Shared Source vs. Open Source: Panel Discussion
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Clay:
I'd like to jump in a little bit on this idea of
the future world, and to pick up on some of Craig's comments about
the ecosystem, and to say — as much to this group as I said to
Microsoft — that I think the issue of source code considered
alone is less important now than it was five years ago, and will be
much less important five years from now, because the number of times
that applications are running on a separate box in a separate
location than the operating system they are interacting with is going
to explode through Web services and through peer-to-peer
architectures. And I think the meta-issue we're concerned about here,
with an ecosystem, is interoperability, not merely open
source; and to me, when I think about this future world, I'm more
concerned with open interfaces, which is increasingly how we're going
to have our ecology constructed, than I am with the source code that
lies behind those interfaces, which is often not exposed.
So: our questions for the Microsoft folks, probably more for David than for Craig... In the Hailstorm documents, and in the demo and the white paper, you noted that Hailstorm's schemas are straight XML, no special sauce — demo'd Hailstorm running on Mac OS, a Palm OS, and Linux box—
Craig:
—[garbled] access from those points—
Clay:
—Right. Those were running as Hailstorm end
points. And there was a mention in the press conference, though not in
the white paper, that there would be ways for Linux and Solaris
servers to participate in Hailstorm, although that participation
wasn't defined. So the question I haven't seen answered in public,
that I'd like to get an answer to is: Can I have — can I use
a Hailstorm schema to have a Palm Pilot communicate with a Linux
server, without contacting a Microsoft server during that
transaction?
David:
[To Craig] You going to take that or shall I?
Okay. We absolutely recognize that in a distributed world,
interop is key. Right? No question about it. And as Craig pointed out,
there are a number of industries which sadly have not yet seen the
light and are not running all Microsoft software. [laughter] Alas.
[laughter] I'm sure they'll wake up.
And so from a customer perspective — and we always come from a customer perspective — I know I just need to keep pounding that — the customers are going to want it, and we will definitely make it possible. There is no question that we will do that. It's the right business choice. It's the right choice in terms of policy. It'll happen.
Michael:
So you'll do that when everybody else is dead.
Dave:
No, Michael. [Inaudible]
Clay:
To be fair to Microsoft, that's not true on
device classes where they don't have the monopoly. So there are kind
of two Microsofts here, and there are places where they don't have a
monopoly and they behave very differently. I want to re-ask the
question and try and get a yes or no. [laughter and applause]
Dave:
Okay. [applause] I failed.
Clay:
Yeah. Can I have a Hailstorm transaction without
phoning home to Microsoft during that transaction?
Dave:
So, that is a.... [laughter] — I'll try to
explain. I'll give you a yes or no. I'll say... yes?
Clay:
All right.
Dave:
But I will caveat that with [laughter] much
— as you know, in distributed systems, the interesting things are
done when the parts are brought to the table that you need, right?
Clay:
Yep.
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Shared Source vs. Open Source Related Links |
Dave:
So if Hailstorm is wildly successful, and people
are using Microsoft services provided from Microsoft farms,then it's
highly likely that that Palm Pilot is going to want to perhaps
do authentication and then to federate data from the Linux server
with the authentication information. Right?
Clay:
No question. And obviously I was simplifying the
question by asking for a simple round trip. But the question was
whether or not it's a choice or requirement. And I hear you saying,
"It's a choice."
Craig:
Let me give you my analogy, and it probably won't
be perfect, but the way I think of it, in programming individual
machines in the past, the programmer's interface was the APIs. And
the API was essentially a protocol and schema of an interface for an
operating system. And in the world we see coming, it became clear to
us — for our own account — that we couldn't depend on
things happening only within one machine. We believe that the
traditional notions of distributed computing, in terms of remote
procedure calls and things like that, was the right model, and that in
fact you needed to have loosely coupled systems, broadly defined. And
that that really says in that world, protocol, schemas, and message
packets essentially are akin to APIs. Microsoft has always published
the APIs, and in fact as this community does, they borrow those APIs
and they do whatever they want with them. They emulate them, produce
completely independent implementations. So once we publish the
protocols and schemas for interfacing through a Hailstorm service or
any other .Net service, I don't know why anybody can't take and do
what they do with an API spec today, which is use it as they want to
use it. But—
Tim:
—Can I ask a question about that? I know
there's been some concern in this community about the sort-of second
generation of the SMB protocol being protected by patents to help
keep it from being reverse engineered. There is sort of this feeling
that Microsoft has a strategy that control — and hey, if it's
not going to be controlled via, you know, binary programs, it's going
to be through patents. So maybe are we going to have open shared
source but patent protection? [applause]
Craig:
Sure.
Tim:
So in fact there is still a tool whereby you
could keep people from—
Craig:
—But look: we're a business, okay? We're in
the business of licensing intellectual property. So if it turns out
that in the future that business says, "Okay, we should license
the patents to people who use that in order to be compensated for the
development of intellectual property," maybe we'll do that.
You're always welcome to come and ask us to license anything from
sources to patents. But I mean, we are a business. We're not—
Tim:
But Apple was a business when you copied
their interfaces and, you know— [laughter and applause]
Craig:
Steve would tell you they still are a business.
Brian:
I think even aside from the patents issue, even
aside from the publication of the API issue, you still have a
question of centralization.
Let me use, as an example, DNS. DNS is a quote "distributed system." That's the D in DNS, right? But we all know that there are a set of root name servers out there. Those root name servers used to be managed by a government entity. And that was privatized. And certainly the Internet exploded, certainly there's been a lot of contention over the privatization of those root name services and other people going after promoting alternative root name servers. The fact is right now that is a critical point in our infrastructure, and people are concerned about that.
And I think, likewise, we are similarly concerned with .Net and Hailstorm — that there could be a similar centralization taking place. Where today to go look up a DNS, to look up a host name, you have to ultimately go to a root name server to find out — you know the details. I think there's people concerned that the same type of centralization may come to be inherent in deploying .Net services.
And taking a step back from that, I think a lot of what drives people towards open source is the desire to remove centralization from the software development, from the software distribution model. And I think that's something that's very right for all of us to think about, to be concerned about—
Craig:
—I guess there's two things to think about.
Right now, I mean, we've gone out and told people, "This is what
we're going to do." All right? We didn't wait and just deliver
a fait accompli. All right? We actually have advertised our
intentions, all right? The down side to doing that for us, you know,
I mean — I recently read about AOL deciding to come up with Magic
Carpet. What do you think that is, okay? I mean, they
said, "Oh, this may be a good idea, this thing over here
Microsoft's talking about. Maybe we should have one, too." So it
isn't clear to me that we are granted any automatic franchise in this
area.
