No, I'm not commenting on things related to the Fortune article. I'm not a
lawyer, and I'd be pretty foolish to comment on what one says--it's not going
to be productive.
However, things have *started* to change in the company. *All* the way up. I
suspect it will take some time, but we'll see the end of insanity one day.
Microsoft has been hiring a lot of people over the last several years--Since
YE2002 we've went from ~50,000 employees to ~78,000 employees. That means the
over 1/3 of the company has been with the company less than 5 years. Not only
does that bring in new perspectives, but it also helps shape the company by
changing the way people think. A lot of people who have been with Microsoft
over 5 years have a different perspective, and have a lot of learning to do.
The new blood however, has grown with the world of Open Source, and has a
different perspective. My Job is to help them see that, and cascade these
changes through the enterprise. I'm going to do that by focusing on the
positives, and having private, frank discussions about the things we can do
better.
You may have heard of company that had one hell of a poor track record--sued by
the DOJ, business hated them, they locked up protocols and created agreements
that were bad for consumers, customers, competitors and the business climate in
general. They however, turned it around. It took years and years--and some
serious soul searching, but they have integrated with Open Source in a way that
I wouldn't have thought even possible before it happened. IBM was at one time,
appreciated less than Microsoft is today, and they have come out looking pretty
good.
All I ever ask, is two things:
1. Judge the company by its actions, and not by its words.
2. Help me change Microsoft, by showing the company how it can work
better by accepting Open Source, not as a threat, but an opportunity to engage
customers of all kinds.
Over the last year, Microsoft product groups have started over 150 open-source
projects, all hosted on CodePlex. You can only imagine the difficulty dealing
with the legal department over this--it's still a tricky process, but it's
evolving. The I aim to encourage more of that, and see more participation in
the real world.
We contributed on two extensions for FireFox--one was entirely in-house. (I'm
still shocked at that!) I aim to get some of my code added to the main FireFox
build this year, as a result of getting to meet with the FireFox leadership
team last year.
Microsoft created some licenses for open source software that are far better
than we've ever seen from the company:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensingbasics/sharedsourcelicenses.mspx
---
I can do coding however. I have already--go into the Help->About in Scite...
scan down the list of contributors and you'll find my name.
I also have over the last several years, written 6 implementations of the .NET
wrapper for Scintilla, and I'm still involved in the project at codeplex,
although less than I'd like. (see http://www.codeplex.com/ScintillaNET)
However, I'm not likely to have a lot of time to participate in coding,
especially since there are projects that I may have to donate significant time
to in order to make them happen.
Am I offering to help port Scintilla to the Mac? No--not for any sinister
reason mind you, but my job is about helping Open Source on Microsoft
Platforms... my employer has an investment in that apparently, and my
performance metrics are tied to producing business value.
If licenses for Windows is needed, yes, I can produce those. In the last few
weeks I've gifted out a significant quantity of MSDN Subscriptions to several
Open Source projects, some of which you will not believe. (I'd name them right
now, but the damn fulfillment process internally is slower than I'd like, and I
don't want to pre-empt the actual shipments) I've been told that they should
receive them this starting month, and when I get confirmations back from those
projects, I'll post about that too.
I've already offered Neil an MSDN Subscription, as I feel that Scintilla is an
important project to help.
I'm resisting the temptation to do a whole-lot of one-offs, as I'm trying to
find ways to scale the benefits I can provide to the community. I have a
limited budget, but I have contacts with deeper pockets. When my goals and
theirs align, we can milk that for a lot.
I've rambled on for longer than I would have liked, but I wanted to be
constructive and help you see where I'm coming from.
(now, I'm going to turn most of this into a blog post :) ... always gotta
recycle the bits )
Garrett
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Aggro
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 1:38 PM
To: Discussion of the Scintilla editing component
Subject: Re: [scintilla] Promoting this project and its decendents
Garrett Serack wrote:
> Recently, I've Joined the Open Source Software Labs at Microsoft
> (Yes! We have Open Source Labs now!), and I've procured the position
> of Open Source Community Lead.
> So, what'd I'd like to do is get an exhaustive list of projects that
> use Scintilla (the list on the website looks ... incomplete)-both
> commercial and open source, and see if there are things you think I
> could help arrange, I could certainly see what I can do.
I assume you can't do this:
http://showusthecode.com/
And you probably don't do any coding either:
http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/ScintillaToDo.html
So what exactly are you offering? Are you for example willing to help
with porting the software to MacOS X (for example financially by
providing Mac hardware and software for the developer willing to do the
job, but who is lacking this stuff) or is the help restricted to things
related directly to Windows (for example giving free/discount Windows
licenses)?
(I'm not a developer of Scite or Scintilla.)
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