AS>I'm not privy to the terms of any deals between Microsoft and AS>InstallShield and have no idea if there was any breach of good faith, AS>but from a end-user's point of view, I can't see what's so bad about AS>this.
Seems to be part of an embrace, extend, takeover strategy. See below.
Doesn't seem that way to me. See below.
> In that strategy memo, Microsoft staffers suggested that by embracing and > extending open protocols, Microsoft could freeze open source out of the > marketplace. Jason Matusow, manager of Microsoft's shared-source > initiative, may say to my colleague Mary Jo Foley, "We've been learning > from open source about the importance of sharing code with developers," > and that's true, but that's only part of the story.
The difference between embracing open /protocols/ in closed source software and adopting open source tactics is night and day. Fwiw, I don't see these recent moves as underhanded, but rather a sign that MS have opened their eyes to the advantages of the open-source model and that they realize if they don't adopt some of its tactics, they are in danger of losing an important competitive edge.
Nothing to do with embrace/extend/take over. Rather, it looks as if 'open source' is starting to force Microsoft's hand.
Long before Microsoft learned the "importance of sharing code," it learned that to beat any competitor, it should "embrace and extend" that competitor's technology. Want to take over the Internet? Embrace Web browsing technology with a free browser, Internet Explorer, that's incorporated into the operating system, and extend it with proprietary "enhancements" that make other browsers look bad. It worked.
No it didn't work...
> So, although some people rave about how great Mozilla, Opera and Firefox > are, according to OneStat.com, Internet Explorer this January had a total > global-usage share of 94.8 percent. Second place went to Mozilla with an > almost insignificant 1.8 percent, and Opera 7 came in with a global usage > of 0.8 percent.
...because Microsoft was not able to use IE's monopoly position on the client desktop to reap much financial reward. IE is not a hard requirement to access 99.9999% of the sites on the web (neither is Mozilla, Opera, Firefox or Lynx... thank god for that and it better stay that way). This could also be why Microsoft gave up on improving IE, btw.
Embrace and extend works, and Microsoft's first dabbling of releasing its own, formerly proprietary code under a real open-source license is just another example of this business philosophy in operation. Indeed, it's part of the Halloween plan, where one of the suggestions to derail open source is to "put out parts of the source code [to] try to generate hacker interest in adding value to MS-sponsored code bases."
If Microsoft's open-sourced code is of high quality, its purpose general enough, and its *license sufficiently liberal*, then it wouldn't be derailing the spirit of open source, it would be helping it.
Concerning "embrace, extend, takeover", MS' track record suggests that is has not really succeeded taking this approach. Embrace and extend failed with Java. It failed with the Internet protocols. It failed with web standards. Microsoft does not control 'choke-points' for a single one of the three. That's why, with .NET, they're trying a different tack by offering - not embracing - standards. Uptake has been slow, by the way.
In fact, virtually all of Microsoft's successful technologies - ADO, ODBC, NT, DirectX, Win32 (*) - areas where it can be said to have 'taken over' - have been homegrown and not due to 'embrace and extend'.
[* In fact, with Samba, open source is the one doing the embracing. Samba's clout and penetration is sadly, not sufficient for now to allow any extending, much less taking over, but hey, if AMD can convince Intel to embrace its x86-64 standard... ]
The WiX release does more than just that, though. Looking more closely, WiX enables developers to translate programs from Windows Installer Databases (.msi/.msm) formats to a text-based, XML-file format. XML is an open standard, but to work with MSI/MSM, those XML files have a very specific format. Now, what company has already sought patent protection for specific expressions of XML code? The answer is, of course, Microsoft, with its Office XML formats.
So what? WiX is a tool for a proprietary platform in the first place. Microsoft's move enhances the value of that platform for its users, users who previously had to deal with closed source tools. MS is trying to give users of their proprietary platform/standards some of the same benefits that open source users currently enjoy with theirs. Nothing wrong or insidious with that.
This is also right out of the Halloween playbook. In it, Microsoft cites merging open protocols such as Directory Name Services (DNS) with Active Directory and changing "the rules of the game in the file-serving space" (aka Microsoft's Longhorn WinFS) as examples of beating open source by extending commodity protocols. Microsoft is now in the process of doing this to XML, and WiX is just one more step along the way.
This conclusion is just all over the place (by the way, did you notice that the author didn't even know what DNS really stands for?). Releasing the source code for a tool and extending a 'commodity protocol' are two different things that achieve entirely different goals. One benefits the user, the other tends to promote lock-in (to the extent that the user adopts these extensions).
In reality, instead of "freezing open source out of the marketplace", the Halloween plan of embracing 'commodity protocols' has actually made it possible for MS technologies and open source ones to interoperate to a significant degree. So this is actually good for everyone. Especially open source, as the fact that that it can work well with the most widely adopted commercial platform out there fits in with its egalitarian goals.
-- reply-to: a n d y @ n e t f x p h . c o m
-- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
