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Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#161

Post by tracker1 »

daveguy wrote: post #136
josteink wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The GPL reduces developer freedom. Does it? The GPL increases the user's freedom by forcing developers to contribute back, ie limiting the developer's freedom (to close code down). Likewise, BSD and MIT type licences increase developer freedom at the cost of end users. You have got to keep these two roles clearly separated when thinking about licences, even though in lots of cases the actual users will be developer…

> limiting the developer's freedom (to close code down) Even with a more permissive license (MIT/BSD) the developer as a user never has the freedom to close down the original source code. Integrating that code into a proprietary offering does not close down the original code base. If there was only one copy of the code, then yes, integrating into proprietary software would close down that code. The original code can…

Agreed, the vast majority of what I create is ISC (similar to MIT) these days.

Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#163

Post by tracker1 »

danblick wrote: post #87
throwawaykf05 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, asserting their legal right to protect their investment in R&D that latecomers like Linux and Android simply ripped off. Just a matter of perspective, really. Is just that given open source is the dominant religion around these parts, that perspective is in the minority.

Honest question, what do you think was ripped off from Microsoft? I wouldn't think Linux or Android took much from them, really. (When I think of innovation at MS I think of developer tools, research on programming languages and distributed systems, and stuff like Photosync.)

IIRC, the only areas that have been specifically mentioned have been surrounding filesystem access and structure, which MS has done a lot with, most of it outside patent protection now though. Not sure what else, as most articles can't/won't say as part of the non-disclosed parts of these contracts.

Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#164

Post by CJefferson »

zeveb wrote: post #155
CJefferson wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, I work on GPL v2 systems, and we can't link to GPL v3 libraries. No other license I've worked with has this incompatiblity problem.

> Except, I work on GPL v2 systems, and we can't link to GPL v3 libraries. The standard way to use GPL v2 is to use this verbiage: This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. If someone doesn't do that, I don't know what to…

At some point in the far distant past, someone decided they didn't want to give the FSF the ability to apply any license they like to their software (which is reasonable, the FSF could in principle make GPL v4 -- All your source are belong to us).

While that choice might have been a mistake, it would now be an impossible effort to get all contributor's permission to change, so we are stuck with v2.

Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#165

Post by tracker1 »

oblio wrote: post #15
aries1980 wrote: post #8

AFAIK Angular is part of Google. But a quite decent improvement from the era when the company bribed government officials to purchase bulk licences for pupils and govn't, distorting the job market. This is a less harmful Microsoft than it was 5-10-20 years ago.

It still has split personality, unfortunately. You can't turn such a huge company 100% around in such a short time.

that's no different from any company with more than 10K employees, one group won't necessarily be aligned to all the others... The developer and azure areas of MS have definitely been leaning in the pro-floss side of things... Windows and Office, not so much, who knows wrt XBox, they seem to flip-flop on indee support.

Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#166

Post by tracker1 »

bad_user wrote: post #100
josteink wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is quite an improvement from the olden days when a certain Microsoft executive described the GPL as a cancer, and open source in general as a thing to avoid Absolutely. And don't take this the wrong way... I much appreciate the improvements. But there's still a very strong trend that Microsoft code contributions tend to be in MIT or similarly permissively licensed projects. They still tend to avoid the GPL whe…

The problem of these licenses is that they don't come with patents grants. Which given that this is Microsoft we are talking about, it's a big deal. Of course, their projects does come with a patents license, in addition to the copyright license, but it's unclear to me whether this license applies to derivative works for example. I'm not a lawyer of course and I have a very limited understanding, but interpreting the…

Yeah, but when MS used their own MIT-like license with patent grant and nuclear patent option, people hated it. They have made certain guarantees in the past wrt ASP.Net bits and other areas... MS seems to have been mostly in favor of live and let live wrt patents on their open-source software, it would be a colossal mistake for them to sue over patent use on their open-source software, short of defensively against someone suing them over patents.

Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#167

Post by moron4hire »

ksk wrote: post #160
moron4hire wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possession is nine tenths of the law. You have no right to tell people what to do with their own computers.

>You have no right to tell people what to do with their own computers. You seem confused. The discussion here is about copyright law and intellectual property licensing. Code is a series of 1s and 0s that can be duplicated at almost no cost. Me "possessing" it doesn't deprive anyone else of anything.

Exactly, but I'm not the one that is confused. You have no tangible property on which to seek your rent.

Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#168

Post by sqeaky »

daveguy wrote: post #101
rmc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a quite decent improvement from the era when Or the era of "Linux is a cancer" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_c...

Well, to be fair, he was trying to refer to the fact that GPL is viral (turning other licenses into its own). That is a valid critique of GPL (it reduces developer freedom) and that is why it has been in steady decline compared to more liberal licenses (as a percent of FOSS licenses).

No he wasn't. He was trying to disparage and insult a perceived threat. "Cancer" is an inflammatory and negative thing to call something no matter how you spin it.

Ballmer wasn't stupid he could have been nuanced and precise if he wanted, he certainly knew the difference between a kernel and a license. He wanted to convince people to not use a given technology stack because he was invested in another. If that is not convincing enough at the time there was already a more accurate but still negative sounding phrase "The GPL is Viral", but that wasn't offensive enough and didn't attack the perceived enemy OS.

Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#169

Post by sqeaky »

wmccullough wrote: post #68
golfer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Scroogled" era wasn't that long ago either. Unbelievably embarrassing. Nor the stealing of Google's search results. I'm not ready to bless Microsoft yet.

How long do they have to pay for their past mistakes before they've done enough to placate people?

Long enough to earn trust.

I still don't trust Sony after the RootKit fiasco, and it might be another decade before I do. Or Sprint after the IQ agent keylogger.

There are simply too many other companies with similar products to ms, sony or sprint that have no public dishonesty on their record. I can just use someone else's product until they have been good corporate citizens long enough that I have forgotten.

Re: Microsoft is now the leading company for open source contributions on GitHub

#170

Post by ksk »

moron4hire wrote: post #167
ksk wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You have no right to tell people what to do with their own computers. You seem confused. The discussion here is about copyright law and intellectual property licensing. Code is a series of 1s and 0s that can be duplicated at almost no cost. Me "possessing" it doesn't deprive anyone else of anything.

Exactly, but I'm not the one that is confused. You have no tangible property on which to seek your rent.

I have no clue what you're even talking about. Sorry, this will be my last reply.
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