“Open source advocates are doing what was once unthinkable – giving the thumbs up to a Microsoft source code licensing program. The Free Software Foundation has said new licenses for Microsoft’s pseudo open source program, the Shared Source Initiative, appears to satisfy the four requirements defining Free Software.” So, what does it mean for you? Update: A description of the changes.
Q) “What Does Microsoft’s New Shared Source Mean for You?”
A) “Crap.”
” So, what does it mean for you?”
I guess we have to start being nice to Microsoft?
“The Free Software Foundation”
These clowns are like the scam artists who sell people plots of land on the Moon.
They have no relevance to open source software, nor do they speak for anyone but themselves.
What??? Clearly you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Oh OSS is a hard bunch. You should see what we do to traiters? :>
BTW hope the Nessus guys are feeling better.
You keep telling yourself that. Take a look at the “open source software” you claim they have no relevance to. The FSF’s GPL is by a significant margin the leading license under which open source software is developed. The reasons are various, ranging from concerns of freedom to concerns about code reuse, but the net effect is clear: the FSF does matter and the GPL is here to stay.
Ultimately, open source software can exist only when programmers are willing to contribute to the community. Programmers will only do that when they feel they’re contributing to an actual community, not doing free work for corporate America. That’s why the GPL is so popular in the open source world. The very thing that corporations hate it for, its ability to ensure the freedom of the code, is precisely what has enabled it to thrive!
Sorry, but the GPL doesn’t hurt corporate America a single bit. In contrast, IBM, Red Hat or Google couldn’t be happier about the hoards of programmers that work for them for free. The GPL may shift the industry from selling software to selling services, but nonetheless it’s megacorporations that run the business and not the small shops and individuals.
I’m not particularly interested in the question of whether it hurts or helps corporations, and I didn’t say anything to support one argument or the other. What I said is that the feature that makes certain corporations hate it (and certainly many do), is precisely the feature that allows it to keep a thriving developer community intact.
Quite to the contrary.
The GPL has driven down the costs of software, so that the pockets of the rest of industry are not as deeply picked.
Props to RMS, viva le FSF!
The people who run Adobe Photoshop and Maya will be glad to hear that.
They sure will once Blender and Gimp start to take shape. No matter how you look at it, the end user benefits from open source in almost every way I can think of. a) you get to have a free of charge alternative of to your favorite commercial app and b) that software beeing so cheap puts pressure on the developers (of the commercial app) to improve it/lower the price?
See the pattern emerging?
Hi,
“They sure will once Blender and Gimp start to take shape. No matter how you look at it, the end user benefits from open source in almost every way I can think of. a) you get to have a free of charge alternative of to your favorite commercial app and b) that software beeing so cheap puts pressure on the developers (of the commercial app) to improve it/lower the price?
See the pattern emerging?”
Perhaps..
Free software forces commercial developers to continually improve their products and reduce it’s price until the commercial developers can no longer compete and either go out of business or become a service based company.
In 100 years time, when all commercial software development is dead, people won’t be able to get a job as a programmer and no-one will bother to learn how to write real code.
In 200 years there will be no more new software.
Ironically, the “script kiddies” will probably survive, and there’ll be plenty of jobs on help desks (although most of this will be in third world countries where labour is cheap).
FSF is slowly killing the software industry, and everyone thinks it’s great because they are too short-sighted to see past their next pay check.
In 100 years time, when all commercial software development is dead, people won’t be able to get a job as a programmer and no-one will bother to learn how to write real code.
The vast, vast majority of coders write internal code that never gets sold on a shelf. Maybe 5% of the world’s programmers work for companies like Microsoft putting out what you call “commercial” software. If they all died or their employers went out of business tomorrow the economy would be greatly effected, but the state of the craft would not be significantly changed. This is a specious argument.
Free software forces commercial developers to continually improve their products and reduce it’s price until the commercial developers can no longer compete and either go out of business or become a service based company.
Yes, it’s a shame what Red Hat has done to Microsoft, what those Gimp folks have done to Adobe… How sad to see their stocks prices take such a beating at the hands of those pinko commie coders.
Except as you well know, that hasn’t happened. For a variety of reasons, the world in your mind is not the world that has come to pass. Make predictions if you want, but please don’t pretend that your paranoid fantasies are already fact.
But what if it does? What if software does become a commodity? Lots of things become commodities, and the world is almost always a better place for it. It doesn’t mean that innovation stops, it means that competition increases and innovation takes place on another level. Apple’s leveraging of open Mach and FreeBSD and KHTML code is a perfect example, even if that’s an all-software example and it doesn’t make some folks happy – but not all leveraging will be pure software plays. A shop buying Linux servers instead of proprietary Unix is doing a similar kind of leveraging, getting more bang for the buck – and a more competitive marketplace – by choosing a more open platform.
Hi,
I think you’re under-estimating how much things can change in 100 years. Consider what the software industry looked like in 1905.
“The vast, vast majority of coders write internal code that never gets sold on a shelf.”
..but eventually they’ll all be customizing “off the shelf” products instead, much like people can customize Excel using “VB for apps” instead of writing their own special purpose code, or use Bison, YACC or Lex instead of writing parsers.
“Except as you well know, that hasn’t happened. For a variety of reasons, the world in your mind is not the world that has come to pass. Make predictions if you want, but please don’t pretend that your paranoid fantasies are already fact.”
It hasn’t happened yet, it won’t happen next week or this year. It might happen in the next 100 years, but it might take longer. Pointing at the past 10 years or so and saying “see!” is stupid. It’s like someone saying cars will never replace horses a few years after Mr H. Ford started mass producing them, simply because they hadn’t at that time.
How long before everything is written by groups of unpaid volunteers? How long before those consumers are paying for the software through taxes and the welfare system instead? It’s already happening in my house – I’m using government hand-outs (tax payers money) to live on at the moment while I develop my own software. I doubt I’m the only one. I’d rather write code as an employee, but there are no software companies around here anymore – I’d need to shift inter-state or move overseas.
In 100 years time, when all commercial software development is dead, people won’t be able to get a job as a programmer and no-one will bother to learn how to write real code.
A state in which programmers cannot get jobs is one in which no software needs to be written. As longs as computers need programming, there will be jobs for programmers.
Commercial software development is hardly the biggest source of programmer jobs. Very often, code gets written not because someone wants a product, but because there is a problem that needs solving. For example, in the engineering world, code is written to, say, to predict the performance of a new engine. As long as there are new problems to solve, there will be jobs for programmers to write programs to solve those problems!
Hi,
“Commercial software development is hardly the biggest source of programmer jobs. Very often, code gets written not because someone wants a product, but because there is a problem that needs solving. For example, in the engineering world, code is written to, say, to predict the performance of a new engine. As long as there are new problems to solve, there will be jobs for programmers to write programs to solve those problems!”
Why would you write a special purpose simulator when you could write a general purpose simulator and re-use it (and possibly sell it)? Have you not seen generic simulators for electronics, chemistry, biology, etc? Try doing a web search for “SPICE source download”.
Yes, there are generic simulators, but in many engineering fields, they’re of limited use. Most generic simulators are based upon simplifications of reality, and for the really cutting edge stuff, you sometimes need to build a tool that uses different simplifications appropriate for your task. If you take a look at the industry, say, GE and Pratt and Whitney, you’ll see that they have their own in-house code for these things.
Moreover, simulation is hardly the only use for in-house programming. Somebody has to write the software that makes a phone network run, or the software that allows wireless devices to avoid stepping on each others toes (to use a personal example), or the software to control the fuel injection timing in an engine. Do you think the Open Source world is going to take over these markets?
Hi,
“Yes, there are generic simulators, but in many engineering fields, they’re of limited use. Most generic simulators are based upon simplifications of reality, and for the really cutting edge stuff, you sometimes need to build a tool that uses different simplifications appropriate for your task.”
Do you mean the generic simulators need more features and more options? That is just a matter of more time…
“Somebody has to write the software that makes a phone network run, or the software that allows wireless devices to avoid stepping on each others toes (to use a personal example), or the software to control the fuel injection timing in an engine. Do you think the Open Source world is going to take over these markets?”
Do you mean like this: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9423084269.html
IMHO it’ll take longer for open source to kill embedded systems too, but it isn’t impossible.
I must admit, sometimes I use an extreme to illustrate a point more clearly, where perhaps I shouldn’t. It doesn’t make much difference if open source kills the software industry completely or reduces it to 10% of what it is now – it’d still be a problem IMHO.
[quote] Do you mean the generic simulators need more features and more options? That is just a matter of more time… [/quote]
and in a field like engineering time is one of the most important matters. while you’re waiting for someone to add the features you need, someone else using that in-house code will finish their work first and you’ll be eating dust.
I suspect Rayiner that the situation will be one of job market contraction, rather than elimination.* Of course trying to guess what will happen in a 100 years, especially in the computer field is a bit silly. By that time computers could be self-programming, and then there truely would be market elemination.
*Contraction and an overall leveling of wages. Just because programming’s done in-house doesn’t mean that they’re going to be paid as well as they are today. Businesses really want to make programming fit the “assembly line” model, even though it’s nowhere near mature enough to do so.
The very thing that corporations hate it for, its ability to ensure the freedom of the code, is precisely what has enabled it to thrive!
Code can’t have freedom, people can. Until you understand some basic logic, then you can’t be taken seriously.
“Freedom of code” is a perfectly valid statement just like “freedom of speech”.
It doesn’t mean the code has freedom nor the speech has freedom.
It means that speech are free (from restrictions) and code is free (from restriction).
That’s why we are talking about “free as in free speech – not free as in free beer”.
So rayiner’s statement is perfectly valid from a logical point of view.
Whether you agree or disagree with rayiner is another matter.
Code can’t have freedom, people can.
Which version of English do they use in your country? The very first definition for “freedom” on dictionary.com is:
The condition of being free of restraints.
Can a license ensure that the code remains in a “condition of being free of restraints”? Sure! Ergo, a license can, by definition, ensure the freedom of code.
Ah, the subtleties of the English language! The same word can not only have multiple definitions, but can be applied to a variety of subjects depending on context!
Actually, its not even that subtle. The claim that only people can have freedom can immediately be seen to be incorrect in the face of expressions like “freedom to roam” or “degrees of freedom”, which can be as easily applied to animals, robots, and mechanical components as people!
“Open source advocates are doing what was once unthinkable – giving
the thumbs up to a Microsoft source code licensing program. The Free
Software Foundation has said new licenses for Microsoft’s pseudo open
source program, the Shared Source Initiative, appears to satisfy the
four requirements defining Free Software.” So, what does it mean for
you?
>
>
Absolutely nothing.
I think that Microsoft is putting a good foot forward with regards to letting people view/edit/use their source code.
Hell, even the See-but-don’t-touch license would be great on something like Internet Explorer, so at least there could be somewhat of a peer review process, even if the control still lay in Microsoft’s hands.
It would be great if some of their better (i.e. appropriate) licenses were approved for the OSI.
Well, the licenses are worth nothing as long as Microsoft do not release anything under these licenses.
But it could be nice to see and touch some parts of the Windows source. Then we could fix the bugs in the desktop – I’d really like to do that
You are right, if they don’t release anything, then there wouldn’t be a point.
I think it would be good just to have the source available, so that there would no longer be any “secret hooks” for Office, or intentional breakages to stop competitors’ products.
Viewable (even if it isn’t editable) source code means that you can no longer hide behind a curtain, because someone might look one day.
“I think it would be good just to have the source available, so that there would no longer be any “secret hooks” for Office, or intentional breakages to stop competitors’ products.”
I hope they do so some of you guys will finally realize that neither of the above is true. The Office team at MS no more has access to the Windows source code than you or I do. The fact that they have an arsenal of MS Windows developers at their disposal certainly helps out quite a bit, but there are no secret hooks…they use published API’s, and that’s it.
I’m really curious…what kind of “secret hooks” could there be? Some “secret” hook into GDI to make clippy move around faster? <g>
Heck if I know, that’s why they’re “secret”
Haha. My point is this though…what kind of secret API’s could there be? It would be in MS’s best interest (not that they always follow that) to publish any API that gives developers an edge…they sell more Windows licenses if the software written for Windows (Microsoft brand or 3rd party) has an edge over other platforms.
Hell, nothing is “secret” with a decent decompiler.
Well, secret would probably be a wrong word. Undocumented is closer to the mark. And as the anti-trust showed, there is undocumented APIs – and they’re being used (or have been used) in final MS-products (and certain products from MS partners).
This was proved during the anti-trust case.
When it comes to secrets, you might like to look at this link:
http://www.futurepower.net/microsoft.htm
Now, this is not true for older versions at least.
Cannot say about it for newer versions (XP and 2K3), but they were many hooks as late as in Windows 2000, as the leaked code showed.
What hooks? I’m not calling you a liar, I am honestly curious.
I don’t have my old bookmarks at the moment, but I’m willing to search for the sites.
So far I only found this 3 year old article, which doesn’t really say anything.
I’m posting the link anyway but it’s not really worth your time, I’m afraid. You can mail me if you want to at kristian AT herkild DOT dk – since the threads tends to become quite unnavigable (if that’s a word in english).
-Kristian
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020410_edlin.html
I doubt that. If all the hooks were published, WINE should be emulate it perfectly without any issue. They DO use secret API’s.
But it could be nice to see and touch some parts of the Windows source. Then we could fix the bugs in the desktop – I’d really like to do that
Who’s we? You would be fumbling around for months just trying to figure out what’s going on in the code base. It’s like asking a VB programmer to fix some bugs in the linux kernel.
I would definitely spend some time studying the source before any modifications were made. But I wouldn’t be fumbling around, that’s for sure. I’m a lot wiser than that!
And I had absolutely no intention of messing with the NT kernel. I was talking specifically about the desktop itself – not the kernel. I don’t know why you brought up the kernel.
It’s like asking a VB programmer to fix some bugs in the linux kernel.
You’re not a programmer if you use VB
– and a VB programmer messing with the linux kernel? Now, that’s something I’d like to see 
– it would be like a talking dog.
It appears to me that you think I’m some sort of “never-used-windows” linux teen geek, but I’m not. I’d be surprised if the windows api was very different from the windows api (which I do know my way around).
We == everybody who may have the skill and the interest to modify the source
. o O ( Now, that can’t be too hard to understand )
“what does it mean for you”?
Honestly, I’m shocked. I NEVER thought I’d see this day. Microsoft being approved with Open Source and the likes? Well I HAVE to check this one out lmao. This is honestly interesting.
I’m still having trouble beleiving that “Microsoft” and “Free Software” (money wise and as in GPL-like free) can be used in the same sentence in a literal/factual sense.
WHOA.
–ZaNkY
“what does it mean for you”?
NOTHING.
I already switched to linux and other free softwares times ago and I cannot accept these ridiculous licenses “Look but don touch” or “OK, get this free but you need to buy our expensive products to run”.
SAVE THE TRUE FREEDOM !
SAVE FREE SOFTWARE !
The statement from FSF Europe said that two of the licences Microsoft is proposing are free, and the other three are non-free. One of the two free licenses is BSD-like and the other is GPL-like (which is quite an irony considering all of the Red-baiting Microsoft has done about the GPL).
The FSF people get furious when you call them “open source advocates”.
The biggest hook, if you could call it one, is preferential access to people and API up to a year or more before release. I’m not entirely sure this is a good thing with any company, regardless of size. If the API is open and available to one, it should be open and available to all.
If you’re refering to Longhorn/Vista…MS has done a pretty good job of releasing the SDK’s for a while now. There was longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com for quite a while (no longer around, replaced by http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/libra…)
They want other devs to start writing code against Vista as early on as possible, and from what I’ve heard from sources inside MS, the external SDK is very current.
As for the people, well that’s one thing that there simply isn’t really a feasible solution to. One of the perks for working at MS :-).
Whether that’s the FSF or OSI. All that matters is the compatibility with various licenses. The GPL is incompatible with many licenses, so fitting in with that doesn’t matter. OSI wants to be relevant by claiming to have some kind of moral authority in what is open source, but they lost that idiotic trademark attempt.
All that matter is how the individual developer or group of developers decide what license is relevant to their code.
RE:[What Does Microsoft’s New Shared Source Mean for You?]
FUDD, FUDD and more FUDD
wont touch it and wont trust em…
Yup. I clean forgot about the SDK availability, but the people thing remains, and that can make a really big difference. Perhaps some sort of formal Chinese walls policy ought to be adopted? Really, I’d like to see a more formal split between the divisions.
That still wouldn’t make me happy. Perhaps we should look beyond even a formal break up and just say to hell with it and force them to hand the API over to the United Nations. I’m not just being funny with that. There’s some real issues here that need fixing.
*LOL*
Handing Windows API over to the UN? That’s what I’d call a major IP violation. Does “human rights” mean anything to you? Does “constitution”?
Come on. I’d like Windows to be completely GPL’ed but forcing MS to do anything is not the right way.
Major IP violation? Couldn’t care less if it has a distorting social and economic impact, which it does. Laws are only codified opinion backed by force, and have no more moral authority than the next thing if they’re allowed to drift too far.
Human rights? Constitution? You haven’t got a clue what these things mean beyond the latest fashionable point of view. Spare me the abstract ideas that blow in the wind from one time, place, or situation to the next. I don’t need the brain cell death.
I no doubt know more about human rights and constitutional rights than you do.
As far as I can gather from your point of view it smells like nationalization.
You’re talking like a neofascist or “good old” marxist. Choose whatever you prefer!
Have you ever heard of democracy? Your solution to force Microsoft to release code of any kind is utterly unacceptable.
I know a couple guys who would have been allowed to look at the code years ago when MS started the “shared source” crap. Neither of them would… Anybody who does is tainted. Any code written after viewing somebody else’s source runs the risk of being open to attack. Especially if the code is owned by a litigious, FOSS-hating corporation that has enough money to hire more lawyers than anybody else on the block.
And, what is MS likely to “open source”? More things that lock programmers in to the MS way. “Here, use our install.” “Here, use our APIs.” “Sure, they only work on Windows, but they don’t cost you any money.”
It seems to me you are retarded or just a troll. Nevertheless, I will try to reply.
Anybody who does is tainted. Any code written after viewing somebody else’s source runs the risk of being open to attack.
So how exactly did you friend learn programming? Is there another way than viewing someone else’s code and learning from it?
Especially if the code is owned by a litigious, FOSS-hating corporation that has enough money to hire more lawyers than anybody else on the block.
Isn’t it funny that you make a statement like […] FOSS-hating corporation […] in a news posting about Microsoft releasing FOSS licenses.
And, what is MS likely to “open source”? More things that lock programmers in to the MS way. “Here, use our install.” “Here, use our APIs.” “Sure, they only work on Windows, but they don’t cost you any money.”
I guess they tried open sourcing someone elses OS but found out it has laready been done.
Actually it’s dangerous to look at source code from Microsoft. Usually this requires a NDA or an equivalent to a NDA (e.g. most “shared source” licenses used so far), and due to the terms of the “shared source”-licenses used, you will have to keep that person away from anything that competes or could compete sometime with anything Microsoft releases or might release sometime.
But the new licenses seems interesting. But I don’t consider them much worth, until MS releases something major under them.
As far as I can tell, they might as well have used the LGPL or the GPL instead of creating their own half-crippled versions. But okay… one step at a time (seems reasonable to me, anyway).
Nothing
So can I now sell my own Windows Distribution?
Wolves have offered free houses for chickens with traps inside. So, what does that mean to you if you’re a chicken?
I wasted my life using too much of their, IMO, shitty software which I had to pay for.
Let them squeal into the red while open source bankrupts them
f–k em
Let them eat their own shit
was that a detailed analysis ?
I hope not. If that was a detailed analysis, I wouldn’t want to see a sequence diagram from him, nor a domain model
the Free Software zealots have won.
Fist they laugh at you.
Then they ignore you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
But its not over.. not all software is available with these rights, yet.
I wonder if Microsoft felt financially pressured into making this decision or if it came from their heart…
The real signal here is that Microsoft will tone down their attacks on the share-alike “copyleft” mechanism of the GPL as “viral” and “communist.” They lose that rhetorical weapon as soon as they release a share-alike license, which is exactly what their CL license variant is.
What that means, from a PR perspective, is that we’ve won that argument. The red baiting didn’t gain traction and only made them look foolish. Their gain from the argument was outweighed by their potential gain from using exactly the same sort of license.
Bigger picture: Except for a few rare cases, the Shared Source program has been little more than a marketing stunt designed to blunt free and open source software in the PR realm by saying “see, we’ve adopted their best practices where it makes sense, so they never have an advantage.” In reality it was mostly blather, not substance. But changes like these indicate that they’re actually going to put community development and the sharing of source into practice in a bigger and bigger way (though still incredibly limited by FOSS standards – don’t hold your breath for an open source Windows or Office). And by actually embracing some of those practices they’ve only pretended to embrace in the past – Microsoft could become an even tougher competitor.
Embrace, extend and extinguish – MS knows it missed a few steps with OS – they jumped to extinguish via FUD.
Now we will see the same old 20 year plan rolled out once more.
Embrace, extend and extinguish.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Actually I see this as a response to all the (reasonable) critisism Microsoft has gotten the last few years. Especially the situation in Europe forces Microsoft to adopt to reality.
You can’t embrace extend and extinguish the open source licenses. It just won’t work as the world is today. Unless we forget everything we learned.
sounds like MSs’ PR-departmend finally dropped “FUD” their new campaign “Anti-FUD”.