Microsoft's Savvy Open Source Move 137
willdavid writes to mention Joe Panettieri is reporting that Microsoft is continuing their push for open source software interoperability. In the most recent push Microsoft is partnering with a small Silicon Valley company called SpikeSource to certify open source software on Windows 2008. "Despite growing Linux deployments, Windows Server remains quite popular for running open source applications. SugarCRM, the fast-growing open source application provider, is quick to note that many of its business developments occur on Windows Server. And Microsoft itself has sponsored SugarCRM's conferences, in order to stay in front of open source crowds."
Does this mean... (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't think so. Microsoft's idea of interoperability only goes one way.
Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft refuses to have Microsoft apps support Open Source apps.
It's all one way. It's all Microsoft's way.
It's not even that nice. (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft is not really happy to have anything running on Windows if they can sell the same service. Look at Word Perfect, X11, Netscape, Samba and so on. Anyone who ports to Windoze has had to face the same treadmill of changing specs and sabotage. Now it's AV, Open Office, Safari and iTunes. Just look at the stink people made over something as trivial as *gasp* Apple offering another browser on Windows. Anything that threatens M$ revenue and control will always be under attack.
The OOXML and OLPC sag
Are these trolls? (Score:2)
I mean this story is so littered with this anon posted crap that I can't read anything anymore.
You mean like this (Score:5, Informative)
http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Re:You mean like this (Score:5, Interesting)
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Note they said "Microsoft will get anything running on windows" not the reverse.
The question is when does MS give info to ODF so they can run an OOXML to ODF converter and ODF back into OOXML. Now do you see the issue?
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http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Novell_OpenOffice_OpenXML_Translator_for_Linux/1173116568/2 [betanews.com]
Re:You mean like this (nope) (Score:2, Insightful)
Sound like a similar lock-in? HMMMM I WONDER.
I nmanaged to get Novell's ODF Converter working (Score:3, Informative)
Although Binary only, there is no reason odf-converter won't work on any given Linux distribution.
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I also haven't checked to verify your comment, guess I'll have to check that later/take your word fo rit.
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I believe that the sun converter is the only one that has a chance of saving setting word to save text documents as odt by default, (much like you can do for almost any document format properly supported by word.)
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That might not be a bad idea for them, actually.
If Microsoft Office Business Ultimate Professional Subscriber's Kittens Edition 2009 had an ODF importer/exporter built in (or available in convenient download form, like the PDF exporter for 2007), they could claim perfect support for their (only) competitor's product.
On the other hand, Open Office still manages to choke on the minutae in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. documents. If Microsoft supported ODF - but Open Office barely supports two standard de
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On the other hand, Open Office still manages to choke on the minutae in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. documents.
Though I haven't opened Powerpoint documents I have opened MS Word 2007's .docx and Excel documents with NeoOffice [neooffice.org] the native Mac port of Open Office without problems. The version I have is 2.1 yet 2.2.3 is available.
FalconRe: (Score:2)
Interesting - I'll have to try NeoOffice. Generally, it opens documents just fine - but it managed to garble a Pivot Table one time, and another time managed to mangle a crappy Word document someone made with a billion pictures space-space-spaced into position by hand. (Although Office 2007 choked on that one, too!)
I wonder how long it'll take for Microsoft to have to take users away from OSS, rather than keep their existing ones from migrating.
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I wonder how long it'll take for Microsoft to have to take users away from OSS, rather than keep their existing ones from migrating.
Actually because of their antics I can see people moving away from Microsoft. I'd bought and used MS Windows and Office for about 10 years. About 1 1/2 years ago though when my HP was dying I got a desktop PC, tower really, with Linux preinstalled. I was sick and tired of the problems I had with Windows and hated the idea that MS was requiring Activation and spyware. The
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I mean that, right now, Microsoft pretty much owns the market. They're not worried about growing their userbase, they're worried about keeping their user base.
Linux and Mac are still looking at growing their userbase. I wonder how long until the tables are turned.
OS market share (Score:2)
I mean that, right now, Microsoft pretty much owns the market. They're not worried about growing their userbase, they're worried about keeping their user base.
Ok.
Linux and Mac are still looking at growing their userbase. I wonder how long until the tables are turned.
Linux and Macs are growing in market share but I think it'll take years before either has a sizable desktop market share. Apple has increased it's laptop market share a lot more than the desktop market share which suggests to me than pe
Ulterior Motives.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Jaded? Yep. Suspicious? Yep.
Re:Ulterior Motives.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, they may well not really want to help the Firefox or Open Office teams much, but if it's a choice between "PHP on Windows" or "PHP on Linux" I think it's obvious where Microsoft's interests lie.
There's nothing suspicious in that behaviour - it's perfectly plain in my view. Now, unless you count increasing Linux market share as an aim in and of itself, I find it hard to see how MS doing this is something to be dismal about.
Re:Ulterior Motives.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think there's anything "ulterior" about it. It's pretty obvious: if people are going to run open source software, MS would like them to be running it on Windows. It's therefore in their interests to help open source developers to get their stuff running on Windows - especially where it doesn't compete with any of their own products.
Wait for the "embrace, extend, extinguish" routine. Didn't they just come out with something that would only work on Novell and no other flavor of Linux? Just sayin', they've done this before.
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Which step are they on now?
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So now they are hardheadedly "embracing" open
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So now they are hardheadedly "embracing" open source. If they manage to get some people to stop developing Linux for "open source support" from Microsoft, they can move on to "extend" where they begin tagging on features to these projects or requiring these features to be implemented for Windows development. It will fall short there.
Not sure about that one.
There's lots of web applications which will only run with MySQL as the database backend because they depend on MySQL-specific behaviour - even though it really isn't difficult to remain reasonably database-agnostic provided you consider it from early on in the development process.
It isn't too much of a stretch to imagine PHP applications which expect the underlying system to be Windows (even with simple things like expecting all paths to start with a letter, followed by a colon, fol
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I'll push my luck here and wonder aloud how far out php on windows is from the Extend phase. A PHP.Net perhaps?
You're right, I am being pretty
Re:Ulterior Motives.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, they seem to have fumbled the ball with Vista but let's not get out of hand about their decision to keep XP. I don't think it was meant to fool anyone. You can loosen up your tin foil cap for the moment.
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They're going back... (Score:4, Funny)
others are being more savvy about it (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:others are being more savvy about it (Score:4, Informative)
The move with Sun/OOorg/MySQL is something I'm watching closely and hope that it ends up being the winner I suspect it will be.
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Just out of curiosity I looked at their workstations recently, and for what you get, it doesn't seem like a bad deal. Its not standard desktop fare. But I'd probably prefer a Sun Worksation to a Mac Pro.
Kim Polese is CEO of SpikeSource (Score:3, Informative)
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I personally can't stand Microsoft and its software (although I make a living supporting it). but I don't mind if SpikeSource gets to spread OSS on Windows with Microsoft's help. In the end, Microsoft won't benefit from it as much as OSS will.
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"continuing their push for interoperability"?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Joe used to work for Windows Mag, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft is interested in anything that sells Windows Server. However, with all of their sword rattling, known monopolistic behaviors, partnering with them still can get you the Black Widow Effect. Just ask 3Com, or Ashton Tate, etc.
Partnerships... (Score:2, Insightful)
When Microsoft actually starts releasing code under a real open-source license, then we can start talking. Maybe.
Quick, tell the FSF they've been had! (Score:2)
When Microsoft actually starts releasing code under a real open-source license, then we can start talking.
A "real" open source license? Presumably, then, you think that licenses such as the Microsoft Reciprocal License [microsoft.com] and Microsoft Public License [microsoft.com] are fake open-source licenses. Don't you think you'd better call the Free Software Foundation and tell them they've been hoodwinked into certifying [gnu.org] both these fake licenses as Free Software licenses?
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If you go back to what RMS was writing In The Beginning (c.f. Gnu Manifesto), the principles did precede the code.
If you go back even further, the code and principles were together in the 1950s and '60s in the Tech Model Railroad Club [wikipedia.org] at MIT. It was all part of the Hacker ethic [wikipedia.org] which Steven Levy [wikipedia.org] first wrote about in 1984 in his "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" [wikipedia.org].
Falcon
Microsoft and Moodle (FOSS LMS) (Score:2)
Just another way MS is trying to control OSS. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure exactly how MS will turn the certification process to try to control OSS, but based on past behavior I'm pretty skeptical to accept it at face value.
More wasted effort. (Score:1, Insightful)
Certification is yet another way to waste free software effort. If reverse engineering a sabotaged and constantly changing OS was not difficult enough, they now offer the chance to lick boots and pay for a certificate of Microsoft appreciation. Real interoperability is easy, liberate the code and follow reasonable standards. The more Microsoft does, the more transparent their motives are.
They can also use it for fear mongering at companies that continue to run Windows. What do you want to bet Microsoft
The Road Not Taken (Score:2)
It's interesting to wonder what would have happened if the talented folks working on Samba has spent the time instead building a next-generation networked filesystem that Microsoft could only dream of and implemented clients and servers for the three major platforms.
Things would have turned out differently, that's for sure.
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It's interesting to wonder what would have happened if the talented folks working on Samba has spent the time instead building a next-generation networked filesystem
You mean Microsoft working to make the OS and Samba as incompatible as possible with the new next-gen client/server at every OS release? Or maybe the Samba folks having divide their resources among supporting all the various different client versions (95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista), and being able to work less on the server part?
Things would have t
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I'm sure Microsoft thinks they can create the artificial need for "certification" to run on Windows. Then just don't certify certain products, or make the certification process wind up making the software hugely advantageous for Windows.
Except it's the Open Source group SpikeSource that will be doing the testing and certification not Microsoft.
FalconGood Business Sense (Score:3, Insightful)
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I gotta agree with the article. This makes complete sense from a business perspective.
I agree too, it does make good business sense. However how often does Microsoft make decisions that are good for business? I can name 1 decision which I think was a bad decision, not releasing a version of MS Office for the Unices. In part because MS didn't Open Office has gained ground. Now, some will say or ask who wants to run Office on Linux but if no one did then CodeWeavers [codeweavers.com] would not have created CrossOver so
How long before Microsoft create a competitor? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Assuming my memory is correct, unless SugarCRM has some drastic differences, they don't need a half-baked competitor. They're quite half-baked enough as it is.
small company (Score:1)
!savvy (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't interoperability at all (Score:3, Informative)
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This is just making sure various popular OSS projects can run on top of Windows. That's not interoperability. It'll be interoperability when MS helps OSS projects written specifically for Windows port to *nix without the need for WINE or other emulators.
No. It'll be interoperability when an OSS project can communicate with a totally unrelated MS product without having to reverse-engineer everything from scratch.
There is a damn good reason Samba 3.x can only implement Windows NT-4 style domains. It's only in the last couple of months the Samba project has been able to obtain proper specifications.
There is also a damn good reason that there is more or less nothing Free (speech and beer) which integrates fully with Exchange or Outlook without requiring a s
Quote of the Day (Score:3, Insightful)
AF (Score:2)
This seems to be a one-way street... (Score:3, Insightful)
But, we applaud the efforts of the FOSS community to make every effort to run Windows apps on *nix operating systems.
And I think both approaches are equally sel-serving. We understand and support it in FOSS, since we assume FOSS is the underdog, righting wrongs, giving us choice, and generally being a hero.
But Microsoft is trying not to be the underdog in open-source serving, giving us a choice, and generally being as self-preservationist as any *nix vendor. And there are, indeed, *nix vendors. Not just Sun, Red Hat, Novell, but others much smaller that carve out their niches and do very well, thank you. And they, mySQL for example, are not displeased that they also serve a Microsoft customer or two.
Trust Microsoft to not try and hijack FOSS? Of course not. Assume they want to play nice with FOSS? No, probably not. Condemn them for doing what their competitors are doing? just to pile on, IMHO.
If only Microsoft had done this when Novell was advancing the art of PC servers. But that's another tale for another day. Back then, the market was up for grabs. MS won, Novell lost. Today, I don't see Microsoft destroying the *nix marketplace any time soon. Too much momentum, too much good stuff out there. Microsoft thrives when they can identify a limited range of competitors. It's not like that any more.
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But, we applaud the efforts of the FOSS community to make every effort to run Windows apps on *nix operating systems.
And I think both approaches are equally sel-serving. We understand and support it in FOSS, since we assume FOSS is the underdog, righting wrongs, giving us choice, and generally being a hero.
But FOSS also works to run *nix applications on Windows.
It's a two-way street, with roadblocks. (Score:2)
Setting aside the fact that a LOT of people think making Windows apps run on UNIX is a bad idea...
We applaud the efforts of Microsoft to make every effort to run UNIX software on Windows. That's where real interoperability comes in - the core UNIX API is much simpler and more complete than the corresponding parts of Win32, so you can write a native UNIX app once and run it anywhere (it's not
Sharing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Novell's ODF Plugin can work with any distro. (Score:2)
Windows is Popular for Open Source Applications (Score:2)
Why Windows? Because that's what corporate environments use. Our corporate officers want Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio, and
Here are some real suggestions (Score:2)
1. Do not "certify" software that will not accept a filename that is typed in or is dragged & dropped or cut & pasted that has forward slashes in it.
2. Do not "certify" software that cannot read a text file with bare linefeeds in it and preserve the line breaks.
3. Add
Microsoft Logic (Score:3, Funny)
It is awesome BTW, Microsoft should probably make "Microsoft (r) Logic" a new ISO standard.
1. Open source is popular.
2. Most open source is written in a portable way hence they run in many platforms including windows.
3. There are a lot of windows users out there.
4. (miss the point)
----
.: Windows is a popular open source platform!
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Certified open source? (Score:2)
Wait a minute. Microsoft's "interoperability" aside, how is open source software certification supposed to work? By definition of open source, I, being the idiot that I am, can freely modify the thing and therefore break whatever signature protects the version that was certified. Then my version becomes lesser by virtue of not being certified anymore. Neve
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How is certified open source any more open than TiVo?
It's not certified open source, it's certification that open source software will run on Windows Server.
Falconstandard filter (Score:2)
echo microsoft interoperability \
| sed 's/ i/ e/;s/per/ops-/;s/bi/h-sh/;s/l//;s/.$//'
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Looking at the definition of agnostic [reference.com] the only definition I can see that may fit is #4. Which would mean you are completely ignorant to OS and closed source software ideology.
I think the word you are looking for is neutral.
Re:Windows Server rocks (Score:5, Informative)
IIS7 does NOTHING out of the box, and everything is a module. Almost everything that used to be a tab when configuring an IIS app is now a seperate module..even just redurecting an entire site to another url. And the new 3.5 ASP.NET stuff has a real MVC layer in the works for people like me who completely hate ASP.NET PostBack hackery. IIS7 now has full support for FastCGI and PHP is a first class language in terms of performance. I imagine this will hold true for other FastCGI friendly things like Ruby/Perl/Python/RoR/Catalyst/Django.
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I also forgot to mention, it now also fully support HyperVisor as a VM OS as well.
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In either case, don't run your business on it.
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http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948472 [microsoft.com]
As a student, there are ways to obtain permanently activated copies for less than the $999 or so retail. Most universities have MSDNAA access where you can log on and download a CD key for free. If that doesn't work, there is a deal if you log onto your MSDNAA account to obtain a one year Technet subscription for $99. This is for evaluation only licenses, but removes any time limitatio
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The one thing I did see in 2008 that I haven't been exposed to anywhere else is the direct tying of Group Policy and Network Access. Now you can set up group policies that define what a computer has to have before it's aloud to use the remote network. For example, a VPN user would dial in...then the policy server would c
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Windows Server, which im atempting to install right now into a vmware machine so i can finally work in my damned laptop instead of connecting through a ridiculously inefficient scheme such as terminal services, is a PIECE OF SHIT.
ASP.NET is ANOTHER PIECE OF SHIT in which one can BARELY do a browsable table with filters, let alone some decent ajax.
You now tout it as a platform for running the "great" php language (which, BTW, is ANOTHER PIECE OF SHIT as far as programming languages go) b
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Shitty PHP programmers program shitty PHP
Shitty
Shitty OOP programmers program shitty OOP.
Shitty Perl programmers program shitty Perl.
From the sound of your rant, you sound like both a shiyty ASP.NET programmer and a former shitty PHP programmer.
All languages have their own issues. None are perfect. Most can do what needs to be done cleanly in the hands of experienced programmers.
I never claimed that PHP was this shit, or that F
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So you can't get the source. Big deal. This isn't Stallman World. Most companies don't need the source. If you
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Right, because anybody who happens to be smart enough to learn as many languages and platforms as possible is automatically labeled an MS AstroTurfer. In the real world, it's called being versatile and being marketable. When an open source programming gig comes along, I can get it. When a MS programming gig comes along, I can get that too.
No offense, but what a waste of a good mind. Incidentally, these days there is more open source work than there are open source programmers and it pays very well indeed. So you don't really need those minion gigs at all.
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"Ideologocally agnostic" my ass... (Score:2, Informative)
Your last two sigs involved "linuzzz" and "abble".
And you're telling me that windows and IIS are "great pieces of software"?
Shocking!!!
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InTheLoo and Mactrope are both your accounts, and here they are carrying on a conversation with themselves.
Add to that your 'gnutoo' account that is posting further up the thread.
There is something seriously wrong with you. I couldn't care less about any Karma you whore by setting up your own rebuttals, but the fact that you are intentionally misleading people with your multiple accounts posting together on the same thread bothers me.
I guess all I can do is help newer mods be infor
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hi twitter (Score:1, Funny)
twitter, Erris, Mactrope, inTheLoo, gnutoo. A veritable army of one.
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Re:Mocking freedom. (Score:5, Insightful)
Free specs bring free software. (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything that has free specifications has a free implementation. One follows the other like day follows dawn. The only thing that prevents people from interacting is when people keep secrets or threaten others with software patents.
People have made free software for obnoxious things too, like Microsoft's networking protocol or DeCSS. The EU's directives were helpful to Samba but the Samba people did an adequate job of reverse engineering the specs themselves. I think that the EU has gone a step further and made Microsoft release changes to the specs that Microsoft made to break Samba. Microsoft's networking protocols are inferior, so I don't keep up with it. DeCSS has, of course, had nothing but trouble from the DVD conspiracy/consortium.
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It has nothing to do with interoperability.
While I agree that Microsoft (and all companies) should strive for publishing accessible and clear documentation for their file formats and protocols, if your definition of "freedom" includes them releasing their code under the GPL (as yo