Who would have guessed?

re: Who would have guessed? [Reply to Rick Strom's comment about CVS and VS]

ericlee748 — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:15:47 GMT

Hi Rick,

My name is Eric Lee, and I’m the product manager for Team Foundation Server – a product in the Visual Studio Team System family.

First, let me apologize on behalf of the Microsoft rep that blew you off about this - Visual Studio is certainly a product who cares very deeply about the opinions of its customers.

You have a good point – simple, bullet-proof, cheap/free version control is certainly something that all developers need; whether they are doing OSS, running a small business, or part of large enterprise.

Before I try to address your question directly, let me spend a paragraph or two talking about how we think of version control and extending Visual Studio at Microsoft – I’d be happy to hear your opinions on this.

The introduction of Team System gives us two version control offerings from Microsoft – Visual Source Safe and Team Foundation Server (TFS). Visual Source Safe (VSS) is what we like to think of as where change management begins – it’s simple, relatively cheap, easy to setup and doesn’t require a server.

VSS will start to bog down a bit when it’s pushed beyond its scope – for example, it has no work item tracking, limited remote access and limited parallel development capabilities. This is where Team Foundation Server comes in – Team Foundation Server is a from-the-ground up implementation of version control, work item tracking, and release/project management integrated into a single collaboration server. TFS uses XML Web Services for communication and SQL Server 2005 as its data store. Both TFS and VSS integrate out of the box with Visual Studio 2005.

In terms of extending Visual Studio, we have always been very cognizant of making Visual Studio as extensible as possible – both for commercial and non-commercial partners. Lost in all of the announcements of Visual Studio 2005 is that our Visual Studio Industry Partner Program (VSIP) now has a free membership option. This membership gives you access to the SDK that enables extension of VS2005.

Part of the Visual Studio SDK is the MSSCCI interface (pronounced ‘misky’) that enables partners to implement version control providers; this interface is part of our SCC API. This interface has become something of a de facto standard for development environments. This interface gives you access to events like ‘user is trying to edit a file’ so that you can implement your ‘check-out’ operation. This interface also allows you to provide locked and unlocked glyphs – basically all the aspects of a version control system. We provide a skeleton version control provider as an example. Integrating CVS with Visual Studio would involve writing a provider that uses MSSCCI – there are some examples out there today.

Now to address your concern more directly; CVS – VS integration is a perfect example of the balancing act we have to do in Visual Studio. On one hand, an ‘out of the box’ solution might be very appealing to our customers; but on the other hand, doing this would take an opportunity away from our partners. In order for Visual Studio to be successful, we feel we have to build it as a platform, and help create a healthy ecosystem of partners. Doing this means providing viable opportunities for our partners to build value onto VS. Finding this balance isn’t an exact science, we use a number of ways to get feedback from our partners and we disclose our early plans to our VSIP Alliance and Premier partners. All of this is done to try to find a happy medium; we don’t do this perfectly all the time, but it is certainly something we constantly evaluate and invest a great deal of time in.

CVS integration in particular – because of the potential partner opportunity and the overlap it would introduce with VSS and TFS - is likely not something we would produce out of the box with Visual Studio.

However, the idea of a simple, bullet-proof, built-in version control system is something we are thinking hard about for future versions of Visual Studio. The idea of what is integrated in an IDE is changing and expanding all the time, maybe it is time to include version control as a natural part of an IDE? Would that be a streamlined version of TFS, a free copy of VSS, or something else? These are certainly all possibilities. I’d be happy to discuss your thoughts on this as well.

Thanks for taking the time to share your opinion with us.

Eric.

re: Who would have guessed?

Ravnoveceye — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 00:52:24 GMT

Wesley Parish said:

"Albert Einstein is a suitable ghost to trouble. He wasn't a technical kind of guy, as I understand it. He wasn't interested in the devices developed from technical understandings of his theories."

I present:

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-03-25&documentid=3-5&studycollectionid=abomb&pagenumber=1

Just read your Internetnews interview

Wesley Parish — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 11:01:21 GMT

I'm trying to work out what it was you said then.

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3600876
You said: "I think one of the challenges is that a lot of these projects wrap themselves up in the banner of interoperability, but really what they are is clone ability for many cases. Fundamentally we're a commercial software company, and the way that we develop software is that we file patents and protect our intellectual property. "

I am trying to figure this out, taking as the basis for comparison, the natural sciences and the technologies explicitly based on them.

Albert Einstein is a suitable ghost to trouble. He wasn't a technical kind of guy, as I understand it. He wasn't interested in the devices developed from technical understandings of his theories.

Now there was a naturally occurring fission reactor in Gabon, West Africa several million years ago, when a conglomeration of uranium oxide - yellowcake - reached critical mass and started a self-sustaining nuclear reaction that lasted for quite some time.

Relatively shortly after - in geological terms - humans occurred then developed the first atomic pile in the US.

Cloning the Gabon reactor? Of course; it just happened that the Gabon reactor wasn't then recognized as a nuclear reactor. That took some more time - not a long time as far as geological timespans or half-lives go - before people recognized that nuclear reactors can occur naturally, and the Gabon example was the only recognizable example left us.

Now you talk big about "interoperability". What on earth do you mean by it, if the best example of it currently in operation and development, is Samba, which you then dismiss as a clone which violates your company's "intellectual property"?

What would met your criteria as "interoperability" if it was not in some manner a "clone"? You tout Interix/SFU as an example of Microsoft's interest in interoperability - what is Interix/SFU but a clone of Unix/POSIX operating as a process in the NT DLL space, without its own drivers, etc, because all that's taken care of by the NT Kernel?

You say: "They ask things of us and we say, "That's our IP." And they say you should do it because all software should be free."

And when they don't "clone" the requisite smb functionality, you feel free to hold them up for criticism as not providing "interoperability"? That's not a software or "Intellectual Property" matter, that's one of basic ethics.

I think you need to sort that out before you proceed to lecture any of us on "Interoperability", let alone "Intellectual Property". Then, "We're actually just trying to get something working together and drive some change." won't bring forth sniggers from the cheap seats.

re: Who would have guessed?

jgiacobbe — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:10:43 GMT

Who realy guessed there are so many grumpy technical users who want to be politicol scientist. It is software. Don't begrudge MS it's success. I like windows. I like Linux. I like Mozilla but I also like Outlook 2003.

Some of you guys take a chill pill. I run an Exchange server that is also hooked up with cisco Unity and was very worried about my one Mac OS client that I don't provide direct support to. When the user opened Mozilla and configured IMAP access to Exchange I was impressed. Wasn't a perfect solution as far as using the full features of exchange but it allowed the Mac user to get the UM benifits of my system. When he listens to his Voicemail from Mozilla his Message Waiting Indicator on his phone turns off.

Instead of crying about propritary protocols versus Open protocols let's talk about what protocols have been successful for interop. As an admin I would rather see talks of how we can use what we have to make all the best of what is out there.

Like maybe the best way to query AD for valid user email addresses so that my postfix/spamassasin/Amavisd mail gateway can filter out email destined to non existent users before it gets to my Exchange server.

Most OSS projects I see are aimed at providing a new version of something old. I am amazed at the number of MTA's out there. There are a few like mono that are aimed at making some MS stuff more platform independent and then there are some oss applications like mozilla that are fairly platform agnostic.

Why not have stuff that plays nice together? Segragation was tried once. Seperate but equal didn't work.

BTW thanks MS for the virtual machine addins for linux and the free virtual server. That might have just been a response to VMware but thanks anyway.

For all the OSS fanatics.
There was a note in an earlier comment that sums it up. It is all about the END USER. That means Keep It Simple Stupid. If you make software that works for the end user wether that is the uberadmin running the giant Database/ecommerce/financial app, the lowly SMB "got to to do everything" admin or the receptionist who only make $8 an hour.

The idea behind this site was to say hey, let's play nice. And if in learning to play nice MS gets product ideas that is fine. Like me they don't mess with all this stuff for the fun of it. Boating or camping is something you do for the fun of it. I, like a lot of people in IT are in this to make a living.

re: Who would have guessed?

STYXS — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 20:15:34 GMT

So glad you guys are finally doing this - looking forward to more

On SFU...

billhilf — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 08:07:53 GMT

"and now they've seemingly given up on porting and are now going on with migrating sys admins and developers"

Incorrect. The subsystem for Unix applications ships in the operating system with Windows Server 2003 R2. I'd recommend reading this: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/r2/unixinterop/default.mspx

re: Who would have guessed?

aperson — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 23:50:00 GMT

"So your article in no way contradicts anything I have mentioned. "

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1855248,00.asp

"Microsoft has decided against enhancing its Services for Unix (SFU) product and will not release any new versions of it going forward, according to company officials."

""There will be no additional releases of SFU," said Samm DiStasio, director of product management with Microsoft's Windows Server division. "Customer feedback to us was that they wanted tighter integration of this sort of functionality with the operating system."

They mean replacing the Unix shell with a drop in replacement in monad that better integrates with .NET and windows.

Monad, the .NET command line interface is really nothing like bintools or bash. Not to mention bash wasn't even included in SFU, it was korn shell and C shell.

They used to provide an entire section of MSDN dedicated to porting POSIX API for Unix developers forced to interop with Windows, and now they've seemingly given up on porting and are now going on with migrating sys admins and developers.

Because of the dis-similarities between their windows .NET friendly shells and interfaces and the real Unix interfaces, Linux is probably a better migration choice. Barring the POSIX file system structure, they couldn't even make Windows POSIX compliant for programming API. So it's not super attractive if you want to keep your existing skills.

The next gen SFU or monad could be an alternative for somebody who is absolutely stuck with windows. That's kind of making the best of a bad situation. The whole point of this site/lab is making the best of bad circumstances.

Linux is so grand because it runs on anything you could imagine. Say you have Sun netras and fire servers sparciii sparc_64. Clean them out and put Debian or whatever on there. Clean your PPC boxes and your x86 boxes.

Linux simply runs on everything. So no matter the hardware you get after whatever aquisition, you can use Linux to replace windows, replace solaris, and replace proprietary unix systems for a truly consistent interface with LDAP, ect... whatever across your entire system.

That's what's so cool about it. Windows has to interface with hardware not running x86 because it literally has no choice, you can't back up, kickstart windows to all your Sun, IBM, and x86 hardware and be done with it consistently. With Linux you can back up, clean out and make one consistent platform for everything.

Reply To Somebody regarding the end of life of Interix

Chris Travers — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:48:14 GMT

What does "out of band" mean to you? Indeed, in 2003, I recommended bundling SFU with all server OS shipments.

It means that, as I suggested when I worked at Microsoft that future versions of the product will be bundled with the server.

This is not the end of life of the SFU project. It is simply the recognition that it is best as something bundled with the OS so as to reduce cost of migration expenses.

So your article in no way contradicts anything I have mentioned.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting

OSS do not GUESS, they just DO!

ravenii — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:34:35 GMT

I have two comments,
Keep the port25 open and have a spam gaurd ready!
I don't think EU will buy this as Microsoft being OPEN!!

re: Who would have guessed?

Rick Strom — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:30:56 GMT

Ok Bill, I have a real suggestion here that is hopefully within the scope of what you are doing (and hopefully you're still reading the comments here). I'd also like to voice it to someone else at Microsoft since the MS rep I spoke to tonight blew me off.

Visual Studio 2005 should support CVS out of the box, or via an after-market but MS-developed add-in. The Microsoft rep knew as well as I do why Microsoft wants to push "Team System" over CVS -- namely, because it makes OSS development on SourceForge (and elsewhere) for the Windows platform a pain in the butt.

I love Visual Studio -- since I switched, I haven't looked back. But its hard to fully love a product that doesn't do something which really should be quite obvious. If Microsoft is worried about the potential harm that would come from facilitating development of SourceForge projects, or CVS projects in general, I think they are missing the bigger picture. A first class compiler like VS 2005 with a built in CVS client? You wouldn't just dominate the market, you'd own it. You would also benefit from a much larger number of (free) applications for the Windows OS, which would in turn reduce the chance of losing users to a Linux desktop.

"Trust me, Team System is better than CVS" and "maybe SourceForge will look into Team System" are not good answers (but those are the answers I got from the MS rep). Casual users can be convinced to do things a certain way, but developers generally tend to like to decide for themselves how they want to work. One of the things that has made Visual Studio so great is that it tries -- and succeeds, for the most part -- to be everything to everybody. With VS 2005 they seem to be going in another direction, and that makes it hard for me to seriously consider the upgrade from VS 2003.

Microsoft Office Document Imaging

Brad Hards — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 12:34:40 GMT

The MDI format used by recent version of Office is mostly undocumented (I have some papers that look applicable). We could put support into libtiff pretty easily, given a little help. With that, we could get a cross-platform MDI viewer going very easily.

Any chance of some collaboration on this?

Microsoft Office Document Imaging

Brad Hards — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 12:32:09 GMT

re: Who would have guessed?

NiceJoke — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 03:42:54 GMT

April Fools!

Port 25 doesnt seem to be listed in the TechNet home page, nor in the What's New page.

re: Who would have guessed?

aperson — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 00:55:19 GMT

"Hi Guys some friend gave me backoffice nt4 wow holly american cow, this is big stuff, i have been installing
pirate networks and they perform better than 2000 stuff "

You're in the golden years of piracy, Microsoft now cators to pirates
http://news.com.com/Vista+wont+show+fancy+side+to+pirates/2100-1016_3-6060700.html
"Those who are not running genuine Windows will not be able to take advantage of the Windows Aero user experience,"

( but they'll still be able to use the platform )

Instead of stopping piracy and pirate networks it appears M$ is catoring to them hoping that piracy will further prevent people from using Open Source as an alternative solution.

Microsoft apparently wants you as a user of it's pirated software.

This is not the case with Linux as all users are legit by default.

re: Who would have guessed?

pirate — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 00:38:45 GMT

Hi Guys some friend gave me backoffice nt4 wow holly american cow, this is big stuff, i have been installing
pirate networks and they perform better than 2000 stuff

hahaha old ms soft works better than linux redhat