Biju,
Brian is up at FNF (a weekend music party that is off the grid).
Here's what I know about Apache taking that money.
First of all, Apache got over dealing with proximity to MSFT for
pragmatic reasons a long time ago. Covalent is an example of a
company that sold Apache-based products to Windows customers. I would
say that nobody at Apache thinks Microsoft is somehow having a
religious conversion and aren't evil anymore (just as very few of us
believe that Google isn't evil...sorry Charles). Publicly traded US
Corporations are inherently evil...all of them are...because by design
they exist to pursue profit over all else.
Apache is a pragmatic group and we tend to take balanced actions. We
took money from Google, why not from Microsoft? Also, we have a long
history of taking code from big corps (which is in some ways more
fraught with peril than taking money)...
Danese
On Jul 25, 2008, at 11:46 PM, Biju Chacko wrote:
Microsoft to sponsor the Apache Software Foundation
By Ryan Paul | Published: July 25, 2008 - 12:15PM CT
Today at the OSCON open source software convention, the Apache
Software Foundation (ASF) got an unexpected new sponsor: Microsoft.
The Redmond software giant, which will contribute $100,000 annually to
the ASF, joins Google and Yahoo as a platinum sponsor of Apache
development
[...]
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080725-microsoft-to-sponsor-of-the-apache-software-foundation.html
Brian,
Is Microsoft finally starting to grok Open Source? Or is this just a
few guys in a corner somewhere? Or should I put on my tinfoil hat
because it's all part of some bigger conspiracy?
-- b
