Microsoft is just positioning itself so that it can sell to government entities that specify "open source" software. The current hard-selling of OOXML is the obvious model here.
- OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -5/+11Yes, it really is. People seem to think this is a joke or something.
Don't you all realize Microsoft is out to DESTROY anything that it cannot subjugate and profit from? Oh yes, you've got that little Apple cult, which co-exists with MS under the agreement reached back when Gates bailed out Steve Jobs, but Linux is a different story. MS still can't find a way to blackmail and gain control of Linux. What MS cannot control, it will destroy using every dirty, underhanded tactic available to it. From government lobbying, to FUD spread through the media, to sabotage of open standards, to leveraging its OS monopoly.
Microsoft is not your friend! - joseph11h, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5British English actually is different from American, my friend. And the two do have different rules and spellings (such as the ones MikeCampbell mentioned). Both ways are correct, none more correct than the other.
- HornyFox, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4It worked, by the way.
- Gumboot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4The author says that "nobody except Microsoft will be implementing this standard [OOXML]" but haven't Apple already done that with iWork '08?
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Except Linux isn't an entity; nobody owns Linux, so there's no possible way to destroy it. This is why Microsoft fears it.
- klecu, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Seriously, who would want IE source? It's possibly the worst engine out there.
- crashie, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Apple already does, their web browser (Safari) and their kernel (Darwin) are open source. Lets see Microsoft release Internet Explorer and the Windows kernel as open source ;)
- OBKenobi, on 10/10/2007, -9/+12I suspect eclipse007 is with the Dark Side.
"MS-LPL" cannot be approved precisely because it is limited to Windows-only! MS-LPL is another OOXML, another one of those Microsoft inventions that only make sense in Microsoft Land and destroys the work of everyone else.
***** you, Microsoft. Your "standards" are poison. - etnu, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4What the ***** are you talking about? Silverlight is a brand new technology that Microsoft is pushing to try to get more web app development going, and it isn't even widely available yet. Do you read before you post?
Only an idiot would think that Microsoft has had any real success on the Internet. None of their internet offerings make any money, and most of them are actually losing it. They ***** up big time, and now they're trying desperately to get back into the game with things like silverlight and buying up ad companies. - grumpyrain, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4I don't think we are going to see open source licenses for Windows, Office, SQL Server (well not in the short term anyway). The most obvious candidate would probably be Silverlight. They don't have a dominant market share to lose, and it is quite a promising framework. I would not even be surprised to see IE opened up.
- qwuinc, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4schestowitz is making a good point and people bury it. Why do you guys think MS is pushing its own "open source" license instead of using one of the approved licenses that countless free software projects are already using?
- xSeg, on 10/10/2007, -4/+7Price has nothing to do with open source. Your a GNU user that doesn't know wtf GNU is. Where does the GPL say anything about no money. I could walk around selling debian for $100 a copy and it's still open source. Your dumb stop breathing. Just remember free as in freedom.
- HonoredMule, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5It's just another ploy to undermine any competition, whether it be typical competitors or troublesome philosophies like FOSS. A student of Microsoft's history will see nothing new or unusual about this move, nor believe for a moment that they're trying to do anything other than maintain a landscape with high natural barriers to entry in the markets they dominate. It's basically just the old bait-and-switch.
- mabhatter, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3yep.
My work has a great big ERP system that we have full source to so that could be "open source" but that "open" code is tied to so much licensing it's crazy... they even shake us down for more money every now and then even though we have a "perpetual" license. what's worse is that most of our code tied to their DB structures would be "not ours a la SCO" if we switched. Just having the code is not open source by a long shot. It will be another 5 years of this "pretend" open source before managers see thru this. - whiteguysamurai, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4They should open up the 9X code, i can't see them using that anymore.
And who knows, maybe the community could do something useful with it. - adolfojp, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3They are in the bussiness of making money. They will open source whatever makes bussiness sense. For example: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/04/27/MS-open-source-Silverlight_1.html
- captjc, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I propose that we use the word "graey" as to avoid conflicts between the Americans and the British
- Sefus, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3yeah. It doesn't really seem like anything too significant at this point.
I'll digg it for being pretty damn interesting though. - mithrasinvictus, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5If MS wants to make good, they should start by supporting ODF and promising never to use patent FUD again.
- yohan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3They're. That's. Try not to make yourself look like an ignoramus while slagging someone else for being exactly that!
- PhillAholic, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3didn't the people behind MP3 do this? Release it as a free cool way to get music at a fraction of the size of a CD, but then slowly tighten up the restrictions until companies couldn't live with out and had to pay them?
- afreytes, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Embrace Extend Extinguish = MS bait-and-switch tactics
- Tetraca, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2That's exactly what they fear.
- cmdrNacho, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Seems like this announcement comes at a key time, , right after SCO , MS and Sun lose a key decisions in the court to open source.
- ZippyV, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I remember downloading the full source of a game from Microsoft that was never released. Could it have been MechAssault 2?
- sappyvcv, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yeah! Why aren't they open sourcing their most successful/profitable products?! What a bunch of jerks!
- GliTCH82, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Seriously. He's disagreeing with you, he must be a bot.
- smek2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2This of course has nothing to do with the growing failure that Microsoft has become.
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