October, 2007

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  • Port25

    Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries

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    by jcannon on October 03, 2007 07:47pm


    Some news from Scott Guthrie's blog this morning - we'll get more from the .NET and Shared Source team over the next few months:

    "One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them.

    Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year.

    We'll begin by offering the source code (with source file comments included) for the .NET Base Class Libraries (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows).  We'll then be adding more libraries in the months ahead (including WCF, Workflow, and LINQ).  The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL).

    You'll be able to download the .NET Framework source libraries via a standalone install (allowing you to use any text editor to browse it locally).  We will also provide integrated debugging support of it within VS 2008.

    Integrated Visual Studio 2008 Debugging Support
    The final release of VS 2008 will support the ability to configure the debugger to dynamically download the .NET Framework debugger symbols (and corresponding source code) from a web server hosted by Microsoft.  You'll be able to configure the .NET Framework symbols to be downloaded all in one shot, or manually retrieved on demand:

    Read the rest of the post at Scott Guthrie's Blog….

  • Port25

    Microsoft Out in the Open

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    by jonrosenberg on October 16, 2007 01:37pm


    This morning, we were excited to learn that two of Microsoft’s Shared Source licenses have been approved by the OSI.  It’s been an interesting and educational couple of months since we submitted these licenses (we announced our intent in July, and submitted on August 10th.)  I personally enjoyed hearing the wide diversity of opinions from the community, including the legal professionals who weighed in on the discussion.

    During the discussion period, we were pleased to respond to the communities requests for additional clarity in the licenses by renaming them to the Microsoft Public License and the Microsoft Reciprocal License.  In the process of the license discussion, we also heard additional calls for more clarity in our communication regarding the wide range of Shared Source licensing options available from Microsoft.  Some Shared Source licenses clearly meet the open source definition and others do not. In the future, we will continue to solicit feedback from the community to ensure crisp delineation of these different license types on our website.

    As we continue to work with the open source community, we look forward to ongoing feedback on how to improve our participation and provide greater transparency to all of our customers and partners.  I’d like to thank Russ Nelson and Michael Tiemann for their guidance throughout this process and I would like to thank all the members of the community who contributed to this discussion on the license-discuss alias.  I think you’re going to see a lot of great code come out under these two open source licenses and we are happy to be able to call them, “OSI Approved.”

    I look forward to continued vibrant discussion with the Open Source community,
    Jon

  • Port25

    Virtual Machine Additions for Linux 2.0

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    by jcannon on October 23, 2007 01:41pm


    A quick note to let our community know that Virtual Machine Additions for Linux 2.0 has been released - bringing the version number up to 2.0. For those unfamiliar with Virtual Machine Additions for Linux, it is technology layer designed to improve the usability and interoperability of running Linux operating systems as guests or virtual machines inside of Virtual Server. From the release notes, it looks like this version adds support for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. You can find additional information on running Linux as a guest operating system with Virtual Server on TechNet.

    Qualified distributions now include:

      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (update 6)
      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (update 6)
      • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
      • SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9
      • SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
      • Red Hat Linux 7.3
      • Red Hat Linux 9.0
      • SuSE Linux 9.2
      • SuSE Linux 9.3
      • SuSE Linux 10.0


    Check out download details here.

    [PostIcon:3352]

  • Port25

    PHP SQL Server drivers, much improved IIS support for PHP - what is this world coming to!

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    by hjanssen on October 19, 2007 08:15pm


    Yes I am still alive!

    As I write this, I realize that I have been very delinquent with writing blogs. Time has gone by very fast, and I keep on working on more and more things. And before you know it, you look back and months have gone by without any blogs....

    But I wanted to write a few things that have happened here in the last few months. As you might be aware, Microsoft has been working very hard on making PHP on Windows a premier experience. And working in the OSSL, my group and I find ourselves in the middle of most of these efforts. And it gives us a great view of the changes that are happening inside of Microsoft (Sometimes with a gentle shove from us  )

    So, we assisted the IIS team with their FastCGI effort and GoLive release a few weeks ago. (http://www.iis.net/php ) And no less interesting, something that I am particularly proud of is that Microsoft has released a CTP (Community technical Preview) of a native PHP SQL server driver on Windows.

    As a result, I was invited to speak at the PHP Zend conference that was held in San Francisco last week, (www.phpcon.com)  I have included the presentation for people to see what we talked about. John Bocharov from the SQL server team co-presented with me on stage and showed some of the bits that are now available for download.  You can download them directly from the Microsoft download site. (here is a super long URL with the download details and helpful hints for the driver; http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=85F99A70-5DF5-4558-991F-8AEE8506833C&displaylang=en )

    As part of the release, we at the OSSL converted phpbb (www.phpbb.com) to run with the native SQL server driver, and I showed phpbb running natively on SQL Server, on stage -  which was pretty cool.  We are currently cleaning those changes up and will be submitting them to phpbb code base. And....I am looking to see what other popular PHP applications out there we can contribute support to by writing code & integrating the driver.

    All this shows a commitment from Microsoft that I am pretty excited to be a part of. I mean....an IIS 6 version of FasCGI with specific support for PHP, FastCGI build into Server 2008/IIS7 with PHP optimizations and now the SQL server driver for PHP on Windows!  

    What is this world coming to! 

    A note on the PHP driver, it is like I said - a community preview. Which means we are very much looking for your feedback on how to improve it, and any bugs you might encounter. So please participate as you can to make this the driver you would like to see it be.

    Let's see...what else we have we been up to? We have been working with the Apache Software Foundation more, which has been a lot of fun. And in discussions with them to see how we could better work together, I supplied them with 75 MSDN licenses to help them develop on Windows. I am looking forward to continued cooperation with ASF on many different fronts.

    The Lab continues to grow in both manpower and equipment, and we now have over 300 Servers to play with. From the old P3’s (very few still left) to the latest in IBM, DELL and HP Blade systems.

    I will do my best to be more responsive and blog more. So keep the comments coming! Until the next time……………..
    Thanks,
    Hank.

  • Port25

    Eclipse Executive Director, Mike Milinkovich, Talks with Sam

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    by Sam Ramji on October 18, 2007 04:21pm


    Mike Milinkovich is the Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation -  an open source community - supported by a non-profit foundation - dedicated to building an open source development environment. In this podcast, Mike joins us to discuss some history around Eclipse, the larger open source community - and his varied background in accounting and computer science. Mike also touches on the architecture of participation's impact on the foundation and the development team behind the Eclipse platform.

    For interested Eclipse users, Sam will be speaking at this year's EclipseCon 2008 - stay tuned to Port 25 for more information as that draws closer.

    Attachment: http://port25.technet.com/videos/podcasts/milinkovich.mp3

  • Port25

    Technical Analysis: Recovering GRUB, Dual Boot Solutions

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    by jcannon on October 30, 2007 04:43pm


    Today's post returns Port 25 to our more regular technical analysis that examine common technical scenarios when running Windows and Linux together, or Windows and other popular open source projects. This week, the lab looks at at disk recovery options using GRUB and dual boot scenarios.

    Abstract:
    Those of us who dual boot have seen it happen.  Somewhere down the line, we overwrite the bootloader (or configure it to ignore one of the operating systems) and suddenly we can only boot into one of the operating systems.  Probably the most common causes of these issues involve the use of fdisk /mbr and Windows installations overwriting GRUB  or LILO  (but it happens with Linux too).  In this paper, I will assume that you can only boot into Windows, and that you have decided to use GRUB as your bootloader.  A few of these notes are distribution-specific and those portions will be clearly marked.   However, most of the process will work on any Linux distribution which conforms to accepted standards.

    Note: This paper represents testing and documentation in a lab environment. User Account Control (UAC) is an essential security component to Windows and Microsoft does not recommend turning off UAC in production environments.

    Attachment: DualbootRecovery.pdf

  • Port25

    Win a copy of the .NET/J2EE Interoperability Toolkit

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    by jcannon on October 31, 2007 03:22pm

     

    It's been awhile since we've featured any books or authors on Port 25 - you may remember Jeremy Moskowitz on Windows/Linux Integration, and then Linux in a Windows World with Rod Smith. That doesn't mean our library shelves have gone empty though ~ so today we're going to run a small giveaway of some extra copies of .NET and J2EE Interoperability Toolkit we came across. It's a great book on how to open .NET to work with Java and comes with some useful tools on CD - including the The Mind Electric GLUE web services. GLUE provides developers that want to build Java Web services with an easy-to-use, compact implementation of all of the core Web services standards, including XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. It allows any Java object to be instantly published as a Web service and third-party Web services to be consumed as if they are local Java objects.

    To Win: All we ask is that you submit the best example of open source interoperability on Windows. It can be a project running on Windows (like Apache), a language (like PHP or Java), or a commerical application - like MySQL. Send them directly to port25@microsoft.com and we'll pick the best 6 stories. We'll close the competition next Friday, November 9th at 12 noon EST. Good luck!

     

    About the book:
    Discover how to build applications that run on both the Microsoft .NET Framework and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)—and extend your customer reach and system shelf life. Whether your background is in .NET or J2EE, you’ll learn to implement many of the interoperability technologies available today, including Microsoft, Sun, and third-party compatibility tools. Interoperability expert Simon Guest takes a balanced look at the pros and cons of each cross-platform technology presented, including best practices, workarounds, and examples of interoperability solutions in action. You also get interoperability software on CD—plus a wealth of code you can use in your own solutions.

    Discover how to:

    • Use .NET Remoting to enable interplatform connectivity
    • Write interoperable Web service solutions that show interoperability in a production environment, handle exceptions, and use UDDI
    • Employ Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to create a shared database between .NET and J2EE
    • Enable cross-platform asynchronous calling with Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) and WebSphere MQ from IBM
    • Implement a bridge between .NET and J2EE queues using Microsoft Host Information Server and Microsoft BizTalk Server
    • Deliver a consistent user interface across platforms through shared session state and shared authentication
    • Build complex interoperability solutions using Web services specifications for security, binary data exchange, and routing

     

     

  • Port25

    Allison Randal on Participation & Motivation

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    by Sam Ramji on October 25, 2007 09:14pm

    It's taken awhile, but without further delay - we're excited to post Sam's discussion with Allison Randal that took place at this year's OSCON event in Portland, OR. Allison discusses the importance of participation in the open source community and her perspective where Microsoft sits relative to the principle that everyone deserves to participate.

    From her biography on the O'Reilly site: Allison Randal is the Program co-Chair for O'Reilly's Open Source Convention and Energy Innovation Conference. Her first geek career was as a research linguist in eastern Africa. But eventually her love of coding drew her away from natural languages to artificial ones. Allison is the architect of Parrot (a virtual machine for dynamic languages), on the board of directors of The Perl Foundation, and founder and president of Onyx Neon. She co-authored Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials, and has edited various O'Reilly books on dynamic languages including Perl Hacks and Programming PHP.

     

    Attachment: Randall.mp3
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