MS Releases Open Source Alternative To BigTable 163
gollito writes in with news that Microsoft has released an open source alternative to Google's BigTable file system, which is used on large distributed computer clusters. Matt Asay writes for CNet: "I also believe that Microsoft's fear-mongering around open source cost it years of productivity and quality gains that it could have been delivering to customers through open source. I hope that reign of ignorance is over."
Wow... just wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow... just wow. (Score:4, Funny)
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Are you trying to say swine flu didn't change EVERYTHING, Brian?
Is this what you're trying to say?
Huh?
Huh?
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Nobody ever said posting as an AC didn't have a downside. ;-)
Re:Wow... just wow. (Score:4, Funny)
Only if that pig is seated in a chair in Ballmer's office.
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go look up "bootstrapping"
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Yep, pigs flu... I mean, flew. Bad joke, I know, I know.
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Or this is Microsoft trying to hurt Google because they fear them more than open source
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Two words. Yep.
Don't try to count them, just say it twice. It will all work out in the end.
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Holy crap some large brown pink animal just fell out of the sky and crushed my Porche with my X in it.
Oh God my neighbors yappy Mexican pocket purse dog just got obliterated but appears to 400lbs of chops!
This is either a great day or about to be the worst day of my life!
I lol'd (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this really news, or just another opportunity for us to have everyones favorite slashdot debate?
Re:I lol'd (Score:5, Funny)
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What are you on about? A ninja can (and indeed has) take on a ship load of pirates. With a frozen shamrock.
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doctor mc ninja reference
You've spelled it out for me - and I still haven't got a clue what you are talking about. Is it a child's program, a hip-hop DJ, or what?
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. I refer you to the Adventures of Dr. McNinja [drmcninja.com].
--- Mr. DOS
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
C'mon, there's no way ninjas are better!
Have you ever heard of anyone ninjaing software? Or music? Or games? No one ninjas anything. It's all about the pirates! :D
Re: (Score:2)
Now poor Mr Ballmer has to play nice with the SCO slaying Euro trash.
Why could it not be like United Fruit.
Call in a favour from Washington, over throw the Finnish government and make sure all of this 'open source' stuff is lost in the confusion.
Permanently.
Re: Lumberjack Commandos (Score:2)
I meet your ninjas and your pirates and raise you Lumberjack Commandos: [wordpress.com]
Re:I lol'd (Score:5, Funny)
Rubbish
emacs is clearly superior
Re: (Score:2)
Rubbish
emacs is a clearly superior Operating System
There, fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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Cool! I just installed [emacs] on my machine. Do you know where I can find a decent text editor for it?
It comes with one built in.
M-x vi-mode
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, in a mathematical sense, emacs is strictly superior to vi--you can implement vi in emacs, but not the other way around!
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Bollocks.
Urrrm.... Can I say BSD? ...BSD .... urrm... fuck yeah?
Is that right?
Re:Sharing (Score:1)
really? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:really? (Score:4, Informative)
Do some real research and stop proliferating garbage. The SpiderTCP stack used in NT3.1 was licensed from Spider Systems, who obtained and modified the BSD code, which was distributed under the BSD license. SpiderTCP is not and has not ever been open source, even if it was based on open source code.
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Yep, just like the "new, completely rewritten" operating systems they've released (like Vista, 2000, and W7). SpiderTCP is still floating around in part.
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Since when were Windows 2000 and 7's network stack re-written?
Of course it's probably in there somewhere, but it'd be such a small percentage that it'd be basically insignificant. I'd doubt that any non-basic code would survive two rewrites (NT3.5 and Vista).
There's probably a compat struct somewhere for the five apps that ran on NT3.1 and required TCP/IP (or STACKS, the platform SpiderTCP ran on) but other than that, I wouldn't expect much.
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Which license? (Score:5, Interesting)
So... the linked article says the Kumo search team (the ones who develop the FS) USE open source. But I can nowhere see that the FS is released as open source. A citation would be good, especially since the used license would be quit important.
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The product is called Hbase [apache.org]/ Apache license, so it is open source.
Re:Which license? (Score:5, Informative)
So... the linked article says the Kumo search team (the ones who develop the FS) USE open source. But I can nowhere see that the FS is released as open source. A citation would be good, especially since the used license would be quit important.
You should check your glasses and re-RTFA. Two points there:
1) The Kumo search team did not develop the FS. They've used the one Apache Hadoop [apache.org] (guess the license).
2) The Kumo search team have implemented a BigTable analog on top of Hadoop FS, and that's what they've open sourced. The result [apache.org] is a subproject of Hadoop now (again, guess the license).
Also, this isn't obvious from TFA itself, but looking at the sources that it references, this is really old news: the blog post they link to is from 2007. It is also before Powerset was bought by Microsoft (that happened in 2008), so the relevance of all this to Microsoft policies is unclear.
It's not an alternative to BigTable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's not an alternative to BigTable (Score:5, Insightful)
Google doesn't sell/license BigTable in any way. It's used internally. I fail to see how it's possible to release an alternative to something which can't be acquired in any form.
Not completely correct. You can use BigTable right now. There are Google AppEngine APIs that can access BigTable. You just can't use it without using Google's servers, that's all.
If, at this point, you still can't see why it's completely obvious why Microsoft would write an alternative to BigTable and open source it, all I can say you haven't been paying attention.
Re:It's not an alternative to BigTable (Score:5, Interesting)
You'll note that Google aren't opening up their crown jewels: you can't just download their raw web page index and do your own thing with it. Since they're not in the software business, they can afford to give away or open their software tools. Since Microsoft are in the software business, that hurts them.
Now there's an interesting symmetry here. Being (primarily) in the software business should mean that actual content and databases isn't too important for Microsoft. If they wanted to hurt Google, they would open up their raw msnsearch indexes and other useful content databases. That would hurt Google, because people could download massive competing data collections and create their own competing search engines without the huge resource investment in crawler farms etc.
Re:It's not an alternative to BigTable (Score:5, Informative)
Using Google's AppEngine, you can use BigTable.. so while you can't install it on your own servers, you can still write software that uses it.
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Using Google's AppEngine, you can use BigTable.. so while you can't install it on your own servers, you can still write software that uses it.
Which means that your appliance that uses BigTable needs continuous access to the Internet.
Re:It's not an alternative to BigTable (Score:5, Funny)
Which means that your appliance that uses BigTable needs continuous access to the Internet.
What!? This is absolutely outrageous~! None of my servers have internet access!
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I concede I may be missing something, but very few of my 1500+ servers have access to the internet and those that do are carefully restricted by firewall.
Am I being dense?
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Really? So if all proprietary compilers where not sold, but were instead kept in-house as development tools, then GCC would cease to be an open source/free software alternative to them?
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Yes, but gaining a tool by building your own IS an alternative to doing without because someone won't let you use theirs.
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Google doesn't sell/license BigTable in any way. It's used internally. I fail to see how it's possible to release an alternative to something which can't be acquired in any form.
I don't sell or licence my dick to other men in any way. It's also used internally.
However if you are looking for an alternative to my dick, you could consider buying a dildo.
Then you could put my surrogate dick in your mouth and shut the hell up. Seriously... think before you post?
needs an expert opinion (Score:4, Insightful)
don't count on it, you know about embrace/extend/extinguish?
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Summarizing the entire quote in the article summary:
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"...I hope that reign of ignorance is over." don't count on it, you know about embrace/extend/extinguish?
Now I can see how they can do that with protocols (e.g. the IE extensions to HTML), business models get harder and open source... well you can embrace it, and extend it, and both are only making it stronger, that is the nature of the beast isn't it? The FOSS model can not be extinguished. It's in a way like a cancer. You can merely try to slow it down, but as long as there are people that are either idealistic or have no interest in keeping their sources secret, the FOSS model will survive.
Crap (Score:4, Insightful)
Article says that they "use open source". Doesn't mean they give ANYTHING back at all, because they are not distributing it, thus the HEADLINE is so false it's unbelievable.
For instance, say they took even a GPL'd piece of software, extended it to add marvellous and important new features and then KEPT IT IN HOUSE. They can still use it, still claim it's "open source" but they NEVER have to let anyone but themselves see that code.
It's bad editing, bad reviewing, bad summarising and just outright lying. There is nothing "Open" about anything being done here apart from the software that MS chose to use.
Re:Crap (Score:5, Informative)
Note also that while Google has a bigTable, they have not released it as open source (as far as I can tell, but they do sell it as a webservice). So there may be some desire to undercut Google here with this move.
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Nowhere in that summary does the word Hadoop appear.
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My post was accurate in this case, but I admit sometimes they
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Re:Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crap (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you're not even close.
A company called Powerset developed the open-source alternative to BigTable called HBase. This was developed as an Apache Software Foundation project under the Apache license.
Microsoft bought Powerset for a bucket of money because their search technology based of Hbase was pretty damned good. This was last year. This year, the folks behind powerset - as Microsoft employees - were given the go-ahead to continue committing to the ASF project and they continue to make it better. For what I can see, they aren't keeping anything juicy in-house.
It's honest-to-goodness MS committing to an Apache project.
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so what's the license? (Score:3)
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is it mentioned anywhere? I can't find it.
I was wondering the same thing. If it is just the standard MS open development model, then it is not really news. GPL on the otherhand...
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It's apache, which is more free than GPL.
While this is an informative post, modding it insightful is a bit trollish. If your definition of "free" means "less restricted", then it is certainly true. If your definition of "free" refers to the "free" as commonly used in "free software", then the statement is meaningless. Either it is free (gives me the 4 freedoms) or it isn't. There isn't "more" or "less".
By saying it is "more free than the GPL" you are making a distinction which is completely unnecessary in this context. The Apache license is b
More Or Less (Score:3, Insightful)
It's apache, which is more free than GPL.
More free if you want companies to be able to use the software without giving anything back to you.
Less free if you want changes to always be public for everyone forever.
I'm all for BSD style licenses in some cases that allow a company to use code without contributing changes back to anyone. But do not redefine what "free" really means just because you have an irrational fear of prophetic guys with beards.
Otherwise you are missing the whole point behind open source
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BSD style licenses allow some changes to exist behind locked gates. The GPL doesn't allow you to lock the code. You take the code that someone else toiled over and you use it to make a profit you really should give something back to the guy that wrote the original code. Otherwise, create your own and give that away BSD style.
I think the GPL is a more popular license this is indicative as to why.
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"... the available Hadoop technology, Powerset decided to give back to the community by developing an open-source analog to BigTable that is built on top of HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System)."
Since Hadoop is Apache License 2.0, presumably this extension is so too.
It is called HBase according to the cited release post [powerset.com].
Wiki:
http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/Hbase [apache.org]
Yahoo and Adobe seem to run it too (see PoweredBy).
Project website:
http://hadoop.apache.org/hbase/ [apache.org]
Looking inside the last release tarball, it really
.Net? (Score:1)
Will be it attached to .Net? Probably, right?
Meanwhile, the Big Table has python and java (or any JVM variant) as languages.
And how open-source the MS Big Table will be? You can download it and use in your cluster or single PC?
Re:.Net? (Score:4, Insightful)
Will be it attached to .Net? Probably, right?
Java more likely (since it's built on Hadoop, which uses Java).
Slighty embarrassing for microsoft, perhaps? But remember, this comes from a group that microsoft acquired, not something that has always been a part of microsoft.
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And how open-source the MS Big Table will be? You can download it and use in your cluster or single PC?
apache license 2.0
imo better than gpl.
did they use hot chicks to promote it? (Score:2, Funny)
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Matt Aimonetti is a Ruby on Rails bozo:
http://merbist.com/about/ [merbist.com]
He doesn't seem to be particularly involved with CouchDB:
http://couchdb.apache.org/community/committers.html [apache.org]
I guess he was presenting information about CouchDB to the ruby community.
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when to use couch?
when availability is more important than consistency
I think I'd rather not subscribe to that newsletter.
no surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Clearly Microsoft is using open source as a tactical weapon here, the way companies often do against entrenched competitors.
But is this a new tactic for them? No. Back in the '90s, they competed against Netscape in the browser wars by giving away IE for free; unlike Netscape, which was hoping to eventually start charging for Navigator, Microsoft made IE part of Windows (so it was effectively free for anyone who already paid for the PC).
And Microsoft released an "Open Letter to Netscape", asking its rival to cooperate with the W3C and avoid making proprietary extensions to web protocols. As if anything else about Windows desktop development at the time was based on open standards!
Going back even further, at one point Borland International was the leading PC software tools vendor. Microsoft wanted this title for itself (remember "developers developers developers developers"), so to compete against Borland's Object Windows C++ framework, they came up with MFC. And following Borland's lead, they made MFC open source (or "shared source" or whatever. Source available).
So no, they aren't having a change of heart. They will do whatever it takes to get control of this hot market segment.
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Much of what you are saying here is inaccurate.
Netscape was a product that was introduced as paid software. You purchased it. Microsoft's IE was a paid product also. You purchased it. It was the competitor to Netscape.
Microsoft then decided, while IE was still a stand-alone browser, to give it away for free.
In order to compete for market share this move put Netscape in a position to have to give theirs away for free.
Clearly, we can see from this that Microsoft has given software away for free for a long
Lets see (Score:4, Informative)
100 bucks a copy for os licenses x 50K boxes...hmmmm no thanks..
Money? (Score:2)
> ...Microsoft's fear-mongering around open source cost it years of productivity and
> quality gains that it could have been delivering to customers through open source.
Yes, but did it cost Microsoft any *money*?
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Yes, but did it cost Microsoft any *money*?
Vista. It cost MS its reputation. Before then, MS, in the non-tech world was considered pretty decent. Sure, XP was as insecure as heck, froze up randomly, etc. But it was decent enough. Then came Vista. By being totally committed to proprietary designs, MS managed to release a train wreck which cost them customers, their reputation, and many man-hours on the redoing of Vista.
Just look at what Apple did with OS X. They took an open source foundation (BSD), added a nice GUI, some compatibility, and the
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I'm familiar with the situation (Score:3, Funny)
And I can tell you that the entire original Register article was pulled out of author's ass. The CNet article just extended that ass pulling, Goatse style. Must be a slow news day. None of this will ever end up in Live Search. Nothing to see here, move on.
Try the Powerset demo, compare it to even current Live Search or Google. Realize that this is just Wikipedia they've managed to index, even at that quality. Scratch your head and wonder why Microsoft paid $100M for it.
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If The Reg was claiming it, most likely it is true. They generally don't make stuff up. If it is a mistake on their part it doesn't mean they made it up. And until you can get a response from The Reg on your comment you shouldn't be accusing them of lying.
Assuming you're not joking (Score:2)
You don't understand. I'm not "accusing them of lying". I know it for a fact that they're lying.
HBase isn't a Microsoft product (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft has allowed two of the primary HBase developers, who work at Powerset, to continue their open-source work on HBase, which is definitely cool. But to say that Microsoft is releasing this is just flat out wrong.
(Full disclosure: I am a non-Microsoft-employed HBase committer.)
Reign of ignorance? (Score:4, Funny)
I hope that reign of ignorance is over.
Lets see... Nope, Ballmer is still in charge!
HBase / Powerset (Score:2)
So completely missing from article summary and article itself is any information about the software.
This guy is just late to the party. HBase was contributed to the hadoop project by Powerset. A startup that microsoft bought.
Probably HBase (Score:3, Insightful)
None of the articles say it, but they are probably talking about HBase [apache.org]. If this is the case, this is seriously old news.
HBase was started by the Powerset guys before being acquired by Microsoft. After the acquisition there was a lot of concern in the Hadoop community about whether the Powerset guys would be allowed to continue to contribute. They have, and as far as I can tell, the community is not particularly concerned about MS's involvement.
Releases? (Score:2)
- Last july Microsoft bought Powerset, that were developing what would be the base of a semantic search engine.
- That company (before all of that) used Hadoop, and helped to build over it a BigTable-like distributed storage engine, called HBase.
- And in last october (thats Microsoft contribution to open source) Microsoft enabled the Powerset's developers that were contributing to HBase to continue their work there.
They aren't releasing any "new
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>> a new search engine based on that work
Thas was made up by The Reg and regurgitated by CNet. Kumo is NOT "based on that work".
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If The Reg was claiming it, most likely it is true. They generally don't make stuff up. If it is a mistake on their part it doesn't mean they made it up. And until you can get a response from The Reg on your comment you shouldn't be accusing them of lying.
why do u think MS cares about quality ? (Score:2)
they are a business, they care about profit.
the great thing about being a monopoly is, you don't have to ship quality products - your customers can have whatever they want so long as it's black.
seriously, if you are a de facto monopoly, as ms has been for the last, say 20 years, and you make 50 % gross margins , why on earth would you spend money on quality ?
that sort of thinking is what seperates techies, who toil in the trenches, from c suite execs
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Apple's hardware is the same as everyone elses. They use the same components, chipsets, etc.
They produce a modified version unix as the core OS and then create a propriety desktop manager.
There are some changes to the hardware such as the chip which is used to determine if the OS is running on an Apple board. But the video, ram, HDD, sound, and every other component is just like every other PC. Just comes in a different external package.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (Score:2)
Try Hypertable for a real alternative (Score:2)
Microsoft open source Open Source (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft is not distributing open source software. This is not an open source product. It can't be used on multiple platforms. It can't be modified and freely distributed. It is not open source.
Microsoft does openED source where you can view the code but never use it outside of your project and never on another platform other than Windows.
Open Source was defined around 15 years ago in the attempt of ensuring that the definition for open source was long standing.
Microsoft and open source together is an oxymoron.
Microsoft claimed in 2007 that Open Source was dead and that Linux was dead. Their attempt to do this was about the time they claimed that open source violated 235 of their patents. Then they refused to state which ones even though the consumers world-wide asked for it.
They were the same company that sued TomTom and backed the company with funding for SCO to sue IBM and other linux backers.
We do not, in open source, put any trust in Microsoft nor do we let them attempt to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish Open Source by closing it or limiting it. They are trying to get big business to think that the only acceptable form of open source is that which is defined by Microsoft.
Everyone should be objecting to Microsoft and this 100% of the time.
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They are allowing developers that work for a company they purchased (so the developers work for Microsoft) to continue contributing to software released under the Apache 2.0 license.
No matter what the rest of the company is doing, this activity is exactly the "Open Source" that you seem to think it isn't.
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This is the problem with the dual personalities of Microsoft. You know that if you use their open source and make a good profit you could end up being sued for not having licenced the patents covering the technology.
Avoid at all costs. At least until their get their split personality syndrome under control.
missing tag: itsatrap (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, who cares if its 'open source'.
Its only news if its Free software [gnu.org]
Thank you, but I'll store my data on *MY* server, using protocols implemented in *Free* software.
Microsoft open source (Score:2)
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You should be modded down for being a dumb shit and posting a quote to his comments out of context.
Read the whole fucking thing dude.
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Don't be a drone your whole life.