I think it is very early to welcome Microsoft to the right side of the history of computing and consumption and creation of software despite their announcement (with major cavaets) of the set up of their CodePlex Foundation. It is therefore interesting to read the headline here that uses the world “glasnost”. The last time Glastnost was a real force for change, we saw the melting away of the USSR and the Eastern Block. Would that be the case here as well? I hope so.
Not so fast
That word “glasnost” only appears in the title and not the article. Still, I’d rather take Groklaw over Infoworld in the credibility stakes- here’s what PJ had to say about CodePlex (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090911130806414):
> Microsoft wants all FOSS apps to run on Windows instead of the Linux kernel. Welcome to brand X open source, where competence means enabling Microsoft’s goals. And does this mean Mr. Ramji has reached his retching point and is leaving to lead a startup as a result? Just wondering. Decent men do have a retching point, I’ve always believed.
It looks more like just another episode of that long-running serial, “embrace & extend”. You know how each season of that ends…
Re: Not so fast
Agreed that the word glasnost is only in the headline. But that is an interesting coincidence.
Indeed, MS is ONLY Interested in making open source work better on THEIR closed platform. Compare that with MinGW. MinGW – “Minimalist GNU for Windows” (a port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and GNU Binutils, for use in the development of native Microsoft Windows applications) is an honest way to make development of code for Windows without the dependencies of Windows compilers. This ensures that code built can work in more than Windows environments. It would seem to be a strange thing that the open source community (and Fedora in this case) assisting in making apps for WINDOWS to be built on a Fedora environment. That is what choice is all about. We – the Fedora and Open Source Community – want to give people choice and not lock in. I do not ever expect Microsoft to make anything like that.