Microsoft Corp. says it is looking to turn over more of its programs to open-source software developers, playing a greater role in a process that the Redmond company has criticized strongly at times in the past. Money-makers like the company’s Windows operating system and Office productivity suite aren’t on the table — or anywhere near it.
Microsoft Open to Open Source
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Microsoft Corp. says it is looking to turn over more of its programs to open-source software developers, playing a greater role in a process that the Redmond company has criticized strongly at times in the past. Money-makers like the company’s Windows operating system and Office productivity suite aren’t on the table — or anywhere near it.
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Microsoft doesn’t play *ANY* role in Open Source except to spread lies about it.
One has to wonder about the motives of even posting a story implying that Microsoft is a supporter of the Open Source
movement.
Is it an attempt to get people opposed to Microsoft’s .NET rubish and other things to adopt them instead by suggesting
Microsoft has no problems with people who aren’t interested
in using their products?
Yeah,right.
If Microsoft isn’t going to open source Windows or Office then is it pretty much going to be developer tools? I don’t know, something like the IDE for Visual Studio? They have Windows, Office, developer tools, and games. I can’t think of anything they could open source aside from the developer tools.
Windows Wizards could be open sourced, allowing us to gain from the VB code that walks us into walls instead of helping us set up computers
Gotta wonder about a company that changes thinking just to stay where the money’s at. I know people who will do anything as long as their peers think it’s cool, and none of those types of people get far. This is like chasing an ambulence.
And it’s not just to Microsoft bash; more than just Microsoft takes this sort of stance. It’s just that Microsoft is the only really prominent company making these flaky sorts of moves, making it obvious that they never think what they say; they’re just trying to get as much money as possible. There’s a difference between trying to be a successful company by turning good profits and trying to be an honest company that tries to have a good reputation.
There’s a difference between trying to be a successful company by turning good profits and trying to be an honest company that tries to have a good reputation.
I don’t think you should wait for a multinational to do that. If you like that kind of companies then stick to small less then 30 people companies.
This is not a MS problem. Apple, IBM, Novell, Sun, Intel, AMD and many other multinationals are like this.
As soon as you sell your soul to the stockholders (IPO) you can forget your personal values.
This is the perfect example of why we need to speak of “software libre”. Open Source is a term that can be easily appropriated by marketing in any big company to create the perception that they are in favor of allowing people to freely share.
To create an ontology of sharing and its accompanying ethics, we need a language of our own. Why? Just see this article where Microsoft claims that it now sees benefits to “Open Source”. Open source has been a marketing success because it doesn’t carry any significant political or ethical message. Yet the very reasons for its success could water down our efforts to bring software libre to everyone who wants to use it because people will believe that our approach and that of Microsoft are one and the same.
Is Microsoft now against the software patents that threaten software libre develoepers? Of course, not?
Set your mind free. Remove conceptual grids from it! Is MIcrosoft interested in open source because they now want users to freely share Microsoft products or is it because they are afraid that the members of the free software movement may have the engineering muscle to out-engineer them and the normative leanings to do so with an ethical smile on their face?
This runs against Microsoft’s foundation and principles. Microsoft need stop making fanciful headlines and proposals. If Microsoft wants to survive in the long term, it needs to present a practical approach to its current self-defeating policies. One very practical approach is to make its main products (Windows & Office) retail for $20 or less for each license.
Microsoft Bob
Microsoft released the pretty cool ESPS speech processing library under a BSD-like license (http://www.speech.kth.se/software/#esps ). They got the code when they bought Entropic (http://www.entropic-communications.com ). Microsoft (and other software companies) probably have lots of code like this lying around — code that isn’t used in any product, but could be useful for a lot of people if freed.
I still find it a bit curious that Microsoft considers it to be better for their business to release software under a free, non-copyleft license, which allows other companies to use their code in proprietary products, than to copyleft it like Openoffice, MySQL etc. But I guess they have to if they want to continue claming GPL == evil communist terrorist virus.
Anyway, thanks for ESPS!
” Gotta wonder about a company that changes thinking just to stay where the money’s at.”
That’s a company’s purpose, guy. It’s part of this process called “capitalism” that lands food in your mouth.
That’s a company’s purpose, guy.
No, the sole purpose of a company is to shield the owners of a business from lawsuits. The company may be sued, but not the people running it. It’s this shield which allows companies to do things like buy other companies strictly to strip their assets. Capitalism has NOTHING to do with companies. The country was capitalistic long before laws allowing companies to exist were enacted.
“That’s a company’s purpose, guy. It’s part of this process called “capitalism” that lands food in your mouth.”
Please explain, Mr. Economics major, how capitlism lands food in my mouth. That food has to go through a lot of hard work and processing but I fail to see where capitalism falls into it. Did all the communists starve or something?
I, for one, see them supporting the Mono project, then selling MS Office re-done in C#. Such a product would certainly keep my MSDN subscription afloat longer, as I continue my drift in the direction of emacs and Python and C++
However, I’m not a representative sample…
that they won’t be releasing any of their cashcrops – MS Windows or MS Office – under the MIT license. How sad, hau varry sad! (Boo-hoo, boo-hairless-hoo! – Spike Milligan’s Sad/Happy Ending Story Of The Bald Twit Lion)
Not to worry – OpenOffice.org does all I require it, under Windows or Linux or whatever else I might care to either port it myself or get it ported to. ReactOS is coming along quite nicely, and will soon be usable by the general user. Linux and the *BSD contingent are already there, and there are a host of other F/LOSS OSes getting up steam, or already are up and running – Syllable, Haiku, MenuetOS, etc.
// Humour Warning – Your Computer Is Not Malfunctioning
In my childhood I heard a joke about a fairly-closed-off religious sect/denomination. Someone had died and had gone to heaven, and was being shown around. He noticed a very high brick wall around one part of heaven, and asked St peter, “Who’s that?” “Oh, that’s the (insert least-favourite religious sect/denomination name here),” St Peter said, “they think they’re the only ones here.”
// Further comment deemed unnecessary.
Did that happen before or after we attacked them for being communist or even thinking about being communist?
The purpose of a company is NOT to be a legal shield. You are thinking of the purpose of incorporating.
well, this gives a bad look for microsoft, saying open to open source when its supposed to be evil.
long live linux and the bsds!!!!! (yes i like linux now)
“Gotta wonder about a company that changes thinking just to stay where the money’s at.”
Yea, me too. They are doing what they are in business to do: MAKE MONEY! Seriously, what makes it not ok for MS to make a move based on money most good, successful companies would do the same thing?
Maybe they will open source DirectX. It would be great to have support in a *nix envirenment for all the latest hardware/software that requires directx to utilize it’s full potential. After all it’s not a money making product, so I don’t see why they wouldn’t.
Open source is the way.
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just want to say hi to all my fans in England.
Helder Postiga
😛
If we know anything about Microsoft there’s a hidden agenda. They just haven’t suddenly seen the light about their buisness practices and decided to change. They want free developing of their applications and then they get all the benefits or they want to wait for someone to screw something up and then Microsoft can blame Open Source.
[i]”Gotta wonder about a company that changes thinking just to stay where the money’s at.”
“That’s a company’s purpose, guy. It’s part of this process called “capitalism” that lands food in your mouth.”
Nope. Mistake #42. It is more complex than that. Seen from a short timespan point of view, a company’s purpose is not necessarily to gain (the most) profit out of it. It could be, but it isn’t necessarily that, not neccesarily the primary goal. Any company has a function in our society (importance of this function is a different aspect). In order to guarantee it’s existence -which is not necessarily its goal- the company has to raise enought money to play quite; that is something _totally_different_ than playing quite (i’ve worked for multiple, small companies who had the goal of playing quite + serving purpose of services). However with having the only goal as “raising profit” you won’t make it as company; when you sell something, you sell that to someone who sees value in what is being sold enough to make the trade go. If the product isn’t good enough, then the profit will not fare.
It’s funny how some companies try to blur this. If Diebold’s target were only to raise money, they’ve fucked it up with their low-quality product. And they have, or will fail. If Carlyle’s target were onlt to raise money, then they’ve tried to blur their existence pretty well. But the facts are being raised, and the company (holding) will be under attack.
As smurf put it, in the case of a “NV/BV” (company with shareholders) there’s a lot of money in it from the public. That public doesn’t wish to lose it’s money while the goals of few individuals might have other aspects than simply getting rich. I fully agree with him/her.
Ie. the function of the company in society could be more important, the improvement of our lives, the innovation aspect, the writing a name in history aspect, or other ideology aspects. Not everyone wishes to see his/her primary goal as getting rich, nor does this neccesarily lead to the secondary goal being unimportant, nor does it mean any ethics one might may not be allowed to be in conflict with the profit goal. Hard to comprehend, yes?
I know companies who have such goals and quite frankly i’ve always had more pleasure doing business with them than whatever company i’m able to imagine you’re fanboy of.
Comcast, Mike Anderer. They’re all cool persons given their target is to raise money. In the meanwhile, they fuck things up, but that’s all okay according to the view of some -apparantly Americans- given they only want profit which is their right and their only purpose. No criticism on that, please!
Anyway, we’ll see these forms of alternative-capitalism occassionaly and on the IT field we see Microsoft as the loser since they fuck up both their customers and competing companies. As much as you’d like it not to see, many people on this lil’ planet have a problem with that so they’re seeking for an alternive which doesn’t pull the very same trick.
and yet another senseless flamewar ensues. i swear this site should be called slashdot2
Did all the communists starve or something?
They would be if the filthy capitalist pigs weren’t giving them food.
As the communists used to say : “What is a capitalist ? The person who sells you the rope you use to hang him” 🙂
In related news, Osama bin Laden has declared that he is now
studying to become a Rabbi.
Recent research by the Alexistorvalds Institute has pointed out a human individual lies at an estimate number of 20 times a day.