Competitors Mostly Silent As Microsoft Releases Code (The Seattle Times)

Posted Aug 7, 2002 16:08 UTC (Wed) by libra (guest, #2515) [Link]

At the first second when I learned Microsoft was ready to disclose some carefully chosen part of their code I thought "that is a good opportunity, maybe Samba or Wine will benefit of that". But one second later I was already knowing it was a stupid thought. Not only because the code will only be disclosed under so restrictive agreements that Free Software will not be able to benefit of it, but also for some other reasons here exposed :

1) Microsoft know for long now that the disclosure of parts of their code would be necessary. But as neither judges nor government has been able to enforce the law in a proper maner, in a proper time, they have had plenty of time to "clean" their code, certainly removing most of their hidden features and entry points to parts still not exposed to everyone sight (I now consider the "trustworthy computing" initiative with a slightly different eye).

2) Microsoft will chose to reveal what they want, when they want, just keeping some people eyes turned in the direction they want, while they do other thing behind the stage. It has the same advantage as always to waste intelectual resources of people who could otherwise focus on usefull things, like porting some of their code to GNU.

3) Microsoft will pretend to make very big efforts in this movement when in reality we can expect that most of what they will reveal will mostly confirm what has already discovered by the Free Software community through reverse engineering and experimentation (but that will also turn some head in the direction of Microsoft instead of Wine or Samba, once again).

4) Microsoft will reveal some genuine code, but in which coding language, with which recommended compilator to be able to check that their code is really the one compiled in their DLLs ? If people must learn some C# or Visual Basic and use a proprietary and unavailable compilator to be able to check Microsoft code I think it is better to go and play Minsweeper, it will be less a loss of time and intellectual energy.

5) Even if one can obtain, understand and compile Microsoft code, I doubt it will be allowed to try replacing any DLLs of Windows with self compiled and more functional ones. In the end, after many efforts we may just finish with nice code and a law forbidding us to use it.

Finally the challenge is certainly no longer in Microsoft revealling some scarce part of their code. At least all the core of Windows with the whole Active Directory included shall be revealed to be of some interest. Some part of other server products related to Active Directory (like Exchange) shall as well be revealed, but what is most important is that those information should be freely available and usable by the Free Software community as well as anyone else. Of course Microsoft will say it is impossible (are there still too much backdoors and security problems in that code to be able to reveal it even after half a year of "trustworthy computing" ?). Maybe the real answer to the Microsoftpolistic position will just be to stop caring of what they say and start doing what should have been done from day one : refuse to use any program which is not 100% knowable in functionnality and 100% modifiable in its non standard or limited areas.

Coders, IT, users of the world, work everyday for your freedom and the freedom of mankind, refuse the leadership of the one that bind you to ignorance and despair.

Posted Aug 9, 2002 4:56 UTC (Fri) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

Perhaps Microsoft will decide not to be hypocrites, and to use an Open Source license they claim to like. Hmmmm ... which one will they choose, though? X11, MIT, BSD-with-advertising-clause, or new BSD?

(:

Probably the Old BSD - that way they can release the source to winsock.dll, ping.exe, ftp.exe, netstat.exe, and selected bits of the NT Resource Kit such as ls.exe and chown.exe, which doesn't work anyway. Basically pull the Darwin trick. Hey, it worked for Apple - lots of people thought they were actually being generous by releasing all that BSD code..