A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

What's Microsoft up to with PHP?

Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:50:34 GMT

Over the past year, Microsoft has stepped up its participation in initiatives supporting Free and Open

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

bill C — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:05:40 GMT

Why doesn't Microsoft just clean up it's 'buggy' OS to start with? Maybe that would give you guys some real bragging rights. On top of that, the performance gain on any given 'cleaned up' system would be tremendous. Now, sometimes I come across a bit disgruntled and I have a number of good reasons for that, but at the end of the day, I still praise the work that port25 is doing because it does lead to better things (eventually) for everyone. I ran a number of servers over the past 20 years or so, and settled on Linux for a number of reasons, up time being a good one and the performance I get out of my machine is comparable to a Windows 2008 server on a dual xeon. That's not a hardware problem either. Take out the 'bloat' and you might be on to something.

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

cim — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:41:38 GMT

You obviously dodged the question. Do ISVs in Europe have to pay and license invalid software patents from Microsoft?

www.theregister.co.uk/.../microsoft_goes_open

I'm selectively quoting the same thing here from Jeremy Allison:

"the promise not to sue is only for 'non-commercial' open source, which is a bit meaningless."

Sure he goes on to say that in the end it's all good etc FOR THEM.

But why would a commercial ISV (open or not) have to pay for sw patents that just aren't valid in Europe?

Microsoft still wants to "license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates."

How nice of you :)

Regarding the interop on ms.com/interop and the wire/metal thing - if thats all you have to offer then well its not much.

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

Sam Ramji — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:58:21 GMT

cim:

I recommend you do some fact-checking with the leaders of the Samba project (Jeremy Allison and Andrew Tridgell) before you come to conclusions on the value of the documentation we're releasing.

On interoperability, you can find more information on what we've been achieving at http://microsoft.com/interop. PHP support, Web Services standards interop with Apache Axis, JBoss optimization and certification of SQL Server JDBC drivers, IPSEC and Kerberos interoperability testing and development, and Xen/Hyper-V support for Windows and Linux virtualization are just a few of our achievements in open source interoperability. You can see the Xen/Hyper-V work in the current release of Windows Server 2008 and more information here: port25.technet.com/.../Interoperab-on-the-metal-and-on-the-wire.aspx

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

cim — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:07:14 GMT

Why would people be prohibited in EU to implement these things in commercial programs?

After all there are no SW-patents in the EU. Is this a sideway to still make them somewhat valid for MS only?

These protocols/specs are a farce and dont do anyone any real good. Unless one can use it commercially I dont see anything special. Also MS has been touting interop and openness ever since the Novell deal. I've yet to see any real substance and not just de Icaza and his continual praise for MS stuff.

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

Sam Ramji — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:46:23 GMT

Here’s what the protocol program team had to say:

Patent lists are posted already for the docs that are up on MSDN. For the time being, they are contained in two separate lists with some overlap. Here are the links to the main pages – the patent maps are part way down the page.

www.microsoft.com/.../mcpp.mspx

www.microsoft.com/.../wspp.mspx

As we progress with this initiative, as we publish each set of documents (including the beta documents coming out in April), we will also publish lists of protocols in that set that are covered by patents, make a patent map available that shows the specific patents on the protocols, and the licensing and pricing information for those patents.

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

Andy Jones — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:29:13 GMT

In some ways I agree with 'Evil Paulie', although not about an OS from Microsoft being OSS.

Until this so called covenant not to sue also covers commercial products or vendors then it is not worth the paper it is printed on (or screen it is displayed on). This is an attempt by Microsoft to control the market and to control standards, and to attempt to kill off open source competitors, nothing more. You either do it Microsofts way or not at all. Who is to say that once everyone is locked into 'the Microsoft way' that Microsoft will not backpedal on the open bit and then raise their patent prices?

Finally, your list of 'responses from the publications/blogs' is missing the EU's statement which sums up the whole affair:

"Nonetheless, the Commission notes that today's announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability."

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

cim — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:08:14 GMT

"Sam -- Any idea when will Microsoft post the list of patents that apply to each protocol?"

NEVER ;-)

Or at least not in the foreseeable future.

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

Pablo Barrera — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:11:44 GMT

In spite of differents opinons around OSS MS Strategy, for business is a big day for technology. There´s still a lot of road to travel, but would be useful, that port25 helps to start new OSS projects focused on code accesibility. Making business is not a "human merit", but its good to make the choice capability to customers more affordable.

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

Edgar — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 08:39:57 GMT

Sam -- Any idea when will Microsoft post the list of patents that apply to each protocol? It is nice they posted the protocol documentation, but each protocol says "Microsoft may have patents" for this protocol. Before people dig into the protocols, it would be nice to see if any of the protocols have patents to determine if a commercial software developer should consider leveraging the protocol. Also where, ie what URL is/would this be posted on? Thanks.

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

evil paulie — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:36:06 GMT

Why? I stumbled on this site, and I am still laughing. As a Linux user, this is a joke to the legions of real Linux users and Admins. Who cares about the "token" OSS that MS spits out? Until I see and OS from Microsoft that is OSS, I will finally give them credit. Not to mention the fact that this is to drive people to buy more MS Server crap. This is not to benefit Linux, or OSS.

A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

Windows Vista News — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:00:03 GMT

There is an interesting post over at port25.technet.com

re: A Brief History of Open at Microsoft

Dominic Sartorio — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:36:52 GMT

Hi Sam,

Agree this is a significant development for the whole industry. We've heard consistently from customers that interoperability between open source and Microsoft products is important to them, and something the industry has collectively done the least to resolve. Opening its APIs is a positive step and makes it possible for integrators and developers to deliver integration that customers want. Nice work.

Dominic