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Microsoft is building the Beowulf MPI parallel-processing code into its
Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition
<http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1859439,00.asp>. Microsoft says it
will give back fixes to the open-source community, and possibly also
"changes" as well.

Let's see the Microsoft apologists in this noisegroup suddenly discover
that Open Source is wonderful after all...

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 10:46:24 +1200, someone purporting to be Lawrence
D'Oliveiro didst scrawl:

> Microsoft is building the Beowulf MPI parallel-processing code into its
> Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition
> <http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1859439,00.asp>. Microsoft says it
> will give back fixes to the open-source community, and possibly also
> "changes" as well.
>
> Let's see the Microsoft apologists in this noisegroup suddenly discover
> that Open Source is wonderful after all...

Every time I see someone saying that MS are "embracing" anything, I
automatically tack "and extending" onto the end of it.
If MS have finally caught onto the notion of truly open source and
standards, it's about time. However, given their comments on the
Massachusetts OpenDoc stand I don't think they've done anything of the
sort.

--
Matthew Poole
"Don't use force. Get a bigger hammer."

In article <>,
Matthew Poole <> wrote:

>On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 10:46:24 +1200, someone purporting to be Lawrence
>D'Oliveiro didst scrawl:
>
>> Microsoft is building the Beowulf MPI parallel-processing code into its
>> Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition
>> <http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1859439,00.asp>. Microsoft says it
>> will give back fixes to the open-source community, and possibly also
>> "changes" as well.
>>
>> Let's see the Microsoft apologists in this noisegroup suddenly discover
>> that Open Source is wonderful after all...
>
>Every time I see someone saying that MS are "embracing" anything, I
>automatically tack "and extending" onto the end of it.

And then "extinguishing". This is a very real danger. Particularly since
the Beowulf MPI code is released under a BSD-style licence, not under
the GPL.

The issue is whether you think people copying open-source software
should be free to make it closed-source and proprietary (Apache/BSD) or
not (GPL).

I used to dislike the GPL, but these days I'm leaning towards it more
and more...

"Lawrence D'Oliveiro" <_zealand> wrote in message
news:ldo-...
> Microsoft is building the Beowulf MPI parallel-processing code into its
> Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition
> <http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1859439,00.asp>. Microsoft says it
> will give back fixes to the open-source community, and possibly also
> "changes" as well.
>
> Let's see the Microsoft apologists in this noisegroup suddenly discover
> that Open Source is wonderful after all...

It's a relatively quiet Monday so I thought I'd chip in a few thoughts on
this topic for what they're worth....

First up, "Microsoft Embraces Open Source" might be a fairly long bow to
draw from an article which talks about us including a small amount of
BSD-licensed code in a product as big as Windows Server. As an aside, the
"probably the first team at Microsoft that will actually ship an open-source
component inside of our solution" comment in that article seems to me to be
incorrect as it's a well-known fact that shipped the BSD TCP/IP stack in
Windows for a while.

Microsoft's viewpoint on opening up our source code has changed
substantially over the last few years and we've now got 70+ "shared source"
offerings many of which offer modification and/or redistribution rights in
some form or another. The best place to start looking for info is
www.microsoft.com/sharedsource and there's a comprehensive listing of all
the current programs at
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/s...g/default.mspx .

Given that we're a commercial software vendor take a pragmatic view about
which code we'll open up, the extent to which we'll open it and why. The
latter tends to be customer-driven e.g. the Government Security Program
which allows governments to view the source code for Windows and Office
(including service packs and betas etc) and meet with the people who
developed the code to discuss issues or ask questions etc. The bottom line
with all of this is that Microsoft is never going to be an "open source
company" along the lines of a Red Hat however when it makes sense for both
our customers and us we're willing to open up our code in a way which
provides the customer with what they want without compromising our
intellectual property rights or ability to provide a return to our
shareholders.

In addition to the above we have started contributing code into the open
source community. It's still early days but I think it's an indicator that
this isn't a lip service thing on our part. A good example of this is the
Windows Installer XML (WiX) project at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wix .
This is licensed under the CPL and is proving to be one of the most popular
projects on SourceForge.

The concept of open source licensing has been around for decades and will be
around for decades more. It's not the solution to everything and "wonderful"
is in the eye of the beholder but it does make good sense in some
situations. With guys like Bill Hilf and Daniel Robbins now on-board in
Redmond I think it's a safe bet that this isn't a passing fad on our part

Brett Roberts
Microsoft NZ

<snip>
>
> The concept of open source licensing has been around for decades and will
> be around for decades more. It's not the solution to everything and
> "wonderful" is in the eye of the beholder but it does make good sense in
> some situations. With guys like Bill Hilf and Daniel Robbins now on-board
> in Redmond I think it's a safe bet that this isn't a passing fad on our
> part
>
> Brett Roberts
> Microsoft NZ
>

Speaking of Bill Hilf, here's a (very) recent interview with him conducted
by NZ journalist Adrian Bathgate

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3414438a13,00.html

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 10:46:24 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
<_zealand> wrote:

>Microsoft is building the Beowulf MPI parallel-processing code into its
>Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition
><http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1859439,00.asp>. Microsoft says it
>will give back fixes to the open-source community, and possibly also
>"changes" as well.
>
>Let's see the Microsoft apologists in this noisegroup suddenly discover
>that Open Source is wonderful after all...

Troll. We already noted that MS had opensource stuff on SF.net, and
that Windows had in a previous time used the BSD winsock code.

I have nothing against open source software except for the ideologues
that want to put companies that developed closed source software out
of business.

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:55:33 +1200, Brett Roberts wrote:

> Microsoft's viewpoint on opening up our source code has changed
> substantially over the last few years and we've now got 70+ "shared
> source" offerings many of which offer modification and/or redistribution
> rights in some form or another.

LOL!

Where could I go to pull the entire source of Micro$oft WindozeXP.

What if I wanted to modify the Windoze GUI and distribute my own version
of Windoze and call it, say, "Doors." Is that possible?

No?

Didn't think so.

Micro$oft has not made the source code for M$ Windoze freely available.


Bling Bling

--
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack
perspective.

T'was the Mon, 19 Sep 2005 20:22:00 +1200 when I remembered
Bling-Bling <> saying something like this:

>Micro$oft has not made the source code for M$ Windoze freely available.

Duh. Why should it? More importantly, it doesn't even have to. They're
the copyright owners, if they don't want anyone to see the code, they
don't have to. Otherwise, what's the point of copyright?
--
Cheers,

Waylon Kenning.

Hi there,

Rob J wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 10:46:24 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> <_zealand> wrote:
>
>
>>Microsoft is building the Beowulf MPI parallel-processing code into its
>>Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition
>><http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1859439,00.asp>. Microsoft says it
>>will give back fixes to the open-source community, and possibly also
>>"changes" as well.
>>
>>Let's see the Microsoft apologists in this noisegroup suddenly discover
>>that Open Source is wonderful after all...
>
>
> Troll. We already noted that MS had opensource stuff on SF.net, and
> that Windows had in a previous time used the BSD winsock code.
>
> I have nothing against open source software except for the ideologues
> that want to put companies that developed closed source software out
> of business.

Those closed source offerings had better shape up then huh?

Conversely it seems that commercial software vendors, MS being
one of the key protagonists, are rampantly trying to enforce
agendas such software patenting upon the software world. What
do you think that will do to Open Source software if patents
gain the foothold MS wants them to?

Open source doesn't have the financial backing to gain market
share by buying IP, so it will need to rely on providing a
better quality and 'value for money' product than the commercial
vendors...thats the danger MS and others foresee, and thats why
MS and others are trying to force their patenting agenda upon
the software world, to make it prohibitively expensive for open
source vendors to create software thereby killing them off...

--
Kind regards,

Chris Wilkinson, Brisbane, Australia.
Anyone wishing to email me directly can remove the obvious
spamblocker, and replace it with t p g <dot> c o m <dot> a u

In article <>,
"Brett Roberts" <> wrote:

>First up, "Microsoft Embraces Open Source" might be a fairly long bow to
>draw from an article which talks about us including a small amount of
>BSD-licensed code in a product as big as Windows Server.

From the article:

It would have been extremely costly and complex for Microsoft to
develop an alternative to the MPI technology, which "is a complex
piece of software that would take years to develop," Faenov said.

"years to develop" a "small amount" of code...?