Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 20:00:44 -0700 From: "Jason S. Anderson" <jason.anderson@windriver.com> To: "Pedro F. Giffuni" <pfg1+@pitt.edu>, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG, crap@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Microsoft giving back to FreeBSD !! Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20010627194638.01ad1970@mail.wrs.com> In-Reply-To: <3B3A7898.3A4AD201@pitt.edu> References: <XFMail.010627143038.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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Funny how these threads seemed to converge over the past 48 hours. Web services and .NET. Jordan's transition to Apple. GPL vs BSD licensing. Microsoft's "efforts" to participate in the open source arena. What I believe some of the early adopter crowd is beginning to realize is just how much overlap and interdependency there is between all of these different subjects. After all, what is .NET really? It's a new development platform, just as Win32, J2EE, *BSD, Solaris, and even PowerBuilder are all development platforms. What's different between each of them (on the surface) is the market or value chain they're trying to promote and the breadth of capability the platform offers to both developers and users. Licensing models directly impact the marketability of a particular platform, as well as the size of the supporting network of partners and commercial enterprises. IMHO, what I would interpret from Microsoft's activities over the past 18 months or so -- .NET, the GPL vendetta, supporting variant forms of open-source licensing -- as a survival reaction. It's clear that the traditional desktop application platform isn't going to scale through the next decade, and so they must either invent a new model or embrace other existing ones. They're hedging their bets by doing both, but I think I know which they hope will pan out. The question is what does it mean to FreeBSD? Like Microsoft, there is a need to establish an identity that will survive through the next decade. If anything, .NET could turn out to be a great opportunity to position BSD as a better .NET server than Windows. Microsoft still wins by establishing .NET as a viable framework and peddling their wares through web services, while becoming less dependent on monopolization of the operating system commodity. Now, if open source communities emerge to try and challenge .NET as a framework, that's a separate issue. I don't know how it affects "FreeBSD" per se, beyond considering support for more than one Net service framework. FreeBSD: your enterprise .NET server? -Jason (is crap@freebsd.org just an alias to -chat?) At 08:21 PM 6/27/01 -0400, Pedro F. Giffuni wrote: >Well...yes, we are being used, but that's what BSD is about. > >All in all, we have two options..embrace them or ignore them, and the >final decision will be made by the end users. Are windoze users >interested in FreeBSD now? Is Yahoo (to mention one company, replace >any other name here) interested in .NET if it's more open than Java? > >What they are doing is perfectly legal and ethically correct; I don't >think they will be able to "squash" the GPL though. > >I think this will be good for FreeBSD.. but if the interested parties >are not careful it will bring harm to Linux and to Java. I don't care >much about the first one, and believe me...they will survive. About >Java and what it means to the Internet, let's say they are in great >danger unless they react now (and I don't think they will) but that is >not our fault. > >About these comments about breaking apart the Opensource community; >read well the FUD about BSD vs GPL and you will conclude that we have >never been together. This ends up being a slight advantage in favor of >Microsoft, but it's not MS's fault. As I said the could just as well >release them under the same license for Linux. > > Pedro. > >ps...what is crap@FreeBSD.org ... nevermind, I'll find out :). > >John Baldwin wrote: > > > > On 27-Jun-01 Pedro F Giffuni wrote: > > > This is very cool! > > > > > > http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2001/06/27/dotnet.html > > > > I'm not sure it's really cool. M$ is just using us to snub the GPL crowd. > > Presumably if they actually manage to use BSD to squash the GPl, they > will just > > turn around and attack BSD next. > > > > -- > > > > John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ > > PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc > > "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message ------------------------------------------------------------------- Jason Anderson email: jasona@windriver.com Manager, FreeBSD Engineering Wind River To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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