Microsoft extended an olive branch to the open source community with the launch of Port 25, but visitors to the Web site have been treating the branch as if it were poison ivy. Port 25 is a Web site that offers a look into the Microsoft Open Source Software Lab. Launched in 2004, the lab is the software company’s attempt to test interoperability between Microsoft software and open source solutions. Its other stated goal is to make IT professionals with UNIX/Linux skills more proficient in the Windows environment – and vice versa.
I’d rather see things like their CIFS specifications. 🙂
(And no, I don’t want to see their source code, either)
I see this as an excessive move and very bad taste from the OSS community. Turn it down a notch and listen to what others have to say. Microsoft was willing to share its lab info with the public which as the post above stated is a nice gesture. Try to work with them on the issues instead of flaming, you may not get this type of opportunity again.
But when I comes to using FUD against us there is no holding back. All I see is Microsoft trying to get a advantage all the time, wonder why?.
I agree – I think there needs to be a sea-change over all of Microsoft before anyone can trust them.
Isn’t there a name or saying (probably many) for when someone presents a nice sharing smiley face and continues to smack you over the head and stab you in the back?
“[MS] man speak with forked tounge” is one that springs to mind.
[quote]I agree – I think there needs to be a sea-change over all of Microsoft before anyone can trust them.[/quote]
You wanna know when to trust Microsoft? NEVER! Most OSS people are smart enough to know that. Of course, some of them will trust companies like Novell, which is just as stupid as trusting Microsoft. In general, trusting any for-profit company is a really bad idea. These companies are like Terminators from the films of the same name; they really have no moral consience at all. Whether they are on your side or not depends entirely on the situation at hand. They either help you or stab you in the back, depending on their mission. And this goes for ALL of them – not just some.
I think you’re over simplifying things. One only has to look at the community and humanity driven projects and/or charities that Microsoft (and Bill Gates) are involved in to see that morals do exist at Microsoft.
I guess the reality is that no matter how much good Microsoft tries to do, there will always be people who will focus entirely on the negative.
Not at all, all this shows is that Bill Gates has morals, and his wife too…. not Microsoft.
But the organisation donates money and is engaged in other activities too.
There’s the Microsoft Open License Charity, advice on avoiding online scams, information for parents about protecting your child’s safety online, the donation of financial and technological resources to the relief of the Pakistan and Guatemala disaster and more.
For instance they donated $41m in cash and technology to NetHope, $11m of the same to Hurrican Katrina, more to the Tsnuami disaster and so on.
Have a read of http://www.microsoft.com/citizenship/giving/
Seems the organisation does actually give back to the global community.
Please, can’t you see this is only propaganda? an exercise in public relations? what’s a paltry 41 USD for Microsoft when they have cash put aside in the range of billions? Why not putting what they’ve taken away from the community on the scale? You’ve got to be realle naive to think a corporation that’s indulged in all dirty tricks one could think of to get rid of its competitors could really have ethics, or moral, or anything resembling those.
Same goes for Port 25: it’s only propaganda, a gesture meant to signify “see how good willing and open we are?”, really addressed at the press and not at the FLOSS community.
I’d accept anything coming from Microsoft only when they’ll accept the concept that they’ve got to compete on merits alone and will stop abusing of their monopoly. As the proverb says:
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
’nuff said.
rehdon
But the organisation donates money and is engaged in other activities too
It better be, for taxes reduction.
There’s the Microsoft Open License Charity, advice on avoiding online scams, information for parents about protecting your child’s safety online, the donation of financial and technological resources to the relief of the Pakistan and Guatemala disaster and more.
Good, lots of people like me donate too.
For instance they donated $41m in cash and technology to NetHope, $11m of the same to Hurrican Katrina, more to the Tsnuami disaster and so on.
Now it becomes ridiculous. How much times my monthly salary does MS make in revenue monthly ? 1 million times ?
Excuse me if I would feel rather ashamed to be praised for giving $52 to charity, if I was at the same time having lawsuits for having stolen technologies of others, laughing at projects that want to offer $100 working PC to poor countries, helping companies that want to acquire things made by people sharing, claiming to be paid licenses to these very same poor countries you generously gave copies of your OS before (but only 1 year licenses), …
Have a read of http://www.microsoft.com/citizenship/giving/
Seems the organisation does actually give back to the global community.
Seems to me buying a reputation still works for some people. Amazing !
I don’t know about your country but in mine personal donations to charities by individuals over $2 are tax deductible. That doesn’t degate the fact that someone gave, nor does it negate that microsoft gave a heck of a lot of money when they didn’t have to.
If the information is correct they’re one of the top three corporate donators. I guess if I follow that line of thought every donating corporate are suspiciously doing it only for taxation.
Give me a break. Believe it or not people, corporations are capable of “caring”.
It doesn’t matter how much good Microsoft does, there’ll always be people out there who will bash them just because.
I really don’t understand this whole “us” verses “them” mentality. On both sides, loose the attitude and perhaps some meaningful progress might be made.
As far as getting an advantage all the time.. isn’t this obvious? It’s the nature competition and the Linux community is far from innocent in this regard.
I wouldn’t cross the street to piss in their mouth if their teeth were on fire.
If you ever had the pleasure of competing with them head-on you wouldn’t be so warm, friendly and ready to cozy up to their ass.
This is a giant load of ____. And TaterSalad is a perfect example of what they wanted.
They open up a site to non-regged users (unmoderated) something we all know you can’t do unless your site is an island (anything linked from microsoft.com is no island). Then they blame the OSS community when people post rude things?
Why don’t you tell us FOSS users dig porn because they use the internet and the internet has porn.
And they wonder why we’re cynical about them. You’re not stupid Microsoft, and we know it.
We did not just recently meet these people. We have had to deal with them for quite some time now.
This site is nothing more than cheap talk and pretty pictures. If MS wishes to be taken seriously, then actions are needed. ODF support or the release of Office formats would be an example.
If MS offers an olive branch in one hand, be sure to see what is in the other hand. I would check for the dagger.
Embrace, extend and extinguish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extinguish
Most valid point in this whole conversation. Problem is MS lusers suffer from a variant of, “Stockholm Syndrome”, and get all defensive on behalf of their molestor/abuser. They are sick, very sick. The really sick ones are the, “gee they give to charity…”, who have completely lost their grasp on the big picture and start romanticizing the sick deviant abusing them is actually doing them some kind of favor.
They put fire at the powder and extinguishe it with a water glass
You simply can’t reason with FOSS zealots.
Browser: ELinks/0.11.1 (textmode; FreeBSD 6.1-RC1 i386; 113×48-3)
You simply can’t reason with FOSS zealots.
I assume you didn’t mean to troll, and meant “FOSS zealots” as opposed to normal “FOSS users” like myself and most of the other civilized community.
However, there is no valid reason to use “FOSS” in your statement, as just stating that you cannot reason with “zealots” (regardless of their software preferences) makes more sense without the nasty implications.
I certainly would not state that, “You cannot trust [insert racial background here] theives”. The extra specification of race clouds the issue, and changes the tone of the statement completely, doesn’t it?
It’s become awfully fashionable to post a FOSS browser user agent while dissing FOSS on this site.
Not to challenge your honesty, or your massochism in using elinks as your daily browser, but you can simply find those strings on wikipedia and copy/paste.
Microsoft has a long (20-year) history of screwing with its competition, and Linux has been singled out by Microsoft as its major competitor a number of times.
Is there any wonder that there is little trust in Microsoft among FOSS fans?
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
Browser: Links (0.99; OS/2 1 i386; 80×33)
“Is there any wonder that there is little trust in Microsoft among FOSS fans?”
I have to wonder, after 10 years of fighting, why did the Trojans all of a sudden trust the Greeks, and take the horse into Troy? There was NO REASON to trust the Greeks, and every reason to suspect treachery.
It would be irrational to trust Microsoft in extending an “olive branch.” The open source community should not act like Trojans, while Microsoft puts a Trojan on.
yeah, but the Greeks made them a nice horse, of course the people of Troy would trust a big wooden Greek horsey.
but also, there is a thing called battle wearyness. The greeks would also have been betting the people of Troy would have accepted any peace offering.
Same as Microsoft is expecting OSS people to accept a peace offering, except, lessons have been learnt from past Microsoft deals.
Edited 2006-04-28 06:45
“Try to work with them on the issues instead of flaming, you may not get this type of opportunity again.”
What opportunity?
“One only has to look at the community and humanity driven projects and/or charities that Microsoft (and Bill Gates) are involved in to see that morals do exist at Microsoft.”
You are confusing the man with the company.
Everybody knows that you can send messages *to* port 25 but if you want something in return you need port 110 too.
Imho, that pretty much sums it up… so far Microsoft have been a read-only “participant” in the OSS community. They accepted code from the open source community (BSD code for early sockets and libgif from esr and god knows that else) but they are not giving anything back. Basically their “shared source” licenses are vaporware/FUD, it does not give you any actual freedom.
Let’s see some GPL-compliant code (GPL, LGPL, BSD or similar) from MS. Until they provide that, all the talk about olive branches is just BS.
It’s called “Blood Money”.
Here’s an article and a bunch of comments about a web site, but nobody gives the URL. I hadn’t seen it, or maybe I didn’t pay attention. Anyway, here it is:
http://port25.technet.com/default.aspx
http://port25.technet.com/archive/2006/04/27/2287.aspx
Interesting part about that is that it doesn’t always work. I tried the whole dd thing on a partition with an older Win2k install…. Yea, it wouldn’t boot when I put the image onto a different disk, got all sorts of strange errors about missing important files and such.
I think it was ntfs that had been converted from fat32.
The way he described g4u sounds like what dd does.