Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Community, Port 25 News

Sam Ramji is leaving Microsoft

billhilf — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:47:00 GMT

It's been a while since I made an appearance on Port25. I felt it was important to provide some thoughts to the Port25 community on Sam Ramji's impending departure from Microsoft.

After many years helping to carry the open source software banner for the company, Sam is leaving Microsoft at the end of this month. You may have also heard that he has accepted the position of interim President of the CodePlex Foundation as well as a leadership position at a startup in California. (I'll let Sam and his new company share more details there.)

Sam joined my team three years ago to drive open source technical strategy. I have eagerly supported him as he passionately articulated a vision that Microsoft could coexist - and even thrive - in a heterogeneous IT world.

The perspectives on OSS at Microsoft have evolved to the point where Microsoft's open source strategy is no longer just locked in a single ‘lab' on campus - now OSS is an important part of many product groups and strategies across the company. We have become increasingly clear on where we work with open source - development methodologies, projects, partners, products and communities - and where our products compete with commercial open source companies or platforms. Today, there are engineering and business leaders across the company, myself included, looking at how to drive interoperability for customers and as a lever for new growth.

And, because we recognize the importance of having that strong internal advocate for open source, we are actively seeking someone to fill Sam's shoes at Microsoft.

We will not waver in our commitment to open source.

To my friend Sam: Best of luck to you and your family as you move on to your next great adventure, and THANK YOU for all of your efforts and passion.

Time to Say Goodbye

Bryan Kirschner — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:37:00 GMT

The first time I went to a LinuxWorld conference as a Microsoft employee, a guy passing by me saw "Microsoft" on my name badge and stopped. "Microsoft? What are you guys doing here?" he said. "I loved Microsoft. You put my kids through college."

As it turns out, he owned a small IT business during the late ‘80s and early 90s, which thrived building applications during the headiest days of the "PC revolution."

The last time I went to an OSBC as a Microsoft employee, I MC'd the third annual Open Source ISV "Day 0" event hosted by Microsoft. I told that story in my opening remarks. At the reception at the end of the day, one of the attendees came up to me and said: "You know, I'm one of those guys who's been doing technology for 30 years. And today's event felt like Microsoft in the early 90s. It's the first time I've gotten that from Microsoft in a long time."

It seemed a very fitting way to bracket one of the most challenging but also rewarding periods of my career: one that had its roots and the fertile soil for its success in my friends and former bosses Bill Hilf and Sam Ramji. They created space for me, the latitude to go out and figure out a way forward for Microsoft and open source, by first listening to customers, developers, and sys admins face-to-face.

That opportunity culminated in my becoming the first person in the company (but not the last!) to hold the title "Director of Open Source Strategy" and shipping the first company-wide statement of policy and position on open source.

But, by this time, you've probably figured out something's changed. I've moved on become Vice President for Corporate Strategies at Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner Research.

There are a few things I have always gotten excited about: technology is one. Politics is another. Learning new things is a third. These add to a strong desire to spend all of my time playing MMORPGs. But since that isn't economically viable, they fortunately also add to up a consistent interest in understanding interesting, often controversial, convoluted, and conflict-ridden-situations and figuring new ways forward.

I did this in the public sector, working on community policing, where I sprinkled in some work on political positioning, messaging, and communications. And then I brought that background to Microsoft ten years ago.

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner connects all the dots in a new and exciting way. The founder, Stan Greenberg, is widely known for being the pollster and strategist for Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Nelson Mandela. GQRR has a big political consulting practice, and a smaller (but expanding) corporate consulting practice. Continuing and accelerating the growth of the latter is my new job.

I've been around Port 25 since its very beginning. Pre-beginning, actually. I owe a huge debt to everyone inside Microsoft but, even more importantly, outside Microsoft who helped make it what it is today.

My new boss, Jeremy Rosner, was the subject of a movie called "Our Brand is Crisis." Port25 will always be with me as a powerful and tangible part of a big shift from "Microsoft and open source" looking more like a "brand" that equals "crisis" to one that looks more like...well, like Port25. Which is what it should be.

So...thanks. I certainly still expect to be engaged on issues of openness and technology.You can now find me at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.

Welcome Mark Stone to Port 25

Peter Galli — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:45:00 GMT

I would like to introduce Mark Stone, who will be a regular contributor to Port 25 going forward. Mark has a long association with open source.

He did his first Linux install in 1994 and, in the fifteen years since, has served as O'Reilly's executive editor for open source, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Linux Technology, publisher for the web arm of SourceForge's open source evangelism efforts, and later Director of Developer Relations for SourceForge.

During that time he helped Microsoft launch its first two open source projects on SourceForge.net. He has also co-edited two of the foundational books on open source: Open Sources and Open Sources 2.0.

At SourceForge, and as an independent consultant, he has worked with technology companies large and small to help them formulate their community engagement strategy around open source.

He has most recently been working at Microsoft to help identify and support community projects that advance open source on the Windows platform.

Please join me in welcoming him to the Port 25 family and look for his first blog post later this week.

Peter

Sun to Distribute the MSN Toolbar

Peter Galli — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:55:00 GMT

Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have signed a search distribution deal under which the MSN Toolbar, which is powered by Microsoft Live Search, will be available to U.S.-based Internet Explorer users when they download the Java Runtime Environment.

The agreement, which is effective today, means that Internet Explorer users downloading Sun's JRE will have the option of downloading the MSN Toolbar, giving them one-click access to Live Search and direct access to Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger.

Java is already found on 91 percent of Internet-connected PCs worldwide, while the Java Runtime Environment is one of the highest-volume consumer downloads on the Web. There are also some 6.5 million Java software developers and more than 800 million Java desktop users across the globe.

Given the enormous diversity of Java-based Web applications that are downloaded every month, the deal should help drive exposure to, and usage of, Live Search.

It is also being reported today that Google has dropped StarOffice from its Google Pack of free software, though this has not been confirmed by the company as yet. But this makes sense since Google probably wants people to use its own free online office suite.

ApacheCon and the Stonehenge Proposal

Kamaljit Bath — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:24:00 GMT

This is Kamaljit Bath, and I am in the Big Easy to experience my first Apache Conference! I am a Principal Program Manager in the Interoperability Technical Strategy Team at Microsoft. We have been doing a lot of great interoperability work and have done quite a few Open Source projects to build bridging solutions etc., but this is the first time I am attending ApacheCon. This is a learning experience for me.

Microsoft is certainly interested in expanding interoperability between Open Source solutions and Microsoft technologies, and is working with individuals and communities for that purpose. I think this is great because it will enable choice of solutions and create strong partnerships to promote growth for everyone in the industry.

ApacheCon has been quite an experience for me so far. I have seen the energy and high quality decision making. It is amazing how people from many different backgrounds can come together and accomplish so much in so little time.

I have also met some very interesting people and some that I have wanted to meet for a long time. Meeting motivated and driven people is what I like the most about conferences. I have learnt a lot from this experience and I will take back great memories from this trip.

In his keynote today Sam Ramji, the Senior Director for Platform Strategy at Microsoft, gave an update on the many interoperability and Open Source projects that Microsoft is engaged in. I am sure that some of this was news to many of the attendees, but hopefully it gave them an idea of the breadth of work that Microsoft is doing in this area.

Sam covered a lot of things, including our participation in Apache QPID project; the release of the 'Oslo-M' language under the Open Source Promise; participation in the Apache HBase project; and support for the new Stonehenge proposal by WSO2.

Sam also covered many other open source projects that Microsoft has used to build bridging technologies, while my manager, Jean Paoli, has covered these in detail in his blog.

Sam is a well known figure in these avenues and needs no introduction - he has been representing Microsoft at many of these conferences.

But it is also important to have a more grass-root level developer and architecture presence from Microsoft, and we are now moving in that direction. Hopefully, we will see an increased Microsoft presence at such events.

Microsoft is also supportive of the new Apache incubation proposal - Stonehenge - that was proposed by WSO2. It will focus on building a set of sample applications based on approved W3C and OASIS standard protocols with goal of proving interoperability between different implementations on various platforms.

I think these sample applications will provide developers a great starting place for their tasks by providing best practice guidelines and reference implementations on various platforms. They will also help find potential interoperability problems and hopefully develop into a great community to discuss the architecture of multi-tier SOA apps. We look forward to working with WS02 on the scope of this project, and having discussions with the community.

These are exciting times for the software industry and we are seeing the co-existence of commercial and open source software and coming together of various forces to create solutions for the new heterogeneous IT environment.

Onwards, with great faith and hope!

On the Road in Europe - Take 2

hjanssen — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:38:00 GMT

Wednesday - Day two for my IPC in Mainz conference, which is a developer orientated PHP conference.

Very well attended. The most negative thing I can say about this conference is that for some unknown (but brilliant beyond my level of comprehension) reason the venue is a 30 minute cab drive from the Speaker hotel. And the shuttle provided in the morning leaves every 30 minutes, has 5 seats and has a line of 20+ people for it in the morning.

And yes, there are hotels closer by.

It is pretty cool to see how things changed in the last few years; people do not stop/point and stare anymore when they see Microsoft people walking around and actively engaging. People are happy to see us.

There are a lot sessions on a variety of topics, but I get the most out of talking to people outside of these sessions. I am starting to lose track with everybody I have talked to.

Anyhoot, I had a good conversation with Brian Akers. For those who do not know Brian, he is one of the people behind Drizzle. He gave a keynote yesterday that was extremely well attended and talked about the state of Drizzle, which is starting to become a really interesting Database.

One session that was pretty unique was Pierre Joye and Garrett Serack doing a joint session on how to build PHP on Windows. This used to require the sacrifice of your favorite item, standing on your head, facing the North and chanting to RA to get it to build.

The work we have done with the PHP community to make PHP on Windows the best possible platform in the past few months has been greatly improved and accelerated. All old libraries have been updated to their latest versions, something that had not been done in over 10 years for some of them. More importantly, these libraries are now the same versions (and thus have the same behavior) as their Linux counterpart.

Additionally the build system used was VC6, which means Visual Studio 1998!!. The build system is now VC9 or Visual studio 2008. And, depending on the speed of your machine, it builds in a few minutes. And viola, a brand new, shiny, hot from the oven, newly minted PHP.

Now we have a great place to start from, a build for Windows that we have all the code for, a build with a compiler that comes out of this century. That will leave us ready to do the next steps, optimizing PHP on Windows. And that is what we will be working on for the foreseeable future. If you can/want to please participate.

These changes are incorporated into the latest build starting with PHP 5.3. You can download this here.

If you want to check out in person what we did, and how you now can build PHP for Windows, check out this link.

BTW, Pierre and Garrett both have the misfortune to report to me at the OSTC. And yes, there are questions about their sanity

A few more days, and then back home. Where my wife, kid and dog claim they are looking forward to having me back again after 2 weeks. Off to get some rest.......

Windows 7 and much, much more

Peter Galli — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:22:00 GMT

There was lots of news announced at PDC here in Los Angeles on Tuesday. From the first public demo of Windows 7, to how Microsoft is extending Office to the browser, to the release of the Silverlight Toolkit, and much, much more.

Rather than bore you all with too many facts and details, I thought I would simply provide a set of links to resources where you can get more information about all this news. I'll keep updating these as I find more useful links.

Windows 7:

Extending Office to the Web:

Silverlight:

Windows Server 2008 R2:

Bink.nu

Steve Ballmer's Executive Email:

A Platform for the Next Technology Revolution

Opening Day: Azure Platform Debuts

Sam Ramji — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Today at PDC in Los Angeles, Ray Ozzie unveiled the Azure Services Platform, which will enable developers to build the next generation of applications - spanning all the way from the cloud to the enterprise data center. My team's focus has been on making sure that this platform treats open source development technologies as first-class citizens.

A key components of the Azure Services Platform is Windows Azure, an infrastructure that provides core capabilities such as virtualized computation, scalable storage, and automated service management. Developers will be able to build or extend parts or complete service-based applications using Live Services, .Net Services and SQL Services.

They will also be able to choose from a range of open source development tools and technologies, and be able to access Azure services using a variety of common internet standards, including HTTP, REST, WS* and Atom.

The Azure platform's goal is to support all developers and their choice of IDE, language and technology. We are also providing programmable components that can be consumed by other applications, and Microsoft is funding and sponsoring open source software development kits to enable Java and Ruby developers to take advantage of Azure.

This is significant as this is the first time we are delivering cross-platform software development kits at the same time as Microsoft Developer Network software development kits.

We are also funding these open source projects, under the BSD licensing model, in collaboration with Thoughtworks Inc. and Schakra Inc., and they will be run on open source portals RubyForge and SourceForge.

Much of this interoperability work was undertaken by Jean Paoli, the General Manager for Interoperability Strategy, and his team, including Vijay Rajagopalan, the Principal Architect for Interoperability Strategy, so a big thanks is due to them on this front.

In addition, as part of Microsoft's commitment to openness and working with open source communities, I asked the Open Source Technology Center (led by Tom Hanrahan) to come up with some specific examples that show how open source communities can access Windows Azure.

This work has allowed us to deliver several ‘proofs of concept' which show open source developers that they can create applications that run as services and have access to services in the cloud. These ‘proofs of concept' demonstrate that:

A developer using the Eclipse IDE can write a C# application that runs on Windows Azure
Gallery, the leading PHP photo application, can access Windows Azure cloud storage
A blog engine hosted on Windows Azure can authenticate users with OpenID.

Specific to Gallery, we've done two simple things: we created wrappers to convert the Windows Azure API to PHP objects, and we created a Windows Azure subclass inherited from the Windows NT Platform class. The net of all this is that, with a small amount of code, we were able to connect one of the top PHP application to Windows Azure, specifically, photo images stored as BLOBs in the cloud.

Finally, Microsoft is also going to publish the "M" language specification, including MSchema, MGrammar and MGraph, under the Open Specification Promise. This will facilitate the interoperability of the "Oslo" declarative modeling language, codenamed "M," with prominent industry standards such as WS* specifications, XML formats, industry protocols and security standards.

Stay tuned, because there's more to come.

Cheers,

Sam

Microsoft at AJAXWorld

Peter Galli — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:05:00 GMT

The AJAXWorld Conference and Expo got underway in San Jose today, under the broad theme of "Rich Web Technologies for Enterprise Web 2.0 & Social Web."

Scott Guthrie, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, delivered the keynote address today, while Brad Abrams, the Product Unit Manager for the AppFx team here at Microsoft, will also be presenting a couple of sessions over the next few days.

While Microsoft is not announcing anything new at the show, Abrams will point to the cumulative effect of all the work that has been done so far. He will talk about how JQuery will ship with future versions of Visual Studio, as well as how standards based JavaScript, CSS, and HTML are all now supported in Visual Studio 2008.

Attendees will also get to see how JQuery interoperability and usage is now on the same page with ASP.NET Ajax, as well as demos of the cross-browser, cross-platform Silverlight plug-in, which works on Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, and on both Macs and Windows machines.

Abrams tells me he also plans to show off a couple of Silverlight sites running on Linux with the Novell Moonlight implementation of Silverlight, as well as a demo of its Silverlight tools for Eclipse, which underscores how developers can use the tools they want to leverage Silverlight.

He has also posted a lot more detail on his talk, which was titled "Building a Great Ajax application from Scratch," in this blog post.

Also, Bryan Kirschner of the platform strategy group, will be delivering a keynote address on how Microsoft participates in a world of choice at GOSCON, the Government Open Source Conference, in Portland tomorrow.

In addition, two other colleagues from Microsoft will also be participating. Stuart McKee, the National Technology Office for the U.S., will be on the Government Open Collaboratives Panel with Brian, and Kathleen Connor from Microsoft's Health Solutions Group, will also be speaking.

An interview with Codeplex's Sara Ford

Sam Ramji — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:20:00 GMT

It has been a month or so since the Codeplex announcement of server support for SVNBridge, which enables TortoiseSVN to talk to Team Foundation Server, and the team is looking for feedback now this has been out for a while. I also recently interviewed Codeplex's Sara Ford on this, and wanted to share her responses with you.

Sam Ramji: So, Sara - this has been a top request for some time. What are the most interesting comments you've received requesting this feature?

Sara Ford: There have been countless requests and comments for this feature, but one of the more memorable ones when we first announced the SVNBridge project last year is "It's so crazy it just might work," was one.

Many of our users view CodePlex, when compared to other open source hosting sites, as Team Foundation Server (TFS) versus Subversion (SVN). Now, our users can use either TFS or SVN clients against any of our projects. It's like soccer fans and American football fans are unexpectedly findings themselves in the same arena, conversing for the first time.

Sam Ramji: What made it hard to deliver this feature?

Sara Ford: When we first started investigating this, we were skeptical that it could be done, since TortoiseSVN and Team Explorer are so different. But once we began comparing the protocols used for Subversion and Team Foundation Server, we were surprised by how much of it could easily be translated. So a lot of things started working quickly, but there were a couple of areas that didn't map directly, and those represented the bulk of the effort to get all the kinks worked out.

Sam Ramji: What can Subversion fans expect next from Codeplex?

Sara Ford: Well, as always, we look at the features users have voted the highest on the CodePlex Issue Tracker. Now that we're closing our number one most requested feature, we're asking our Subversion fans to visit our Issue Tracker and start voting for what they want to see next!

Sam Ramji: It's interesting that now we have Subversion support in Visual Studio through the AnkhSVN project, and SvnBridge support from Codeplex on the server side. You can probably do round trips via SVN from Visual Studio to Codeplex. Interesting? Or just plain strange?

Sara Ford: VisualSVN and AnkhSVN are both popular plug-ins for Visual Studio that provide integrated IDE support for Subversion, and several users have mentioned they've tried them against CodePlex and they work great! We really like the idea of providing the broadest support for different clients and tools, so users can pick the tools they prefer.

Next Steps

jcannon — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:11:00 GMT

When I began my journey with technology, it was with a passion for the web. Living off a friend’s T1 line, I was hacking together HTML when Mosaic was the only show in town. I’m returning to that love of the web next week where I’ll be moving to a new position in Product Management for Windows Live social networking.

To the community: I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed learning, listening and working with you. I’ll take your wisdom with me & promise to carry the “open” flag with me wherever I go within Microsoft. You’re in good hands: effective immediately, Peter Galli, will be taking over as Open Source Community Manager on Port 25. Things have been quiet on Port 25, and Peter has great plans to shake things up …but more on that later.

See you around, -Jamie

Participation, Diversity, and Change

Bryan Kirschner — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 22:32:00 GMT

“…Our goal here is to evolve and to hopefully provide information that makes it easier for people using OSS and Microsoft software in the real world.” Bill Hilf wrote this in an April 2006 blog entitled “Who Would Have Guessed?” just one week after Port25 launched. Although in hindsight it seems obvious Port25 was a good idea, back then there was a lot of guessing and finger-crossing, because Port25 wasn’t about Bill or Sam participating in a dialogue as individuals—something they did and continue to do all the time. This was about Microsoft as a company opening up for two-way participation in a new domain.

This domain has proven to be even broader than people using open source and Microsoft software—it includes people holding varied dispositions across technical, business and legal perspectives, in both camps. There are people interested in very specific technical issues and some in broader industry trends and themes. Posts with high readership, many trackbacks, lots of comments (or some combination of the above) include, for example, some how-to and systems administration focused (Kishi on systems configuration), some about new bits you can use (Hank on Windows media player for Firefox) and some about big news (John Rosenberg on the approval of two Shared Source licensed by the OSI).

Comments on two recent posts—How Did It Start for You? and New Horizons really crystallized for me the diversity of the Port25 community—inside and outside Microsoft. The Port25 community defies reductive classification as “a Microsoft guy (or gal)” or “an open source gal (or guy)”—or as “a developer” or “an end-user.” Folks wear multiple hats and have diverse experiences and interests. So Port25 is evolving to reflect and support that diversity.

Port25 will continue to be the home of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft. And technical content will continue to make “it easier for people using OSS and Microsoft software in the real world”. But the redesign you’re looking at will make it easier to browse and search a larger and more diverse body of content efficiently: are you looking for downloads, developer-focused content, or in browsing content of general interest to the “community?”

One big reason for making these sorts of changes is the steadily increasing number and scope of people , technologies , activities , and downloads across Microsoft and around the world that are relevant to Microsoft and open source growing together (to use a phrase you’ve heard before on Port25). We want these to be readily discoverable for every member of the Port25 community who might have an interest in them—whether because you find something to be problematic (--constructive feedback is important!), inspirational, or useful. And above all, the biggest reason is something we have all experienced over the life of Port25: the vitality and two-way dialogue of Port25 continues to foster to more awareness, connections, participation and change within Microsoft and in the broader ecosystem.

Referring to one such manifestation of change, Sam titled a blog “If you’re surprised you’re not paying attention.” The evolution of Port25 will make it easier for you to pay attention to what matters to you.

New Horizons

jonrosenberg — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:22:00 GMT

Those of you who’ve read my little bio at the bottom of this blog may have guessed that I have a life-long passion for helping kids learn and a strong belief that technology can be a great educational tool. Next month I will be moving to a new position at Microsoft that will allow me to indulge this passion full-time as Director of Education Solutions, helping Microsoft to innovate around technology, delivery models and partnerships to reach the majority of the world’s student population that don’t have access to technology and its benefits today.

Many families today take technology for granted. I know mine does. We all assume that a computer will always be on, connected to the Internet, available to help with studying, problem solving, productivity, and finding the answer to just about any question that we can think of, including how well Junior is doing in Spanish class :) While I appreciate what technology has done to enrich my children’s education, I am also aware that the majority of people in the world do not have access to a computer. My new job is, quite simply, to get to work on this problem and I can’t wait to get started.

After all the OSCONs, OSBCs and other interactions with the Open Source community, I’m quite sure that the list of things I’ve learned and people I have to thank for it is longer than your reading endurance. So I’ll just say that it’s been great, I will never forget the cooperative spirit in which many of you engaged with me as Microsoft made its first forays into the world of Open Source, and I’m sure that many of our paths will cross again as we endeavor to improve education in the developing world.

Alvidaa

kishi — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:21:00 GMT

I have been working as a Senior Program Manager with the Open Source Software Lab since the fall of 2005. After spending two of the most eye-opening and fantastic years here, sadly, time has come for me to move on. I am taking on a role in a different division inside of Microsoft but having been attached to Port25 for such a long time, I didn’t want to leave without writing my parting thoughts. You see, when I started my work with the Open Source Software Lab, I had no idea who Bill Hilf was or his role at Microsoft. So when I first came to speak to him about this opportunity, I was driven purely by the job description, the first line of which read “Everything is connected”. After talking to Bill, when I came back and searched for his name/credentials on the web, needless to say, I felt like a total idiot. Here was someone, who was literally the Linux and Open Source “guy” within Microsoft and I had no clue about his background whatsoever....taught me that I should have done better homework . After going through the interview loops and meeting up w/ some sharp minds in OSSL, I was very attracted to the opportunity and came on board.

Anyway, I have had the pleasure of working with some amazing people on this time, Sam Ramji, Hank Janssen, Michael Francisco, Steve Zarkos, Tom Hanrahan, John Kew, Anandeep Pannu to name a few. In the process of understanding and learning about Linux and Open Source technologies, I also learnt a whole lot about driving change through people, technology and especially practices (Sam – Thank you!). In my two years with the OSSL, I got the opportunity to REALLY push the boundaries of conventional or deep-rooted thinking. I was able to work on my pet projects/areas of interest such as Systems Manageability and IT Operations. I spent this past summer building the Interop Lab in Cambridge, MA – something I enjoyed whole-heartedly. I got face time with thought leaders like Miguel De Icaza and rubbed shoulders with creative thinkers like Tom Hanrahan. The experience that I am walking away with is quite profound at many levels. Let me explain why: You see, this team is so unique in what it does, that it’s perhaps one of the few places which has the ability to drive change inward and outward. In my experience here, I have not only seen the ground shift beneath my feet but have also tremendous progress towards community involvement and understanding as it relates to Linux and Open Source. The wisdom I am walking away with can best be captured by something Margaret Mead wrote “Never under estimate the power of a few committed people to change the world “. I say that with the utmost passion because the intellectual horsepower, pure passion and pace that I have witnessed in this group is hard to ignore or imitate.

Some other thoughts that I am taking with me are how much effort goes into simply undoing misconceptions and misunderstandings. Working in this group and watching Bill, Sam, Hank and all these guys work – I realized how committed we are to building bridges and doing a great job of listening as well as being understood. So, after working with Open Source enthusiasts and Windows professionals side-by-side, I whole heartedly endorse something F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a while ago “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function“

In conclusion, I would urge the Open Source Community to really look at how far we have come in the past two years alone. Don’t take my word for it, see for yourself the work done on Port25 and http://www.microsoft.com/opensource

As always, your thoughts and comments are ALWAYS welcome…………….. Alvidaa (That’s urdu for Farewell)

Win a copy of the .NET/J2EE Interoperability Toolkit

jcannon — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:22:00 GMT

It's been awhile since we've featured any books or authors on Port 25 - you may remember Jeremy Moskowitz on Windows/Linux Integration, and then Linux in a Windows World with Rod Smith. That doesn't mean our library shelves have gone empty though ~ so today we're going to run a small giveaway of some extra copies of .NET and J2EE Interoperability Toolkit we came across. It's a great book on how to open .NET to work with Java and comes with some useful tools on CD - including the The Mind Electric GLUE web services. GLUE provides developers that want to build Java Web services with an easy-to-use, compact implementation of all of the core Web services standards, including XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. It allows any Java object to be instantly published as a Web service and third-party Web services to be consumed as if they are local Java objects.

To Win: All we ask is that you submit the best example of open source interoperability on Windows. It can be a project running on Windows (like Apache), a language (like PHP or Java), or a commerical application - like MySQL. Send them directly to port25@microsoft.com and we'll pick the best 6 stories. We'll close the competition next Friday, November 9th at 12 noon EST. Good luck!

About the book:
Discover how to build applications that run on both the Microsoft .NET Framework and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)—and extend your customer reach and system shelf life. Whether your background is in .NET or J2EE, you’ll learn to implement many of the interoperability technologies available today, including Microsoft, Sun, and third-party compatibility tools. Interoperability expert Simon Guest takes a balanced look at the pros and cons of each cross-platform technology presented, including best practices, workarounds, and examples of interoperability solutions in action. You also get interoperability software on CD—plus a wealth of code you can use in your own solutions.

Discover how to:

Use .NET Remoting to enable interplatform connectivity
Write interoperable Web service solutions that show interoperability in a production environment, handle exceptions, and use UDDI
Employ Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to create a shared database between .NET and J2EE
Enable cross-platform asynchronous calling with Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) and WebSphere MQ from IBM
Implement a bridge between .NET and J2EE queues using Microsoft Host Information Server and Microsoft BizTalk Server
Deliver a consistent user interface across platforms through shared session state and shared authentication
Build complex interoperability solutions using Web services specifications for security, binary data exchange, and routing