Microsoft trying to redefine "open"

             Recently I have been reading a lot about how Microsoft is becoming more open. Plenty of the articles are nice and long. The content is so bland that at the end of the article you feel "nothing". The only thing is that the word "open" will be used profusely and will be present in almost all the sentences. It is like you typed "open" 100 times and then started typing text around them. In one of the article, the author writes how Microsoft has started leveraging "open" source software instead of re-inventing the Tyre. This is what is happening. So, Microsoft will not acquire any proprietary company for an application.

               They will hunt for software available in public domain and use them without spending a single dime, which for Microsoft is definitely a major shift. This got a boost with the acquisition of github. Majority of software available on github are hobby projects satisfying the creators itch. They are now ready to use the model made famous by Apple(with Macos and webkit) and google(Android, chrome). If a piece of software is available with sufficient maturity include it. No licensing fees. Microsoft wanted a collaboration and versioning system, they went and bought github. How does a proprietary company justify acquisition of a platform used by FLOSS and OSS developers. Start rebranding the proprietary company which wants to become open.

                To this day not a single key proprietary software has been released in the open. How are they now open? But github was a key cog in the wheel of the upgrades for windows 10. Now, Microsoft wants a rolling release strategy for windows 10. That is there will not be a windows 11. github is the component Microsoft lacked. Now, the upgrades for windows 10 is much easier. With this methodology all the users are beta testers. But, the catch here is that people pay for a windows license. A wrong upgrade can be costly to the company. Now with the present acquisition, it will be easy for the company to roll back changes and release a downgrade. The best example for the openness ad per the organization is its decision of using chromium browser to replace its nonsensical attempt at browser. The worlds biggest company cannot make the most important software of the internet world. If you cannot fight them embrace them.

                     Why chromium? Holes. Microsoft likes holes. It creates holes and sells holes. To start with Microsoft cant make a browser so it cannot make a browser with good holes. So, take a browser created by a company with holes, lots of holes and made by an advertising company. What is the result of such a dangerous combo? Holes, Lots of holes(re-quoting Keanu Reaves). Now, Microsoft is "open" for business on the internet. Is google complaining? No, why? They will be getting to know the holes created by Microsoft. Together they are ever happy while exposing the consumer to the highest amount of data collection. Why didn't Microsoft fork Firefox? Just because the Xbox team is sitting beside the surface team, have they become open. Just because all its employees are sitting in open spaces, has Microsoft become open? Just because the "notepad" team is sitting beside the "office" team, are they now "open".

                  Microsoft is creating a new definition for "open". It is out to malign the word "open" create confusion among users regarding the meaning. The openness withing chronically closed systems. If the kids just sit beside parents and discuss can the system be called open. Yes withing the family, they can be called open, but doesn't mean that this family honors the society as a whole. All this PR about open is Pure PR. What is in it for the end user. Will you get a better windows experience and so on.....

          For us FLOSS enthusiasts, Until Microsoft matches the phrase "show me the code" there is no relation between the word "open" and Microsoft.

Apathy in India

          I am sitting waiting for my train. Two elderly couple order coffe from the vendor who is busy counting his money.In fact he reluctantly gave them coffee. They enjoyed the coffee gleefuylly sitting on the chairs provided on the platform. They finished it and then got up from their chair and did the most unthinkable and unimaginable thing. They threw the disposable coffe cup right in front of them. They then went back to their chairs waiting for the train. And I am in for one more shocker. The train rambled in right on time. But still, the time beig announced was for the arrival of the time. There was no indication as to when it would depart.

             Now there are two parts in the above situation. One is that of the elderly couple and the other is the dinasour of a train service, The Indian railways. Let us now take up the first part, the elderly couple. They had their cuppa which is very much ingrained in an Indian's daily routing, nothing wrong about it. The difference and the shock starts when the couple finish their cuppa. They threw the cup right on to the train tracks. They did this in auto mode. They did not give it a thought. They just thought that that was where the garbage had to go. Now they are waiting for a train which is supposed to arrive on the same track. For me this incident was a shocker. The event really caught my attention.

         This happened while I was going through a blog post regarding slackware and how the author adored the way the distro is being maintained and gave accolades to its history. All of a sudden because of this incident my eyes started to scan that particular platform. I was not searching for anything in particular. To start with, I started looking for waste bins, I found one just beside the elderly couple's chair. I nearly went near them and wanted to advice them that they had a bin at arms length. I just paused for a moment and observed that the bin was full to its complete capacity. Now I searched for all the bins across the platform and to my shock, every single one was overflowing. I restrained myself from advicing the elderly couple. Now, I turned my attention towards the vendor. Having counted his money, he was belting out the beverage at a feverish pace without bothering where the used cups are going to end. Now, I extended my horizong to all the platforms, wait for it, It was the same across the 10 platforms.

         The solution, which I thought at that moment was very simple. Dont allow the vendor to sell any more coffee until the waste bins are cleared. Imagine the uproar of the commuters at such a proposal. Thereby putting pressure on the vendors as well as railway personnel. Let us start keeping up cleanliness across all the public utilities. It is not happening with people on their own. It is better to put meaningful constraints on all the stake holders. The constraint should be on both the service provider and the service receiver.

The modern web is f*&*d

            It required the mozilla firefox's debacle to understand how complicated and shitty the  www has become. It is no more interlinking of html files. It is a treasure trove of executables. Executables are supposed to be run on your own personal computer/laptop. Every web page you open runs executable code. I just want to view the page. If i want to execute something, i will do it. But, the "I" for one is totally absent. It is "we". They decide what is to be show and executed. You, poor chap want to read the text in a html page. You point the browser to that exact html link. What do you get. Nothing. Yes, you get nothing out of everything. The world wide web to start with was such a joy. I remember seeing one of my richer friends using the www and I thought it was so serene. It was like God, if there was one has come down. It was like Krishna with all his knowledge is only waiting for you to ask the right questions. The answers are all there but tied to the right questions. It was like an interlinked answer sheet for "everything".

              What has the web come to now. The chromium browser i use, is the, ungoogled chromium build with all the plugins required for removing ads, privacy guarding, javascript disabling stuff. The link i wanted to open did not open until i disabled the script blocking plugin. Now, what is this page i was looking at. I was looking at a page from mozilla's website which was periodically being updated during this addons debacle. You know what, the page was not displayed until i enabled scripts to run. Why are scripts running here. Yes, I dont know how the modern www works. I just know how to make it look better from a client point of view. youtube doesnt display on the chromium browser with scripts disabled. I was just reading about the way youtube was started by its hipster devs. I felt very sorry for them. A big organization taking control of your pet project starts by giving you that processing power you need to start with. Then starts the acquisition of everything. You lose your identity. All acquisitions start with giving the acquired the promise of independence. Now, independence, is an intoxicating word. It is like you are suddenly on one of the private beaches and you are being told you are the owner and here is the money to run it.

                  From here the buyer will start scheming. How is he gonna integrate this independent entity into his largesse. Everything will happen bit by bit. The buyer will tell I am going to install security guards for "your" teams safety. Now, you are cornered and in the coming days you will screw your team or will exit it altogether for the team to fend themselves. The remaining team have to just go with the buyer. You and your efforts are still not recognized in the vc market. So you continue for a few days become goody goody with the buyer and incorporate whatever you are asked. There ends the independent product.

                    When I started using the public network. It was so neat. You want to download a big file do it from my ftp server. Dont clog my http server, other users will feel the latency. Your http server will "only" serve http pages and links, nothing else. You wanted to write a blog go ahead and register to organizations specialized in doing so. The tool will only concentrate on making blogging experience better. All of a sudden the blogging landscape became zero. All the blogs were searchable. What an utopian condition. Now, you write your blogs. It does not come up in any searches though it will be the only matching web page based on your searches. But the first 100/10000/N results will yield results what the "algorithms" tell. Now, algorithms is a good word for the big corporations to escape from responsibility. The algorithms are so complicated that i believe it is out of human intervention considering the complex rules which includes government rules, paid content, the ISP and what not. The user and the creator are totally lost in this maze.

                  Everybody wants to build a bigger walled garden. A stronger walled garden. Is everything in the walled garden accessible to everybody in that particular walled garden. No. The products are same as the industry. A person working beside somebody will not know about the salary of the next. But, all work in the same walled garden. The products are also the same. There is no openness left in this industry. There has to be a revolution. This revolution has to happen from the bourgeoisie, the content creators. The content creators have to wage the war. It is not that difficult. The internet allows the freedom  and tools to do it.

              I had a book named internet with me, purchased when i started to understand how the internet works. I remembered that book and gave it a visit. It might seem idiotic now, but, there was one word which caught my eye, "gopher" Sadly the number of articles on this protocol is at the minimal on the public network. But, this was until I went down one of the gopher hole. From here it was rabbit hole.

             I request all the content creators to host a gopher server and advertise it along the http pages. I loved the simplicity of the protocol(Come on, the http was just to have linkable web pages and travel down the rabbit hole). If you want your content to be searchable and help other people put it on plain html websites or put it in a gopher hole. Start using it, you will fall in love immediately, with its simplicity, with its methodology of serving content. Its adaptability to deliver content in terms of text file and to download other content like music/movies/pdf etc.

The servers available

af          A simple gopher server written in Lua, with a blogging module
geomidae    A simple gopher client written in C
Attua       A gopher server writting in Retro, A forth dialect


The clients available

sacc    A simple console gopher client
cgo     A simple console gopher client
vf1     Majority of the hackers on gopher tend to use it.

For more info enter the
gopher://bitreich.org:70    with your gopher client

The above is a very small list. I have come across much more. At this moment of writing I have used the above and remember them well.

           I spend all my time on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD. Therefore all the collections are projects running on these platforms. What an awesome community/developers are out there. It has been an honor to use your hard work and your passion.