MS No Cathedral, Open Source No Bazaar? 170
AlexGr sends us to InternetNews.com for an account of a Microsoft VP demonstrating Microsoft's ASP.NET AJAX product running on Ubuntu at AJAXWorld. In his earlier keynote, Brad Abrams had declared that, when it comes to AJAX, Microsoft is not the cathedral and open source isn't really a bazaar. He noted that ASP.NET AJAX is available under Microsoft's permissive license with full source code. "The Web is built on open standards and we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards," Abrams said.
deja vu? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:deja vu? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a web developer for the last ten years I wonder who they honestly believe they are kidding? No matter what your bias you can clearly see in their current policy that they have no interest in standards and less so in web standards.
Re:deja vu? (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading that 'standards' line it makes me see Microsoft as nothing less than a hydra:
- multiple heads
- with multiple mouths
- each able to say its own thing
...but they all share the same heart.Re: (Score:2)
In a weird way, it works both ways (Score:2, Insightful)
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Yes, they truly think that. And many many people are exactly so stupid. If BG says it, it's true. And if you point out that it's false, you're just jealous of BG's money.
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A few Google searches says the story's not so simple. [alexhopmann.com] The link's longish by today's standards, so TWLAS (Those With Limited Attention Span) need not apply. The gist is that they had all the pieces in their hands to rub together. They built some of those pieces themselves, they built on some pieces from elsewhere, incorporated some more unchanged, put them together to build the first AJAX application ... and didn't invest any more effort.
They'r
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B.S. MS had absolutely NO intentions of doing AJAX. They did not create JavaScript. They had no intention of using Javascript combined with XmlHTTPRequest. XmlHttpRequest was developed to give them a RPC capability for their apps. They had absolutely no intention of using it with their browser. This was a pure OSS idea. That is why MS was the last party to the game WRT ajax.
Re:In a weird way, it works both ways (Score:5, Informative)
Do you enjoy writing fiction and lies?
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And that's where it would have stayed.
Oh, wait, maybe it would have developed further - Windows Update might have used it...
Not to mention that some malware author probably would have used it at some point...
It was OSS who DEVELOPED the whole NOTION of AJAX - who cares about XmlHTTPRequest alone?
Look around you, Windows shill. There are tons of OSS AJAX toolkits. Who cares about the Microsoft one with the
permissive license"?
That moron can't even understand t
Re:In a weird way, it works both ways (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft sometimes creates useful things, like once every couple of years. :)
AJAX is certainly one of these (few) things.
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He's confusing Microsoft with Al Gore. That happens a lot.
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...a New York hot pretzel, with a dash of moebius strip...
How much mustard would you need for that?Either there's been a complete sea change.... (Score:5, Informative)
This is the company that wanted to decommoditize standards and protocols [scripting.com], yet they come out with the line "The Web is built on open standards and we at Microsoft believe that we have to enable those open standards"
Re:Either there's been a complete sea change.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll be willing to bet they never would have made source for ajax available had open source not existed. Once again they lead by following...
And anyway, it's not open source, because I can't take the entire source and produce a rival product using it.
Re:Either there's been a complete sea change.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Either there's been a complete sea change.... (Score:5, Informative)
Where did you get that idea? Of course you can take GPL'd code and create a rival product and sell it. You just have to redistribute your changes to the GPL'd code as well so that others may take advantage of it like you did of the original product.
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I guess you didn't notice the "By that logic" in the post you quoted from.
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"by some other tortuous and completely unrelated logic" perhaps.
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Microsoft would not, under any circumstances, allow one of their products to be forked and come under the control of another entity.
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I don't see any evidence that Microsoft "gets it".
I think the suits responsible for managing the development of ASP.NET JAVA have confused "bizarre" with "bazaar", and precisely aimed for, and hit, the wrong target. This is a truly bizarre thing that MS is attempting to foist on the world.
We can expect more weirdness like this coming from Redmond. As a corporate organism, Microsoft was never endowed with very much of the higher cortical functions that are needed to work the top levels of the Maslow pyra
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Microsoft is slowly d
Hmm. First example of it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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They cannot release Win2k source code; doing so would violate their agreement with Sun following the Java lawsuit. Win2k binaries aren't even available on MSDN anymore. Basically, if you don't already have a Win2k disc, you're not going to get one.
Re:Hmm. First example of it. (Score:4, Interesting)
and is it served as application/xhtml+xml by default too? Because there's a certain browser by Microsoft that can't handle that...
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That being said, last I checked, VS2005 default to XHTML 1.0 transitional, not XHTML 1.1 strict
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You know, it would have been better if they hadn't. The problem is they make code that pretends to be XHTML, but it isn't. They still use the HTML mime type: sending XHTML with the text/html mime-type is bad [hixie.ch]. If they had stuck with XHTML 1.0 Transitional that would have been okay, because those specs make room for nasty browsers that don't support XHTML [microsoft.com], but XHTML 1.1 should always be sent as application/xhtml+xml.
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Re:Hmm. First example of it. (Score:4, Interesting)
But Microsoft also handles many protocols nicely (as long as it's on the server side), and provides easy to use GUIs to setup and administer them.
For example, let's say I want to store all my infrastructure for user accounts, X509 certificate and DNS services and email configuration on a LDAP directory and would like to access via Kerberos as well.
The setup wizard for Active Directory will handle all these tasks (automatically) in less than 10 minutes (and add 30 minutes setup for Exchange and service packs). Additionally I'll receive many administration GUIs, fully redundant setup and backup programs. (Not including group policy which does not have a good alternative on Linux side yet).
On the other hand the same infrastructure setup on linux (with Fedora Directory Server or similar), requires coding plenty of scripts (LDAP gateway, sendmail configurations, kerberos password migration, etc, etc) and will probably take 3 days at best. Additionally I'll have to setup Amanda and similar backup strategies by hand.
So, I'd either choose to invest $1000 on a Windows Server 2003 license once, or hire an administrator with $1000 more salary per month than a current one.
Unfortunately many enterprises choose the first one
(btw our current setup uses Fedora Directory Server as main, while we also have an Active Directory installation in parallel, yet this is only because we're a university and we like to experiment more).
Re:Hmm. First example of it. (Score:4, Interesting)
So, you mean that they abuse their economical power... But it is ok, since they do that with a nice GUI? Or are you saying (falsely) that Microsoft has not extended those protocols? Because they have extended (or tried) almost all of them, DNS being the only exception, and irrelevant since they already tried to extend TCP.
Now, you seem to be very uninformed. There is quite a long time since people don't need to edit sendmail configs for a normal server (unless you talking about setting your netmask), Windows didn't deal with email by that time. There is less time that LDAP gateways and kerberos servers work easily, but they also do. And I'd really like to know what nice backup solution you get on Windows out of the box, even completely ignoring that to set-up amanda one just need to say where to put all those files and what to backup (I really doubt any other solution won't require that information). Someone that already knows those systems may very well configure it all on a day.
And, at leat at my box (hint, it's Debian, one of the most geeky and hard to configure distros out there) there are GUIs for most of those.
That tells how good at math are those people... Of course 3 days of work by $1000 a month are much cheapper than $1000 on licences and not accounted work on making all that software work as intented.
And, are you implying that windows doesn't need maintence?!?!?!
Re:Hmm. First example of it. (Score:4, Informative)
In order not to get further into a flamewar, it'll try to get technical.
Let's say we need to build an infrastructure on the open protocols mentioned above. While there're plenty of alternatives, one can propose Active Directory can also do the job well (this does not mean it's best or anything).
The required setup is done less than an hour, and will require a (less competent) system administrator for maintenance in the long run.
(It can be argued that the Linux side will require a more educated - i.e: more expensive - system administrator, and preparation of many site specific scripts and configurations - yet this may not seem objective for some people).
Don't misunderstand I'm not proposing converting all the systems to AD. I'm telling AD is also a fine solution based on open protocols.
Re:Hmm. First example of it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I also find no mention on the WS2003 server feature page that it can serve anything remotely CUPS'ish. You were probably thinking of IPP? RDP support on unix hosts should definetly not be credited MS.
The AD compatibility list and its features may look nice on a glossy paper. To be honest - I wouldn't touch it with a long stick. Its a one way street into a long life of MS induced pain - non-compatibilities, forced upgrades, a license policy that you need professional help to understand etc.
Not to mention the happy fact that with AD, MS has a perfect instrument to enforce any diabolic license-policy they can think of - at any point in time they want to. They are in complete control of your core infrastructure.
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You've missed the entire point, I'm not telling AD is the only (or best) option. Yet AD can be setup and maintained very fast and easily.
For your information, the server in question was set up just after the release of
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1) Just because you can do it easily doesn't mean you can do it right
2) Have you ever tried using NDS ?
3) Try using Exim instead of sendmail. You can do the "configuration" in 2 minutes or less.
I hate LDAP as much as I hate Windows AD. Even tho I don't like Novell, NDS is still the best directory server around (when you want to handle multiple platforms). Btw, unless I'm much mistaken, Novell was the one to invent directory services in the first place.
(btw, my current setup
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In short, the difference between the cathedr
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CatB discussed two open source development models, one in which potential changes were submitted to the monarch or oligarchs of a project for consideration, and one in which pretty much anybody could add stuff whenever.
By that definition, I have never heard of any projects using the bazaar model. I mean, do any project supply public commit access?
No, I'd rather think of the cathedral model as the model used in certain BSD systems, as well as in the development of XGL, which is a klosely knit team of programmers write the code without accepting patches from the public, while still releasing their code to the public. The bazaar model is used in most F/OSS projects, where anyone can contribute, but contributions are asse
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Microsoft did not invent anything anytime, they just bought up or copied it (badly) from someone else and made it sound like they did it. From the beginning (BASIC & DOS) till now I have not seen a single drop of innovation or invention come from Redmond. I have basically grown up with Microsoft products around me (from
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MS would use closed, proprietary, patented protocols/standards (furthering vendor lock-in) wherever they could, if people didn't immediately jump to Apache/PHP if they did.
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When IE starts supporting standards then I'll believe Microsofts claim of standards based Internet.
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Thank you for confirming that Microsoft's business model is deliberately fucking up standards, all the while declaring that they're in favor of them.
Yes, I would like to see that particular business model destroyed.
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Correction (Score:3, Funny)
standards," Abrams said.
There, fixed spelling for you.
they did the obvious but finished last (Score:3, Insightful)
most if not all of them aren't even tied to a specific server-side technology -> so more choice.
they point out it's open source? hey of course it is! the major part is in javascript. it's open by design and even if it were possible to scramble, obfuscate and encrypt their code. it would be useless because developers will have the need to extend the widgets to their specific needs at a certain level.
Re:they did the obvious but finished last (Score:4, Interesting)
Could someone explain me wth does that mean : (Score:3, Insightful)
what cathedral ? what bazaar ? what relation does any cathedral and bazaar have, what kind of metaphor is this, and just what the heck does that mean ?
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http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaa
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Written by Eric Raymond about the differences between open and closed source, pretty much.
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That certainly explains Stallman's attitude that he's the Pope (the current one, the one who used to be head of the Inquisition) and only his proclamations are to be adhered to...
Re:Could someone explain me wth does that mean : (Score:5, Informative)
This is an (indirect) reference to Eric S. Raymond [wikipedia.org]'s seminal paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" [wikipedia.org] (actual essay is here [catb.org]), in which he talks about software development being done in one of two ways, by huge development companies in commercial environments, being similar to the way medieval cathedrals were constructed, versus open-source development in which just about anyone can get involved if they want, and that development is closer to the typical bazaars where anyone can walk up and put up a booth to sell rugs. It is this paper that was basically the cause of Netscape deciding to open-source its browser.
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The main difference besides timing is that Mozilla was a web suite like Netscape traditionally was were Firefox was the fist stand along browser of the legacy.
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The Netscape only and Mozilla browser only installs/binary were the same source tree as the suite packages. My understanding is that Firefox is a separate development from that linage and it isn't compatibly with the suite programs like the other binary installs were. I failed to give the older browser only installs credit because of this. I always took t
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The gothic cathedral was in many ways a communal project that evolved over decades and even centuries. David Macaulay: Cathedral DVD [shoppbs.org] The medieval craft guilds had a very large say in who sold what and where. Medieval Gulds [iastate.edu] I can't find an anchorage
MS and standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Enable ? Hardly. Follow ? When PR requires. Open ? Yeah, right.
"Enable those open standards" does this even mean something ?
First they don't do it. Then they do something similar for a second and act as they've always done it and behaved accordingly forever and even act like it's their ground philosophy.
Not that I would care what a company does to ensure a certain future - economical, technical or otherwise - yet there are certain boundaries to arrogance - like in we think you're ignorant enough to eat whatever we serve you for dinner kind of arrogance - that sometimes just blows the hood.
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Well. Taken literally "enable" means "make possible", "supply with means, knowledge, or opportunity", "give sanction to" or "make operational".
In other words: you can't play unless we let you.
The arrogance is astounding. Of course it may in fact be the case that Microsoft can make everyone pack up and go home if they want to. Does this mean they've decided to let it live?
Nah. It probably doesn't mean anything.
it's called stealing mindshare .. (Score:2)
Now that they have figured out that they can't kill open source through the pollution of open standards, they pretend to engage with it so as they can steal back mind share and subvert it from the inside. To the general public MS = computers, so it would odd that advances were happening elsewhere the MS wasn't involved in. Gets Microsoft and Open in the same sentence, get it. Watch out for a joint Open Source compa
Open Standards == No one is Using it (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone have any idea what this claptrap means?
Oh right, this is what it's about. You're trying to stop people from using all the open source AJAX implementations out there, and you believe one way to do this is to claim that open source software has no support? As everyone who uses this kind of stuff should know, it's far faster and more responsive to discuss things like this with like-minded people (and/or employees) on a mailing list or forum than wait for a meaningless answer from some dumb witted twit who doesn't understand the software he's been cajoled into providing support for. You're going to fail there, so no, you don't understand how people are using AJAX at all.
Yes, because most of the servers on the web aren't Windows, damn it! Oh sorry, that quote was taken out of context.
Forgive me for being just a tad sceptical, and wondering why this was good enough to make it as a Slashdot news story.
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If you lose the spin placed by you and Abrams, you both said "Open source has forum-based support, and Microsoft has phone based support". Which is faster: a mailing list where somebody will volunteer an answer where they have time,
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Google and public Wikies are often far, far, far faster
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There is NOTHING about OSS that REQUIRES forum-based support. There are plenty of OSS developers offering support for MONEY.
Another Windows shill red herring.
You people have utterly NO intellectual integrity, do you?
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Ah that's an easy one. You see, if you nuke the crap out of a planet, eventually the minute particles of cathedrals and bazaars will evenly spread out through space by a form of osmosis. It's a perfectly simple principle of discombobulation.
Weird site, opensourcelegal.org (Score:4, Interesting)
Generally sites talking about open source tend to be keen to advocate the open source philosophy, but the tone of this site is mostly neutral and lacking any overtly expressed opinion. If anything, the page titled Why Open Source? [opensourcelegal.org] seems more negative than positive.
So perhaps the legal firm running the site is playing up the difficulties and uncertainties surrounding open source as a way of promoting its legal help on the subject? But I can't see anything on the (rather small) site advertising legal services at all. It doesn't really have enough content to get many visits for its news or information. I wonder why it was set up...
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I agree. The negative aspects listed had stronger qualifiers than the positive aspects, which makes it feel more negative than positive.
By the way, won't you agree that Peter Moldave (their contact) looks a bit like Bill Gates? ;)
Step 1 (Score:3)
Step 2 (Score:4, Funny)
Step 3 (Score:2, Funny)
The Proof Is In The Pudding: Open Source DirectX (Score:5, Informative)
* "Microsoft breaks with standards effort" [zdnet.com] 03-25-2003
* "Microsoft quits W3C standardisation panel" [theinquirer.net] 03/24/2003
How about a free and open standard in gaming?
* "Microsoft DirectX killing innovation" [theinquirer.net] 03-27-2003
Re:The Proof Is In The Pudding: Open Source Direct (Score:2, Insightful)
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I'm sure you can find plenty of articles on slashdot for this one.
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Given their long history of breaking standards, it is quite hard to believe that they have really changed attitudes in the last month. It is much more probable that this is just another marketing spin from Microsoft, trying to sound like they advocate standards while they in reality are trying to destroy them.
We are from the Government.. (Score:2, Funny)
We are from Microsoft and we enable Open Standards.
ASP is not an open standard (Score:1)
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! (Score:1)
Come to think of it, their BSA raids on small businesses is kind of like the Inquisition... I guess you could have worse business models than the church. I mean, they are still around after thousands of years and sti
Clear and Correct perspective on MS. (Score:4, Interesting)
They can and will say what ever they need to to get people to buy.
Second in priority is Microsoft is their own legal advisors to advise
themselves, (based on their interpretation of the law - no different
than any other lawyer or law firm) on what they can get away with, what
they can get in trouble for but balanced against what they gain in
breaking the law (do they gain more than they lose - if so then they
see it as a cost of doing business).
Third in priority is the bullying and buy out of the competition. Of
course their legal house is involved in this too.
Forth has become the application submittal for as many patents as
they can get, even stupid stuff that is clearly not patentable. In
the battle against open source this will become combined with the
third priority more and more.
What you don't see in any of the above is genuine innovation.
Microsoft does NOT enable fair play. But they often make claims
in contridiction of what they actually do.
Microsoft has a very long and hard earned reputation of being
dishonest with marketing speak.
But we all know this, those of use that read slashdot.
And slashdot users are not who this markting bull is aimed at.
Or maybe we should thank MS for enabling us to be open?
"Permissive Licence" doesn't seem awful (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed two main things in that license text:
You can't remove any copyright, patent, or atribution notices. Kind of like the dreaded BSD advertising clause, in that if someone puts "Parts written by 1337 h4xx0rz" in the output of the program, you have to leave it there. Repeat ad nauseum for every contributor that jumps on the bandwagon, and things could get... unaesthetic.
They use almost the exact same patent control system as the GPLv3. If a program contains patented code, you're granted permission to use those patents to execute it. If you sue one of the patent holders for violations of your own patent, that permission is revoked. I think this is called the "please don't eat me, IBM!" clause. Seriously, though, this needs to be pointed out every single time some Microsoft shill attacks the GPLv3. You can dislike v3, but you can't really call it anti-business when the world's largest software vendor implemented parts of it in their own license.
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Credit where it's due, surely? If a person has made a contribution to the software, surely it's only fair enough to credit them if they so desire? I do appreciate your point about aesthetics (which I firmly believe matter), but in most cases surely a well-designed credits page/screen/listing output/whatever should be perfectly acceptable. For example, take a look at the credits for Firefox (Help->About->Credits); that's a very long list of
enabling open standards .. (Score:2)
'One strategy is to jump on the Java bandwagon and try and take control [edge-op.org] of the class libraries and runtime'
'Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Lets move on and steal [edge-op.org] the Java language'
'Outlook will not run propedy on top of GroupWise 5.1 because it uses/expects unknown MAPI calls/parameters. We have asked our normal Microsoft contacts for assistance in getting this to work
Sure it runs on Linux (Score:2)
This is especially significant in a world where the content consumers are more and more also the content creators.
In addition at the enterprise level: AJAX isn't easy to implement when you're using it for really intense UIs... you need an IDE for this to do
Bazaar (Score:2)
He doesn't say this particular release makes OSS any less of a bazaar, his statement is that most successful open source software is backed by a corporation, thus blurring the line between cathedral-bazaar. It isn't as much a bazaar as idealists like to think.
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2. Grant of Rights (A) Copyright Grant- Subject to the terms of this license, including the license conditions and limitations in section 3, each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce its contribution, prepare derivative works of its contribution, and distribute its contribution or any derivative works that you create. (B) Patent Grant- Subject to the terms of this license, including the license conditions and limitations in section 3, each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license under its licensed patents to make, have made, use, sell, offer for sale, import, and/or otherwise dispose of its contribution in the software or derivative works of the contribution in the software. 3. Conditions and Limitations (A) No Trademark License- This license does not grant you rights to use any contributors' name, logo, or trademarks. (B) If you bring a patent claim against any contributor over patents that you claim are infringed by the software, your patent license from such contributor to the software ends automatically. (C) If you distribute any portion of the software, you must retain all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices that are present in the software. (D) If you distribute any portion of the software in source code form, you may do so only under this license by including a complete copy of this license with your distribution. If you distribute any portion of the software in compiled or object code form, you may only do so under a license that complies with this license. (E) The software is licensed "as-is." You bear the risk of using it. The contributors give no express warranties, guarantees or conditions. You may have additional consumer rights under your local laws which this license cannot change. To the extent permitted under your local laws, the contributors exclude the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.
So, basically it says that you may make and sell the software or derivitive works of the software at no charge - due to the non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty free patent and copyright grant - provided you leave attributions in place. NOWHERE does it say you may not improve it. You are just spreading crap to further your own agenda.
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2. Grant of Rights
(A) Copyright Grant- Subject to the terms of this license, including the license conditions and limitations in section 3, each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free copyright license to reproduce its contribution, prepare derivative works of its contribution, and distribute its contribution or any derivative works that you create.
(B) Patent Grant- Subject to th
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Well, no.
Ballmer is not "God".
Bill Gates is "God" - certainly to the MS shills here and people like Rob Enderle and Daniel Lyons.
Ballmer is Gabriel - who throws chairs.
Of course, to the wage slaves who work at Microsoft under the Microsoft management hierarchy, they probably would invert the analogies...
Just watched "Constantine" again the other night - Redmond as Hell matches a nuked LA as Hell... In fact, the "half-breeds" sorta compare with Microsoft shills, too...
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Not to mention Laura DiDio [wikipedia.org] and Maureen O'Gara [wikipedia.org].
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Since when is PDF an "open" standard? Its compressed postscript invented by adobe.
The file format is open though, if not necessarily a standard. The specification is available for free from Adobe's web site.
I can open PNG files in IE.
Even such PNG files that contain transparent parts?
MS documents their IFS driver so you can write your own file system for windows and use it *without* recompiling the kernel.
Since only Microsoft have the Windows source code, requiring a filesystem developer to recompile the Windows kernel would be pretty stupid. T'd rather think this is an erroneous jab at Linux, which has a reputation among some people (especially trolls) that its kernel needs to be recompiled for just about anything.
If MS wanted to lock everyone into "NTFS" hahaha why would they go out of their way to document IFS drivers?
Maybe so