Okey, i got the chance to sit down and have coffee with a friend last night who is totally MS dev and we had these discussions:
Opensource is screwed more towards service oriented market, while MS is screwed towards product oriented market. If i develop under MS, i usually build applications for distribution. It is important that the features, ideas and technology of the product is protected, thats why they are distributed as compiled binary packages w/ licenses to protect the source code and the technology used. The tools i use are costly since they provide the abstraction between MS OS and my applications, these tools are required so MS can protect their source code/technology but still allows other products to run under MS; thats why we usually ask for the API - today we have MSDN to take care of that (the new developers are lucky, we used to hack our way into windows before) If i develop under OSS,i usually build services for use. These services are mostly used by existing applications (OSS or MS) or to provide new technologies and capabilites. These services are supported by releasing opensource applications which OSS community may revise and enchance. There is no danger in distributing technologies along with these application under OSS since this would ensure that the technology advances and mature faster allowing more diverse services to be built using that technology; a mutual symbiosis. In short, MS dev needs to dominate/protect their sourcode and tecnology to survive while OSS needs to share and innovate to survive. Thats why it's scary for an MS dev company to think that their latest prorietary software be suddenly available to public - its their bread and butter. Then here comes OSS who seems to be able to provide the same technology at lower cost; the worst part is..OSS is giving away these technologies for free. It is an innate nature of technology to be transferrable since we, the technology users, needed to interact to survive. Its a universal law, energy must be transfered in one form or another, same analogy goes with technology and anything else. We always say in the security world that there is no such thing as secure system, if there is a way to build something, there is always a way to destroy it ( 4lph4 and 0m3g4 ;p). Even if how hard we try to proctect and hold these technologies for our advantage, someone else will always figure it out.. someone will always build a better one; when this happens, we MS developers aways brand them as copycats/"me-too"'s -- Well, that is like saying we believe are the only ones in entire universe! (so what if there are other life out there and they also have MS, can we sue? ;p). Let's not dwell too much in these subjects, the important thing is that the dynamics between the battle of OSS and proprietary/MS exposes new oppurtunities. i say let MS join the OSS scheme of things, it would make the lives of developers much easier by being able to reverse engineer MS better ;p (and ofcourse build better applications, lower dev MS cost, & etc) Just our two cents worth. OT: im still looking for the API for winXP SP2 bluetooth stack. help. -- Roger P. Filomeno Systems Developer Finger Apps Inc, http://fingerapps.com Systems Developer Entertainment Gateway Group, http://egg.ph -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
