The hypocrisy of Codeplex

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I'm tired of hearing all this "We love open source." bull$hit from Microsoft. Since they began Codeplex, they have been touting it as their way of embracing the free software movement. In reality, Codeplex defeats the entire purpose of free software, which is to create an atmosphere in which people can use only free software, and not have to rely on proprietary products. The fact that all of the software that comes out of Codeplex is Windows-only defies this entire principle, and only works to reinforce dependence on proprietary operating systems. Why is it that every effort Microsoft makes to "contribute to the community" is something that really only benefits them? Sorry, but I'm not buying it, and I don't think this dedication of theirs to open source is at all sincere. If they really want to look sincere about it, the first step would be, I don't know, maybe stop trying to make free software illegal.

Yeah, all those people choose voluntarily to use it because it doesn't benefit them in any way.

I think you're confusing open source and proprietary. There's no reason the two have to overlap entirely. There are plenty of open source projects out there that don't run on Windows - you must be really upset about that as well.

What're you talking about? Microsoft loves to flaunt how it contributed Hyper-V drivers to Linux, even though they hardly maintain them and legally had to due to them using GPL software in the Hyper-V stack. But that part seems to of missed their website.

It depends on design. In theory the non windows stuff is portable to windows. Depending on how MS did things, it might not be possible(or legal) to port them outside windows despite being ostensibly open source.

The thing is that Linux and Free BSD are open-source themselves. Windows, on the other hand, forces you to be accountable to a company, a company that has done everything in its power to destroy free software, despite their feigned dedication to it.

Microsoft itself represents the complete opposite of open software, since it's a multibillion dollar commercial software company and all, but it will pretend to love open source if it generates significant good PR and allows them to make claims about contributions to open source.

Anything is portable if you spend enough time and energy. Your statement about porting from Windows is ridiculous. If I write software on my own that runs in Windows, and decide to take my code and make it run on some other system, that's my business. If I were to take Microsoft's code and try to port it, that would be something different.



How am I forced to be accountable to MS? I write and give out code that runs on Windows all the time and the company doesn't hold me accountable.

Honestly, I think you guys are crazy if you think no-one is making a buck on Linux & FreeBSD applications. Sure you can get free source-code and that's great for those of us who understand it. But the honest truth is that most users don't understand the code and often end up paying the "free software" vendors for service contracts to get their applications running smoothly. For the vast majority of the consumers that use these applications in a business environment it's no more free than an application running on Windows or Mac.

That's kind of the point. If Microsoft is going to restrict people's use of Codeplex software by not allowing them to port it to other platforms, then it's not really free software.

That's because you're doing exactly what they want you to do: write Windows-only programs. If you were to make a product that actually competes with Microsoft software or threatens their market share in any way, you can be sure they'd be on your case.

Exactly. And you still run into problems like DLL stomping. And you are not assured that the development IDE is going to include DLLs in the install or even that the licence for said DLLs allow them(and their code) to be used outside a licenced window install.

I've written Windows software that competes with Microsoft product and sold it on the web. Have been doing so for over a decade. Microsoft doesn't complain. They've had plenty of opportunity.



Why would I assume that a windows DLL would compile on another system? You guys seem to be talking about something totally different. You seem to be talking about taking Microsoft's code (or compiled code in the case of DLLs) and running them on another system. I can see why they'd be upset if you did that - it's their code and they're not releasing it for free. That's their right. But if I port my app from Windows to *nix and use whatever *nix libraries or open-source projects are available to me instead of the MS code, Microsoft has nothing they can say to me. I can still build my own portable app that is my code and runs on both operating systems and MS can't do anything about it.

Do you guys actually have any experience developing apps on both Windows and *nix? I do, and I've got to be honest that the stuff you guys come up with seems really bizzare and perhaps over-paranoid.

Most of the stuff on codeplex has a much more permissive license than the GNU stuff, too. I use one of the projects on that site in a redistributable web app.

What exactly is it that you write?

Yes. Though nothing worth mentioning. My stuff is private to a group of my friends.

You have to understand where we are coming from. In linux the libraries, compilers and IDEs are LGPL which allows one to derive closed source applications. Once you incorporate GPL stuff, all derived work has to be GPL as well. So when we see a closed source DLL(or really, the code inside it), we naturally think that its precedent license will unduly constrict our work. The fact that the GPL exists at all suggests that this is a valid concern.

Anyway, effectively what you are talking about with cross platform is two applications with closely matched functionality.

When I wanted to write a DLL based on my collection of linux functions, I found that I had to massively rewrite it, despite the fact that in linux it was just a text file of functions.

To build a shared object, the linux equivalent of a DLL, it took all of two lines in terminal. Windows, it seems, takes 17 discrete steps according to the easiest tutorial I managed to find. Plus I had to write extra stuff into the file.

The linux SO was just a collection of functions. example:



and to compile it to a shared object?



yeah, I could assign the script to a button. No need for terminal work. This shared object will work with c, c++, python... just about anything.

In a windows DLL however, it seems i have to specify exports and do all sorts of esoteric stuff. Example of a hello world dll?

http://www.rgagnon.com/pbdetails/pb-0123.html

The point is, a port either takes a bunch of butchery to get it from windows(almost a total rewrite) or the addition of a bunch of extra code clutter to get it from linux to windows. Needless to say I'd rather go from linux code to windows. Once you start tearing chunks out of your application, things go bad fast. This seems to be a trend with professionals as well, as a lot of games are developed for windows using linux machines.

Are the pros onto something?

All you have to do is specify exports and use stdcall for exported functions. What's esoteric about that? You only want to export functions that are part of your libraries interface, not everything.