Do Citrix and Black Duck Help Microsoft Embrace (and Extend) “Open Source”

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2009-06-19 11:31:13 UTC
Modified: 2009-06-19 11:31:13 UTC

Summary: Microsoft-tied entities brushing shoulders amongst people in the Free(dom) software world

"Microsoft" is not a company, it is an ecosystem. It is a network of connected businesses that share the same goals and thus help one another. The role of Citrix is clear to see based on the XenSource story. The short story is that Citrix took Xen away from GNU/Linux, which is gradually gravitating towards KVM, probably as a direct result. Unsurprisingly, one of the only remaining supporters of Xen in the enterprise-oriented space is Novell, which is part of Microsoft's linked interests.

As we pointed out several days ago, an investment from Citrix in Vyatta may be cause for concern [1, 2]. On the surface, it sure seems rather innocent and virtualisation guru Dan Kusnetzky opines that this may be a strategic move against Cisco (Cisco and Microsoft don't get along so well anymore).

Dell, HP, IBM are you watching? I believe you would gain some important ground in your emerging competition with Cisco by also becoming buddies with Vyatta.

Dana Blankenhorn believes that "It’s a delicate dance, especially at times like this when growth capital is so scarce. Time will tell whether Vyatta tilts toward, say, Xen in helping craft customer solutions. Or whether it starts pushing Novell’s Suse Linux over, say, Red Hat."

Considering the fact that Microsoft promotes SUSE and vilifies Red Hat, how likely is it that some gentle pressure might come from Citrix so that Vyatta leans towards Microsoft's patent ploy? This hopefully will never happen.

Moving on a little, last month we noted that Black Duck (created by a Microsoft employee, who is still on the Board of Directors along with Roger Heinen from Microsoft) had invited Microsoft to FOSS 'on our behalf' [1, 2]. It is almost as though they act as a gateway. Gavin Clarke, a Microsoft spinner/PR person for the most part, passes on Black Duck's latest praise of Microsoft:

A home-cooked Microsoft license has carved out a small but growing following among the open-source community in less than two years.

[...]

That's according to license and code watcher Black Duck Software, who attributed the rise in MS-PL to Microsoft's efforts to increase the appeal of its CodePlex project-hosting site. MS-PL is one of 1,577 software licenses from 200,000 projects analyzed by Black Duck.

It is important to be reminded that these are licences whose goal is to attack Free software and give Microsoft greater control over a much more confused and diluted 'community' (of Windows developers who give their code away for free).

“It is very dangerous to allow Black Duck to become (or be perceived as) a sort of spokesman for "open source".”It is also important to remember that Black Duck is a proprietary software company (and marketing puppet at times, for press exposure that leads to shameless self-promotion). Black Duck talks a lot about "open source " while selling proprietary software and nothing which is Free (libre) software at all, not to mention Black Duck's ripoff of Palamida's good *GPLv3 database (but that's old news).

It is disappointing to see Matt Asay parroting a message of this company which ushers Microsoft into embrace & extend of "open source". There is more in SD Times, following another Black Duck press release about open source in healthcare last week.

It is very dangerous to allow Black Duck to become (or be perceived as) a sort of spokesman for "open source". But some people allow this to happen, not just Microsoft proponents with prominent positions in the press. ⬆

Comments

Roy Schestowitz

2009-06-19 21:22:29

Microsoft and Codeplex are an increasing part of the open source community.

Microsoft is at the same time suing the open source community using software patents.

Jim Allchin from Mirosoft said: "Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer [...] I can't imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business. I'm an American; I believe in the American way, I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don't think we've done enough education of policymakers to understand the threat."
NotZed

2009-06-19 14:56:15

If anyone still puts any weight to 'open source' beyond 'commercial interest trying to steal your work for zero cost', well, then you're an imbecile, idiot, or `spastic minda', to be honest.

That's why the term was 'invented' in the first place, and nothing has changed since then; whether it be redhat, novell, a lecherous book publisher, or even microsoft or some 'black duck' doing the so-called 'open sourcing'. They're all only doing it for their own benefit.
Eran Strod

2009-06-19 20:30:21

Our mission at Black Duck is to enable wider adoption of open source. We do this by making it as easy as possible for development organizations to understand and comply with the license obligations set out by the open source community. The data we have in our KnowledgeBase, which we think is the most comprehensive in the industry, simply reflects the code that is written by open source developers. Microsoft and Codeplex are an increasing part of the open source community. It’s also important to recognize that the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) is a formally approved OSI license, meaning it complies with the definition of open source including free distribution, access to source code, etc. (see http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd ). Thanks, Eran Strod Black Duck Software

Sabayon User

2009-06-19 21:41:49

Save your breath Eran. There's no point. Your company has been tried, found guilty and executed by a jury of jokers and jeers.

This is a person who sees no ethical problems with encouraging trolling of the Ubuntu community to further his agenda, even to the point of trying to get people fired from their jobs over a technology he doesn't approve of.

Don't worry, you're in good company. As the facts behind this little operation begin to surface, people that have been gratuitously smeared and attacked over the years will be vindicated.

Do Citrix and Black Duck Help Microsoft Embrace (and Extend) “Open Source”

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