55 ms·

It sure feels like there's a strong force within the MS dev tools team to be far more open, and the only thing holding them back was the CEO. I sincerely hope M

It sure feels like there's a strong force within the MS dev tools team to be far more open, and the only thing holding them back was the CEO. I sincerely hope Microsoft continues to open more and more products and truly integrate the open source philosophy into their culture.

Already__Taken 13y ago
I don't have the greatest grasp of licences but once they go open and take pull requests they can't go back can they? Are they even allowed? It would mean binning the project and starting from scratch privately right? At the risk of being accused of stealing the open contributed code.
- eitland 13y ago
  Short answer: Depends on copyright assignments or not. (I'm very sure however that they have this worked out. )
- lucian1900 13y ago
  Everything else they've released has been Apache2, so assuming that, they could decide stop releasing new versions of it. They couldn't "take back" the versions already released, though.
- skywhopper 13y ago
  My understanding is that the copyright owner may do whatever they please, including selling modified versions with their own custom proprietary changes, or maintaining multiple versions under differing licenses. However, it's true that once they've released the code under an open license, anyone who has saved a copy of the code may release their own forked version in the future, regardless of what the copyright owner does with their version, so long as the forker continues to follow the terms of that license for the code still under copyright of the original owner. New code under the forker's copyright may be released under other licenses if the forker chooses, etc, etc.
- bunderbunder 13y ago
  They own the copyright, so they're free to do what they want with the code. That's why dual licensing models (like that of MySQL) are possible. However, code that's been distributed under an open license stays that way. So Microsoft could add a commercial license, and even stop making updates under an open license. But if they do that, then there's nothing stopping the community from moving forward with their own fork of the open source version. If I recall correctly, the Darwin operating system might be a good example of how that sort of dynamic could play out.
NicoJuicy 13y ago
I think the new ceo has been appointed through the course that Microsoft has been taken the last years. People internally has been pushing Microsoft the open source way (some evangelists of MS and .Net). They have gotten greater influence into the firm, because of success and a allround positive influence (and Microsoft didn't had any appeal to a great group of developers because of closed source and patents). The similarity between the new CEO and those people where greater then with Balmer. So it's a logical step into it's evolution. It doesn't mean that Balmer hold them back at all, they could thrive under Balmer, but perhaps he hasn't had any experience with this business direction or couldn't grasp the concept of it. And as a result, someone else was more fit for the job.
- bunderbunder 13y ago
  It doesn't hurt that the same faction that's been pushing for more openness is also delivering some of the best revenue growth within the company. Both directly and indirectly - SQL Server's a pretty solid DBMS, but I'm not sure there are a whole lot of compelling reasons to pick it over one of its competitors if you aren't using .NET.
  - NicoJuicy 13y ago
    Subjective reason, i don't know if it's the case in real world. But SQL Server Management Console supports obdc, LocalDB (like SQLLite) and SqlServer (MySQL) at once. But it's on the Microsoft platform though.. I wouldn't know another reason.
  - hkphooey 13y ago
    How will Apple respond, if at all?! Steve Jobs promised that FaceTime would be an open protocol... never happened. AirDrop is yet another closed protocol. XPC is a new protocol for sandboxed processes to communicate with each other, it's basically distributed objects. Again, a secret even though things like CORBA, Java RMI, etc. have been around for years.
    - cgh 13y ago

Already__Taken 13y ago

I don't have the greatest grasp of licences but once they go open and take pull requests they can't go back can they? Are they even allowed? It would mean binning the project and starting from scratch privately right? At the risk of being accused of stealing the open contributed code.

eitland 13y ago
Short answer: Depends on copyright assignments or not. (I'm very sure however that they have this worked out. )
lucian1900 13y ago
Everything else they've released has been Apache2, so assuming that, they could decide stop releasing new versions of it. They couldn't "take back" the versions already released, though.
skywhopper 13y ago
My understanding is that the copyright owner may do whatever they please, including selling modified versions with their own custom proprietary changes, or maintaining multiple versions under differing licenses. However, it's true that once they've released the code under an open license, anyone who has saved a copy of the code may release their own forked version in the future, regardless of what the copyright owner does with their version, so long as the forker continues to follow the terms of that license for the code still under copyright of the original owner. New code under the forker's copyright may be released under other licenses if the forker chooses, etc, etc.
bunderbunder 13y ago
They own the copyright, so they're free to do what they want with the code. That's why dual licensing models (like that of MySQL) are possible. However, code that's been distributed under an open license stays that way. So Microsoft could add a commercial license, and even stop making updates under an open license. But if they do that, then there's nothing stopping the community from moving forward with their own fork of the open source version. If I recall correctly, the Darwin operating system might be a good example of how that sort of dynamic could play out.

NicoJuicy 13y ago

I think the new ceo has been appointed through the course that Microsoft has been taken the last years. People internally has been pushing Microsoft the open source way (some evangelists of MS and .Net). They have gotten greater influence into the firm, because of success and a allround positive influence (and Microsoft didn't had any appeal to a great group of developers because of closed source and patents). The similarity between the new CEO and those people where greater then with Balmer. So it's a logical step into it's evolution. It doesn't mean that Balmer hold them back at all, they could thrive under Balmer, but perhaps he hasn't had any experience with this business direction or couldn't grasp the concept of it. And as a result, someone else was more fit for the job.

bunderbunder 13y ago
It doesn't hurt that the same faction that's been pushing for more openness is also delivering some of the best revenue growth within the company. Both directly and indirectly - SQL Server's a pretty solid DBMS, but I'm not sure there are a whole lot of compelling reasons to pick it over one of its competitors if you aren't using .NET.
- NicoJuicy 13y ago
  Subjective reason, i don't know if it's the case in real world. But SQL Server Management Console supports obdc, LocalDB (like SQLLite) and SqlServer (MySQL) at once. But it's on the Microsoft platform though.. I wouldn't know another reason.
- hkphooey 13y ago
  How will Apple respond, if at all?! Steve Jobs promised that FaceTime would be an open protocol... never happened. AirDrop is yet another closed protocol. XPC is a new protocol for sandboxed processes to communicate with each other, it's basically distributed objects. Again, a secret even though things like CORBA, Java RMI, etc. have been around for years.
  - cgh 13y ago