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Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

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Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#141

Post by cjsuk »

jordigh wrote: post #134
cjsuk wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've patched and raised PRs to contribute and they are ignored. I am helping them fix their product. Nothing. So I phone up support and PAY to have something fixed. Nothing. I try playing nice. I try paying nice. I get nothing. I vote with my feet. Nice or not, that's also an aspect here; choice.

> I am helping them fix their product. Then stop. You don't have to make anything better for them. Fix it for yourself. If you're not having a good time trying to help others, then stop doing it. You have no obligation and neither do they (except, of course, if there were explicit contracts involved). I have some Xchat patches. I tried getting them into Hexchat, but they didn't want them. Well, looks like I'm now per…

We have a support contract and I have support credits with MSDN. That accounts for nothing though apparently.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#142

Post by giancarlostoro »

cjsuk wrote: post #127
giancarlostoro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and yet they also have things like this: https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt Can't really say nothing's changed if a lot has. I personally believe they need to refine their OS department, clearly that side of the company needs serious change. I say this after having heard of all the oddities from Windows 10 (their latest and current OS) an…

That's only there because they know no one can fork and commit to maintain a codebase that size. Same reason no one forked Linux. They still have 100% control over it.

https://github.com/flagello/Essence

That's one fork of VS Code. Not sure how to find projects implementing .NET Core I do know Mono is implementing code from .NET Core though see:

http://www.mono-project.com/docs/about-mono/dotnet-integrati...

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#143

Post by maxxxxx »

cjsuk wrote: post #30
Quarrelsome wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They haven't changed a bit. o_0. I remember when I had to use tools to disassemble their precious source that they kept withheld and locked up. Now they post their new tech to github and I can view all the source easily. Now they try to make their tech work on Linux. I'm all for fair criticism but your prose is not that, its dogma. If you think they're still the same company I can only imagine that you left your ey…

They're not really different though. People's memory is short. I've had access to MSFT source code before under shared source apart from the CSPs suspiciously, I've had symbol server around for years and been able to pop into framework code, then there's stuff like this: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749640.aspx - not even counting the amount of source coming from MSR etc. My criticism is not dogma, it's…

.NET Core also made me doubt their efforts. It looked good at the start but it has turned into a very confusing experience. There seems to be no direction.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#144

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

arca_vorago wrote: post #140
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux has made huge strides in the past few years towards just works This is precisely my point. "Just works" is great, until something doesn't "just work", then you have to untangle a pile of complex and opaque interactions, often with poor and outdated documentation, to make something work. In the past, Windows at least had relatively straight-forward mechanisms of operation that were all well documented and, imp…

>then you have to untangle a pile of complex and opaque interactions, often with poor and outdated documentation, to make something work. As if windows doesn't do this but worse? At least on linux I can see the source code of whatever is breaking and fix it. MS's official documentation is crap compared to gnu/linux documentation, not to mention linux has a very helpful community on places like irc. Have you ever take…

The source doesn't help you untangle the interactions of complex systems to find the root cause now does it? Even then, it is often easier to simply work around the problem than go through the trouble of rebuilding from source, with all the headache that comes with that. That you even consider this a viable answer is evidence of the deeply rooted problems with the mindset of the Linux Desktop community.

Windows has a lot of the same problems now, that's what I'm saying. That's where MS is screwing up. My opinion is that they still haven't screwed up as badly as the Linux Desktop has, and more importantly the advantages Windows Desktop brings to the table are greater than those of the Linux Desktop. This is why I said it was "barely the least-worst" instead of "the best".

I could spend hours writing about all the problems I have with the Linux Desktop, but it would fall on deaf ears because you'd just point at Windows and say "but they suck too!", which has basically been the Linux Desktop Evangelist strategy since 1990. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't spurred mass adoption.

It's great that the Linux Desktop fits your needs well enough that you can use it as your primary OS. Apparently there are about 4% of Desktop users for whom that can be said and "works fine for me!" is not going to win any of the other 96% over.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#145

Post by danielbarla »

digi_owl wrote: post #135
danielbarla wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yepp, it's a trade off between the rights of the developer and the rights of the consumer / user, you fundamentally can't have both (simplification). RMS goes all on the latter side, essentially.

I am not sure RMS makes such a distinction. To him all users are potential developers (or programmers more likely). Frankly he is more concerned with who actually control the computing hardware and software being in use on a daily basis. Keep in mind that one of the issues that got him on his quest was the loss of the ability to modify a printer driver to message those with a print job in the queue that the printer w…

I'd argue that he quite clearly does actually make that distinction, though perhaps with different words. (I'm also under the impression that he elaborates quite a bit on the core concept, though I'm unable to easily find a reference). But, e.g. from the GNU Manifesto, 1985:

> GNU is not in the public domain. Everyone will be permitted to modify and redistribute GNU, but no distributor will be allowed to restrict its further redistribution.

The phrasing is a bit different (it's from a point of view of freedom of distribution), but essentially he's pointing out the copyleft idea; that the code can never go back to a model that doesn't provide the same guarantees.

So, there's the freedom of distribution, versus the freedom of someone to restrict the distribution. Both cannot exist at the same time. He's quite clear that the benefits of freedom of distribution outweigh (any potential) benefits of restriction, so he's happy to deny others that "freedom". It gets phrased in many ways, but right or wrong, that's what it is. In that sense, I agree with the poster I responded to; to the person doing the coding themselves, an MIT license leaves more doors open, and hence feels more free.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#146

Post by vog »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #132
vog wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware that this behaviour is somewhat "popular" on HN, to make their comment kind-of "stand above all other's", but I'm not sure if that is actually a good idea. The authors of those comments almost certainly won't notice your reply if it is in a new thread. And the others (like myself) are confused as soon as your fuzzy reference becomes more and more ambiguous.

I mean, that's not really the purpose of my comment. The purpose is more that I don't want to copy+paste my comment on the 30 different negative threads, nor do I think I should.

Indeed, it's a pity that discussion threads are trees rather than DAGs. In email and usenet, you can specify multiple entries in the "References" header, to theoretically you can refer to multiple parent messages. (Alas, that header isn't actually used for that purpose, but just to refer to parent, grantparent, etc. to have some redundancy in case of an incomplete archive or partially-private discussions.)

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#147

Post by vetinari »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #87
bad_user wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we see Microsoft making tangible changes to their behavior, and we reward that with more derision and distrust, then we aren't exactly incentivizing them - or anyone wathcing - to do more Well, if we are speaking of incentives, then here's one ... Don't screw with open source or open standards or your legitimate competitors by unfair competition , because many people will never forget it, so don't be surprised i…

Microsoft can't undo the past, and they aren't going away. Your choice boils down to a single question: do you want the Microsoft of tomorrow to be different from the Microsoft of yesterday? If so, then quit hating and start celebrating the victories.

Their past makes their starting position now more difficult. They have to make up for their past deeds, after all.

Someone, who didn't do thing like Microsoft did, has it easier now. It sounds only fair to me.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#148

Post by hannob »

morganvachon wrote: post #116
hannob wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BSD/GPL question is independent of the free software / open source term. Both the OSI and the FSF accept GPL and BSD-style licenses. So both GPL and BSD code is free software and open source software.

Are you sure about that? gnu.org has a huge beef with BSD, they are actively campaigning for any developer considering BSD to use GPL instead[1]. Basically, anything that is not 100% copyleft is considered non-Free by GNU and FSF. Again, that doesn't bother me; to each their own. I'm not a developer so you might say I have no skin in this issue. However, I stand by my assertion that BSD gives the lone developer more…

> gnu.org has a huge beef with BSD, they are actively campaigning for any developer considering BSD to use GPL instead[1]. Basically, anything that is not 100% copyleft is considered non-Free by GNU and FSF.

Not true. Just look here: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html

Plenty of BSD-ish licenses that are in the free software categories.

The FSF's and GNU proejct's position is that they prefer GPL over BSD, but nowhere do they say BSDish licensed code is not free software.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#149

Post by Fnoord »

tyfon wrote: post #2

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good. However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source. It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software. How much has Microsoft really changed? I…

> However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source.

25 years, so that's since 1992.

Do you also remember IBM? Did you hold it against IBM when they started to become actively part of the open source community?

Microsoft is changing from a proprietary software company pur-sang to a more service-oriented (and, like Google & Facebook, privacy-invasive) company. We need to forgive Microsoft and move on not out of love for Microsoft but for our own sanity. New threats have arisen.

What Microsoft did (see the Halloween documents for a peak into that), any other big, powerful company or monopoly could've (and has, see e.g. IBM or Intel) done in the past.

As of now, the invasive privacy concerns en masse (by a plethora of corporations and governments) are a much bigger threat to our liberty than Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

#150

Post by ludwigvan »

bad_user wrote: post #80
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #71

What signs of change are you expecting? Microsoft is a huge organization and change comes slowly to different products. Here's the thing - if we see Microsoft making tangible changes to their behavior, and we reward that with more derision and distrust, then we aren't exactly incentivizing them - or anyone wathcing - to do more. I personally applaud Microsoft on their dramatically increased involvement in open source…

> if we see Microsoft making tangible changes to their behavior, and we reward that with more derision and distrust, then we aren't exactly incentivizing them - or anyone wathcing - to do more Well, if we are speaking of incentives, then here's one ... Don't screw with open source or open standards or your legitimate competitors by unfair competition , because many people will never forget it, so don't be surprised i…

This.

We can’t forget or forgive the sins of the past, those who remember.

But generations will pass, and yesterday’s sinners will become conquerors, philantropes, savior of mankind.

In the end, history is written by the mighty and they can market themselves however they wish.

But some won’t forget, at least not this easily. It is the least we can do.

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