• Coding

  • Microsoft goes Open Source

Don't let the title fool you, the next version of Windows in the making is most probably not going to be open sourced. However it would seem that today more than ever, Microsoft, the archetypal proprietary software company is going towards the Open Source.

Up until last summer, Microsoft's relationship with Open Source had been mostly about spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) to the public opinion about Open Source. Sometimes criticizing Linux as a rival, often calling Open Source "property theft", it was clear that Microsoft did not believe in "community developed software".

Last July, the world was surprised to discover that Microsoft had released 20 000 lines of code to the Linux kernel project, one of its biggest Open Source rivals. The code mainly consisted on drivers allowing Linux to run better on Hyper-V, Microsoft's equivalent of VMWare, Virtualbox or KVM.

The biggest surprise came yesterday, from the ASP.NET development team. Announcing the release of the Beta of version 3 of their ASP.NET MVC framework, they also announce the release of NuPack. What is NuPack? From the article:

"NuPack is a free open source package manager that makes it easy for you to find, install, and use .NET libraries in your projects. It works with all .NET project types (including, but not limited to, both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC).

NuPack enables developers who maintain open source projects [...] to package up their libraries and register them with an online gallery/catalog that is searchable. The client-side NuPack tools – which include full Visual Studio integration – make it trivial for any .NET developer who wants to use one of these libraries to easily find and install it within the project they are working on."

In other words, NuPack is an Open Source product aimed at Open Source developers using .NET. If anything, the fact that Microsoft releases some code under an Open Source license proves that there are viable economical models for Open Source inside capitalist corporate systems.
I think Microsoft tries to embrace and make use of new development and technologies in computing, and open source software is no exception.
ASP.NET MVC has been Open Source from version 1, they also have a bunch of other open source projects.
xterm wroteASP.NET MVC has been Open Source from version 1, they also have a bunch of other open source projects.
Not exactly. ASP.NET MVC is released under a Microsoft Public License, part of their Shared Source project. This license has been considered Open Source as of late 2007. It is considered free by the Free Software Foundation.

Anyway my point is that it wasn't the original intent to create an open source license. It just got titled as that years later. Still is there denying the fact that Microsoft has been publicly participating in Open Source projects since this summer?
rahmu wrote
xterm wroteASP.NET MVC has been Open Source from version 1, they also have a bunch of other open source projects.
Not exactly. ASP.NET MVC is released under a Microsoft Public License, part of their Shared Source project. This license has been considered Open Source as of late 2007. It is considered free by the Free Software Foundation.

Anyway my point is that it wasn't the original intent to create an open source license. It just got titled as that years later. Still is there denying the fact that Microsoft has been publicly participating in Open Source projects since this summer?
I think version 1 was released in 2007.

If people would just widen their view a little bit instead of blindly bashing Microsoft for no reason at all (Just to follow the herd that is), they will see that, as you've said, Microsoft has been involved, creating and releasing Open Source projects for quite some time.

Even their .NET Micro Edition will be Open Sourced. Several other proposals like JQuery Templating have been active as well.
I would never trust microsoft with anything they say about opensource unless they release their code with a license that the FSF approves as 100% free.

Opensource doesn't necessarily mean free btw, I've seen some software that say their open source, but you have to pay to modify the source.
The label Open Source is given by a legal organism called OSI (they're the guys who came up with the name in the first place). The FSF (led by Richard Stallman) are the ones who insist on the word "free".

Both the FSF and the OSI accept the Microsoft Public License.

Good news?
rahmu wroteThe label Open Source is given by a legal organism called OSI (they're the guys who came up with the name in the first place). The FSF (led by Richard Stallman) are the ones who insist on the word "free".

Both the FSF and the OSI accept the Microsoft Public License.

Good news?
Yeah I know about OSI and the FSF. I re-checked and it seems there were 2 items, the NuPack and ASP.NET MVC.

Well... NuPack is released under Apache License v2.0 which is good news.

ASP.NET MVC is under the Microsoft Public License which is not good news (at least to me) cos as it states on the site http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
This is a free software license; it has a copyleft that is not strong, but incompatible with the GNU GPL. We urge you not to use the Ms-PL for this reason.
I guess... it's ... I dunno, OK.
I think overall this is a "Good Thing" because Microsoft, a large proprietary developer, is now releasing FLOSS. I don't care about their reasons, they could be evil or not but their action is a net (no pun intended) positive.

Here's what I don't like about it though. This NuPack is a tool that makes it easy to find C# libraries to use with your programs. There are open source implementations of C# and the CLR (Mono) and they're good.

But the CLR is covered under several patents held by Microsoft. The open source license makes the software "Free" but it doesn't grant any exemptions from the patents. So theoretically, implementing the (entire) CLR can get you sued. So more open source projects depending on C# and the CLR implementations means that these projects will be in danger of failing if Microsoft decides that they want to sue these implementations.

Take a look at RMS's view on the matter if you're interested in what that means.
This is being a bit over paranoid. Stallman has a tendency to do that. Mono is mainly developed by Novell, with the partnership of Microsoft. They're actually the same agreements that cover Moonlight, the open source implementation of Silverlight.

I'm sure the lawyers at Novell, one of the biggest software companies in the world, would know how to protect themselves and put some legal clauses in the contract to avoid Microsoft's suing Mono users.

But it is true that software patent can be a real threat, even when publishing under an open source license. Good thing we don't have them in Europe.
a year later
so with NuPack you can use any library from the repository which are actually added by normal users ?
I found this somewhat related article. It's a little more in-depth coverage of the shift of Microsoft towards open source.

According to the article, the shift had started with Bill Gates showing interest in the methodology, circa 2004. This is when the company started to hire Linux engineers like Bill Hiff or Sam Ramji. As of today, and again according to the article, Microsoft would focus its open source efforts towards Azure, its answer to Amazon EC2.

This is why we've seen involvement on their part in projects like Node.js and Hadoop (originally both Linux technologies), and even code participation in Samba.

Cloud computing is a different business models, that unlike the traditional model of "selling" code, doesn't contradict with Open Source. Microsoft knows it and expect us to see more of this soon.