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by Garrett Serack on February 28, 2008 04:59pm
The Apache Visit to Microsoft Campus: Day Two
Day two turned out to be quite a busy day!
First thing in the morning, we started off testing some Apache applications on Windows Server 2008, both the 64 and 32 bit versions. Right away, a few things were uncovered, primarily around UAC, data redirection (where Windows redirects writes to the file system and registry to safe locations for low-rights processes) and an odd issue with an event mutex that we're tracking down.
After getting a little testing done, we had a great in-depth presentation of IIS by Senior Program Manager Thomas Deml. Like the Core Networking presentation the day before, it was really informative, and the Apache folks took the opportunity to really drill down into the architecture of IIS. Why would they? Like I mentioned before, a number of Apache Projects (like Tomcat) support IIS in one way or another, and could benefit from tighter integration with IIS.
After lunch, Peter-Michael Osera and Li Shao spent a couple of hours addressing some of the C++ and toolset questions the Apache team brought. They really did an admirable job answering the questions that they could, and the ones that they didn't have answers to, they are following up via email over the next couple of days.
After that, some more time for testing rounded out the rest of the day.
For supper, Sam Ramji, took the team out to Ruths' Chris Steakhouse for a fantastic meal, and we had a great evening talking about nearly everything under the sun.
by Community Contributor on February 27, 2008 08:33pm
First, many thanks to Microsoft’s Port 25 Team for the opportunity to post today!
Today SpikeSource announced the availability of five additional PHP-based applications on the Windows Server 2008 platform. Gallery, Mantis, Moodle, PhpBB and WebCalendar are available for free download from www.spikesource.com. We welcome you to take a look and to offer your feedback!
Similar to the previous applications we released on Windows Server (Drupal, Alfresco), SpikeSource delivered these as turnkey “SpikeIgnited” applications, with all components needed to run the application available in a single one-click-install distribution. We have also included a variant of our SpikeNet update service optimized for Windows Server 2008.
“That’s great”, you might say, “SpikeSource has ‘Ignited’ a few more apps, so what’s the big deal?” We believe the big deal is that these applications also run on a stack of other Microsoft products in addition to Windows, namely, IIS/Fast-CGI and SQL Server Express, with which many open source products have historically not interoperated well. Quite a bit of engineering went into assembling this “WISP” stack and building/testing these PHP applications, and this know-how is an important step towards improving the interoperability between the worlds of Microsoft and open source.
Why do this? Because customers want it. Throughout SpikeSource’s history, nearly 50% of our customer’s request Windows versions of our open source applications, and most of them also care about interoperating with IIS, SQLServer, Sharepoint, ActiveDirectory and so forth. Our experience is representative of the industry. Ask any commercial OSS ISV with a server-side application, and they’ll tell you the same thing, with similar numbers.
Also, last December, the Open Solutions Alliance (www.opensolutionsalliance.org) published a report (pdf) summarizing the results of its customer outreach efforts. One of the key findings was that customers want better open source and Microsoft interoperability, and moreover, they felt this was the issue that the industry has collectively done the least to address. While there has been a lot of unfortunate history that has gotten in the way of this, ultimately customers don’t care as much about grudges as they care about everything simply working. Together, SpikeSource and Microsoft’s open source lab are doing something about it.
The release of these five PHP applications is just a first step. By taking five commonly used PHP applications and making them run better on a Windows stack, we took a step towards better interoperability, and we also built some technical expertise that we intend to leverage more broadly and share with the community in the future.
So, stay tuned, and we welcome your input. What other types of open source applications are important to run well on Windows? What specific technical issues do you have that you would like to see us solve? What more can we do? Please send us your feedback!
Dominic Sartorio Sr Director, Product Management, SpikeSource President, Open Solutions Alliance
by Sam Ramji on February 27, 2008 06:00am
When I think about what works really well in open source development and technology, the following things stand out:
So where did we apply these ideas to the development of Windows Server 2008?
Overall, we’ve learned and continue to learn from open source development principles. These are making their way into the mindset, development practices, and ultimately into the products we bring to market.
I’ve focused here on “what Microsoft has learned from Open Source” – and ironically, I’ve agreed to do a panel at OSBC on 3/25 with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation on “what Open Source can learn from Microsoft”. As all of the different organizations in IT continue to evolve, we’ll learn from each others’ best practices and make increasingly better software. As in science, this incremental improvement will move all of us forward.
by Garrett Serack on February 26, 2008 02:34pm
This morning, we've had the honor of hosting the Apache Software Foundation in the Windows Server 2008 Application Labs. They are here this week in order to get some deep knowledge about Windows Server 2008, and access to the folks from product groups who can help them make their apps work better under Windows Server.
We asked them out to campus because we are extremely interested in having the Apache web server (well, all the Apache projects) run great on Windows Server 2008. Now, every time I say that, some folks always want to know "Why would you want that?" or "What do the IIS folks think about that?"
Well, it turns out that some folks have apps that run on Apache. Yes, even on Windows. Sometimes, it's a matter of investment in a particular solution where their app uses Apache. It could even be that they just simply prefer the model that Apache provides. Regardless, it's important to us that those applications run as good as they possibly can on the Windows platform.
As to the question about IIS, there are several Apache projects like Tomcat that currently support IIS, and hey, we'd like to have even better support. To make that happen, we've asked some folks from the IIS team to join us in the labs, where they can open up and give the assistance that is needed.
By midday, two fine gentlemen from the Compatibility Lab (Pat Altimore and Maarten Van De Bospoort) presented a great session about general compatibility issues with Windows Server 2008.
In the afternoon, we had Ari Pernick (along with a posse of extremely knowledgeable folks, whose names I did not get... but I will) come out from the Core Networking group. They spent about two and a half hours going through details in the Windows Server 2008 networking stack, as well as a deep investigation of the HTTP.SYS technology. Now, I’m no slouch when it comes to this stuff, but I tell ya, I learned a lot yesterday just sitting in on that. From the water-cooler conversations that we had later in afternoon, I would expect that we’re going to see some interesting changes in Apache httpd, and Tomcat in the future.
After that, we took an hour and came up with a list of other issues and questions that the Apache folks had, so we can drag in some more product groups on Tuesday and Wednesday.
As for the evening, we all went out to the Rock Bottom Brewery for some food and drinks and some socialization—I took a few pictures, and I’ll get them up as soon as I can.
by Sam Ramji on February 25, 2008 12:31pm
There are no guarantees that a future of Microsoft + Yahoo! will arrive, but the possibilities have me feeling positive. These are just my personal opinions – and who knows what will happen – but a few things described below give me optimism for an increasingly high-performance, multi-platform, PHP-infused and developer-driven future.
Here are a few reasons why I’m excited.
Yahoo! is famous for its culture of openness. Outstanding technologies like Hadoop have been developed and contributed to the community, and the fundamental concepts of open Internet culture at Yahoo! are core to its success. Microsoft has made strides in the last few years in understanding and embracing open source developers, development models, and technologies – I’d say we’ve gone from 1 to 100 and are still going. Yahoo! would speed our progress from 100 to 1,000.
One important reason? Technical leaders like Rasmus Lerdorf, Doug Cutting, and many others….
Those who read Port25 often know that we are at the heart of the shift at Microsoft to embrace PHP on Windows. My team has had the privilege to work with Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski and their engineering team. Just through this collaboration with community developers and our partners at Zend, Microsoft engineers and product teams learned a lot.
We have also learned a great deal from Jim Hugunin (Jython and Iron Python architect) and come a long way in our openness to new languages and community development. John Lam has shown us the light on Ruby. I think we are at a point in time where we could thrill developers with Rasmus’ leadership on PHP. Having the inventor of PHP in the same company with the language runtime performance wizards in the Developer Division under Scott Guthrie, makes my mind boggle.
Similarly, a major focus at Microsoft is understanding the developer – and those of you who have been watching have seen the shift from strictly “let’s show PHP developers that ASP.NET is cool” to “and let’s show PHP developers that we understand that PHP is cool”, a result of learning from day-to-day work with PHP developers. The sheer mass of PHP-focused voices that this combination would bring would make PHP absolutely fundamental to the company. Many of these developers are actively contributing to code beyond the core Yahoo! web platform and are leaders in their own right.
And, finally, we’ve taken a great leap forward in Windows/Linux Interoperability in both virtualization (SuSE Linux on Hyper-V) and protocols (identity, management, file systems, networking), with major customer, partner, and engineering commitments. I have no access to information on Yahoo!’s server farms, but I expect Microsoft + Yahoo would accelerate our capabilities in Windows/ Linux interoperability significantly as well. The modern datacenter is a heterogeneous environment, and I have heard over and over again from customers the value they place on our recognition and technical competency supporting that real-world heterogeneity.
The world is different today than it was 10 years ago, and so are we. Here on the Redmond campus, MacBook Pros aren’t unheard of, and people with knowledge of Linux are in demand. Some of those MacBooks are running Vista, administrators are running PHP and ASP.NET on the same machine, and we’re seeing adoption of open source in and on top of a range of Microsoft technologies. As the world has changed, so has Microsoft, to the benefit of the company and our customers. This would be an exciting next step—here’s hoping!
by Sam Ramji on February 22, 2008 02:06pm
Four years ago, we started the Linux Lab at Microsoft. Two years ago, we established the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft. One year ago, we initiated the Linux Interoperability Lab at Microsoft.
Yesterday, we announced the broadest change to the way the Microsoft builds software and works with open source communities and developers.
By now you’ve probably read the announcement – “Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability” and are wondering what it all means, and where it came from. In a nutshell, the documentation for the APIs, document formats, and protocols used in Windows Vista, the .NET Framework, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be made publically available. All developers will be able to access the documentation with no need to sign a license or pay any fee.
We are also announcing the launch of the Open Source Interoperability Initiative – a framework that will let us consistently support community development teams who build implementations of these specs with labs, technical support, plugfests, and joint testing and development.
To me, it’s a logical progression from the work and learning we’ve done with the Mozilla Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, the Linux Foundation, the Apache Foundation, the Samba Project, MySQL, and PHP. We’ve learned how to make agreements with community projects – including those which lack a legal entity for formal agreements; how to deliver technical support; who to listen to; and how to prioritize our work. We have seen how positively developers and users respond to these kinds of collaborative efforts. This is reflected by the progression of our approach: the creation of the OSP (Open Specification Promise), the IECC (Interoperability Executive Customer Council), the IVA (Interoperability Vendor Alliance), the submission and approval of the Ms-RL and Ms-PL by the OSI, and the PFIF/Samba agreement and ongoing collaboration.
It’s also a major evolutionary step, and significant commitment for our engineering teams. Ray Ozzie says it best: “Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions. By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.”
Because we are a platform company first and foremost, it will be entirely worth the investment both due to the increased transparency to developers, and due to the expanded range of innovation that can be built on Microsoft technologies.
I think this is a great day not just for Microsoft, but for the software industry. And I thank the people who have helped us learn what it’s taken to get here – most notably Jeremy Allison, Matt Asay, Mike Schroepfer, Andi Gutmans, Jim Zemlin, Mike Milinkovich, Zack Urlocker, Marten Mickos, Andrew Tridgell, Miguel de Icaza and Stephen Walli. We will continue to look to their perspectives and advice as we continue down the open road.
Here are a few of the responses we’ve seen – and I’ll quote from the industry publications and blogs:
LWN.net: “The announcement is sweeping enough to make one check the calendar, but we are still a month and a week early for pranks. Microsoft is making available specifications for APIs and communication protocols for Exchange, Office, SQL Server, SharePoint, and others without requiring a license or royalty payments. They will indicate what patents they believe cover any of the protocols and "will license all of these patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, at low royalty rates." There may be lurking dangers, but it appears to be a sincere effort at providing interoperability.”
Matt Asay (Alfresco/The Open Road): “As a Microsoft admirer, critic, and competitor, I can't help but applaud the depth and breadth of this move ... All in all, a huge day for Microsoft. Will there be gaps in Microsoft's efforts? Undoubtedly. For one thing, it hasn't really made much progress on its covenant not to sue commercial open-source providers, despite what Ina writes. But I'm impressed that it's even bothering to try.” Andi Gutmans (PHP/Zend): “I believe Microsoft has finally understood that their closed nature has significantly hindered the growth of their eco-system. In many ways the threat of Linux has by many been interpreted as a threat of open-source (wrongly so in my opinion) …. Microsoft is now enabling the open-source community to grow its contributor base around such technologies and significantly improve the delivered quality. As most open-source developers and users live in heterogeneous environments this will benefit many.” Jeremy Allison (via The Register): "It's definitely a positive step. Doesn't mean any change for us [Samba] as we already had all these docs, and the promise not to sue is only for 'non-commercial' open source, which is a bit meaningless. But that's the same thing we had really (they're listing the patents etc.). At least everyone now gets access to the same info, which I'm very happy about. As for the rest, the devil is in the details. If they can follow through with this, the world will be a better place.” Zack Urlocker (MySQL/Open Sources): “… even if it was legislated, it's still good for the industry. And it’s good for Microsoft customers. And ultimately, it's probably good for Microsoft to be more open. If Microsoft wants to attract the next generation of developers and users, they should take the hint: Open works.”
Matt Asay (Alfresco/The Open Road): “As a Microsoft admirer, critic, and competitor, I can't help but applaud the depth and breadth of this move ... All in all, a huge day for Microsoft. Will there be gaps in Microsoft's efforts? Undoubtedly. For one thing, it hasn't really made much progress on its covenant not to sue commercial open-source providers, despite what Ina writes. But I'm impressed that it's even bothering to try.”
Andi Gutmans (PHP/Zend): “I believe Microsoft has finally understood that their closed nature has significantly hindered the growth of their eco-system. In many ways the threat of Linux has by many been interpreted as a threat of open-source (wrongly so in my opinion) …. Microsoft is now enabling the open-source community to grow its contributor base around such technologies and significantly improve the delivered quality. As most open-source developers and users live in heterogeneous environments this will benefit many.”
Jeremy Allison (via The Register): "It's definitely a positive step. Doesn't mean any change for us [Samba] as we already had all these docs, and the promise not to sue is only for 'non-commercial' open source, which is a bit meaningless. But that's the same thing we had really (they're listing the patents etc.). At least everyone now gets access to the same info, which I'm very happy about. As for the rest, the devil is in the details. If they can follow through with this, the world will be a better place.”
Zack Urlocker (MySQL/Open Sources): “… even if it was legislated, it's still good for the industry. And it’s good for Microsoft customers. And ultimately, it's probably good for Microsoft to be more open. If Microsoft wants to attract the next generation of developers and users, they should take the hint: Open works.”
We recognize that the communities’ judgments of the significance of this announcement will be entirely based on the actions that follow. The optimistic undertone that I’ve seen so far suggests that we can make real progress.
We will report back frequently on the progress and details of this work – especially on the Open Source Interoperability Initiative – here on Port 25. This announcement is the starting point of the next phase of Microsoft’s work with open source, and as Port 25 readers know, we are here for the full marathon.
The interoperability principles are posted here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx
by billhilf on February 21, 2008 09:00am
I have always been a fan of Tim O’Reilly’s phrase the “architecture of participation” to describe “systems designed for user contribution.” I liked it so much that at last year’s OSCON I made this concept the focal point of a discussion about how Microsoft’s products, programs, and partnerships have evolved over time to further this idea of ‘participatory systems’. (The slide I used at OSCON in Portland on July 26, 2007 is shown below).
(Presented July 26, 2007, OSON, Portland, Oregon)
I also like the metaphor of an ascending curve that reminds me of a strand of DNA. To me it is a visual representation of the fact that as the number of examples of architecting for participation have increased, the mindset and the behaviors involved in doing so have increasingly become a part of the company’s core culture and software design and development practices.
Today we are making a set of broad-reaching changes that go above and beyond any prior incremental changes in Microsoft’s DNA, that opens the door on new horizons for what architecting for participation might mean in the future. I want to talk about what this means—and why an open source interoperability initiative is an important part of it.
To understand why Microsoft is making broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices that will drive greater interoperability, it’s important to step back and look broadly at the way the emergence services oriented architectures, web services, and the growing importance of software plus services are transforming the world of technology.
Ray Ozzie described this sea-change well this morning:
…as we put more and more of our data into [technology] products, a new set of issues emerge. Whether it’s our health records, or our customer databases, we’ve progressively learned that our documents and data have a lifetime that potentially spans well beyond the lifetime of any specific application that might’ve been used to create it. For our records and our documents, issues such as preservation and portability have become vital concerns…Furthermore, as a byproduct of the internet’s ubiquity, virtually every system and product nowadays has become interconnected. From the mobile phone in your pocket, to your PC, to the heterogeneous systems within our enterprises, everything’s being interconnected – and connected to the Web as our “universal hub” for information sharing.
At MIX ’07 Ray put the sweeping implications of this overarching vision in the context of history, starting with what he called the “dawn of the PC revolution” in the 1980s. There is an important connection to bear in mind between some of the key inflection points in the technology landscape (like the availability of low cost PCs, and cheaper, faster connectivity) with changes in how aspects of openness and developer opportunity have evolved together. This resonates with me when reading today’s announcement (available here):
Historically, as lower cost hardware became widely available, documented APIs and free SDKs enabled developers to more quickly develop applications
As the number of applications exploded, and network connectivity became the norm, protocols enabled exchange of information between programs and over the wire.
And as many types of computing devices have proliferated and connectivity has become ubiquitous, data portability and standards have become key tools in the toolbox for a loosely-coupled, services-based world.
Long-term success for Microsoft depends on our ability to deliver a platform that is open, flexible, and provides customers and developers with choice. These choices include Microsoft and open source technologies working together, and this will continue to be the case in the future. By increasing the openness of high volume products across APIs, protocols, and standards, we can continue to provide the platform that offers developers and businesses, including those based on open-source technologies, the broadest range of opportunities to innovate, deliver value, and create seamless experiences for end users.
By building on and expanding existing facilities, events, and resources supporting interoperability, including labs, plug fests, technical content and opportunities for ongoing cooperative development, the open source interoperability initiative will ensure this fundamental change in how we run our business and share information is broadly inclusive of open source technologies. As Microsoft takes this significant step forward into the interconnected world of the future, we aspire to doing so with members of the open source community by our side now and for the long haul.
Today is an important day, full of change. A wise inventor once said: “The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress” and although I’m sure today’s news will bring critics aplenty, it is with time and commitment that this change will manifest. I’m extraordinarily proud to be part of Microsoft and to be part of this change.
FAQs, updates and news about the initiative will be posted on www.microsoft.com/opensource/interop .
by Brett Shoemaker on February 13, 2008 11:31am
I continue to be surprised by the amount of weight given to downloads as a metric for OSS success. A topic Matt Asay also touched on recently over at The Open Road. Like Matt, I’m talking OSS at the product or company level (i.e., not OSS projects) and by success I mean sales.
For me, a high number of downloads only signals that people are willing to trial a product. Downloads do not equal actual use of the product, and trial is a far cry from success. If we take it as a given that consumers see value in the product, the company still has to convert those downloads into paying customers, and this challenge is where the problems of using downloads as an indicator of success become apparent.
The first problem is that not all downloads are created equal. If downloads are from commercial buyers who want to “try before they buy,” then increasing downloads is a good thing, whether open source or not (e.g., Microsoft’s Express Editions). However, if one’s downloads are largely by enthusiasts where no procurement channel exists, then the value of those downloads, beyond possibly generating demand for the product from the bottom up, is minimal when one is going after IT leaders who buy commercial products. It is the conversions that matter, and not the downloads.
Now, I realize that number of downloads will continue to receive attention as an indicator of success in open source. It is an easy metric to track, and while a less-is-more argument can be made in specific cases, I would rather see more downloads than not. That said, total downloads is still misleading.
Different products have different potential market sizes, so total downloads cannot be used to make comparisons across a number of products. Total downloads simply doesn’t provide a robust enough picture. It is the equivalent of saying that Company X is successful solely because it generates $250 million in revenue. Revenue doesn’t tell you anything about profitability, share, or rate of growth. Company X could be unprofitable with revenues declining at a rate of 20% a year. Revenue, like total downloads, is only part of the picture.
Sure, total downloads is worth knowing, but I am more interested the patterns and trends of those downloads. Are they steady/growing/declining? To what degree do they coincide with release dates? Etc. It is this second level of detail that starts to tell you whether a project is successful, not total downloads.
Hitting those total download plateaus, whether it be 25,000/month or 1,000,000 overall, is a great opportunity from a marketing standpoint to generate press and interest, but it doesn’t tell you whether or not an OSS product is successful or not. It’s just a small part of the equation.
by jcannon on February 12, 2008 10:21am
Abstract: By many estimates, Apache is the world's most popular web server software, hosting more than half of active domains according to Netcraft. Typically, Apache is run on Linux or UNIX, but it runs quite well on Windows. This paper provides an introduction to running this software on Windows and provides a framework for understanding how Apache on Windows is fundamentally different from Apache on Linux.
Download Installing Apache on Windows
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.
by MJM on February 07, 2008 09:45am
In reading Jamie’s recent blog post on software and engineering excellence here at Microsoft, I got to thinking broadly about the impact of access on innovation. Obviously, the constant advances in software technology have not occurred in a vacuum. They are the result of people within and outside IT companies who have created, shared and borrowed from each other to create new and better products.
The expansion of the knowledge sources and markets through exploitation of internal and external options has been referred to as “open innovation,” and is described by Henry Chesbrough (who coined the term) in Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm as:
“Open Innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology. Open Innovation processes combine internal and external ideas into architectures and systems. The business model utilizes both external and internal ideas to create value, while defining internal mechanisms to claim some portion of that value. Open Innovation assumes that internal ideas can also be taken to market through external channels outside the current business of the firm, to generate additional value.”
A couple of graphical representations I came across recently help make this clearer (from www.openinnovation.eu/openinnovatie.php). The first represents the traditional “closed innovation” R&D model:
In this diagram, the firm boundaries are represented by solid lines, indicating that the company’s ideas all come from within, and they are pushed out within the traditional market paths. Compare that approach to the “open innovation” model:
In this diagram, the firm boundaries are indicated with broken lines, illustrating the free flow of ideas into and out of the company throughout the research and development processes.
Thus, Open Innovation is at base the strategic modification and/or removal of traditional barriers to knowledge sharing and market access to maximize the values of ideas.
Such an approach is contrary to the traditional notion of siloed, jealously-guarded development. Traditionally, companies like AT&T, IBM, Apple and for that matter Microsoft have made billions relying solely on their own people and ideas. But in the interconnected world, a guarded approach to R&D is becoming less realistic and, more importantly, less productive. It is almost impossible to corral ideas when massive amounts of information can be transmitted easily and instantaneously almost anywhere in the world. And, even when it is possible, doing so deprives a company (and arguably society) of the immense power of collaboration.
Ah, there’s that word: “collaboration.” It’s the magic term of the new millennium, but what does it really mean when we get down to brass tacks (or better yet, dollars)? I came across a brilliant example of money-driven collaboration recently in the Innocentive website. This site matches “seekers” and “solvers” in an “Open Innovation Marketplace” and claims to have over 135,000 solvers in 175 countries over 40 different disciplines. The website promises cash awards of up to $1M for solutions to big, industry problems. This approach has been called “crowdsourcing” and “mob wisdom,” and it represents a fascinating, if extreme, example of the open innovation principle.
However, can a business survive solely on an external community for its new ideas? Companies such as Dell, Eli Lilly, Proctor & Gamble, Google, and Best Buy have reportedly turned to crowdsourcing for new ideas, but you don’t see them jettisoning their R&D departments. There’s still a lot of value to be gained from in-house research and development. The key is finding the balance and using multiple avenues of knowledge creation. As Joel West and Scott Gallagher point out “a central concern to open innovation is how to best use the internal R&D capabilities of the firm to maximum advantage…successful approaches will often combine a variety of approaches.”
In my next blog post, I want to look at the interplay between open source and innovation in software generally and discuss Microsoft’s approach in particular. That approach, like all attempts to harness open innovation, is open to critical analysis, but there are sound business reasons for it. I intend to make a discussion of those reasons an important focus of my blogging here on Port 25.
by Paula Bach on February 05, 2008 09:29pm
My last blog was about me traveling to Limerick and Toronto. I have now defended my dissertation proposal and passed. (Yay!) Here is a funny story. A week before the proposal defense I created my presentation and rehearsed it every day until the third day before when I began to get a sore throat. I don’t think it was from rehearsing the presentation or nerves or anything like that. Instead it was just a bug that was going around. Lots of students are sick at the end of fall semester. Anyway, two days before my defense I was getting a froggy voice, so I did not talk all day long. The day before the defense my voice was really raspy. The night before I worked on saving my larynx by gargling with salt water and any remedy I could find online. I woke up at 4AM the day of the defense and tried to speak a word. Nothing but a squawk came out. I had lost my voice. Because it is really difficult to get committee members together, the show had to go on. So at 9AM I stood up in front of my committee and a few fellow graduate students and began to squawk my way through the well-rehearsed presentation. It was not fun to look at the audience trying not to look disturbed at the sound of my voice.
Finally, after about the fifth slide, one committee member stopped me and asked the rest if they could just go into the discussion and skip the presentation. Everyone agreed and I listened to 5 professors, all of whom I respect a great deal discuss the merits and faults of my research. It was really an enlightening experience because I cannot think of another time when I will get five really smart people in one room discussing my research to make it better. In the end I came out with some ideas to rework my plan. The committee agreed that I was trying to do too much and advised that I choose one of the two parts. The first part, understanding FLOSS usability in general through the survey, observations, and interviews is almost done, and I have learned a lot, but the second part, designing a tool for CodePlex to support usability activities is not only more interesting, but also part of the agreement between IST and Microsoft. I came up with a new direction based on more literature I have gathered. The first exciting addition is the use of a theory to guide the design and research. I will use activity theory because it can handle people, both from an individual and social level, and artifacts. It also considers context and the dynamics of activities. Other HCI theories, for example, distributed cognition, handle people at the individual and social levels, and artifacts, but does not specifically take into account context and dynamics of activities. I am also using a methodological approach called action research. Action research is a practical approach to research where solving problems leading to intervention is a collaborative act between researcher and practitioner. I am a practical kind of researcher so this approach suited the project and me best.
I will be working with Microsoft UX people and the CodePlex team to integrate usability support for the CodePlex community site. I will also be working with a few projects hosted on CodePlex to help with the design.
[PostIcon:4037]
by Bryan Kirschner on February 05, 2008 07:32pm
“…Our goal here is to evolve and to hopefully provide information that makes it easier for people using OSS and Microsoft software in the real world.” Bill Hilf wrote this in an April 2006 blog entitled “Who Would Have Guessed?” just one week after Port25 launched. Although in hindsight it seems obvious Port25 was a good idea, back then there was a lot of guessing and finger-crossing, because Port25 wasn’t about Bill or Sam participating in a dialogue as individuals—something they did and continue to do all the time. This was about Microsoft as a company opening up for two-way participation in a new domain.
This domain has proven to be even broader than people using open source and Microsoft software—it includes people holding varied dispositions across technical, business and legal perspectives, in both camps. There are people interested in very specific technical issues and some in broader industry trends and themes. Posts with high readership, many trackbacks, lots of comments (or some combination of the above) include, for example, some how-to and systems administration focused (Kishi on systems configuration), some about new bits you can use (Hank on Windows media player for Firefox) and some about big news (John Rosenberg on the approval of two Shared Source licensed by the OSI).
Comments on two recent posts—How Did It Start for You? and New Horizons really crystallized for me the diversity of the Port25 community—inside and outside Microsoft. The Port25 community defies reductive classification as “a Microsoft guy (or gal)” or “an open source gal (or guy)”—or as “a developer” or “an end-user.” Folks wear multiple hats and have diverse experiences and interests. So Port25 is evolving to reflect and support that diversity.
Port25 will continue to be the home of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft. And technical content will continue to make “it easier for people using OSS and Microsoft software in the real world”. But the redesign you’re looking at will make it easier to browse and search a larger and more diverse body of content efficiently: are you looking for downloads, developer-focused content, or in browsing content of general interest to the “community?”
One big reason for making these sorts of changes is the steadily increasing number and scope of people , technologies , activities , and downloads across Microsoft and around the world that are relevant to Microsoft and open source growing together (to use a phrase you’ve heard before on Port25). We want these to be readily discoverable for every member of the Port25 community who might have an interest in them—whether because you find something to be problematic (--constructive feedback is important!), inspirational, or useful. And above all, the biggest reason is something we have all experienced over the life of Port25: the vitality and two-way dialogue of Port25 continues to foster to more awareness, connections, participation and change within Microsoft and in the broader ecosystem.
Referring to one such manifestation of change, Sam titled a blog “If you’re surprised you’re not paying attention.” The evolution of Port25 will make it easier for you to pay attention to what matters to you.
by Brett Shoemaker on February 01, 2008 08:51pm
As an open source business strategy lead here at Microsoft, I am particularly interested in community reaction following acquisition waves like the one we have seen recently (Sun/MySQL, Nokia/Trolltech, SpringSource/Covalent, etc.). While I am interested in reaction to each announcement individually, I find those that attempt to extrapolate what the event says about the broader OSS landscape especially interesting. This time around, one question that keeps surfacing is whether open source companies have sold out. Put differently, does selling mean selling out? My answer is no.
First, let me quickly point out the obvious. This recent wave of open source acquisitions is nothing new. Over the last 3 years, we have seen a number of open source companies sell to traditional ones (e.g., Zimbra to Yahoo, XenSource to Citrix, Gluecode to IBM). There is also a continuum of “ownership” and participation at the project level as well from company-driven to community-driven projects (e.g., from IBM’s influence over Geronimo to Zend’s PHP involvement to community-driven projects on Sourceforge or CodePlex). And, there is a continuum of opinion on it.
When I hear the question raised of whether open source companies are selling out, my reaction is “Why should OSS companies be held to a different standard than that of traditional ones?” What I mean is that I expect companies, whether open source or not, to do what is in the best interest of their customers and provides the best opportunity for future growth. The question should not be are OSS companies selling out, but rather are OSS companies selling to the right companies and in what ways will it further the company’s purpose.
Furthermore, the approach that an OSS company takes—IPO, acquisition, VC backing, or go-at-it-alone—doesn’t particularly matter. Today, we see more acquisitions and not IPOs because these traditional companies place higher valuations on these OSS companies than the market does. While the market focuses more on revenues, these traditional companies price in other variables (competitive impact, benefits to existing complementary offerings, etc.).
Does this acquisition trend mean that the terms open and closed source will no longer be relevant in the future? Maybe. Maybe not. To me, it’s minutia compared to the overall trend. I expect to continue to see convergence between the traditional and open source business models, and I expect to see Microsoft and other traditionally proprietary companies’ involvement continue to grow, as it is in the best interest of customers, partners, and shareholders. The heterogeneity of the technology landscape will continue to grow and consist of multiple source approaches so as to deliver the most value to customers. So, for me, this wave of acquisitions is nothing more than the next logical step on that path, and I’m excited to be a part of figuring out those next steps.