Comments on: Is open source becoming like Microsoft?

Open source is about choice. But many new projects adopt strategies that make them look like the proprietary ecosystems they were designed to squash.

[odubtaig]

Two key differences.

1) MS _can_ do this with PHP because nothing is hidden, it's all out in the open. They can put out their own reconfigured version of PHP designed to work best with MS SQL Server if they like.
2) MS _can_ do this because they're not forced to go to only one authorised support and maintenance source.

Try doing that with ASP.

[rbethell]

How to put this delicately... um, you do. er, realize that asp will work with just about ANY database, PostGre and MySQL inclusive?

[odubtaig]

Imagine it doesn't.

Kay?

[Goodbye Helicopter]

Boy, you really have NO IDEA about what you are writing about, do you? Just admit it. You didn't do any journalistic fact-checking at all.
PHP is a language that happens to include a fair number of functions in its standard library. It is database agnostic. You can use SQLite, MySQL, PostGREs, Oracle, SAP, and more with PHP.

WordPress can easily be used with several different databases. (the first three I mentioned above do come to mind).
What's more, WP is built with PHP, thus it is inherently database agnostic.

Most interpreted languages used for web development today, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and more... are all database agnostic. They all have their own various libraries for talking to databases, usually using the name DBI for libs that work with SQL directly. All have libraries that do ORM like the famous ActiveRecord used by Rails in Ruby (ruby on rails).
ORMs are no different, they too tend to be well designed and fairly database agnostic.

You really should have your pay docked for writing B.S. that you did no homework on.
Open Source means the source code is available.
MySQL, SQLite, Postgres = all open source.
Other useful and reliable databases? Proprietary.

[LuvThatCO2]

I agree. As I was reading this, I'm thinking *** is this guy yammering about? PHP only supports MySQL? Since when? If anything, its *less* focused on MySQL than it was 5 years ago.

[hymanroth]

@Goodbye Helicopter , there's no need to be rude. If you had bothered to have clicked on the link, you would have quickly understood that MS is improving to the Php - SQLServer interface.

Since MS is taking steps to improve the compatibility of one of its products with an open source product, it's certainly newsworthy in my opinion.

[The_Decider]

"WordPress? Written for MySQL. PHP? Same. The list goes on."

Know nothing Matt thought PHP only supports MySQL.

Now, PHP is something MS would be interested because it might just be the worst thing not developed at MS. PHP is amateur hour.

[fazalmajid]

I was using PHP with Oracle in 2000. Oracle is now putting effort in official support for PHP, but it's not a new phenomenon. SQL Server support is weaker, but that's just because the pool of Windows server-side open-source coders is much smaller - OpenTDS allows connectivity, but recent versions of SQL Server changed the protocol enough for it not to support all the functionality.

As for apps supporting only MySQL, I prefer PostgreSQL myself, but the reality is that SQL is an imperfect standard that does not permit full interoperability, and thus supporting multiple database backends is a major engineering effort. If it wasn't in the original architecture, it's hard to retrofit. That said, I have personal experience with someone doing this - I wrote a RSS reader called Temboz that uses SQLite, someone else rewrote it to use PostgreSQL as a backend, and this is a project that has probably no more than 500 users or so. You have no such ability with proprietary software.

[The_Decider]

Matt,

Go away. Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough? PHP only supports MySQL? LOL

Novell laying off 25% of its employees? LOL

Using Hibernate is the same as integrating functionality to 2 kernels? LOL

You are a clown, go away.

[odubtaig]

Mainframe's the same as a cluster? LOLOCOPTER.

The_Decider: In ur glasshauses, throwing stones.

[The_Decider]

*** are you babbling about?

I never said that. You need to pull your head out and get things straight.

I did equate cloud computing(which is not cluster computing either) with mainframes, because that is basically what it is.

Yeah, I have written programs that run concurrently on dozens of processors, yet I don't know the difference.

You are as stupid as Matt is.

[odubtaig]

I doubt you've done anything which was not easily parallelised.

Do it with fluid dynamics, then I'll be impressed.

[odubtaig]

PS Cloud computing involves remote access to servers. If that makes it the same as mainframes then VPNing to a Xeon server running Windows Server is the same as mainframes. There the similarity ends.

Now, server farms and clusters are a collection of less powerful computers suited to many non-interdependent tasks or CPU intensive tasks with little data transfer (the difference being in how they are logically arranged) while mainframes are single highly powerful computers suited to tasks with high levels of data transfer and operations which are sequentially dependent.

If you don't think that's a significant difference you've not done anything that advanced.

[jeicrash]

Open Source Becoming Like Microsoft?
Just because an open source project is designed to work specifically or easily with another open source project does not make it anything like MS. The reason many developers do this is to ensure the product stays open source throughout its entire deployment.

I think its good to see MS wanting to further involve itself in the open source community even if it won't cut the cost of their next OS.

[ewriter21]

Matt, I don't fully agree with the reasons but I couldn't agree with you more on the results. Many of the other comments here just reinforce the point. Attacking the specific example to sustain a "them bad, we good" point of view while ignoring the actual point of the story really isn't that productive.

I think the reasons are more benign and simple. IT isn't a giant hatred of Microsoft so much as it is easier and cheaper for OSS projects to develop, test, support and optimize on OSS stacks for the same reason that OSS software is easier for customers to try and, ultimately, adopt.

How did most of us (kernel hackers excepted) get started with open source? The myth is that we did so with Linux. The reality is that we did so with Apache and PHP on Windows, Unix or even NetWare long before Linux on servers was as prevalent as it is now. These were tools that met a need and happened to have a different development model. The openness was secondary to our decisions. We tried them because the model allowed us to. Free until you are getting enough value to justify paying for service/support made it easy to get hooked.

Now, if the community of developers or the potential "customers" had to pay for Windows, SQL Server, MS Transaction Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc. in order to do development and test or to evaluate and run the OSS software, where would we be? They chose OSS stacks for a reason.

My conclusion then is that the OSS projects may show a bias towards OSS stacks but that non-OSS business models are as much a cause of this as any "proprietary" thinking or behavior from OSS communities.

[penguiniator]

"to the extent that we build projects that run only with other open-source projects, and intend them to only work with open-source components, we're acting like the proprietary ecosystems that we've been trying to overcome."

Your entire point is rendered moot by the availability of source code and the licenses that apply to it.

[davidherron444]

Yeah, this article is totally crazy & poorly argued. e.g. obviously PHP supports multiple databases etc. "Open source is about choice, including the choice to run open source with closed complements." is also strange. I don't think the Open Source Initiative describes their purpose as being about choice. Yeah, that's a part of it, but there's a huge half of the open source movement for whom that statement would be offensive. It's the Free Software movement I'm thinking of, and e.g. the Stallmanite argument is that all software should be Free (for specific definitions of 'Free'). It's not about choice to mix open & closed components, but it's about freedom.

[MichaelTiemann]

Matt,

I'll spare you the invective and just say that yes, there do exist open source projects tied at the hip to other open source projects. And yes, that can be evidence of poor design. But, and this is the all important point, there are many open source projects out there that are focused on this or that specific decoupling (such as "It's XYZ with Postgres instead of MySQL" or "it's UVW with JAVA APIs instead of C++", etc.) and these projects can exist because of open source licensing.

Open source is not about wishing away work by claiming perfect source that's infinitely scalable, flexible, and future-proof. Open source is about making it possible for any developer to do the work to make the software they need more scalable, flexible, and future proof. And that's still a big deal.

[bstadil]

You got this precisely backward. It is the closed source vendors that need to do the work to secure interoperability with open source. They are the ones that have the source code in both ends.

[changopeludo]

Oh boy, you got it wrong...

In open source source you have accessibility to the source code (open source... understand?) . Don't like to use MySQL for WordPress? you have the source code, you can make WP work with other DBMS...