Microsoft is considering an expansion of a program that would allow companies to see the source code underlying its Office software and other applications. Elsewhere, the U.S. Justice Department on Friday expressed concern that Microsoft has not completely lived up to its agreement to disclose Windows communications protocols, as required by a 2002 antitrust agreement.
Show and Tell for Microsoft
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I expect MS will move a long way in that direction over the next few decades. But even these beginning steps are welcome.
“I expect MS will move a long way in that direction over the next few decades”
Could you please clerify what you mean by this or why?
They are apples and oranges, GNU/Linux is open becasue without that nobody would be able to make contributions to the code. MS would only “open” parts of the code to let people better interact with the operating system, so there is every reason to have heavy restrictions on anything they “open”.
They are apples and oranges, GNU/Linux is open becasue without that nobody would be able to make contributions to the code. MS would only “open” parts of the code to let people better interact with the operating system, so there is every reason to have heavy restrictions on anything they “open”.
Some entities, for example, NASA, The Military, high level government establishments, for security reasons will not accept code that can not be internally audited by their internal software engineers and programs.
Secondly, GNU/Linux is not open solely for the reasons you stated. Lastly, thousands of applications are being written for Windows despite the fact that almost all third party developers don’t know the innards of Microsoft’s proprietary protocols.
The point is open source is creating an awareness. It is not right to be locked in by proprietary methods, protocols, standards or by a monopoly. Fortunately, the government knows how much this can cost the economy and realizes that open standards/protocols/code and interoperability, will save them millions in the long run.
Fortunately, some consumers/users realize this too. I, for example, avoid using proprietary products (hardware, software, electronics), except I have no choice or I’m forced to do so.
Yeah, so I agree with the original poster, thanks to GNU/Linux, Microsoft’s foremost and feared competitor, Microsoft is being forced to clean gutters. Something they would have never dreamed of.
What I’d really like to see (and I think could go a long way to improving their image) would be for them to realse the source to Windows 1.0, or Dos 5 or other old things that are WAY past the point where they would be in danger (financially or competitivly) if they were to be releaed. They could put it under a restrictive license or something.
I wish ALL companies would do things like that. ID has given away Quake I and II (the code, not the datafiles). I’d love to see source to old (DOS, early windows era) programs.
It really won’t make much difference because those who get to see the source are not allowed to change it, they have to request that Microsoft does. The Shared Source program doesn’t cut it, if your going to show me the source, you should let me modify it to my liking aswell or don’t even waste your time.
“The Shared Source program doesn’t cut it, if your going to show me the source, you should let me modify it to my liking aswell or don’t even waste your time.”
No no no, that is exactly what they should never do. Letting people see it to know how it works to make their apps run better is fine. The last thing we want to see is anyone other then MS changing the code. No one wants to see people having to recompile kernels for windows to get a app to work cause someone thought it better that way. Or on a milder way someone coming up with new components for windows and having their program replace the one MS included. next thing you know half the stuff on you computer doesn’t work because of someones brillant change. Not letting people change stuff like that is what helps MS keap consistancy and ease of install and reliablity going in windows. This isn’t anything you could need to do that would require changing something MS has in there. If it does you probably need to rethink what your doing or look for a differant OS. And if its a bug you find then let MS know and let them fix it and test it. That bug fix could mess other things up.
If you are so dead set on having full access to ms code and changing stuff in it, either get hired by MS or go to a differant OS and have your fun doing that.
So why do so many application venders seem so intent on overwriting vital system DLLs without ever seeing the source? Believe me, I have experience with trying to make Windows programs play nice together.
“So why do so many application venders seem so intent on overwriting vital system DLLs without ever seeing the source? Believe me, I have experience with trying to make Windows programs play nice together.”
Did I ever say this was a good thing, did anyone ever say this is a good thing? This is much like what i’m saying, messing with the MS code would further worsen this. I belive MS has been making some effort to eliminate this issue with each release.
After 12 years, the Linux zealot’s ancient 386 machine gives up up the ghost! The machine went through alot, going through DOS 5.0, 6.0, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Debian gnu/Linux. It even had a Geforce 4 on it using a AGP to ISA converter.
But now the machine was dead. So the Linux zealot decided to go to the local PC world to get a new machine.
He decided to get a Athlon 3500+ Packard Bell, when all of a sudden he heard a giant DUNNNNNNNNNN! And behind him, was the largest cheese greater in the world! Behind him was this fat bearded geek with an Apple logo on his chest. He was an Apple zealot. Suddenly Linux zealot had a weired feeling as a Giant Titatainum X appeared on a huge LCD display.
The titanium X span around a huge smiling blue face, while a cube appeared and rotated towards a desktop. The Apple Zealot started to talk about his Mac affection, and how he was going to buy a G5 to complete his collection, but the price, was almost 5,000 EUR, while the packard bell only costs 2000 EUR, and was noticbly faster. The spinning rainbow ball span for ages while it attempted to copy a 17 Mb mp3 file onto the zealot’s iPOD. The Zealot said it was due to the fact that this machine was running the 68k version of OS X, and if you ran the G5 version it would only take two minutes, if that.
Anyway, he decided to “convert” the linux zealot, so he offered to give him one of his Imacs for free Since Linux zealot dosen’t have much money (Flipping burgers to pay the bills of developing gnome software!), he agreed to get a free computer (that is, if you can actually call macs a “real” computer). So the Mac zealot told Linux zealot to meet him at his house later on that afternoon.
So at 5:30 pm, the Linux zealot arrived at the mac zealots house. He rung the bell, which made that annoying “DUNNNNNNNNNN” noise which macs make. The Apple zealot came to the door, and said, ahhh, you must be here for the imac.
LOL
(But a bit off topic
)
Without a doubt MS isn’t going to set by and watch business go away. If what is needed is the military, and other government folks taking a look at the source code, so be it. MS didn’t build their business into what it is today, only to watch it go away over access to source code.
If anyone really believes MS is simply going to give up in the wake of competing operating systems, they got another thing coming.
I did not mean to imply that anyone with a brain would think that is a good idea.
The real problem in Windows is the application developers, they are still caught in the Win 9X mentality. That is the reason that almost all Windows XP users run with Administrator level rights. This completely nullifies the fact that Windows NT based OSes are (almost) secure OSes. Don’t know. Maybe this is what Jav . . . I mean .NET is meant to fix.
Linux might be better off if the economy crashed further.
All the M$ tricks ill be laid bare
“So why do so many application venders seem so intent on overwriting vital system DLLs without ever seeing the source? Believe me, I have experience with trying to make Windows programs play nice together.”
Did I ever say this was a good thing, did anyone ever say this is a good thing? This is much like what i’m saying, messing with the MS code would further worsen this. I belive MS has been making some effort to eliminate this issue with each release.
No, you were implying some sort of dooms day senario of “evil patches flying around the net with mear mortals forced to learn the mystical ways of the command line so that they can compile their operating system”.
Lets assume that Microsoft shoves their whole development tree on the net via a CVS (hopothetically speaking), lets “hypothetically say” that Joe Guru developers a new algorithm which improves the existing pre-emptive algorithm.
Why wouldn’t Microsoft want to review the patch and merge it into the tree? does Microsoft suffer from the “Not Invented Here” syndrome?
The fact is, they need more developers to improve it, and they need developers who can come out of left field and develop ideas that no won has thought of. Some of the ideas we see in OSS world are thought of in a second. Developer watching tv then suddenly realises a really good idea on how to improve the part of the Linux kernel.
If they can start getting not only paid developers but academic institutions involved, problems will be able to get fixed alot quicker. For example, lets say “Very Big Corporation of America” is making a piece of software called “Swizzle Stick”, and have just realised that there is a bug in a uncommonly used feature in the win32 api. Wouldn’t it be best to give the software vendor the opportunity to point out the bug and submit a patch to Microsoft?
Companies tend to reverse-engineer things in a “clean-room” environment as a method of demonstrating that the code that they produce is in fact their own indepentent development and not directly derived from the original product that they are trying to reverse-engineer.
Companies like ARDI, the creators of the Executor 68k Mac emulation line of products, have gone to EXTREME lengths to make sure that the people working on their code had no previous exposure to Apple’s MacOS or Quickdraw code.
Once someone looks at Microsoft’s source for a given product, they are likely no longer able to work on products which are based on the reverse-engineering of features, protocols, or formats used by that Microsoft product.
Can you imagine the impact on something like Samba (and the potential legal liability) if the folks at Microsoft found out that some of the people who contributed code to Samba had already looked at the code for Microsoft’s implementation of CIFS?
Just a thought…
This is how the real world works: you find the bug, you prepare properly written bug report, you submit it to software developer who develops code, you receive bug fix in due time.
>For example, lets say “Very Big Corporation of America” is making a piece of software called “Swizzle Stick”, and have just realised that there is a bug in a uncommonly used feature in the win32 api.
Lets say a small company who happened to be in Russia but an honest MSDN subscriber had found an obscure bug when uncommonly used DNS feature is enabled, returned to computer as a part of DNS name resolution, and cached by Win2K.
That company prepared bug report and sent it to Microsoft. Microsoft knew who developed part of Windows that caches DNS records, and pointed developer to bug report. Rest assured, that bug has been fixed since SP2, if you need that feature fixed in your code- make sure your code checks for SP2 (it is easy).
As an alternative, that small Russian software company could waste weeks or months to get familiar with Windows source code, pinpoint a possible piece of wrong code, guess proper bug fix and submit changes to Microsoft for approval. That would cost Russian software company few thousand dollars (even with low cost of labor in Russia) and could save Microsoft few hundred dollars.
Now, please explain why Russian company would be better off by playing Microsoft development team and by paying its programmers for what Microsoft should do?
Yes, why would I want do Microsoft’s work for them, for free?