On 4/22/16, jd1008 <jd1008@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/21/microsoft_open_source_practice/ > Microsoft headhunters seek Linux folk for secret open source unit > Recruiters target penguinistas for Azure sales joy Since when Microsoft cares about the legality of its acts? They certainly grew to its current position thinking Antutrust law did not exist -or if existed, thinking it did not apply to them-. *sarcasm* Reminds me of "The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer." from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissinger_cables BTW: taking open source software and turning it into a "cloud service" where you incidentally remove the ability of people using it modifying -and even more important, even looking at the source code, effectively turning former FOSS into a black box "service" is nothing new. H*ck, Google even lifted entire portions of the OpenOffice.org spreadsheets documentation and used it for the GDocs spreadsheets functions "on-line manual". Good luck finding the GDocs source they run on their servers... much less tweaking it I've long said that Cloud Computing is "the fine art of separating people from their software. So, in this Brave New World of "SAAS" (software as a service) we risk going full circle back to the days of the mainframe with dumb terminals (which now will be a lot less dumb and browser-centered), and the source code of the apps we run being locked and running inside the "mainframe room" by the secretive IT guys. Now that room is "the cloud". Case in point: IBM had a couple decades ago, IBM Voicetype and then IBM Viavoice dictation software. Now IBM offers you voice recognition as a service on thier "cloud". They are free to bill you per usage (or not) as they please, you can't even choose to run Viavoice on your PC anymore (they long ago sold rights of the desktop version to their main competitor, Nuance, so that dead product has no future or further development, it's their cloud based service what they're trumpeting now). Yes, I know the concept of the private cloud and that some orgs will prefer to have the source of what they run insde their own little clouds (20 yrs ago it was called "the intranet" and client-server instead of browser->SAAS), but that's not what the big corps are aiming at. They are aiming at turning APIs into "SAAS APIs". Whereas the cloud only offers you an entry point and spits back the data/result you want, provided you provide your developer ID key at the beginning of the transaction. Congratulations, you've just handled over the PIN of your bank account and enslaved yourself in the process. But, gee, fighting this is not worth it. It's a lost battle. Today's 20-something and newer generations just love to own nothing and pay thru the nose for "subscriptions" to everything,from digital radio to music streaming.... services which were previously "free" to listen forever if you purchased physical media or a FM receiver. Back to the point, yes, it is legal. Convenient? maybe, initially. Desirable, hell no, IMHO. But WTF do I know... FC -- During times of Universal Deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act Durante épocas de Engaño Universal, decir la verdad se convierte en un Acto Revolucionario - George Orwell -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
