Comment by discordance
7 years ago
I find the attitude more interesting.. on one side we have Linux embedded in Windows, more Linux VMs on Azure than Windows Server, MS employees proudly brandishing shirts with 'I heart Linux' and 'I heart OSS' and on the other side we have Windows Kernal developers saying their ideas were stolen.
Maybe it's a sign of the relationship between Azure and Windows teams?
I interned at Microsoft in late 2000's. The sales engineers had an "anti oss" budget. Many of these guys still work at Microsoft today, now "hearts" open source and linux...
Microsoft did try to hijack LinuxFest Northwest a few years ago, taking over half the event space, sponsoring the event and providing the afterparties (which were tightly controlled, compared to prior/following years where any LFNW attendee could just show up).
Multiple people I know stopped attending LFNW that year, and will not return. Hopefully other conferences like SeaGL don't fall for the Microsoft embrace scam, as it injured LFNW pretty badly.
They have no choice, Linux already won big time on the server, so the only way was to embrace it in a way that would bring them money. And they succeeded big time. Now most young developers don't remember all the dirty tactics used year after year by MS to kill all competition, whether commercial or open source.
Also consider the amount of people leaving and joining Microsoft since than as well as the possibility that lots of the old people a) didn't like everything Microsoft did back then and b) are capable of changing and developing over the years.
> Windows Kernal developers
Windows Kernel. To me best knowledge, Windows was never ported to Commodore 64 ;-)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KERNAL
The comment is from one dude in late 2017 - it probably doesn't mean shit.
Like dude is talking about "there is absolutely no way on earth this was written from a clean sheet only from the available public documentation.", but that's not the bar for reverse engineering systems. It is legal (if you do it right anyways) to examine, use, and disassemble software in the process of reverse engineering.
What about EULA then? I know in some cases it is not enforceable, but I think it might apply in case of reverse engineering.
It has applied in the past: https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd
The Windows 10 EULA (XP has similar verbage) says:
c. Restrictions. The device manufacturer or installer and Microsoft reserve all rights (such as rights under intellectual property laws) not expressly granted in this agreement. For example, this license does not give you any right to, and you may not: (skipping a few) (vi) reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the software, or attempt to do so, except and only to the extent that the foregoing restriction is (a) permitted by applicable law; (b) permitted by licensing terms governing the use of open-source components that may be included with the software; or (c) required to debug changes to any libraries licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License which are included with and linked to by the software; and
The EULA says you can reverse engineer to the extent that is legal in your jurisdiction.
If the EULA is a valid contract, and if you can prove someone involved accepted it before participating, you might have an action for breach of contract against that person, but if what they did wouldn't have been a violation of copyright on its own, the EULA won't change that.
This is the first sensible comment in here. A lot of jumping to conclusions.
Big companies are hardly ever coherent, let alone after a big pivot like Nadella’s.
The two things are also not exclusive: it might well be that MS “loves OSS” and that the ReactOS kernel was lifted wholesale from a Windows leak.
Besides, there are many who think projects like ReactOS or Mono are actually a net negative for the FOSS ecosystem, since they reduce the pressure on developers to switch away from Windows-based stacks.
How are these two things related at all? I use Linux too but would be highly annoyed if someone stole my car. Are you implying that Linux users are in some way "stealing" from the Linux authors?