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

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

CodePlex launches support for TortoiseSVN

jcannon — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:24:00 GMT

From our very own Sara Ford, word comes of Codeplex now offering server support for SvnBridge. SvnBridge enables TortoiseSVN to talk to Team Foundation Server. From Sara, "Support for Subversion has been our number one requested feature, and by hosting SvnBridge, our users can now use their favorite Subversion client with any project." Read the full blog here.

A picture says a thousand words:

Technical Analysis: Security Considerations for rdesktop and Windows Terminal Services

jcannon — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:10:00 GMT

Abstract: Microsoft Terminal Services provides an important set of functionality for remote administration and centralized application management. This service allows administrators to log in remotely and with full access to the system. Similarly, users can log in and run specific applications, which are centrally managed by IT personnel. The standard client for Linux systems is rdesktop. Rdesktop is shipped with many Linux distributions and this paper briefly looks at common security considerations around using this client application in Windows environments.

Download Security Considerations for rdesktop and Windows Terminal Services

Note: This paper represents testing and documentation in a lab environment. User Account Control (UAC) is an essential security component to Windows and Microsoft does not recommend turning off UAC in production environments.

Microsoft & Sourceforge

jcannon — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:36:00 GMT

Over the past four years, we’ve been working with Sourceforge on a number of unique programs to help connect developers with the code and communities that interest them. In 2004, we started the Windows Installer XML (WiX) Toolkit project on Sourceforge, licensed under the Common Public License. WiX is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. In 2005, we started the open source ODF Converter project. Then, in 2007, we launched the ‘World of Choice’ destination to provide helpful connections to free community and software offerings available from Microsoft.

Developers have told us these interactions are important and that it’s important that we continue collaborating with open source communities. We understand that the language of that collaboration is code. As a result, I’m excited to share that this year, Microsoft is a Diamond sponsor of the Sourceforge Community Choice Awards (CCA), joining O’Reilly and the Linux Foundation in supporting the recognition of world-class open source developers and projects.

For the uninitiated, the CCAs are an annual appreciation of open source projects that allow any OSS project to be nominated and voted on by the Sourceforge community. This joint collaboration will result in two important additions to this year’s Community Choice Awards:

1. The CCAs are now open to open source projects that are hosted on Codeplex. This means that projects hosted on Codeplex, and licensed under the MS Public or Reciprocal License, are eligible for nomination, voting and recognition.

2. As a part of our sponsorship, we’ve also worked with Sourceforge to create a new category for ‘Best Project for Educators’: Whether you're working in grade school education, high school, or college, teaching is difficult. Open source can help! This award goes to the project that makes it easier to educate and share knowledge together.

This is an important program for Microsoft – we believe strongly in supporting developer choice and collaboration. Open source is all about choice and collaboration. I can’t think of a better venue to support and cheer the fantastic work that these individuals and communities do every day. Education is another important theme from Microsoft. Worldwide, access to knowledge is a serious social and economic issue. Technology can be a key to closing this gap. We want to recognize development work being done in this area.

So here’s how to get involved: If you’re a project contributor, maintainer, or user – visit http://sourceforge.net/community/cca08/ - Select ‘Nominate’ and get started recognizing your favorite OSS Projects. You can ‘Search’ for projects too – Sourceforge has developed a clever widget that returns results across forges. In the case below, I searched for ‘XNA’ and received multiple Codeplex results.

This summer, winners will be recognized at OSCON in Portland, OR. If you will be in town, you’re welcome to attend.

This is an exciting time to be a developer. Let the recognition begin.

Now Hiring: Open Source Community Manager

jcannon — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:54:00 GMT

As many frequent readers of Port 25 are aware, Microsoft is committed to the long-term growth of open source. This includes technical collaborations, business partnerships, industry participation – and community outreach.

As we continue to grow our investments around open source, we’re looking to add a new Community Manager to our team. This position will be part of the Platform Community team and will be responsible for growing Microsoft and open source communities together. More specifically, this individual will be a core contributor to our long-term open source strategy & how we increase the potential of all developers, everywhere.

There’s no better place to start than the very community we work with. As a result, I’m posting this job to Port 25 – the full job description follows below. This is a community & marketing position, located in either Redmond, WA or the San Francisco Bay Area.

To inquire about this opportunity, please apply online and shoot me an e-mail.

Position: Senior Marketing Manager – Open Source Community
Join the team leading one of the companies most exciting & dynamic initiatives, driving Microsoft’s overall community strategy around Open Source Software. As a Senior Product Marketer on the Platform Strategy team, you will have the opportunity to bring our platforms to life by fostering community and thought leadership designed to promote better connections between Microsoft and Microsoft technologies with open source communities. This strategic position will work across Microsoft’s worldwide business groups and segment teams as well as industry influentials to help drive interoperability between Microsoft and open source software.

Your core responsibilities will include assisting in defining and driving core marketing initiatives – most specifically online & offline community-building. You will have the opportunity to help drive the strategy for customer-driven marketing designed to further the dialogue on the value of the Microsoft platform to open source audiences. You will work regularly with technical R&D teams and business strategy owners to define customer requirements and drive customer-ready evidence to arm customers and partners with the benefits of Microsoft platforms and open source stacks. Your work will be a cornerstone for a global thought leadership website and will be regularly featured in industry press around the world. You will also be responsible for ensuring that WW field sales & marketing teams have the right message and content to effectively communicate value to customers.

In addition, you will act as a visible external evangelist for Microsoft with respects to our Open Source strategy, helping to drive a balanced dialogue to the IT Pro and Developer audiences in both one-to-one and one-to-many events. You will regularly work with industry analysts to help shape and inform our market strategies and execution as well as supporting regular press engagements with senior management and executives. Finally, you will serve as a key point of accountability and representation to worldwide executive leadership with respects to our community outreach efforts. This involves regular opportunities to engage executive management with regards to strategic direction, priority setting and progress updates.

Qualifications
The candidate should have strategic marketing capabilities coupled with a strong gene for execution. Excellent analytical skills, as well as the ability to work with and influence industry influentials and analysts are important. Building collaborative relationships across the organization, motivating and leading that organization to achieve collective impact will be essential. The candidate must also be a highly motivated self-starter, with a strong competitive spirit. Familiarity with the Linux & OSS market / products is a plus, but not required for those candidates with strong aptitude. A BS/A is required, MBA preferred with experience in a related field working on projects that require strategic thinking, broad market impact, and business / technical marketing message development & delivery.

MVP Summit Ruby Meetup

jcannon — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:14:00 GMT

John Lam brings word of a Ruby meet-up at the MVP Summit happening today at 2PM at the International Meeting Place at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.

Quote John: "I’m going to be at the Convention Center from around 1:30 onwards. There are a lot of central public meeting places at the convention center. From where I sit at my desk this morning, it looks like the “International Meeting Place” on the second floor will do just fine. I’ll hang out there and I’ll be happy to demo / talk about IronRuby, OpenSource and whatever else *you* want to talk about. Follow me on twitter (john_lam) if you want up to the minute updates on where we’ll be just in case this location doesn’t work out."

More details here

Open Source Day at Microsoft

jcannon — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:16:00 GMT

Last Friday, March 28th, 2008 was Microsoft's first company-wide Open Source Day. This was a significant event and milestone in the company's move towards openness and was made freely available to any employee interested in attending. Packed full of panels and presentations by leaders in open source technology and programs at Microsoft, including a few industry folks, the discussion was open and uninhibited (subtitled : "Everything you wanted to know about open source and Microsoft, but were afraid to ask.")

The event itself was held at the Microsoft Conference Center on the Redmond campus....the same facilities we use for executive discussions with visiting customers and dignitaries. The space itself represents our largest and most sophisticated meeting center- and it was used at capacity to host a cross-section of business, marketing, legal and engineering employees throughout the day. Who would imagine this was happening only four floors below the same building complex that houses Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer's offices....

Mario is blogging more deeply on this later in the week. However, I wanted to share some pictures I snapped during the event which I thought those outside the company might find interesting.

The above slide, titled, "Why go open?" was presented by Raven Zachary of the 451Group. Raven, the first speaker of the day, was presenting his perspective on the trends and issues facing the open source industry. This slide in particular focused on the "why" of going open....You may not be able to read the fine details, but it illustrates primary reasons why software companies choose open source business models. In order: competitive forces, first-mover advantage, customer demand, improved distribution, commercial barriers, community model and internal resource constraints.

Not the first topic one might expect Microsoft to lead the day's discussion with. But this was a different day and it lead with bold statements to challenge the wisdom of this crowd.

This picture is my favorite. For those unfamiliar with the weather of the Pacific Northwest, you know that snow is seldom seen, especially this late in the season. However, Friday saw a squall come through Redmond...and while not sticking, certainly causing a whiteout and dangerous road conditions.

Why is this my favorite? When someone came up & asked what was going on in the Conference Center, pointing to the Open Source poster on the wall, I said, "Didn't you hear? Hell has frozen over?" :)

Till next time,
- Jamie

Microsoft Open Source Initiative

jcannon — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 16:26:00 GMT

We wanted to thank the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for the commitment and willingess to work together - and today, making public the Microsoft Open Source Initiative: The Microsoft Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open-source community. Quote the latest OSI Board Blog: "In the OSI board election held at the end of March, we've [Microsoft] gotten a controlling majority of board seats."

You can find more information at http://www.opensource.org and sballmer's first blog post.

NXT Up: OSBC

jcannon — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:43:00 GMT

At last years, OSBC, Microsoft hosted its first annual Open Source ISV Forum. In large part, the event was focused on facilitating a discussion around enabling open source innovation on Microsoft technologies, and to help potential partners reach new customers with those innovations.

For frequent readers of Port 25, it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that Microsoft is building bridges with open source partners. Over the years, Microsoft has helped thousands of partners grow successful businesses by providing a strong platform – both technically and operationally – to build on. This model has been successful for one reason: choice. Choice in applications, choice in licensing and support models, and choices in how customers deploy the solutions they’ve chosen. It is simply good business sense to extend this tradition to open source communities as well - and we’re committed to doing so.

That’s why we’re excited, in just under two weeks, to hold the second annual Microsoft Open Source ISV Forum on Monday, March 24^th. Similar to last year, we’re holding it in conjunction with OSBC to ensure we’re reaching out to the right folks at the right time, and participating in the larger dialogue that OSBC provides of putting open source to work. Sam Ramji will be kicking the day off with a session entitled, "Open Source, Interoperability, and Microsoft: What it all means." That'll be followed with sessions on venture capital funding, partnering, sales and marketing assistance- and a professional networking reception afterwards.

I encourage you or your company, if you are attending OSBC, or live in the San Francisco area, to register and attend. It’s free for the day, and will promise to be a valuable, open and insightful dialogue on the choices, and challenges, of going-to-market with open source.

ComicCon{nection}

jcannon — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:05:00 GMT

<lighter note>

I'm going to guess that some of our audience knows what ComicCon is - I'm familiar as I was huge DC and Marvel fan in the mid-90's...Who was not, I suppose. My favorite hero, to this day, is Batman (he fights the fight without any special powers....) - and the annual San Diego event was an easy way to track that industry, and the entertainment space around it. Suffice to say, I'm excited for the Dark Knight.

What does this have to do with Microsoft? As part of the very cool {Heroes} work being done, we're now featuring comics that, "adapts tech stories from actual IT Professionals and Developers - a web comic that reflects the real lives of IT Hero's such as you." They're very clever. And to beat, the stories are by Chuck Dixon, a man very well known to Batman fans in the 1990s.

Enjoy the dailies, or subscribe to the RSS feed - I chuckled at the Firewall story.

</lighter note>

all software...

jcannon — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:39:00 GMT

Earlier this month, I was reading the Open Solutions Alliance's top predictions for 2008....this was based on polling they conducted within their membership base. It's a good read and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys that kind of fodder (there's no shortage of "predictions," it seems, this time of year.) The full report is here (PDF). One in particular caught my eye: The CEO of Adaptive Planning, William Soward, echoed the 451 Group in his assertion that '...open source is becoming a fundamental element of all software...'

To a great or lesser extent, open source or open source-inspired development approaches and the increasingly related fields of "open" collaboration and innovation are undeniably spreading to many fields of software conception, design and development. One could look at this horizontally, or where open source development is happening at the fundamental stacks within computer science (operating systems, compilers, editors, programming languages)- and we see this all the time: Linux, Java, Haskell, Ruby, Python; or, one could look at vertical development, as in ESB, CRM, Retail or Healthcare applications...and this is happening as well: MuleSource, Iona and LedgerSMB are a few examples. In each case, the classic struggle to advance software usefulness is being addressed by open collaboration, where certain fundamentals are being shared within a larger group to allow for greater concentration on, say, bigger issues.

In the same vein of Soward's prediction, there have always been & always will be certain aspects of technology that cut across all software. One obvious example that comes to mind is security. No matter what the software size or complexity, purpose or reason, security has a home among the fundamental considerations made by programmers, on behalf of the end-user. Privacy is another aspect of the software (and data) lifecycle that is increasingly core – but still not quite there...

Open source will have a similar home, I imagine, in the minds of developers. Where does open source have a home in my software's lifecycle? What components will galvanize and excite a community? What components will not? Much like security, the industry will expect these considerations as a part of all software development.

This is something our team has recognized and - recently, something that was recognized by the Engineering Excellence folks. In a nutshell, Engineering Excellence is about ensuring code quality and best practices are part of the fabric of software development. If anything, it represents Microsoft's view of excellence in software engineering practices. And yes, we even have an internal handbook....

I can’t think of a better reflection of open source growing into all software –including at Microsoft--than sharing a glimpse from that handbook. (As you may have noticed, I'm keen on the screenshots.....). Among many considerations, we expect all of our developers to understand core elements, such as Privacy, Security, Code Integrity, etc. We have - as of December 2007, added “Shared Source Code."

This section adds to an established set of practices: “exchanging source code with external parties for development and testing” for sharing source code outside of Microsoft and inside of Microsoft. This is now a core component to our fundamental practices across Microsoft development. This is significant as the considerations for sharing original inventions outside any company is always difficult - including at Microsoft.

If this is any indication, I agree with Mr. Soward's prediction... In 2008, the world will see more organizations evaluate where open sources makes sense as part of their fundamental product development considerations....and it will increasingly appear across horizontal and vertical software development, or "all software."

Here's to an exciting year together.

MySQL Conference & Expo

jcannon — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:57:00 GMT

It's going to be a busy couple months in the open source industry, with a number of influential conferences convening over the next six months to discuss the latest issues, advances and topics facing OSS. More on those later, but I wanted to get something quick up on one in particular that Microsoft is participating in - the MySQL User Conference in April. Folks may remember our sponsorship in 2007, (Bryan has a good read on this) - and I'm happy to continue this support and participation.

As part of our sponsorship, we've negotiated a discount for registration we can extend to our community. If you're interested in attending, register at http://www.mysqlconf.com and enter code: mys08micr. This will give you a discount of 10% against the cost of your ticket....we hope to see you there.

PS. Thank you to our friends at MySQL, in particular Kaj Arno for the continued support. (Kaj - thanks for the calendar ;))

Pilot

jcannon — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:49:00 GMT

I spend a significant amount of my time crisscrossing Microsoft, looking for (and advocating) interesting ways that our research and development teams are adopting open approaches in their work. It’s not terribly difficult - and, in fact, increasingly easy to find areas where sharing code, participating in community and collaborating with the commercial open source industry are part of what we do every day. As part of my role as an open source community & platforms lead, growing this list is core to my job. And in blogging more actively on Port 25, I'm excited about discussing and expanding this list out in the open.

That said, once in awhile something different comes along...and in my crisscrossing this weekend, something different popped for me. As a former web developer, I have a special place in my heart for the developer tools we offer to build web experiences. I can recall using FrontPage '97 to develop simple WYSIWYG websites (*WYSIWYG, admittedly, was on a journey then...still is) and patching together Imagemaps with hand-calc'd coordinates; the joy of Photoshop and installing Kai's Power Tools for the visual fun of it, or the pain of Paint Shop Pro and transparent GIFs circa 1996. Dreamweaver was doing some interesting things and Visual Studio was starting to get more and more web-centric. Ahhh, the days of Web 1.0.

Additionally, as a former IS major, I also have a special place in my heart for development on a budget. Those dispositions keep me acutely aware of what goes on with our Express products - and it caught my eye when I started skimming across the refreshed Express site.

A lot of folks aren't aware that Microsoft offers a free-as-in-beer line of development tools for application, game & web development. We call these 'Express' - and there are four editions: Visual Web Developer 2008, Visual C++ 2008 Express, Visual Basic 2008 Express and Visual C# 2008 Express. There is even a free version of SQL Server 2005 in Express which provides complimentary database services during development. They've been available for a few years, but they were recently rev'd with enhancements from Visual Studio 2008.
With my job at Microsoft focused on open source so acutely, I figured I would take them for a test drive & see how easy it would be to get started. The real test, though? How easy would it be to start using this app if I was a Ruby, or PHP developer (Truth be told - I am not, nor was I during my development days) – but these are different times and those are popular choices. It’s a quick litmus test I’m thinking of using more often…because I do get asked frequently about Microsoft’s support of programming languages and frameworks beyond .NET.

Setup is straightforward - download, run the wizard & choose additional (free) documentation and development options like SQL Express. Click Next & you're set on your way. Note: you do need Windows XP or later to run an Express tool.

After VS Express is installed, the welcome center offers multiple ways to get started via community sample code, beginning programming resources, guided videos and relevant articles from a variety of online communities.

So I tried a quick test. In two-clicks, I went to "Help" and "Search" - and typed in 'PHP'. Here are the automatic & dynamically returned search results:

I immediately get source code samples to begin programming (from MSDN); SQL Server samples for data access and more from the Codezone Community and direct links into community forum posts. Right away, these are pretty useful tools to get started with.

Ruby is a very popular language - so let's try this one more time with 'Ruby':

Again, that’s not bad for a quick and dirty search. I get relevant programming articles, opinion pieces, sample code and more. It’s all hyperlinked out into the web, so I can easily jump-off and explore at my own discretion, or as I’m inclined to do…lose myself in a trail of links, only to recall my original point hours later. (Case in point )

The point I walked away with, in all seriousness, is that the spirit of Port25 is spreading at Microsoft & the proof is in the programming. It's exciting to see these offerings baked in from day one & I encourage you to take one of the Express offerings for a spin & post your feedback - what are your impressions?

On Port 25, I'll continue to highlight examples like this, and expand on my role at Microsoft and how we're working on growing the role of open source within Microsoft's DNA. For now, though, I have to dust off my copy of Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability and wax nostalgic with some old friends.

[PostIcon:3352]

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

Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries

jcannon — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:47:00 GMT

Some news from Scott Guthrie's blog this morning - we'll get more from the .NET and Shared Source team over the next few months:

"One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them.

Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year.

We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows). We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ). The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

You'll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally). We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008.

Integrated Visual Studio 2008 Debugging Support

The final release of VS 2008 will support the ability to configure the debugger to dynamically download the .NET Framework debugger symbols (and corresponding source code) from a web server hosted by Microsoft. You'll be able to configure the .NET Framework symbols to be downloaded all in one shot, or manually retrieved on demand:

Read the rest of the post at Scott Guthrie's Blog....