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We had two Soylentils submit stories on Microsoft's joining the Eclipse Foundation:
Eclipse Foundation Gains Member
Coincident with a solar eclipse, Microsoft Corp. has joined the Eclipse Foundation. The company has also made its Team Explorer Everywhere software, "the official TFS [Team Foundation Server] plug-in for Eclipse," available in source form under an MIT-style licence.
coverage:
- Ars Technica
- Tech Crunch
- The Register (Cloudflare-protected)
- Infoworld
- ZDNet
- Network World
- The Inquirer
- CIO
- Fortune
- WinBeta (Cloudflare-protected)
[Continues.]
MSFT is Sinking its Claws Into the Eclipse Foundation
from the openwashing dept.
TechRights reports
Microsoft is Turning Eclipse Into a Proprietary Software Tool by Sinking its Claws Into the Eclipse Foundation
Microsoft is spreading proprietary software and surveillance, extorting Linux with software patents, and [...] contaminating FOSS frameworks--all in less than a single day
Less than a day after the latest "loves Linux" nonsense, we begin to see puff pieces, e.g. [1, 2, 3], which seem more like Microsoft advertisements than actual journalism. No critical thinking, no background/research, no fact-checking. Nothing. Just parroting Microsoft's marketing/propaganda.
"Microsoft today announced that it is joining the Eclipse Foundation," one 'journalist' wrote, "the open source group that's probably best known for its Eclipse IDE, but which also offers a number of other developer tools."
This is "embrace, extend, extinguish", for reasons we already explained in [...] past articles.
[...] Eclipse is actually against software patents, which Microsoft uses against Linux even this week. What was the leadership of Eclipse thinking here? That Microsoft has changed? That there's a 'new' Microsoft? No such thing, it's all marketing/reputation laundering.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Friday March 11 2016, @07:28AM
Reality: MS wrote a plugin/extension (or a set of them) for the Eclipse Framework (free) to work with its (proprietary) Team Foundation Server.
You are free to not install their extension and continue to use it as it was until now - which is what I'll be doing.
This means MS' extension is just one of the heaps of others which may fall into the following categories:
* FOSS extensions standalone or using/interoperating with FOSS products
* FOSS extensions that integrate/interoperate with proprietary software (e.g. all the extensions/plugins for WebSphere/Lotus Notes/etc )
* Proprietary extensions. E.g. almost all if not actually all of the "Rational whatever" IBM products, or Redhat's JBoss Developer Studio [wikipedia.org], or Parasoft C/C++test [wikipedia.org], or plenty of others.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11 2016, @08:02AM
no sale! no buy! no use!
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday March 11 2016, @12:56PM
1) Enable use of Team Foundation Server etc
2) Make people use software dependent on that extension
3) Demand.. when people have a sufficient barrier to leave. That the main software does X, Y or Z.
4) Corrupt everything beyond usability.
5) People leave.. GOTO 10.
What is needed is some kind cold hand over anything that is Microsoft. Get of their software and services. Refuse to collaborate on anyone working for them etc. Make it hard for Microsoft software to work. Allow only interfacing that strictly benefit open source etc. Don't invite their wetware drones etc.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 11 2016, @01:36PM
You forgot:
0) convince people to use Team Foundation Server
without this step, everything on that list is moot.
Now, let me ask: why the hell someone that didn't have any point of touch with MS dev technologies would suddenly feel the urge to do it?
Most of the Eclipse users won't feel this compulsion - MS kept its developers captive with different Visual Studio versions until now, so the set intersection between Eclipse users and VS users is so small it can be neglected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday March 11 2016, @01:47PM
Eclipse users will be entangled in the Microsoftverse. There is a reason for Microsoft to do these moves. They are motivated by money and power.
So any suggestion to counteract this and other moves?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 11 2016, @02:16PM
No they won't.
Because what MS released is optional
As an Eclipse user, one only installs whatever plugins or extension one needs and nothing else. You can even start with an Eclipse installation that is devoid of any plugin coming from the Eclipse site**
If you need to install the MS TFS extension in Eclipse it is probably because you need to use the Team Foundation Server (perhaps your employer already uses uses it?). In which case, Eclipse or not, you'd be already fucked - you stepped into MS' shit and you are already stinking.
But if you don't use Team Foundation, there's no way MS can force you (an Eclipse user) to touch Microsoft's extension - you just do not install the the TFS plugin and continue to do whatever you'd be doing oblivious to the fact that MS is drooling after developers or the FOSS activists try to raise hell.
--
** this has been used as a technique to maintain up-to-date a non-browser application. I know for a fact that, before the advent of high frequency trading bots, a certain financial behemoth in London built their real-time trading client application as an Eclipse framework plugin.
Everytime their traders would start their "application" (in fact, an Eclipse installation with no externals plugins), the Eclipse would check if a new version of plugin (materializing their internal trading application) is available and, if so, would download and start to use it.
Et voila - a rich client application combined with the low cost of new-version-distribution typical to a Web application - the best of the two worlds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Friday March 11 2016, @02:45PM
GPL , FOSS , ONLY. RMS is correct and the continued smear campaigns are an attempt to discredit the core principle in favour of "somethings are different".
There is no difference. Microsoft is doing this because they have the resources to legally blur any license they touch *except* the GPL, where they publish the source.
They also have the resources to take any GPL product then bolt on a closed source MIT blob, and entrench you the way every sh*tty thing they have ever done.
Disclosure: 10 years *almost* M$ free (those f*ckers got rent for the crappy exfat on android, but I couldn't avoid that without paying the fruity tax).
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday March 11 2016, @02:54PM
You could pay the Replicant tax.. oh wait ;)