Senor Icaza is at it again (CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza). This time its the promotion of the Microsoft backed “Open Source” Codeplex initiative. I really do not care much about Microsoft’s oft-professed “Open Source Love” that tends be thrown around as a bone to keep some M$ apologists in the Linux community something to argue on. What really is surprising is Icaza at the helm of such an initiative. Do we need any more of Icaza’s M$ love?
Opensuse is a fantastic distro. I like it as much as Mandriva (which is my first choice). But the blatant hobnobbing of Icaza with Microsoft (earlier Mono and now Codeplex) puts off potential users like me (and I’m a corporate user of Opensuse). I would really hate to hold a fine distro like Opensuse’s KDE (I’m a KDE user) hostage to some petty politics (read Icaza’s final statement about RMS, which sounds like he’s on an ego trip), but one can’t help but do so. The recent decision to make KDE default on Opensuse now would see justified, atleast in my eyes.
Whats next? Icaza taking over Sam Ramji’s position at Microsoft?
Any initiative to create a free software community around any M$ OS is doomed to fail. Otherwise it would have emerged since a long time. The only way to change this would be to release the Windows source and make it free.
This is an attempt to abuse people’s time to write free applications just to promote the sales of a non-free proprietary OS. I think this is obvious?
I have no idea why the Linux distributions supporting .NET / C# and other M$ technologies when they are including programs like Tomboy…
Why developers don’t use open-source frameworks and platforms…?
On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 08:46 +0000, anshuljain wrote:
> Senor Icaza is at it again (‘CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza’
> (http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2009/Sep-10.html)). This time its the
> promotion of the Microsoft backed “Open Source” Codeplex initiative. I
> really do not care much about Microsoft’s oft-professed “Open Source
> Love” that tends be thrown around as a bone to keep some M$ apologists
> in the Linux community something to argue on. What really is surprising
> is Icaza at the helm of such an initiative. Do we need any more of
> Icaza’s M$ love?
Is is wrong for Microsoft to promote open source? I imagine you did
look at the site and see the number of projects there that are licensed
under the GPL and LGPL, right?
If Microsoft promoting the GPL and LGPL and the like, isn’t “right”, can
you explain what you’d like to see? In fact, I just did an advanced
search for all of the NON Microsoft licenses that are accepted by the
Linux community as a whole, and the number of projects is 5229.
Granted, a lot of those are also well known applications already in the
Linux space.
If you’re a purist, that is, you don’t use a LOT of popular Linux distro
applications, you only use GPL/LGPL licensed pieces, then that number at
codeplex is 3099.
The number of projects using Microsoft’s “open source” licensing plus
the evil Sun Microsystems CDDL is 5112. Remove the CDDL and the number
goes down to 4670.
So… are you upset that the GPL is doing well at codeplex? Don’t trust
the community? What’s the issue again?
microsoft is a corporation… and as such their only goal is to make more profit… so by putting on foot into the open source world and pretending to freely distribute some codes for the benefit of that community is by itself an early warning of an invasion.
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:46:02 +0000, Roger Marquis wrote:
> microsoft is a corporation… and as such their only goal is to make
> more profit… so by putting on foot into the open source world and
> pretending to freely distribute some codes for the benefit of that
> community is by itself an early warning of an invasion.
>
> but its only my point of view.
On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 16:46 +0000, Roger Marquis wrote:
> microsoft is a corporation… and as such their only goal is to make
> more profit… so by putting on foot into the open source world and
> pretending to freely distribute some codes for the benefit of that
> community is by itself an early warning of an invasion.
I think you’re looking at the wrong website. YOU, an individual, can
house/link a project through codeplex. It’s a community driven
repository of open source software.
>
> but its only my point of view.
I think the point is that FOSS is a good thing. But for whatever reason
we do not want Microsoft to adopt or promote it (??).
what i have learned so far in my life is: if you want to know what is going to happen in a near future you have to look into the past. i cannot tell if microsoft got a hidden agenda (regarding FOSS) but the way there are running their business makes me uncomfortable. and its ok with me if out there there are good corporate citizens but… i am not
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:26:02 +0000, Roger Marquis wrote:
> what i have learned so far in my life is: if you want to know what is
> going to happen in a near future you have to look into the past. i
> cannot
> tell if microsoft got a hidden agenda (regarding FOSS) but the way
> there
> are running their business makes me uncomfortable. and its ok with me
> if out there there are good corporate citizens but… i am not
That’s not what you said before, though. You said that Microsoft is in
business to make a profit. Well, so are Novell, IBM, Oracle, RedHat,
etc, etc, etc.
There’s no doubt that Microsoft has been a “bad community member” in the
past as regards OSS. But there’s no room for them to improve? Ever?
That seems kinda harsh. That seems like incentive for them to never try
to change. Do we really want that?
On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 21:13 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
…
> There’s no doubt that Microsoft has been a “bad community member” in the
> past as regards OSS. But there’s no room for them to improve? Ever?
> That seems kinda harsh. That seems like incentive for them to never try
> to change. Do we really want that?
It think it’s best to focus on the positives. We believe that the GPL
is a powerhouse license that preserves freedom and lifetime of software
in particular.
That doesn’t mean we should let our guard down… especially when
Microsoft will continue to promote their non FOSS licensing and actively
speak against the GPL.
I think it’s sort of cool that the majority of the licensing of projects
through codeples are FOSS. Sends a message about there a good portion
of Microsoft developers sit.
> On Mon, 2009-09-14 at 21:13 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote: …
>> There’s no doubt that Microsoft has been a “bad community member” in
>> the past as regards OSS. But there’s no room for them to improve?
>> Ever? That seems kinda harsh. That seems like incentive for them to
>> never try to change. Do we really want that?
>
> It think it’s best to focus on the positives. We believe that the GPL
> is a powerhouse license that preserves freedom and lifetime of software
> in particular.
>
> That doesn’t mean we should let our guard down… especially when
> Microsoft will continue to promote their non FOSS licensing and actively
> speak against the GPL.
>
> I think it’s sort of cool that the majority of the licensing of projects
> through codeples are FOSS. Sends a message about there a good portion
> of Microsoft developers sit.
100% agreed and well said. We shouldn’t punish those who do try to “get
along” with (or participate in) the OSS community, but regardless of who
it is, it’s important to be aware that there is a motivation behind the
move. That’s true for everyone.
hello jim …back to the forum today, i said and i maintain that a corporation is a money making machine. microsoft contributing to the FOSS reminded me of the free gift that the citizens of the old Troy received before falling down.
cheers!
Just because it comes from Microsoft we should throw the baby out with the bath water?
Microsoft is a corporation just like IBM, Sun, Red Hat, Apple and others! Are all of their stabs into open source to be suspicious?
How is it Microsoft is sooo much more evil than Apple who tries to lock you in with the Mac/Windows-iTunes-iPhone-AT&T and sue any company that circumvents that?
Is Sun evil too, for finally open sourcing Java and buying MySQL?
How many people here screaming about Microsoft are going to actually USE Codeplex?
I use .NET at work. I don’t have a choice in it and since the company paid to train me in it I’m going to use it. If Mono allows me to pull that experience from the Windows (work) side to my home (Linux) side then all the better.
It is just annoying that if you use “Microsoft”, “Mono” or “Miguel di Icaza” you get a lot of doomsday prophets.
There are evil people everywhere, trying to steal each others ideas. Some of them own and run powerful corporations.
What we need is some kind of framework within which we can protect the intellectual property of the community, so it can’t be co-opted by these evil doers. Some kind of… “license” or something. Then we could stop worrying about it.
I’m not going to say your right or wrong, but I was planning to disclose my research dating right back to personal experience regarding hardware implementation from the 1970’s and merging that with factual accounts of patents licenses and transferred ownership. The prupose of the post was to try and determine from a legal standpoint who has the right to use and to what extent the so called intellectual property rights for new driver and associated development.
As I started to do the investigation it became evident that IBM holds Licensing to all forms of computer magnetic recording technology and the owner of the technology was a German company that patented the first reel to reel recorder in 1930. IBM was transferred the rights in 1950 and incorporated the work of Dr Carl Suding (creator of indexed by tape computer read write storage) and PHI-MON’s automated device control technology in 1969. The results of this collaberation resulted in the first floppy disk drives (basis of harddisk technology today). IBM then licensed and standardized the process to hardware manufacturers and card controllers of the era. I have much more investigating to do but if I am right, Microsoft’s claim to filesystem rights ownership for the FAT VFAT and NTFS systems are a direct violation of patents, licensing, and new work.
You will recall that microsoft just settled out of court with TomTom of the netherlands for Patent infringement on their FAT filesystem because it unduely ported the system to Linux.
Not sure if it is off topic or not. Not even sure if anyone cares about my intended research.
