Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

by Dinux • 9 years ago

230 149 9 years ago

tyfon7• 9 years ago

This is all fine and good. I hope their efforts are sincere. All money and support to free software is most likely good.

However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source.

It will take a lot to convince me that there is not some underlying goal here that is not beneficial to free software.

How much has Microsoft really changed? I have windows on my gaming PC, and every day i have to ALT+F4 a stupid message to "review my privacy settings". There is no option for full privacy so i keep ALT+F4'ing the message and block all the telemetry stuff in my openbsd firewall.

I have a powershell script called deleteapps that removes all the apps that is reinstalled everytime there is an update. It also appears to be impossible to uninstall the xbox app. Onedrive keeps turning on even if I choose that I do not want to sync during the installation, set the option in onedrive to not start at launch.

Why fight the user to this level? Have they really turned "good"?

gear54rus• 9 years ago

You have a lot more patience that I do, frankly.

That's the point people keep missing. These a-holes are seizing control over our computing primarily through Windows and while this stuff (described above) continues, it doesn't really matter if they open-source a lot of shit that doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things or throw a few bucks here and there because all in all it's Windows that has become a huge problem.

tyfon7• 9 years ago

The patience is becoming more and more an experiment to see how far they will go to control my usage in the operating system as a thanks for my 1000 NOK purchase of a license.

Just what does it take to actually be able to use a new Windows without getting shafted?

My gaming is almost completely moved to the PS4, Switch and Linux, even though neither Sony nor Nintendo are paragons of virtue in any sense, they are smaller companies that depend on happy customers.

Neither of them are shoving the horrible GAAS (Games as a service), that is loot boxes and other shady tactics, into their games like Microsoft is doing. There is no forced online. You can just pop in a disk/cart and play without registering 1000 accounts on the internet. The experience is much better imho than fighting windows.

voltooid2• 9 years ago

I just spent a few minutes this morning trying to figure out how to turn off Cortana on my windows 10 virtual machine. I don't want to have to spend 45 minutes of my morning trying to figure out the ins and outs of elevated power shell to just turn one freaking app off on an operating system that I bought and therefore should have control over. In my view, this is very obviously tailored to deter most people from removing apps. I would say, this is not my idea of "good".

cjsuk9• 9 years ago

Add to that the clearly missing quality control and it's just eye poke after eye poke for me. I rebuilt my daughter's laptop a couple of weeks back after her MS account got hosed due to an unresolvable billing problem that just threw errors galore and MS support is like talking to Cortana now. It took me 3 hours to get it into a workable, secure and privacy respecting state with a local account. And it's still unreliable with random stupid failures like the start menu not responding to keyboard without a reboot, the wallpaper disappearing etc.

And them I'm greeted with an advert for Cortana as a notification. And when I installed it, at the start, the entire installer uses Cortana now and shouts at you at full volume. And at every step it wants me to sign in to a Microsoft account over and over again or half the OS decides it's not going to work. What the fuck?

It's a mess. A total undeniable crapfest which just needs to walk itself off a cliff.

I'm a recent switcher to macOS after dabbling for a decade on a second machine. There just isn't this shit to deal with on the platform. It mostly just works and is incredibly boring. Which is what I want from a tool. Yes I sign in with an Apple Account but in the decade I've had one, I have had zero problems. MS account ownership is hell from billing problems, xbox live sign in problems, data loss, crazy authentication fragmentation, the lot.

quigonjinn7• 9 years ago

an operating system that I bought and therefore should have control over.

Price has nothing to do with control. The only way you have control over a piece of software, is if it is free software, no matter if you paid for it or not.

KGIII2• 9 years ago

There's the rub.

You didn't buy the operating system. You bought a license to use it. That is not a difference without distinction. Microsoft very much view it as their operating system, even though you've purchased a license to use it.

My solution is to use Linux, which has a more permissive license. I'm not sure if that will work for you, but it's nice not actually being dependent on a single vendor.

By the way, I'm not saying that it is right - just that it is what it is. You didn't buy an OS, you bought a license to use an OS. The distinction is important.

bad_user6• 9 years ago

Also Microsoft has been threatening Android companies with patents, engaging in racketeering, milking more money out of Android than they made with their Windows phones.

As they say, if you can't innovate, litigate, Microsoft having the potential to become the biggest patents troll ever.

And I expect replies to this comment saying that this is how the game works, that others are also doing it, bla, bla. Stop trying to normalize the usage of patents for non-defensive purposes folks. These companies are playing the system, earning money on the hard work of others by using abusive monopolies granted by the government.

z3t4• 9 years ago

Their new strategy might be to join open source communities and kill them from the inside. Although they probably just mean well and everything bad is just coincidence of incompetence.

Btw, you can play a lot of games on Linux!

kakarot• 9 years ago

Btw, you can play a lot of games on Linux!

Depends on what your tastes are. If you have a soft spot for SkiFree or bland, cookie-cutter shooters then maybe gaming on GNU/Linux is enough for you. But most of the games available for GNU/Linux are candy, games for games sake, and don't have much intellectual value. Wine helps a bit but a lot of things still break especially with modern titles.

My solution is running Windows 7 in KVM with GPU passthrough to an external monitor. Best of both worlds.

clhodapp• 9 years ago

It really is amazing: Microsoft have fixed so many long-standing problems in Windows 10 and made something that is very close to offering a wonderful, refined user experience. However, they have also doubled down on undisableable focus-stealing and sound-making popups and forced interactions with their latest HCI "innovations" with the net result being that Windows 10 manages to feel as user-hostile as any version of Windows ever has...

JustSomeNobody• 9 years ago

They also haven't figured out how to tell a laptop is a laptop and there are times when it should NOT be installing the latest patches.

cjsuk9• 9 years ago

They haven't changed a bit. Open Source is merely a marketing tag for them to gain credibility. They are not very good in the open source community; most of their github OSS releases other than a few high profile ones are unmaintained crap with zero response. If you want to fire up Linux in SCVMM for example, the tooling is open source now, but full of bugs and no way to ship it with working tools. Nothing is ever responded to, PRs, defects or anything. But it's OSS, look we're OSS! It's a joke.

Then when you do raise something on a high profile project like .Net Core which actively has buggy untested tracking enabled in the command line build tools, which violates security policies of a lot of their clients, you get told in nearly as few words to fuck off when you want it turned off by default.

On top of that They still don't listen to customers, preferring to shout loudly over them on endless blogs and marketing whilst crapping on them with increasing costs, decreasing quality, less privacy, ruinous products and more fragmentation.

They're the Omni-Consumer-Products software company now.

Quarrelsome• 9 years ago

They haven't changed a bit.

o_0. I remember when I had to use tools to disassemble their precious source that they kept withheld and locked up. Now they post their new tech to github and I can view all the source easily. Now they try to make their tech work on Linux.

I'm all for fair criticism but your prose is not that, its dogma. If you think they're still the same company I can only imagine that you left your eyes behind in the 90's. The culture has shifted a lot towards the engineers and you need to appreciate the good things that happen in life otherwise all you'll see is gloom. They're by no means perfect but they are _different_.

jordigh4• 9 years ago

most of their github OSS releases other than a few high profile ones are unmaintained crap with zero response.

I find this a very entitled and weird attitude. I also find the opposite side of this attitude weird, that if you release source suddenly you have new obligations. That opposite side is even worse because it makes people scared of releasing code.

Being open source or free software isn't some kind of contract to provide support and "community" or whatever. Slap a license on the code, toss it over the fence and be done with it. If you want to offer support and accept patches great, if not, also great. If you're doing it for fun or advantage good, if you're doing it out of respect for your users to let them fix it themselves, even better, because the alternative is to give them no recourse but to go around begging for you and only you to fix it.

The free software that MSFT has releases is free software (and open source), period. They don't have to do anything further to deserve that appellation.

sydd• 9 years ago

type "Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.XboxApp | Remove-AppxPackage" into powershell to remove the Xbox

ekianjo• 9 years ago

All money and support to free software is most likely good.

Open source is not the same thing as Free Software. From the website itself, in the history section:

The conferees believed the pragmatic, business-case grounds that had motivated Netscape to release their code illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community. The conferees also believed that it would be useful to have a single label that identified this approach and distinguished it from the philosophically- and politically-focused label "free software." Brainstorming for this new label eventually converged on the term "open source", originally suggested by Christine Peterson.

Open-source is used broadly to define a way of developing software, but it says nothing about the rights it gives users. In practice there are several projects called "open sources" that are not using licenses that empower users, hence the valid distinction with Free Software where the end goal is user freedom.

tyfon7• 9 years ago

Yes which is why I specifically wrote free software in two of my paragraphs, I should probably have clarified.

I do not necessarily think supporting non-free open source software is good, and hope some of this goes to supporting actual free software.

hannob4• 9 years ago

Open-source is used broadly to define a way of developing software, but it says nothing about the rights it gives users.

That is totally wrong and a myth spread by people who like to call their products "Open Source" while they aren't. The Open Source Definition is very clear: https://opensource.org/osd

Practically there is no difference between Open Source licenses and Free Software licenses. The difference is merely a philosophical one - whether you emphasis the "freedom" aspect or the "openness of the code" aspect. Bruce Perens just wrote something about it: https://perens.com/blog/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-op...

plandis• 9 years ago

Perhaps the person you're responding to is referring to Microsofts old business practices that involved trying to segment open source projects with the intent of making them inferior to Microsoft products?

Open source, free software, call it what you want. In either case I don't think it's a good thing if Microsofts (or any other company) is trying to hurt the quality of software that is already available to everyone (with or without permissive licenses).

csmattryder• 9 years ago

Devil's advocate: You're supporting `n` billion devices around the world running your product, and the users are typically non-technical (from "I know how to open Word" to "Where's the 'Any' key?")

You need to battle against your competitor's product that "just work" because they can target one specific hardware profile and you can't, so you put in telemetry to improve compatibility. Makes sense.

It enrages us, the technically-minded and privacy conscious, but only serves to make Windows better for the non-techies and help MS stop haemorrhaging users to iOS.

notalaser• 9 years ago

So put a big red scary "PRESS THIS BUTTON AND YOU'LL GET HACKED IN TEN MINUTES UNLESS YOUR COMPUTER DOES NOT CRASH BEFORE THAT" that turns telemetry off and let me press it.

tyfon7• 9 years ago

If they used the collected data only for compatibility improvements and discarded it when done.

If they allowed me to opt-in and I could shut off _all_ other telemetry.

If I trusted Microsoft.

Then we could talk :)

AnIdiotOnTheNet4• 9 years ago

and the users are typically non-technical (from "I know how to open Word" to "Where's the 'Any' key?")

This isn't nearly as true as it used to be, because those people are on phones and tablets now. People who actually use desktops fall into one of 3 categories: content creators, office workers, and gamers.

Microsoft has ruined Windows by trying to make it into a webapp with a tablet UI in a vain effort to recapture that audience.

Meanwhile, the Linux Desktop has sacrificed any chance it once had of being decent by constantly sacrificing transparency of operation on the alter of "just works".

So here we are, stuck in a world where a really shitty version of Windows is still just barely the least-worst choice.

ionised• 9 years ago

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish

I am under no illusions that they have changed at all. They have an agenda, and it won't be for the benefit of open-source.

romanovcode• 9 years ago

Why fight the user to this level? Have they really turned "good"?

Most of MS revenue comes from Azure so it makes perfect sense for them to invest in open source that is used on Azure servers.

ts330• 9 years ago

Roughly 1/3 comes from Intelligent Cloud (i.e. Azure and friends)... although revenues increased 93% in FYQ3. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2017-Q3...

[edit: fix Intelligent Cloud vs Azure specifically]

twelvedogs• 9 years ago

open source currently aligns with MS's business plan, they haven't turned good or bad they just see where developers want to go and think it's a good thing to go with them.

it doesn't change any of their other business plans but currently it's great for open source software and luckily if they change direction again we have permissively licensed software out of it.

they can't scoop that code back out of the pool so i don't really see a downside, except maybe having to fork projects and maintain them without the MS cash if they do change direction

cup-of-tea• 9 years ago

Of course they haven't turned good. "Open Source" is a buzzword in business right now and just like "cloud" the intended audience for the word has no idea what it actually means.

miketery• 9 years ago

Woah cool, can you share your scripts? Would love to have something like this.

tyfon7• 9 years ago

https://pastebin.com/5kXwZi9C

I added one of the lines for xbox last as this actually seem to work. I have tried many versions before. Anyway, just run this in an elevated powershell instance (after removing lines for apps you want)

DonHopkins3• 9 years ago

I also remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of Microsoft.

tyfon7• 9 years ago

I was referring to an actual quote by Ballmer. I'm sure many on the open source side have had less than flattering words for Microsoft too, however Steve Ballmer said, and I quote: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches"

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_...

Provokator• 9 years ago

You can Uninstall the XBOX app, actually. It takes like five seconds in Powershell.

You should be able to find the method with a quick search, but give me a few hours and I can tell you what I used to do it.

rasz• 9 years ago

sure, you can even turn off xbox service ... using registry editor, because its blocked in service management.

ausjke• 9 years ago

Same feeling here, MS used to call OSS as cancer and tried so hard to kill it, now it begins to "embrace" that old cancer, I hope it will not become the real tumor and damage the so-far-so-good OSS society from within. People learn history for a reason, I'm still very suspicious at this point.

lookACamel• 9 years ago

Microsoft is a large company made up of many people, and I don't find it that hard to believe that the demographics, both within and without the company, have shifted in favor of open source.

language• 9 years ago

I can't tell. If you remember they became a platinum member of the Linux Foundation last year too.

X86BSD2• 9 years ago

To be accurate, it was not the cancer of "Open Source", it was the cancer of the GPL.

calcifer• 9 years ago

Ballmer meant the GPL, but he literally [0] said "Linux is a cancer".

[0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_...

msla• 9 years ago

I remember when IBM was running ads on TV for Linux, and I don't remember them getting the kind of push-back Microsoft is.

And IBM used to be seriously rapacious.

More to the point:

Have they really turned "good"?

"Good" and "bad" presume human morality, which groups don't have. Groups view the world as "good for the group" or "bad for the group", or "in line with policy" or "contrary to policy", or on some other axis which is not entirely parallel to the whole "good"/"bad" thing individuals mostly follow.

Point being, Microsoft will do what it always does: Attempt to improve its next quarterly balance sheet. Same as IBM. We have to rely on the licenses to make sure it can't take over any projects. Same as IBM.

ovao• 9 years ago

To be fair, the messaging about open source/free software/GPL/Linux being cancerous was Steve Ballmer's. Steve Ballmer is no longer member of Microsoft's board of directors and his past comments don't really speak to Microsoft's current leadership.

With respect to additional OSI funding, I can't really hypothesize a bad outcome.

Fnoord2• 9 years ago

However, I've been part of the open source community for 25 years, and I remember the brutal marketing against the "cancer" of open source.

25 years, so that's since 1992.

Do you also remember IBM? Did you hold it against IBM when they started to become actively part of the open source community?

Microsoft is changing from a proprietary software company pur-sang to a more service-oriented (and, like Google & Facebook, privacy-invasive) company. We need to forgive Microsoft and move on not out of love for Microsoft but for our own sanity. New threats have arisen.

What Microsoft did (see the Halloween documents for a peak into that), any other big, powerful company or monopoly could've (and has, see e.g. IBM or Intel) done in the past.

As of now, the invasive privacy concerns en masse (by a plethora of corporations and governments) are a much bigger threat to our liberty than Microsoft.

bitmapbrother• 9 years ago

I can't help but think of the irony of mentioning IBM in your comparison to Microsoft considering Microsoft indirectly bankrolled, via BayStar, the SCO lawsuit against IBM for the alleged violations of IBM's Unix licenses in the development of Linux code at IBM.

vog4• 9 years ago

I would have preferred to see this money go to FSF instead of OSI, but of course sponsoring any of these organizations is better than not sponsoring.

hah-muh-rabbi• 9 years ago

I do mind the perception that OSI is some pristine and error-less patron of open source. They're not, they are a business and they will do anything to get more donations.

OSI has been known to accept money from anyone. They took money from the company that's known to abuse open source. It’s a kind of “indulgence”, where you pay the church of open source to wash away your sins. OSI certainly doesn't care about anything other than publicity.

l0b0• 9 years ago

The obvious advantage for Microsoft is that they can now influence OSI. Even if they don't get voting rights immediately (which I would expect them to push hard for) there will now be the everlasting threat of pulling the funding to keep OSI in line. Organisations sponsored mostly by companies can't be expected to be bold about upholding users' rights and keeping the moral high ground, because most organisations are willing to compromise to keep themselves alive. Now it remains to be seen if this is a dark day for FOSS or just for OSI.

MikeTaylor• 9 years ago

From the press-release: "Microsoft's history with the OSI dates back to 2005 with the submission of the Microsoft Community License"

Well, that is not exactly true. For those who have forgotten the history, or weren't around at the time, this leaked internal document from Microsoft was the proximate cause of OSI taking off: http://catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween1.html

TLDR: Microsoft's loud opposition to, and deep fear of, open source software provided a catalyst and a point of unification for those who supported it.

kelvin0• 9 years ago

If I had a crystal ball back in the 90's that would have predicted this, I would simply had thrown it away thinking it was broken. Simply astounding. MS went from the 'monopoly' everyone loved to hate to this. Bravo!

kemonocode• 9 years ago

So I hear it's been rather chilly in Hell as of lately, some report below-freezing temperatures.

That being said, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and all that. Besides, there's a market for free software now they've become a cloud computing company too. Fits perfectly into their long-term plans.

nepotism2018• 9 years ago

Don't large companies sponsor or become members of such initiatives or organizations just so they can have a say on its future?

Sir_Cmpwn4• 9 years ago

What signs of change are you expecting? Microsoft is a huge organization and change comes slowly to different products.

Here's the thing - if we see Microsoft making tangible changes to their behavior, and we reward that with more derision and distrust, then we aren't exactly incentivizing them - or anyone wathcing - to do more. I personally applaud Microsoft on their dramatically increased involvement in open source in the past couple of years and I encourage them to keep it up and explore other ways they can improve. Yes, Windows still sucks, and is getting worse. Keep putting their feet to the fire for it. But that doesn't mean we have to demean the legitimately good work they're doing - let them enjoy the success from that so they can apply it across the rest of the org!

bad_user6• 9 years ago

if we see Microsoft making tangible changes to their behavior, and we reward that with more derision and distrust, then we aren't exactly incentivizing them - or anyone wathcing - to do more

Well, if we are speaking of incentives, then here's one ...

Don't screw with open source or open standards or your legitimate competitors by unfair competition, because many people will never forget it, so don't be surprised if 10 years later you still have a negative image that lingers, in spite of your huge marketing department that keeps paying shills.

This is much like in society really. If somebody screws me or my family, I'll probably cut all ties with that person forever. Being marginalized is a natural reaction. Why should companies have their cake and eat it too?

Sir_Cmpwn4• 9 years ago

Microsoft can't undo the past, and they aren't going away. Your choice boils down to a single question: do you want the Microsoft of tomorrow to be different from the Microsoft of yesterday? If so, then quit hating and start celebrating the victories.

ludwigvan• 9 years ago

This.

We can’t forget or forgive the sins of the past, those who remember.

But generations will pass, and yesterday’s sinners will become conquerors, philantropes, savior of mankind.

In the end, history is written by the mighty and they can market themselves however they wish.

But some won’t forget, at least not this easily. It is the least we can do.

vog4• 9 years ago

I'm confused, the article doesn't say anything negative about Microsoft. Did you intend to reply to some specific comment?

Sir_Cmpwn4• 9 years ago

I'm replying to the general tone of the HN discussion, which is (or was at the time of comment) largely negative in most of the threads.

phjesusthatguy3• 9 years ago

Microsoft burned that bridge a long time ago. My organization's LOB app is going web-based next version, so we can finally update almost every computer to anything but Windows. For the very few users that still require some other Windows-only app, we'll probably still give them a Windows-based computer. We already have a GSuite setup in place so it's really just about giving our users something that isn't too much of a culture shock. I'm looking forward to it!

cJ0th• 9 years ago

Does anyone know what Microsoft's objectives are here?

Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative

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