Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft : Interop, Media

Releasing the Linux Integration Component Drivers...

Sam Ramji — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:38:00 GMT

Microsoft on Monday contributed the Linux Integration Component drivers to the Linux community for the reasons stated in our release. Microsoft chose the GPLv2 license for the mutual benefit of our customers, partners, the community, and Microsoft.

Microsoft's decision was not based on any perceived obligations tied to the GPLv2 license. For business reasons and for customers, we determined it was beneficial to release the drivers to the kernel community under the GPLv2 license through a process that involved working closely with Greg Kroah-Hartman, who helped us understand the community norms and licensing options surrounding the drivers.

The primary reason we made this determination in this case is because GPLv2 is the preferred license required by the Linux community for their broad acceptance and engagement. For us to participate in the Linux Driver Project, GPLv2 was the best option that allowed us to enjoy the tremendous offer of community support. The community's response even within a few hours of posting the code was welcoming and we appreciate it greatly.

We arrived at the decision to release the drivers to the community under the GPLv2 through this process. Both Greg K-H and Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation have reiterated that this is the same process that other companies follow when deciding how to release new device drivers to the Linux community.

We are looking forward to the positive collaboration and acceptance that has marked the vast majority of our interactions with customers and community members regarding this important project.

Cheers,

Sam

Updated 7/25/2009 @ 11:54 AM Pacific: Dave Roberts of Vyatta posted a blog entry rebutting recent cloims that we were accused of a licensing violation with some detail on the technical issues.

Samba, IPv6 and Windows/Linux Interoperability: Sam interviews Dr. David Holder

Sam Ramji — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:36:00 GMT

I got the chance to meet many extremely smart developers last month at SambaXP, the annual Samba developer conference. After attending I’m convinced that the Samba team knows more about how Windows networking works than most Microsoft developers.

One of the most informative sessions I attended was led by Dr. David Holder, an expert on IP networking and Windows/Linux interoperability. Specifically, he focuses on the IPv6 protocol, implementation, and interop, where he sees great opportunities for improved service levels in a range of applications and environments, but also sees a coming wave of interoperability problems between IPv6 implementations on various platforms.

He’s done some very slick stuff in getting Samba to work with Windows Vista and Longhorn’s IPv6 stack, which is encouraging, and lays out a roadmap for future interop work between the platforms.

We are posting the link to his slides along with this podcast of his interview, and David will be available to answer questions posted to the comments section of this page.

Cheers,

Sam

Links:

Dr. Holder's SambaXP “Vista and Samba with IPv6” presentation:

http://www.ipv6consultancy.com/ipv6blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/samba-and-vista-with-ipv6v2.pdf.

Details regarding how to IPv6 enable Samba4:

http://www.ipv6consultancy.com/ipv6blog/?p=12

An Interview with Ruby on Rails Core Team Member: Michael Koziarski

anandeep — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:49:00 GMT

Michael Koziarski (a.k.a) Koz is one of the core group of about 12 people who holds the keys to the code repository for the Rails framework (also known as Ruby on Rails). They’re all listed on the Rails core page with name and mug-shot. (I checked, a guy who looks like the Michael I interviewed has his mug shot on the page!).

According to his bio there “Michael Koziarski (nzkoz) is a software consultant based in Wellington, New Zealand. After a successful stint as an enterprise Java developer, he switched to rails shortly after the first public release. He’s a contributor to The Rails Way and maintains a personal blog.” That’s as good a intro as any so we thought we wouldn’t improve on it!

Michael was invited to the Microsoft Technical Summit and I was able to spend some really entertaining and educational time with him. I even showed him the lab! I think he may have enjoyed his time here as he wrote about us in a blog entry.

I enjoyed talking to him – and he stayed to talk to us about Rails, the dev process and other stuff despite being very close to missing his flight!

Anandeep

Video: An Interview with Ruby on Rails Core Team Member: Michael Koziarski

Cross-Platform Access to Codeplex Compliments of our Friends at Teamprise

MichaelF — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:40:00 GMT

Awhile ago we interviewed Martin Woodward from Teamprise regarding their suite of client applications that provide cross-platform access to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.

Today Teamprise announced that they are providing complimentary licenses for the Teamprise Client Suite to developers who plan to use the license to access Codeplex. This allows projects with developers on the Eclipse IDE along with anyone on the Mac, Linux or Unix platforms to use Codeplex for hosting their projects.

To obtain access to the client go to the sign-up page.

To provide some additional information on this release and Teamprise, Anandeep sat down with Martin to catch up.

Video: Cross-Platform Access to Codeplex Compliments of Teamprise

Martin's Blog about this announcement can be found here.

First Consulting Group: Building Physican Portal on JBoss & Microsoft

jcannon — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:21:00 GMT

In our final video interview featuring University Hospitals of Cleveland and their new Physician Portal, we have the opportunity to meet Joe Yelanich, Sr. Account Executive from First Consulting Group (FCG). FCG has a long history in the medical IT industry, and choose to deploy their solution on top of JBoss JEMS and Microsoft technologies.

Joe offers insight into the considerations and platform choices made from a consulting perspective, and why FCG chose a mix of JBoss, Java and Microsoft technologies to build their healthcare portal. More information is available on the technical and healthcare aspects to this solution in the previous segments. More information on FCG can be found on their website.

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Duration: 6:58

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University Hospitals of Cleveland: Healthcare Perspectives

jcannon — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:31:00 GMT

Yesterday, we published the first of three video interviews with University Hospitals of Cleveland, discussing their new Physician Portal, a healthcare solution built on top Windows Server and JBoss middleware system. Ed Marx, Hospital CIO, discussed the IT needs of the hospital, and how they arrived at a solution that built on - and took advantage of - both open source and Microsoft technologies.

Today, we get an opportunity to speak to Dr. Nathan Levitan, Chief Medical Officer & Senior VP of University Hospitals, and Dr. Ed Michelson, Chairman of Emergency Medicine. Each doctor provides insight into the healthcare impact of how different, disconnected legacy systems materially impacted the quality of care provided to patients, and how the implementation of the portal has been successful in linking patient information among, and within, its various network of 150 locations. In addition, management, usability and security are also covered from an end-user's perspective.

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Duration: 10:16

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University Hospitals of Cleveland: Physician Portal built on JBoss and Microsoft Solution

jcannon — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 20:43:00 GMT

In late 2005, you may recall that Microsoft and JBoss announced a joint technology agreement to explore ways to better enhance interoperability between JBoss Enterprise Middleware Systems (JEMS) and Windows Server. This was an exciting announcement and a great opportunity to explore ways in which the two companies could work together for our joint customers.

Recently, we had the fortunate opportunity to visit one such customer, University Hospitals of Cleveland, who has implemented a joint JBoss/Microsoft solution. The result, a new hospital-wide Physician Portal, allows hospital clinicians to access multiple, diverse patient care systems as though they were one. The reduced complexity and enhanced interoperability not only save the hospital money, but improve the standard and quality of patient care.

In Part 1 of our interview - done on-site & in partnership with industry moderator Bill Laberis - we explore the technical perspectives of the solution with Hospital CIO Ed Marx. Tomorrow, we look at the healthcare perspective & will end on Friday with a discussion with First Consulting Group, the healthcare services firm who built the solution.

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Duration: 12:34

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More on University Hospitals:
University Hospitals (UH) is a community-based health care system which serves patients at more than 150 locations throughout Northern Ohio, including seven wholly owned and four affiliated hospitals.

Committed to advanced care and advanced caring, UH encompasses the region's largest network of primary care physicians, outpatient centers and hospitals. The network also offers specialty care physicians to treat almost every disease and condition, skilled nursing, elder health, rehabilitation and home care services, and occupational health and wellness.

University Hospitals is the second largest private sector employer in Northeast Ohio and is within the top five largest private sector employers in the state of Ohio.

Paul Thurrott talks Open Source with Sam

jcannon — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 14:41:00 GMT

Just a quick note & pointer to Paul Thurrott's interview with Sam on Open Source, the Lab and why these intiatives are so important to Microsoft and to our customers. The interview was conducted back in October, but the podcast just went live at Windows IT Pro.

Windows Unified Data Storage Server

MichaelF — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:36:00 GMT

Today Microsoft announced the availability of the Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 (WUDSS). Built for mixed environments this solution is highly interoperable, without loss of performance in both NFS and CIFS environments. Remote administration is also provided both through Active X RDP and Java RDP Client Support.

This sounded interesting so we sent Hank to talk with Tres Hill, Sr Product Manager, to find out why this announcement is significant for IT professionals running heterogeneous environments.

Video: Tres Hill on Windows Unified Data Storage Server

SendMail, Sender ID and 25 Years of EMail: Sam Interviews Eric Allman

MichaelF — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 18:20:00 GMT

In the wake of the announcement that Sender ID will be included in the list of technologies covered by the OSP (Open Standards Promise) we spent some time talking with Eric Allman to get his thoughts.

Eric is a pioneer in internet communications and is the co-founder/CSO (Chief SCIENCE Officer) of Sendmail. In this interview Sam and Eric discuss the announcement, Sendmail's history, the recent 25th anniversary of email and more...

Catching up with Sugar CRM: Sam interviews Jacob Taylor

MichaelF — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:39:00 GMT

While we were in San Jose for Zendcon we had the opportunity to spend some time with Jacob Taylor, CTO of Sugar CRM. As you may remember, Microsoft and Sugar announced a technical collaboration in February focused on improving the experience of deploying and running Sugar on Windows. Sugar also decided to release the a new Sugar Suite distribution under the Ms-CL (Microsoft Community License) as part of the Shared Source Program.

In this interview Sam and Jacob discuss the path that led Jacob to being co-founder and CTO of Sugar CRM as well as what has been happening at Sugar since February. We also get Jacob's thoughts on the commercial open-source model that Sugar pioneered and the collaboration announced by Microsoft and Zend which has an impact on Sugar and its customers.

Video: SugarCRM: Sam interviews Jacob Taylor

Andi Gutmans on working with Microsoft & Improving PHP Performance on Windows

MichaelF — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 13:31:00 GMT

Today at Zendcon Bill Hilf and Andi Gutmans announced a new technical collaboration aimed at improving the performance of PHP on Windows both for IIS 6 as well as in the future including IIS 7 on Longhorn. The partnership has multiple components including Microsoft releasing a FastCGI add-on for IIS and Zend will establish a Windows testing lab to ensure high performance on an ongoing basis. In the end the winners are the millions of PHP developers and hosters who want an viable choice in operating systems.

In this interview Sam and Andi discuss how Zend came to be as well as the details of the announcement. Andi provides his perspective on what this collaboration will mean to the PHP community and has a question of his own for Sam.

Video: Andi Gutmans on working with Microsoft

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Centrify's Paul Moore Fields Questions from the Community

jcannon — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:40:00 GMT

Paul Moore sits down with Sam in this podcast, our second go around with Centrify. For those who don't know, Centrify builds software that provides access control and centralized identity management in mixed networks (Yes, this can include Windows, Linux, UNIX, Mac, J2EE and web platforms with Active Directory). This interview is a bit different as Sam runs through questions submitted to Port 25 from the first Centrify interview and Paul takes the opportunity to directly answer the community.

Centrify is also a sponsor of TechX, a roadshow being sponsored by IBM, Linux.com, Slashdot, Microsoft and others to help customers better enable interoperabiliy between operating systems, directories, applications (headed to DC, Chicago, Dallas & San Fran - check it out).

Windows and Linux Integration: A Conversation with the Author

MichaelF — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 21:25:00 GMT

Sam Interviews Jeremy Moskowitz who runs http://www.winlinanswers.com and http://www.gpanswers.com to discuss his experiences helping clients solve their Windows and Linux integration problems.

Jeremy has also penned a book titled Windows and Linux Integration which they mention in the interview. Check back on Monday when we will be publishing a complete chapter from the book for download.

Video: Windows and Linux Integration: A Conversation with the Author

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Linux in a Windows World: An interview with author Rod Smith and an excerpt from the book!

MichaelF — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 20:54:00 GMT

Sam interviews Rod Smith Author of the O'Reilly Book: Linux in a Windows World, a required read for OSSL staff. In this interview Sam and Rod discuss the impetus for writing the book and what readers can expect as well as Rod's background and challenges faced in penning this useful resource.

Along with the interview, O'Reilly Publications has given us permission to repost an excerpt from the book that provides useful information on configuring a Samba Server.

Big Thanks to O'Reilly for allowing us to make this portion of the book publicly available through Port 25!

Click the cover for the excerpt: (Download PDF)

Title: Linux in a Windows World
First Edition: February 2005
ISBN: 0-596-00758-2
Pages: 494
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxwinworld/index.html