Black Helicopters - Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft

Port 25 - Communications from the open source community at Microsoft
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Black Helicopters by admin on April 25, 2006 07:26PM

Reading through some of the first posts to Port25, there has been some great ideas and posts.  There have also been some really interesting conspiracy theories, so let me clarify some things we’ve seen in the blog posts, emails, and even other Web sites and articles:

  • Port25 is not an attempt to subterfuge the OSS community
  • Microsoft does not have people posting to Port25 trying to make the OSS community ‘look dumb’
  • Microsoft moderators do not remove all the controversial posts
  • Port25 is not a marketing or PR stunt
  • Port25 is not related to the legal stuff in the EU
  • The guys in the OSS lab are not soulless sell outs or villainous rascals
  • Port25 does not have a hidden agenda
  • It really does not hurt our feelings when people try to get personal or make unfounded and derogatory claims – this is part of the reality of our jobs
  • I don’t speak Russian – but I’m thinking about learning since we launched Port25

You can disagree with the above, but this is the truth.  We are working hard to make Port25 more of a reciprocal community, but it requires everyone to partake in a two way conversation.  I understand there is a lot we do today and need to do in the future, but it requires smart and mature people and companies to work collaboratively.  I’m sure this will ruffle some feathers, but it’s the only way it will really work.  And after you put down the politics and rhetoric, I think you’ll see the same – it’s no different than any other relationship.  Working together can make it happen. 

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  1. jwelch@bynkii.com said:

    Well, perhaps someone can get M. Ballmer to stop foaming at the mouth when talking about !Microsoft platforms. When the head of the company is so actively against anything but  Microsoft, it means the rest of the company follows that lead.

    posted at 08:04PM 04/25/2006
  2. einhverfr said:

    When I was at Microsoft, I was involved in a lot of discussions regarding the future of products like SFU, and other aspects related to the competitive strategy against Linux.

    I have seen all kinds of Microsoft employees, and I was not the only one to run exclusively non-Microsoft platforms at home.  One guy on my team was pretty much a Mac guy, and I knew a guy who ran almost exclusively BSD at home (he also had a microvax which he didn't use anymore).  In general, of the people who were deeply *interested* in competitive strategy (rather than merely afraid of the competition), most were interesting, thoughtful, and respectful.  Most of these people didn't want the competition to go away, but rather just saw it as a good game.

    I like to think I was in that crowd too.  I was a fairly strong proponant of antipiracy measures even though I knew that they would hurt Microsoft in the long run-- I felt that Microsoft had an obligation to keep the playing field level and that pirated software skewed the field in their favor in that it removes a segment of the market from the marketplace.  In essence allowing piracy is anticompetitive...

    Microsoft is a huge company with a lot of contradictions.  I think many conspiracy theorists give Microsoft too much credit on being singularly cohesive and not enough credit to actually trying to live with the antitrust verdict.

    Best Wishes,
    Chris Travers
    Metatron Technology Consulting

    posted at 01:12AM 04/26/2006
  3. Wesley Parish said:

    Firstly: "subvert" was the term I myself used: and my context made it clear I didn't actually hold that opinion; I merely postulated it as one of a large set of possibilities.  "subterfuge" is a noun, not a verb - you can't "subterfuge" someone or something - you can use such-and-such a policy as a subterfuge, a means of appearing to be doing something while doing something entirely else.  In that case you would be using a subterfuge to subvert people's expectations. ;)

    Secondly, the opinions mentioned in order to be refuted, make a tree.  "Port25 does not have a hidden agenda" is pretty much the root of that tree.  Practically everything in that list subtends from that one statement - with the exception of the "speaking Russian" option.

    (I commend your decision to learn Russian.  Everyone should be bilingual - it helps clarify various things and makes one aware of speech-community limitations.)

    To wit:
    /Port25 does not have a hidden agenda
    |
    Port25 is not a marketing or PR stunt
    |
    Port25 is not an attempt to "subvert" the OSS community: The guys in the OSS lab are not soulless sell outs or villainous rascals: Microsoft moderators do not remove all the controversial posts: Microsoft does not have people posting to Port25 trying to make the OSS community ‘look dumb’
    |
    Port25 is not related to the legal stuff in the EU

    ( ':' indicates an organic connection, ie, leaves of the branch above; '|' indicates a direct connection to the root node.  Best I can do in ASCII on a blog; sorry for the inconvenience.)

    And lastly, Chris Travers has a good point.  I've heard much the same thing said about IBM - gigantic company, many various and different individuals, and what is said as gospel truth by management doesn't necessarily bear any relation to what the money-earners in the company actually think - or say.

    Oh, and as a dyed-in-the-wool Free Software user, I don't expect proprietary software or proprietary software companies to go away either.  I don't wish the Free and Open Source Software Communities to get lazy and complacent; I don't wish to face the software development equivalent of eye-gouging on the footy field, either.

    posted at 05:14AM 04/26/2006
  4. perryblack said:

    re your: The guys in the OSS lab are not soulless sell outs or villainous rascals

    Yes, the "little" guys who run this site are most likely NOT villans and won't misuse the information that "accumulates" here.

    Matter of fact, this web site could turn out to be a good place for inter-OS communications.

    I can't say I really blame Microsoft for doing all they can to prevent other peoples software, which may even be better than Microsoft's own products, from running as well or better than Microsoft's own products, but since certain things that Microsoft has created / have helped to create (eg the FAT file system) have become the de-facto standards for the computer industry, AND because Microsoft is THE Monopoly on the Desktop, then Microsoft should take steps or be forced to take steps to level the playing field to encourage "innovative" (ahem, hopefully this word isn't yet patented by MicroSoft) products, rather than bar all attempts to interoperate once the methodology (file system storage on media, network protocols, file formats) becomes so obvious to the rest of the world that it's use / access by the other guys (Open Source, MAC world, etc) really no longer brings Microsoft any revenue because the idea is new or better than any other. The recent hubbub about the decision to use an open document format in the state of Massachusetts is an example of the this. Is it the "merits" and features of Word for Windows that keep people buying it, or is it because the file format is proprietary?

    So IF this site helps to do something to help the rest of the world develop innovative products then I'm all for it.

    The problem with this site is that while you guys are not / profess not to be the bad guys, your bosses have not issued the same statement(s) and can "farm" the information that accumulates in this web site for ideas (all this is being stored in a database with OLAP reporting services, right?) to use to develop more good "bars" (aka patents) to innovative products.

    references:

    http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-904089.html
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/11/microsoft_wins_patent_case/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table

    And so once the "big guys" at MicroSoft make the same statements as you guys THEN I will be convinced that everything here is on the level....

    ... otherwise you are just their puppets (knowingly OR unknowingly). But that's true of everybody who is working for anybody else. Hello World, "I'm just doing my job, sir".

    posted at 09:52AM 04/26/2006
  5. dfoesch said:

    http://www.omniglot.com/writing/languages.htm#cyrillic

    There are more languages than just Russian that are written in Cyrillic.  Specifically of which, one person in the previous situation yelled in response (in Russian) that he was Albanian, although Albanian appears to be written with the Latin Alphabet.

    Of course, to presume that since a piece of text is written with the Cyrillic Alphabet that it's Russian, is about as absurd as claiming that anything written in the Latin Alphabet is Latin/English/French/what-have-you.  They are both too widely distributed writing systems to make such a direct assertion.

    First, I would recommend learning the Cyrillic Alphabet, then how to identify which language they're speaking.  If you just learn Russian, then if you were to try reading Ukranian, you'd be about as lost as someone who reads/writes a language in a non-Latin script who learns English, then tries to read German.

    posted at 04:38PM 04/26/2006
  6. fluke said:

    - "Port25 is not an attempt to subterfuge the OSS community"

    I believe you, Microsoft has a history of providing some small group of employees or written claims about how the world should be if everyone in the industry could work towards a common good.  And then... *POW*... someone else in Microsoft decides that reality requires MS following a completely different path from the common good.

    The MS group that approached SGI about forwarding OpenGL as a standard.  And then *POW*... MS decides it needs DirectX.

    MS seemed very sincere when it published an open letter saying that Netscape's promotion of prioritary changes to the HTML language was wrong and MS would follow the W3C with hopes that Netscape would do the same.  And then *POW*... MS decides maybe it's CSS bugs don't need to be fixed or any real additional progress made on implimenting CSS support.

    The papers made available from MS website about the path to "Cairo" requiring future OS designs to be modular seemed to be something that MS was serious about.  And then *POW*... we are still living with a OS design where a heavy weight browser "needs" to be integrated.

    The MS group that approached the Kerberos group honestly seemed interested in promoting Kerberos as an open standard.  And then *POW*... MS decides to create a basterdized ticket server so existing Kerberos servers aren't fully functional for an AD enviroment.  Later they publish the modification to the standard under highly restrictive terms.

    The MS group that approached the SPF group honestly seemed to want to create a global standard to reduce SPAM.  And then *POW*... terms of use for Sender-ID patents are so restrictive that the authors of the majority of SMTP MTAs used on the Internet state that no FOSS MTA could honor such terms and still remain Free Software.

    Which leads us to "Port 25," ironically the same port that SMTP MTAs classically run on and SPAM continues to run across.  Does this additional interest the FOSS community mean that Eric Allman's views on why Sender-ID can't be accepted by our community now will produce results?  Or, are you just the friendly face of a company that continues to show it's *POW* face when things need get done?

    I mean, isn't it a little like putting lemon juice in the open wound to call the portal "Port 25" after MS gave such a slap in the face to everyone interested in seeing Sender-ID really become a widely used standard?


    - "The guys in the OSS lab are not soulless sell outs or villainous rascals"

    This is true.  Your not soulless or villainous rascals.  But just like ESR, you are a sell-out by promoting yourselves as a "OSS" lab and leaving out *Freedom* from FOSS.  You discuss all the distributions of GNU/Linux that the "OSS" lab reviews and seem to miss the point that the majority of packages that make up those distributions are covered under Free Software licenses.  The concept of Freedom being at the heart of those involved in FOSS is not just some piece of meaningless rederic.


    I once was interested in trying to help reduce malware on windows.  I have done work on the Linux kernel before and am familar with some features that would improve the NT/XP enviroment.  But after looking over the terms of use of example code for the DDK and IFS kits, the message is clear--MS does *NOT* want the help of the FOSS community kernel developers.  The restrictions required for use of the example code prohibit use of the majority of FOSS licenses and it would be impossible to honor such terms while still be able to generate a project that SourceForge could ever accept.


    Of course, feel free to make fun of what I'm saying and claim that I am actually talking about black helicopters instead.  But I am still laying out the truth.

    posted at 02:35AM 04/27/2006
  7. davidmeyer said:

    Until not along ago, I agreed that Microsoft was the evil empire and that Bill Gates himself was flying one of those black helicopters.  I lived, breathed, ate and drank Linux and Open Source since 1997.  But I had a rapid change of heart not long ago, and let me tell you why.

    Linux and Open Source people are their absolute worst enemies.  All I have to do is read the above posts, go to any Linux users group meeting or read their email list or spend any time at all on slashdot, and all you see is foaming-at-the-mouth anti-anything Microsoft people that see a demon behind every rock, tree and latte.  Oh, the demon...he always seems to look like Bill Gates or Steve Balmer.  Frankly, I'm offended that the slashdot crew has put Bill Gates picture up as an avatar and altered it to make him look like a cyborg.  That is pure jr. high nonsense.

    My customers have real problems that require real solutions.  They don't have time for the religious wars that take place on boards like slashdot, newsforge and the postings seen here.  They want technology that works, and they don't want to have to hack the code until it does what they want.  I used to hack that code until I actually gave Windows a serious shot, and guess what...no hacking necessary.  Don't line viruses or spyware?  Simple...get a good AV and spyware solution.  My dad hasn't had either once in four years, and he runs Windows 2000.  Think Windows is less secure?  Give me a break.  Windows is less secure than Windows is a lie.  The security of the OS is the responsibility of the administrator...period.  

    Thank you Bill for this website.  With any luck the Open Source and Linux people who see evil in Redmond will go away so those of us who want to focus on the technology will be able to get something done.  If they don't want to go away, then perhaps that can join in a meaningful discussion and contribute to a solution.  

    posted at 08:25AM 04/27/2006
  8. Robster said:

    @davidmeyer:

    "Linux and Open Source people are their absolute worst enemies"... it's amazing how one sweeping, unfounded generalisation can destroy an argument. The F/OSS community is obviously as heterogenous as any large group of people. If you believe that all Linux people are slashdot-style anti-MS zealots, then is it not just as easy to believe that all Microsoft employees are anti-competitive, profiteering criminals?

    "My customers have real problems that require real solutions"... don't we all. And how many times have you almost been able to offer a solution that didn't involve paying an arm and a leg to Microsoft, except that there was some artificial, Microsoft-created roadblock in the way? No hacking necessary with Microsoft? Sure, as long as you make sure all of your servers and clients are running the correct version of Windows and Microsoft-blessed applications.

    Individual employees of Microsoft are undoubtably as technically competent, passionate, and conscientious as the best in the F/OSS community. But Microsoft *as a corporation* will continue to act in the illegal, immoral, technically indefensible ways that it has in the past, until it is forced to change. The two ways that it may be forced to change are through competitive or legal pressure.

    The Bush administration has all but swept aside Microsoft's conviction in the US. Hopefully the EU will show some teeth and start levelling the playing field in Europe.

    Competitive pressure, like it or not, is mainly coming from the F/OSS community at the moment. I couldn't give a toss whether GNU/Linux takes over the world and Microsoft ends up a flaming ruin, but I (like thousands of other people around the planet) am working to make  steps that will enable my customers to find solutions on the basis of their needs, rather than Microsoft's agenda.

    When I, and my customers, can freely choose network components that will interoperate without onerous Microsoft-imposed restrictions, when we can choose productivity software without being patent-encumbered, when people and companies can compete and innovate in a free technology market, I'll be a very happy camper. Microsoft is welcome to take part in my utopia!

    @Bill Hilf: I don't see evil in Redmond, there are no black helicopters hovering overhead. There is, however, a large corporation with a demonstrated willingness to use any means, legal or not, to stifle competition for its own profit. And if you don't see that, in my opinion you need to take a reality check. I still don't see how this site is going to change any of that: it seems to me that what's needed is not so much intercourse as a "spilling of the beans" from Microsoft. Do you see that in Port 25's future?

    posted at 05:56PM 04/27/2006
  9. liquidat said:

    It is not about black helicopters - sure, there are some trolls and spam bots and drunken "funny" guys who want to fill this with garbage and want to laugh at other people fighting each other. Spend some days somewhere on a famous Linux-site and you will get the same, this time from Windows people. Hey, how often have I read that using Linux is spreading communism? Ballmer even described Linux as cancer.
    There is quite a lot of thing's you have to stay if you are dealing with Open Source projects also, you are not alone in this case, it's just another point of view.


    It is, though, about things you've said, and things your company did.

    Let's take some examples:
    Whenever you, Bill, were interviewed about the Lab you couldn't talk to much about the small things the Lab also did for Open Source products: the gaim-msn fix is the best known example. While I do really appreciate that, I miss something else: if you start using gaim to access the msn network, and MSN notices that, you can be kicked out and your account can be closed down. Ever read the terms of agreement of your own software? <a href="http://messenger.msn.com/Help/Authorized.aspx">Authorized Software for using the .Net Messenger Service</a>
    Why do you not mention this? It looks like you try to put your Lab in a much better light as it should be. It's nice that you fix bugs, but doing it for a program which usage your company declare illegal at the same time is strange, and you shouldn't use it as an example in interviews without mentioning both realities.

    Another example is what you are talking about compatibility between the different servers. You say that Lab 25 is made to improve the interoperability between the Linux/UNIX-world and Windows.
    The biggest interoperability issues I know are the lack of connecting Windows and Linux/*nix machines together in a mixed network with an LDAP system and files servers.
    That should be done on *nix side with Samba, which implements the SMB protocol. But there is a lack of knowledge about the closed extensions to the SMB protocol which are made and used by Microsoft - and the lack of documentation of the active directory interfaces.
    I do not ask or guess why MS does this, but there is no question about *that* MS does this - and that therefore Microsoft is the source of the non-interoperability between Samba-machines and Windows-machines.
    It just looks weird when you say that this lab is dedicated to analyse interoperability issues and *improve* the interoperability when there is not so much to improve in very important areas.
    Sure there are other areas where you probably want and can improve the interoperability; I know SMS, WBEM and openWBEM; but the main important problems are in the Samba-topic, and please let's stick to that.
    As long as there is no major change in the dealing and handling with the information about the interfaces/apis/etc. inside of Microsoft we will not see any improvement - and that is the "fault" of Microsoft which does that due to certain reasons.
    Although you do not exactly say it it alwas has the taste that it is Linux' fault that the interoperability is not as it could be, and that the generous Microsoft tries to fix it know. But that's just wrong. The Samba team does everything human possible to fix the issues, but the limits are clearly set by Microsoft.
    It gives, again, a stragen picture how you speak in interviews and which feeling you give the readers while the situation behind that topic looks much different and should at least be explained in total.
    Remember: this question is not why Microsoft does not document these extensions, but why you do not mention it in all the interviews you did when someone asked you after the interoperability issue.

    There are other examples I cannot understand or which are weird while reading your posts, and so on, but I think the above examples show what I mean and show the problems I see with this Lab as well as with the people speaking for the Lab.
    Btw.: I'm sorry to address you directly in these cases, Bill, but you are the person who have been in public the last month and who have given several interviews. But these arguments shouldn't be tied to a single person, it's just easier to write :)

    Other problems I also see were already mentioned by other poeple: even if you are all nice and honest and even if we could perfectly play together a soccer game and have a BBQ, you guys are not the strategy developers of Microsoft. You do not lead the company. And the way of the company hasn't changed over the last years (*).

    But as I said, that's the company and should therefore addressed somewhere else; it's not your Lab, and the questions I would like to ask you (Bill and the Lab) is what you say to the two different topics/issues mentioned by the examples above.

    liquidat

    (*) One very nice example is MTP: there is, as usual one might say, a standard-extension to a already well established protocol. But the extension documentation explicitly forbids it to implement it in an Open Source operating System.

    posted at 05:59PM 04/27/2006
  10. fluke said:

    Mr. Meyer, I would like to respond to your last post, if you don't mind.


    "Linux and Open Source people are their absolute worst enemies"

    FOSS is an *inclusive* group and requires no license to join.  This means that there will be several bad apples that get included in the group.  The FOSS comumunity will continue to allow people such as ESR to claim to be part of the community regardless of how fixated he is on "Halloween" documents.

    FOSS is also a *distributed* group where even "internal" communications are done in the open.  If a Microsoft employee decides to vent at a meeting, it is kept behind closed doors.  If a FOSS developer vents on a mailing list "meeting" then it is usually available for all to see.


    "all you see is foaming-at-the-mouth anti-anything Microsoft people"

    Actually, for every time I have seen the claim that Bill Gates said that "no one would need more than 640K" there has been a follow-up post explaining why IBM would have been responsible for that and it is unlikely that Bill Gates would have ever actually authored such a
    quote.  If you only see anti-anything MS people in the FOSS community then your choosing to skip the people that do accept MS.  How could a developer that hates all things MS actually take the time to work on projects like Samba or Wine?


    "Oh, the demon...he always seems to look like Bill Gates or Steve Balmer."

    The most popular demon in the FOSS community represents the BSD flavor of *nix and was drawn by Marshall Kirk McKusick.  I really don't think either Gates or Balmer have a round enough nose to look like the BSD beastie, but if you really believe it seems to look like them that I suggest you contact McKusick.


    "I'm offended that the slashdot crew has put Bill Gates picture up as an avatar and altered it to make him look like a cyborg."

    The Slashdot icons are largely done by Rob Malda's wife (or gf at the time the Bill borg icon was done) and the approval process seems to be based on if Rob likes it or not.  While there is a FOSS project for the Slashdot engine called Slashcode, it does not seek any feedback or contributions from the community on the icons.  But in the case of the Bill borg icon, it is based off of a Boardwatch Magazine cover.  So, if your so greatly offended by picture then your taking issue with a prospective about Microsoft that extends beyond a sub-set of the FOSS community and pre-dates Linus T.'s kernel.  The idea tha MS was "borg-like" has been in the popular press for a while.  It even made it on Simpsons and I doubt they got the idea from Slashdot.


    "My customers have real problems that require real solutions.  They don't have time for the religious wars that take place on boards like slashdot, newsforge and the postings seen here."

    Slashdot, Newsforge, mine-sweeper and tricks done by Rover the animated search assistant are not ment to help get real solutions for real problems.  If your billing customers for time spent with ANY of those then your doing a disservice to your customer.  And the religious wars are not specific MS.  Just feel free to find threads on "Emacs vs. Vi" or "DPKG vs RPM" (if you have the time to burn).


    "Don't line viruses or spyware?  Simple...get a good AV and spyware solution."

    What is a "good" AV or spyware solution.  A large part of the AV market place seems to be held by Symantec which has continually failed to keep up with the latest flavors of SD-Bot.  All of the AV packages have at least some "zero day" gap between the time a virus/worm is first released and the time the AV database is updated.  Once malware is running, Windows is *protective* of keeping the file.  While NT was promoted as a "better Unix than Unix" and that Windows "provides a way out" from Unix, it still (even in the latest Vista betas) misses the basic Unix concept of "unnamed files."  If a file is in use on Unix, then the currently held file hooks are honored and the file still holds allocated space but it looses it's name so no new file hooks can be established.  So, AV packages have no problem removing files that are in use on Unix.

    Removal of malware on Windows that got though the zero day gap tends to be more involved.  Most AV companies end up recommending going into safe mode.  There are two methods of doing this, the rapid F8 tapping method and the "msconfig" method.  I have delt with Windows users that have had problems with both.  Some people have trouble finding the right point where F8 can be hit, too soon and some BIOSes will produce a "keyboard error" message and too late then XP boots in normal mode.  And other users follow the instructions from a website to go into safe mode (without networking) and then forget what to run to get back to normal mode.  But even after getting into safe mode, desktop explorer can be tricked into holding malware files active.  So, the best way to address that is to start task manager, end the explorer task and then from the "run" menu option of task manager to browse to the AV exe (if you even know what it is).  Try explaining that over the phone to someone who has a VCR still blinking 12:00.


    "My dad hasn't had either once in four years, and he runs Windows 2000.  Think Windows is less secure?  Give me a break.  Windows is less secure than Windows is a lie."

    Windows XP Home Edition encourages use of defaults that leave the user more exposed to security issues.  If you open a control panel style application in GNOME or KDE that requires priviledge rights then your promoted for the root password.  Not only does XP SP2 fail to promote for the administrative password on control panel items, but "Run As" does not work against .cpl files.  Instead, even after SP2 has been applied, there are control panel items that state that the user should log-out and log back in.  And also, XP is missing any "save desktop" to automatically relaunch the last set of running applications from the previous log-out.  The bottom line for a Windows novice is that it is "better" to remain log-in as administrator all the time than go through the inconvience of having to log back and forth between privileged and unprivileged accounts all the time.

    If security of the OS is strictly the responsiblity of the administrator (or for most personal computers, the user), then it should be possible to go back to NT 4 or RedHat 2 or Mac OS X 10.1 and then use the same administrative skills to "secure" it.  The problem with that is that the OS was purchased to provide some functionality and providing the functionality is a form of exposer.  For required functionality where a known vulnerability exists (for example, eEye.com states a DoS issue exists in XP/2000/2003 that was reported 198 days ago), addressing it becomes the problem of the developer.  While your dad may not have to hack any code, he is only given the option accept that some OS functionality must be disabled/avoided to work-around the issue or accept that it's use may  result in a problem.  FOSS also provides the option to the administrator to help be one of the developers to address the problem instead of just watching six patch Tuesdays go by and hope the next will be the one that a fix is provided.


    "With any luck the Open Source and Linux people who see evil in Redmond will go away so those of us who want to focus on the technology will be able to get something done."

    I am not sure that you draw a line between "see evil in" and "see a problem with" -- if discussion is limited to people that see no problem with the current enviroment, then I don't see how anyone will end up seeking solutions.

    posted at 09:44PM 04/27/2006
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