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

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

#71

Post by spacelizard »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #46
hjek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible-just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding. Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree lic…

You can't practically charge for distribution though - your sell it to one person, and they'll upload it to an FTP archive server.

The same is true of literally every piece of software ever distributed regardless of license.

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

#72

Post by mikegerwitz »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #46
hjek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU Project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible-just enough to cover the cost. This is a misunderstanding. Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make copies and sell them, it is a nonfree lic…

You can't practically charge for distribution though - your sell it to one person, and they'll upload it to an FTP archive server.

Sure---that's sharing with your friends and neighbors, and that's a fundamental freedom.

But many/most will follow the project directly. You can offer the source code to build yourself , or provide a convenient binary/installer for those who either don't want to or can't (for example).

This is especially prevalent for mobile OS's, where building is an unfamiliar task or PITA for many, even hackers.

Would I personally? No. But I respect that decision.

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

#74

Post by wmccullough »

appleflaxen wrote: post #44
maze-le wrote: post #40

As long as key components like the official Microsoft NTFS implementation remain closed source, I see in this open source policy as a charade.

Your sentence is the epitome of good criticism: concise, valid, fundamental.

If that is considered valid, then let's also apply that broad sentence to a ton of other companies out there (Google, Apple). There's huge value to them open sourcing the things they have without giving away their core software.

The problem I see with OSS folks is that they think if a company isn't all in, they are corrupt. This polarized view doesn't work in the real world.

At some point, some of us engineers like making money, we do need a place to live and eat after all.

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

#75

Post by patrickaljord »

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?

This is not a past mistake, racketeering against Linux and Android using their patents is still ongoing today.

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

#76

Post by mikegerwitz »

rubber_duck wrote: post #70
syshum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To translate if you are attempting to exploit other peoples code with out giving anything back to the people that created the code then GPL is a cancer >MIT or the MS-PL is much more practical. This depends on the project I normally license my libraries, code I intend to be included in other software under BSD or MIT, but full developed software that is intended to be used as is gets GPL.

>if you are attempting to exploit other peoples code with out giving anything back to the people that created the code then GPL is a cancer That's bullshit - GPL requires you to open source your derived work as well - which plenty of people have a problem with commercially - it doesn't mean you don't want to contribute anything (quoting you) back. Even with the LGPL there are scenarios where sharing your code is not…

> In general GPL creates a lot of problems to which GPL supporters just plug their ears and mantra "if you were truly free you wouldn't have those problems".

I'm not plugging my ears. I recognize it, and it's terribly unfortunate that one would ever be in such a situation, but the idea there is that the GPL would encourage the liberation of other code, and other platforms. Here's an example:

  http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL
Now, you're talking about a broader issue than liberating a single program. But enough useful GPL'd software might sway larger systems.

Otherwise, if modifying free software and in doing so making your modified program proprietary means that it can't be used at all, then that is the intent.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

rubber_duck wrote: post #70
syshum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To translate if you are attempting to exploit other peoples code with out giving anything back to the people that created the code then GPL is a cancer >MIT or the MS-PL is much more practical. This depends on the project I normally license my libraries, code I intend to be included in other software under BSD or MIT, but full developed software that is intended to be used as is gets GPL.

>if you are attempting to exploit other peoples code with out giving anything back to the people that created the code then GPL is a cancer That's bullshit - GPL requires you to open source your derived work as well - which plenty of people have a problem with commercially - it doesn't mean you don't want to contribute anything (quoting you) back. Even with the LGPL there are scenarios where sharing your code is not…

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by throwawaykf05 »

bad_user wrote: post #39
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...

Yeah, now they're just engaging in racketeering against Linux and Android using their patents.

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.

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

#80

Post by us0r »

Illniyar wrote: post #37

How is that calculated? I mean Microsoft only has 2561 members ( https://github.com/orgs/Microsoft/people ) , so it isn't how many microsoft members contribute to open source. Is it how many contributors their open source projects have? nope, FontAwesome has maybe 100 contributors to all of it's 5 projects but it's listed as having 9000+ contributors. From what I can gather it's mostly based on the number of people t…

Microsoft also has:

https://github.com/azure

https://github.com/OfficeDev

https://github.com/mspnp

https://github.com/dotnet

https://github.com/aspnet

https://github.com/powershell

https://github.com/nuget - not sure this counts

plus probable another 100 i'm not aware of.

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