oh goody, another Announcement
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Feb 21, 2008 1:05 PM EDT |
The one thing that Microsoft does even better than breeding malware is release Announcements. They're always releasing Announcements. Reminds me of the Jim Jones movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080832/ , where he's all sweaty and drug-addled, spending his days endlessly droning stream-of-consciouness nonsense into the PA system. But. This one might actually be significant, though with microshaft one must always search for the poison in the candy: Quoting: ...starting today Microsoft will openly publish on MSDN over 30,000 pages of documentation for Windows client and server protocols that were previously available only under a trade secret license... |
| Scott_Ruecker Feb 21, 2008 1:46 PM EDT |
Looks to me like someone finally saw the writing on the wall.. Welcome to the new Microsoft.. I'll believe it when I see it. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 21, 2008 2:45 PM EDT |
Scott, don't believe it.Quoting:Microsoft is providing a covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols. It's useless to FOSS if we can only distribute non-commercially. MS is doing everything it can to be as incompatible with FOSS as it can be. It's time to raise the bar on patent promises, and that goes for the standards community (ISO, ECMA, OASIS et. al.) as well. RAND is unacceptable. Period. If you can't implement it in software under an OSI approved license then it should be turned down, revoked, etcetera. |
| gus3 Feb 21, 2008 10:18 PM EDT |
PJ at Groklaw has an entry on this: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080221184924826 (Cross-posted.) |
| Scott_Ruecker Feb 22, 2008 1:26 AM EDT |
I read the whole announcement and what I took from it was that Microsoft promises not to sue for non-commercial use of its development tools and some more smoke and mirrors on compatibility and backwards interoperability.. I got twenty bucks in my back pocket that says they get to decide just what can be included in the non-commercial software that has been created using their development tools. So, anything that could possibly make them money is theirs, and not yours and they get to keep all the cool stuff that is made with their tools, nice work gentlemen, nice work. |
| jezuch Feb 22, 2008 3:17 AM EDT |
There's also question how Microsoft understands "reasonable" and "non-discriminatory" terms. Reasonable: I bet you make millions of dollars on the use of our software, so a mere million for a license isn't so bad. Non-discriminatory: and it's a million for *everyone*. |
| bigg Feb 22, 2008 4:14 AM EDT |
> It's useless to FOSS if we can only distribute non-commercially. Yes, I believe that it would not be compatible with the GPL unless everyone would get protection from patent lawsuits. It appears to be yet another game. Alternatively, if they really did open things up, their profits would be tied to the quality of their software. ROFLMAO, like that will happen with Ballmer in charge. |
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