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

Mindtouch: Deki, OSS and Windows

jcannon — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 23:59:00 GMT

Our community knows that open source businesses are important to Microsoft. Nothing demonstrates this better than the fact that open source was a key theme in the recent Windows Server 2008 Launch. You can read more about that here.

One of the individuals we highlighted was Steve Bjorg, Founder and CTO at Mindtouch. Mindtouch develops an open source collaboration platform. Today, I'm excited to have Robert Mason, Mindtouch Platform Engineer, update us on the progress Mindtouch has made in delivering a first class open source experience on Windows. Take it away Bob....

Short Demo Video: MindTouch Deki 8.05.2

This demo video goes through a lot of information quickly. It shows the basics of collaboration in MindTouch Deki and then demonstrates a mashup with a Microsoft Silverlight charting package. NOTE: With MindTouch Deki creating mashups, dynamic reports and dashboards does not require programming ability.

Hello! It’s great to be asked to guest blog here at Port 25. Last you had heard from us, we had written about MindTouch Deki from the start being written in C#, but running solely on Mono inside of a Linux environment. Well, that’s all about to change… I’m happy announce that for the first time, MindTouch is releasing an official Windows-based beta version of MindTouch Deki. Specifically, you may now install using a MindTouch-created Microsoft Windows MSI!

MindTouch Deki is an open source collective intelligence platform. In other words, it is an enterprise wiki that sits atop a web-services framework and enables mashups, dashboards, and dynamic reporting from disparate systems and databases. MindTouch Deki provides a unique collaboration tool for enterprises and workgroups. Rather than taking the less useful approach of other collaborative and Enterprise 2.0 applications by providing a simple walled-garden / point application, MindTouch has developed Deki with the collaborative intuition of a highly polished and robust enterprise wiki, but is also able to federate and mashup application and data silos. It was developed on Microsoft .NET using C#, and, until today, has only officially supported installations on Linux using Mono.

Although this is a beta release, the MindTouch team has worked hard to include all major features and functionality currently available to Deki users on Linux-based operating systems. Please report any problems or issues that you may discover either at our forums or by filing a bug. This new MindTouch Deki MSI beta supports IIS 7 on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Vista only. However, the final release of the MSI will also support IIS 6 on Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Download the MindTouch Deki MSI today. We're very excited to at last be offering support for Microsoft IIS 6 and 7 on Vista, Windows Server 2003, and 2008. MindTouch Deki has enjoyed a groundswell of adoption with daily downloads in the thousands; by (finally) introducing an easy and officially supported means of installing on Windows Server and Windows Vista we are expecting great things! Now, Systems Integrators and .NET developers can return to their existing customer base (and find new customers) to deliver more value by "adding the 2.0" to the enterprise infrastructure in the form of a collaborative surface atop the existing infrastructure that they've already deployed.

Write MindTouch for more information about our web-oriented architecture or for a high level explanation read about our technologies at the website. Finally, expect to see more Microsoft-related updates from MindTouch in the coming months… Subscribe to our monthly eNewsletter at www.MindTouch.com to stay up to date on new Microsoft related products and offerings.

Thanks,
Bob Mason

Technical Analysis: OpenSSH on Linux using Windows/Kerberos for Authentication

jcannon — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:35:00 GMT

Abstract: Secure remote access to UNIX and Linux systems is generally accomplished through SSH. The most frequent implementation of that protocol is OpenSSH, originally written for the OpenBSD project but now ported to a wide variety of platforms. This paper will show how to use OpenSSH with the Kerberos portion of Active Directory to automate authentication.

Download OpenSSH on Linux using Windows/Kerberos for Authentication

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.

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.