Recently in Microsoft vs Open Source Category

One of Microsoft's tried and true competitive strategies is to "extend and embrace" the competition. With open source, this has taken the form of creating Shared Source Licenses. Two of them, the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) and the Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL) have even been approved as OSI compliant by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

In theory, software released under either of those licenses is as "free" (in the open source sense) as Linux, Firefox, or any other open source software. Meaning that you could look over the source code any time you liked, for example.

That's the theory.

In practice, apparently, it's not so clear, at least in the case of the Sandcastle project. Sandcastle is a documentation compiler for Managed Class Libraries, hosted at Microsoft's open source project hosting web site, CodePlex. You might wonder, What are the requirements for hosting a project on CodePlex? #1: choose a license (per the FAQ link, the implication is you need to choose an open source license), and #3: there must be source code.

Sandcastle, ostensibly released under the Ms-PL, doesn't come with source. Yet. The story came to my attention via Reddit, here. The big questions seem to be whether an OSI-approved license can be used to release software without source code--because the Ms-PL seems to somehow not refer to source code, while still supposedly being an open source license!

Stay tuned for more about this; there will probably be more links to meta-websites where open source issues are discussed, as well as responses from various other sources. I'll have more to say/write about this--let me know what you think!

Here's one reason why Microsoft has such a stranglehold on the OS market: Why Linux will not displace Windows.

Sure, it's comment on a long-forgotten thread on a ZDNet blog (Why Linux will not displace Windows). The comment is a stunning illustration of how "common sense" fails to account for those things the individual is incapable of imagining. Consider:

You are kidding arent you?

Are you saying that this linux can run on a computer without windows underneath it, at all? As in, without a boot disk, without any drivers, and without any services?

That sounds preposterous to me.

The comment goes on, but I can't. You'll have to read it yourself, if you must, to get the rest.

And then, there's this: They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know. Not everyone who likes Microsoft is happy with Vista. Go ahead, read the article. It's about Microsoft honchos who got burned with the upgrade.

I suspect that this--How to Remove Linux and Install Windows XP--may be one of the least useful articles on support.microsoft.com; my previous sporadic encounters with installing Windows have never been notable for having trouble destroying everything on the hard drive to make way for Windows.

On the other hand, it is about installing Windows XP, not Vista; it turns out Pirates Stealing XP Twice as Much as Vista, Microsoft Doesn't Know How to Feel. Given that, perhaps this--How to go back to Windows XP after you have upgraded a Windows XP-based computer to Windows Vista is the most useful article there.

The more some things change, the more they stay the same. It's interesting to see how some stories keep popping up, over and over--and then it's even more interesting to see what happens when things turn out different.

So, RIP to my favorite resource for Microsoft FUD and unintentional support for open source software, Microsoft's "Get the Facts" website: purportedly a repository of good, un-biased information from third-party researchers about how much better Windows Server is than Linux.

The story of the demise (as well as some of the good stuff that made it so juicy) is here at Linux Watch: Microsoft kills off anti-Linux 'Get the Facts' site. I wrote about "Get the Facts" earlier this summer on my Linux Cookbook website ("Microsoft's "Get the Facts" (tm) Campaign, Deconstructed"), and was hoping to make a mini-career of deconstructing all that propaganda. Now, I'll just have to look for the FUD in new places, but the good news is that Microsoft's replacement, windowsserver/compare, looks like it'll be chock full of FUD-goodness.

It's fun to keep track of how much Windows costs these days when Microsoft must compete both with pirates, who sell Windows cheap and send nothing to Redmond, as well as with non-Windows open source software who likewise pay nothing to Redmond.

What does Vista cost? List price on Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate is $399.95; Amazon.com has it for $339.99.

But it's cheaper if you buy a system with Windows pre-installed. While Dell doesn't make it easy to compare on their website, according to this report on Ars Technica, the "Microsoft tax" for Dell systems--how much more you pay for the same hardware with Vista pre-installed--is about $50. Of course, that's for Home Premium or Business version of Vista, both of which list for about $200 or so if you buy a shrinkwrapped box at retail.

Then, there's Microsoft's own effort to get something from developing nations: Microsoft offers $3 Windows package for poor nations. Three bucks for a stripped-down version of Windows and Office, if you're in the right (or wrong) part of the world.

That's a deal, but it's also the going rate for pirated versions of Windows and Office in places like Lagos, Nigeria. According to this (which you probably can't reach, since a flood of hits shut it down) the Google-cached version is here, Nobody Knows Linux.

What it says, basically, is that OS prices in Lagos depend on how many discs the OS fits on. Since Vista fits on one disc and Linux takes up four discs, Linux costs more than Vista.

So, Microsoft retains its monopoly through the efforts of the pirates: if consumers can't afford to pay the full freight for Windows, Microsoft may not like it that people are buying pirated versions, but they'll take it over the alternative of having people buy open source software instead.