Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Posted Sep 11, 2009 21:32 UTC (Fri) by einstein (subscriber, #2052)
In reply to: Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch) by martinfick
Parent article: Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

> if it stays open source, it can't be Extinguished. That is, after all, one of the main benefits of open source, isn't it?

You don't seem to understand what microsoft is doing here. What good is an snippet of "open source" code that is useless outside of ms windows since it won't work without the proprietary microsoft libraries?

This is just microsoft poisoning the open source pool, creating windows-only "open source" that helps microsoft and hurts everybody else.

While microsoft may here, in the eyes of some, fulfill the letter of the law, so to speak, they attack the very heart of open source, and they know full well what they are doing.

Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Posted Sep 11, 2009 21:53 UTC (Fri) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link] (3 responses)

"You don't seem to understand what microsoft is doing here."

Perhaps I don't, your post seems rather unclear to me, lot's of evil adjectives used with no real evil behavior sited. Are you speculating or are you privy to some specific knowledge that I am not? You seem to speak in the present tense as if they have already done whatever evil behavior you are eluding to?

Why would I care if MS creates open source software that only works with their proprietary software (is that what you are suggesting)? How does this hurt open source? How is this different than any other piece of free software that relies on proprietary stuff (say: anything that is windows only) created by someone else? Would this somehow magically be evil software, and the other software good? If I use it, will I become tainted and have bad luck (any more than if I have to use windows in the first place)? :)

What law are you talking about that they are fulfilling? I am sure that you have something specific in mind, but I am sorry, I am not able to grasp your explanations.

Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Posted Sep 12, 2009 0:02 UTC (Sat) by Hellow (guest, #57997) [Link] (2 responses)

Part of open source is the ability to edit the source code and port it to other platforms, but this is impossible or extremely hard due to the fact it relies upon software only found in Windows, which is a proprietary platform.

Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Posted Sep 12, 2009 0:14 UTC (Sat) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331) [Link]

wine is famous for being able to run win32 binaries, but it's also usable as a porting library.

Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Posted Sep 12, 2009 0:34 UTC (Sat) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

No, having that "ability" is not part of open source, no more than "having the ability to create a video compression algorithm that is 10x better than today's standards". You have the right to try all you want and it might be hard to do, but that difficulty really has nothing to do with open-source or free software. Your are implying way more of open source than is commonly accepted anywhere.

There is plenty of windows only free software developed by open source (non evil corporations) that would be extremely difficult to port to a free operating system. That free software is not non-free because of it. If we take your reasoning to its logical conclusion, all of the original GNU software would have been non-free before there was a free OS to run it on!

Do you forget that before linux/bsds, GNU software developers were just developing software that relied on a very proprietary operating system that did not have much of a chance (would require a behemoth of effort to create) of becoming free? The GNU software was no less free then than now! Naturally the users were, but one could hardly blame the free software developers for that, could we?

Microsoft launches open source foundation (Linux-Watch)

Posted Sep 12, 2009 7:39 UTC (Sat) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

"What good is an snippet of "open source" code that is useless outside of Linux since it won't work without the proprietary parts of code that cannot be used in other operating systems?"

;-)