Open Source-happy Microsoft Joins Eclipse Foundation (networkworld.com) 131
alphadogg writes to note that just a day after announcing it would be bringing SQL Server to Linux, "Microsoft has announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation, an open source community for developers launched more than 10 years ago." Microsoft, which notes that it has worked with the Eclipse Foundation for years "to improve the Java experience across our portfolio of application platform and development services," made the announcement to attendees at EclipseCon, going on in Reston, Va., this week.
There's an old Microsoft slogan about this (Score:5, Insightful)
"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."
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Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this (Score:4, Insightful)
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I had to use an XP virtual machine for one of my CS classes years ago. Evil Incarnate is what I named it.
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I use Lubuntu. However, I'm grateful that Microsoft exists. It's really hard to say this but much of what we're able to enjoy today is because of the influences Microsoft has had. For better or worse, they're one of the primary reasons that we have it as good as we do. We can argue over things would have been different without them but that's the point - it would have been different.
No, I don't want Microsoft to go away. I want Microsoft to get better. They have enabled/driven so much and inspired so many -
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Sorry, but I was using a touch screen on a Xeni
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Fuck. You get someone to brew a swimming pool full of beer - I'll bring some copper pipe, hammers, axes and wood blocks and TEACH people how to build distilleries!
(To actually brew the wort from yeast and seed-potatoes would probably make for a pretty long party. As would maturing the distillate. Though I can take the rough edges off the "first" bucketful.)
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How, *exactly*, is Microsoft going to "extinguish" anything that's Open Source?
They can't revoke their already-granted copyrights, they can ONLY decline to release *further* code under an open source license.
So... no matter where you get to with Microsoft-supported open source, you can ALWAYS fork it, and continue maintaining, extending, and working with it regardless of what Microsoft decides to do *tomorrow*.
There is literally no way Microsoft could do anything to harm or kill your product, the only thi
Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this (Score:4, Interesting)
Change some of the code, wait a couple of years, file patent infringement claims.
Well, I haven't read the Eclipse license, so that might not work, but it's of a piece with what they've done before. So perhaps a modification of that, where Eclipse usability becomes dependent on a Microsoft plug-in that isn't a part of their donated code.
My feeling about MS is, "If it's a sleazy trick, then MS is either working on it or kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.".
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Isn't the "made publicly available" bit an example of "prior art". At least, when I dealt with (European) patent law, that would have been grounds for denying a patent application. Once we'd FILED the application, then we could use our ideas to beat shit out of our competitors (different, but not directly comparable because they did different things) product adverts. These da
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i8f they open source the code
Null
d if they contribute it willingly to other projects with licenses that are incompatible with stating that you need a license to use the code, then they have triggered estoppal.
Sorry, did you just say that I have NO CHOICE but to
Slug more $So,
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If Eclipse's usability depends on some future hypothetical Microsoft-developed plug-in, then it's unusable now, and nothing of value will be lost. In this scenario, the only value that can be extinguished is the value that Microsoft created...
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Sorry, but have you ever tried to retrofit old code to work with a new set of libraries. It can almost always be done, but it is often quite difficult. And it's quite possible to write patents that apply, or appear to apply, to all the obvious feasible ways of doing so. This has worked in the past. The only tricky part is to get the system dependent on your changes for two or three versions before you start noticed enforcement actions.
I've got several of old programs that won't work on Linux after about
Addendum: Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan ... (Score:2)
N.B.: I'm not claiming this as an example of it happening. This just happened automatically as the system changed and the old programs didn't. Any code that isn't actively maintained is likely to eventually suffer from this problem.
Re: There's an old Microsoft slogan about this (Score:2, Funny)
They could hire Poettering and kill your product from within.
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For example: They look at an Open Source environment, such as Android.
They contract those who use it, and inform them that they believe some of their patents are being abused.
They are deliberately vague about the details.
They threaten to sue, unless licensing fees are paid to Microsoft.
The Android using companies can not afford the risk, so they pay Microsoft BILLIONS in bogus licensing fees.
If there was ANY integrity to what Micro$oft was doing , then this would not be happening.
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Mathematics (as opposed to implementations of the maths) are published ideas (how else can the validity be assessed?)
Re: There's an old Microsoft slogan about this (Score:1)
Slip in Nsa backdoors because Microsoft is uncle Sam's bitch?
Khhaann! (Score:2)
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/. is really showing its age lately :/
Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't some Englishmen still taking the piss out of the Germans for WWII. Microsoft's turning over a new leaf is a very new phenomenon, so I don't see why a healthy dose of skepticism isn't in order. Microsoft has a lot of road to repair before a lot of people will be willing to fully trust it, and that's as it should be.
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Especially since the evil old leaf's narfarious plan included
"Embrace open source"
as their opening move. And now we're supposed to be so glad that Microsoft is embracing open source? Seriously?
Hey, sure, if they get stuck on this phase, that's fine. But the moment they start making suggestions about the direction of the project, or new features they want to add, or "powerful extensions that would really help the project"... You know... I not sure which is worse, the maniac telling everyone to drive into th
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Look what Microsoft did to Kerberos... There are different kinds of poison pills.
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What, exactly, did Microsoft do to Kerberos? They wrote a binary-only extension that prevented non-Windows systems from talking to Windows' implementation of Kerberos. How did that impact the kerberos project itself, exactly? Their extension simply isolated Windows systems from non-Windows systems - doesn't seem to have slowed down the adoption of non-Windows systems at all, in fact.
As far as I can see, the Kerberos project is still going strong today, and Microsoft has since released the specs for its e
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They deliberately broke with a standard to damage interoperability with a well defined protocol. It's bad behavior, period.
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How much does Redmond pay you to be a shill?
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How much does Redmond pay you to be a shill?
Ah yes the classic response, all your arguments are thoroughly disproven with facts and citations so you resort to a pathetic attempt at character assassination. Frankly I am curious what motivates you to act like a complete mental defective that can't accept that he's wrong, are you actually that stupid or do you have some vested interest in appearing that stupid?
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Alright, presume that I echoed their sentiment - as I *do* echo their sentiment.
Am I a shill?
Linux kgiii-desktop-9 4.2.0-32-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Fri Feb 26 02:21:44 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
(It's actually Lubuntu, they skipped changing the name. I'm too lazy to fix it. Note the time, it's off by an hour. I'm accessing the box via remote. Locally it is Lubuntu as well.)
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and it had zero effect on anything except interoperability of standard components with Windows products.
And you've just proven MightyMartian's point RE "They deliberately broke with a standard to damage interoperability with a well defined protocol."
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That's a strawman argument. There is zero evidence that that is their intention.
However, the is more than ample evidence of Microsoft disrupting competition in various, and sometimes ingenious, ways to either give them a significant edge, or to destroy their competition entirely.
Classic examples include:
-Trying to add windows-only extensions to java. Sun called them on that, sued, and thankfully won.
-Refusing to give OEMs very generous discounts/bonuses/etc, if they sold machines with anything other than
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Because you clicked on update, a variety of agreements, accepted a EULA (after indicating you'd read it), and then rebooted the system several times to ensure all the updates were done?
No, Windows 10 doesn't install without user intervention.
Re:There's an old Microsoft slogan about this (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is a sign of insanity.
If showing our age means we remember when MS was bad, and why MS was bad, then guilty as charged.
There are really good reasons to really hate Microsoft, and thus far, absolutely none to love them. Their OS is crap, their developer tool chain is crap, they still have cute ideas about the command line that are funny in a bad way. They appear to be all about Indian software development, and it shows. Honestly other than an effort by marketing to soften their image, they are still the same shitty company. It was just this past month that their covertly funded attempt at ruining Linux (aka the SCO lawsuit) finally died the true death. I don't know why we would expect anything has changed.
I will buy their turnaround the same way I bought Apple's turn-around: after surviving the brink of bankruptcy and fundamentally changing the nature of their product in acknowledgement of its defects, and coming out the door with something I want to buy on its own merits: not because I have to, not because I'm stuck in some demented ecosystem.
Desperation (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one smell desperation. See the recent article on SQL Server for Linux. They are losing mindshare and to remain relevant they need to get a footprint in the OSS space. They can no longer concede it to the competition.
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OSS works a little differently. See Oracle and MySQL. Oops, I mean MariaDB.
As crazy as it sounds, Microsoft is probably actually trying to join the table in earnest for a change. They realize that the world is marching onward and that platforms are not as important as they used to be so they want to try and stay relevant. Witness their move to bring SQL server to Linux. They know that cloud/infrastructure on demand is where a lot of the world is going and SQL server on Windows just isn't going to be a
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They've said that too often before, and every time they've lied. To trust them this time would be foolish.
That said, sometimes they do offer a hook with decent bait that it's possible to take without getting caught. Which is where not trusting them comes in. Be sure the bait is worth the risk, and avoid getting hooked...or poisoned.
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Again though, there's no "trust". If they "do" something to Eclipse the codebase will fork and everyone will take the non MS fork like has happened so many times in the past.
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If they "do" something to Eclipse the codebase will fork and everyone will take the non MS fork like has happened so many times in the past.
Like when they contributed to the Linux kernel...oh wait. What are some of the "many times" when Microsoft has contributed to an open source project and then people have forked and everybody has taken the non-MS fork?
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It's not a MS specific comment. MANY companies or groups have tried to take or hijack an OSS project and the community told them to go pound sand and made their own fork. Like MySQL and MariaDB. Or like Nagios and Icinga, or Mambo and Jooma, or even stuff like OpenBSD from NetBSD (caused by a power struggle within the NetBSD team).
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"They" is spokesmen for Microsoft.
Yes, the personnel at MS has changed. The corporate policy has changed. But there's no believable evidence to indicate that they've become someone to become dependent on...and considerable evidence that it's still a bad idea.
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The shady business practice of Microsoft continue in the present. They are collecting legal payoffs from nearly every Android phone sold for "secret patents", i.e., they say they have patents, but they won't tell you what the patents are.
Then there's the stuffing of the delegation to various standards committee meetings so that no opposing parties could speak. And several other equally immoral and unethical practices within the last decade.
It's true that Balmer has been replaced, but early reports don't s
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yes but this time it will be a public service. ;)
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Embrace, Extend, Extinguish just keeps giving over any open project. Flood with code, new ideas. Extend the project into the busy work realm. Then extinguish as the vast tainted project becomes more work just to keep track of rather than ever been productive again.
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"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."
Isn't that the strategy of every single company that wants to compete in an existing market? If you read up on it the idea is to embrace a product category by producing a competitor, extend your competing product to have features users want in an effort to extinguish the competition.
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Back when that tactic was standard practice, we had Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in charge of the company. Both have since stepped down (BG is now the technology advisor, but not in charge of the business strategy of the company). I'm not saying that Microsoft has definitely changed, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... and the sea is running red with blood.
This move *does* raise an eyebrow with me. .Net FOSS? Naturally. SQL Server for Linux? Whatever. ... But this *is* surprising. They've got a very good IDE with visual studio, it is very surprising that they team up with Eclipse.
Perhaps it is to get closer to the Java camp? After all, that's where all the big corporate money is - Java Appservers and such.
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That would be my big thought, and it's likely why .NET and SQL Server are being ported over to Linux. They're gunning for the big enterprise Java applications, and they know they'll never get these guys to move over to Windows. This looks to me like after 15 years of trying to bring Mohamed to the mountain, they're finally going to bring the mountain to Mohamed.
Frankly, as much as I generally dislike Microsoft and its products, I'm hoping they give Oracle a big nasty kick in the ass. I hate Oracle that much
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That would be my big thought, and it's likely why .NET and SQL Server are being ported over to Linux.
I would have thought it's more about cloud. It's my understanding that even most VMs on Azure are running Linux.
It's hedging bets... (Score:2)
If all roads end in microsoft, then MS is a little less put off by the community that won't touch VS.
MS wants to have a software development reality where you can't turn around without bumping into some potential reason to give money to MS. Previously, they hitched that all on the premise that a target market adopts Windows as the leverage point to get in. Now they are (seemingly) accepting that many market segments won't go that way (server and mobile particularly) and trying to tap into those markets.
I
Re:It's hedging bets... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a key example, I have never met a shop that did SQL Server because they explicitly wanted it, but that it was the path of least resistance for supported database given an existing contract with MS.
But once Microsoft gets its database running on these customers' platform of choice, it can always start competing on price. SQL Server is a totally competent database. If Microsoft really gets it running on Linux in a way that Linux admins will like working with it, it stands to gain market share.
Re:It's hedging bets... (Score:5, Interesting)
Previously, they hitched that all on the premise that a target market adopts Windows as the leverage point to get in. Now they are (seemingly) accepting that many market segments won't go that way (server and mobile particularly) and trying to tap into those markets.
A lot has changed, Windows is a small part of Microsoft's revenue [computerworld.com], and the cloud is now the biggest part. CEO Nadella sees the cloud as a huge cash cow, and wants a part of (seriously, read the article).
So they probably have complaints like, ".net sucks because you can only develop for it on Windows." I'm sure they've heard it, because I've heard it. So they are trying to remove all barriers any pesky developers might tell their managers, preventing them from using the technology (as you pointed out).
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As for .Net adoption, I wouldn't trust a company that extorts royalties from Android devices on patents it refuses to disclose publicly.
Patent revenues from Android devices are a big deal to MS... http://www.thewindowsclub.com/... [thewindowsclub.com]
This theme about MS being "Open Source Happy" is dubious at best (no surprise it comes via timothy).
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This theme about MS being "Open Source Happy" is dubious at best (no surprise it comes via timothy)
Let's say it differently.....they're definitely trying to integrate themselves into the open source community.......
Which is not to say they are friendly to open source.
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It is not surprising if Microsoft wants to turdify Eclipse through "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."
Microsoft under Nadella has been every bit as evil and corrupting as in the past under Gates and Ballmer.
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Re:In other news: Hell freezes over, Pigs fly ... (Score:4, Interesting)
jesus, some folks just won't let go... As if MS has not changed in 20 years. As if tech favorites like google, yahoo, hp, ibm, apple etc haven't ground the little guy beneath their feet on occasion. There's not a chance that the people making decisions these days at MS are from a newer generation than Gates, Ballmer et al. There's, not a chance that these new people have a different perspective on doing business. Nope, MS has stayed the same since 1998 or so and the rest of the tech industry has evolved into a serene and cooperative utopia.
Remember folks, once someone has committed a crime, served their sentence and gone on to do better (in general), it's OK to keep hating them no matter what.
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jesus, some folks just won't let go... As if MS has not changed in 20 years.
That's right junior, MS indeed has not changed in 20 years. If anything, they've become more obnoxious. In the past at least they let you use Windows whichever way you liked, giving you control of your computer. Now they are hell-bent on wrestling that control out of the users' hands and into their own.
For another example, the dirty tricks with incompatible file versions produced by MS Office still continues. I sent a document prepared with Word 2013 to our PI (principal investigator) who uses Office 365,
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It is also pretty clear that this whole thread has been infested by MS paid sockpuppets.
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As if MS has not changed in 20 years.
I have seen nothing to indicate that they have.
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Oh Shit! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ape #2: Spaceballs.
Ape #1: Oh, shit. There goes the planet.
The common "Embrace Extend Extinguish" .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which I expected to see on Slashdot in a laughably fast manner did not disappoint.
Whilst the anti MSers here continue with that tirade, the rest of us are noticing a differentiation in how MS is conducting is business. It's not selling software any more -- it's selling services. Office 365 and Azure are pretty much the key to this differentiation. They want to build their partner ecosystem (this is what they've been pushing heavily for the last year+) and allow their partners to resell not only Azure, but the PaaS offerings Microsoft has built and is building.
If you've seen "Field of Dreams" this is the Microsoft version of "If you build it they will come." They are building the future of deploying applications to the cloud, and managing everything throughout. They are going to integrate with everybody, they will make their own software a commodity and use that benefit of wide integration to drive it home in terms of operational benefits. It means developers can *just develop*. They won't have to worry about infrastructure, networking, etc.
Compared to AWS, Azure is a far less configurable but far easier to manage platform. AWS builds all of the automation they offer into a base of virtual machines that still need to be managed on a storage, network, and VM level. Azure offers that with less configurations (ie, less machine types) but also offers you abstraction from all of it via their PaaS services. The only thing AWS has to offer in that space is Beanstalk and to be honest, unless you're running a lot of Java services it's not that useful.
This is the future of Microsoft, in my opinion. You can think it's "embrace extend extinguish" but since all of their offerings are open source and they are making a hell of a lot of OS contributions, I think the simplicity of the hate has to be expanded a bit to think what MS could be doing to make money given their moves recently.
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I have some cautious optimism. I would love to see some ability for Linux to run AD, Exchange, and other core services, as well as be better managed in domains/trees/forests. Winbind is very fiddly, and it would be nice to see something (preferably OSS) from MS to make Linux variants work with AD with fewer headaches, so I can have the boxes be locked and loaded into the domain in the kickstart file, with whatever GPOs pushed from on high to the boxes before they even reboot the first time.
Some other MS f
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That's cause people look out for that behaviour now. Outside of the desktop, they do not have a dominant position in any other industry. At best, Microsoft has tiny footholds, and most of those have collapsed. Because we now have a generation of IT people that saw what Microsoft did in the past with PCs, and won't give them the chance to do it again.
So Microsoft needs to come up with new strategies to get what they want, such as ballot-stuffing industry standards bodies.
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That is true, although I've seen articles about how their gaming division is on shakey ground.
Desktop belongs to Microsoft. There's no denying it. But there has also been plenty of argument about how much progress Desktop has lost, because of Microsoft's stranglehold. Microsoft long ago stopped trying to compete via quality products. They preferred to get what they want with backroom shenanigans.
Lately it seems like that position is changing, but the problem here is that apart from the diehard Microsoft
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It's not selling software any more -- it's selling services.
Which is worse.
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So yeah, maybe you're right. It's not about EEE anymore. They're just getting desperate.
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Why would a startup go with an MS solution? Because they want to turn around the software quickly, have easily available programming talent, and high quality products?
I mean not for nothing, but .NET is an amazing language suite -- this is noted by almost anybody who is respected by the Slashdot community. .NET skills are readily available for hire, the IDE is top notch, and the ability for you to execute an idea is pretty darned fast compared to "open" languages.
But that's just the languages. SQL server on
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Yes, and if you bothered to dig through the whole history rather than picking up a few comments about me "liking" Microsoft (which I generally do, as far as tools go), you'd realize I worked in finance (and still do today).
And despite that -- does that make my comment less wrong? Or my previous comments? I won't deny that I'm in a minority on Slashdot who actually likes Windows AND Linux because they are good tools for specific things. My entire career I've treated things like tools and as a result, been pr
Uhh... (Score:1)
Is this like the scene where Neo dives headlong into Agent Smith's torso in Matrix n ?
m$ involved with Eclipse (Score:2)
Oh, lord (Score:2)
I hope against hope that this doesn't mean that Eclipse will start to resemble Visual Studio.
Re: Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use (Score:1)
As if VisualStudio is any better. I hate having to wait twenty minutes every morning before autocomplete starts working.
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What in the hell kind of hardware are you running Eclipse on? Shared drives on 10mb network cards plugged into hubs? It can be a bit slow at times for me, but I've never seen anything like that.
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> What in the hell kind of hardware are you running Eclipse on?
Used Dell laptops off of lease with spinning rust harddrives. I wish I was kidding.
We're running Eclipse, Windows Server 2012R2, SQL Server 2014, JBoss (huge Java app server from Red Hat), and Lucene (distributed search) on laptops that are mostly five years-old. Windows is slow as crap before you even start-up the rest of the dev environment. Personally, I run Linux and use vim for Java development against a shared instance of Lucene and
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Here is hint #1.....don't use Server 2012 on a laptop. That is a server OS and not a workstation/laptop OS. Second, why are you using a 5 year old laptop? That is old hardware prone for failure meaning you are just biding your time before heartache ensues.
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And you think Eclipse is your problem??? It's a wonder they nly quit and didn't go completely postal.
Re:Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use? (Score:5, Funny)
Q: Why didn't they say something during the probationary period?
A: The were still waiting for it to open!
Re: Will they help make Eclipse fast enough to use (Score:1, Interesting)
The sad thing is that modern multi tier apps are now so complicated that I've had quite a few devs that took over a month before they pushed their first change. Getting Eclipse configured with all of the required add ins by itself is a hard task.
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I've had a couple of Java devs quit because they just couldn't take it any longer.
If you think standard Eclipse is slow, try running Spring Tool Suite. It's a version of Eclipse with a bunch of add-ons to make Spring development easier. I had a developer in January rage quit over it. He broke his keyboard, said he couldn't take it any longer, then just left for good.
You can make it somewhat faster by going to:
SpringSource Tool Suite -> Preferences -> Spring -> Project Validators
Then disabling all of the project validators, but that takes away much of the advantage of running
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Obvious troll is...
wait for it...
jupp, you know what's comin'...
obviously,
obvious.