RE: [ossig] Microsoft going round promoting .net

[UWE HEINZ RUDI DIPPEL <Udippel@uniten.edu.my>]

This guy also was the one who brought almost everyone here on the .NET with
splashing out his notorious software grants. He even wanted to supervise
students to become BM$ or MM$ or M$D, or ...

He seems to be very convincing (I didn't bother to go); but finally and
luckily he was told that Uniten has no interest whatsoever to become
University M$; and then he finally cooled down.

But at least, some of our best people (one ex-Solaris, ex-Unix, ex-Linux,
ex-BSD guys actually *became* ex-*nix and happily jumped into the .NET;
another advertises .NET on his previously neutral machine ("Powered by
Microsoft .NET - Microsoft .NET Server", etc. Very frustrating ...

Uwe 

-----Original Message-----
From: Imran William Smith
To: ossig@mncc.com.my
Sent: 3/20/03 6:04 PM
Subject: [ossig] Microsoft going round promoting .net

MS did a presentation here (Mimos) today on .NET, hoping
to target the technology research people within Mimos.


They are keen to give out CD's with .NET shared source
on them, inviting us to duplicate them, give them out,
have a good browse through the information and code.  Only
when I quizzed them about the licensing agreement did they
admit that there was a license agreement, but glossed
over it somewhat with 'it's a few pages of legal
stuff, actually I didn't read it fully myself'.  The guy
presenting (Dr. Wong Chek Yoon, MicroSoft Visiting Fellow,
Multimedia University) was kind enough to email me
the full license agreement afterwards.

The key phrase is probably:

"You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after
accessing the Software.  However, this right does not grant you a
license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you
might create using such information."


The license is somewhat GPL-like - you can modify and
redistribute but only under the terms of the original license,
and if you try to sue anyone for patent infringement, the license 
automatically ends.



It looks to me like
MS is actively pushing sharedsource code at developers.
They're trying to get mindset in academic world, saying
'this source code will help you do technology research'.
They spin it as 'help the world of technology move forward',
rather than 'help the world of *Microsoft* technology
move forward'.


How best to counter?  Just keep the open source PR
machine rolling?


Imran



-- 
Imran William Smith
Project Manager, Open Source Development,
Mimos Berhad, Malaysia

Asian Open Source Centre : http://www.asiaosc.org
Mimos open source        : http://opensource.mimos.my



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