I’m all excited – Microsoft has signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement. You can read about that on the official Joomla! blog – Microsoft signs the Joomla! Contributor Agreement.
There’s a couple of fairly momentous things about that statement.
Obviously it means that Microsoft employees can contribute to Joomla!. That’s exciting all by itself as Joomla! is the second largest PHP application in the world. In fact, that’s already happened in conjunction with the signing as Ruslan Yakushev and Don Raman have already contributed code to add WinCache support to Joomla! Read all about the fantastic performance gains that you can get in Don’s post here – http://blogs.iis.net/donraman/archive/2010/03/05/performance-improvement-in-joomla-using-wincache-user-cache.aspx.
However, the thing that’s really exciting to me is that what it means is that the Microsoft legal department has signed off on writing GPL’d code under the right circumstances. That’s awesome! It’s a clear demonstration of how far Microsoft has come in it’s commitment to OSS projects. Now, I’ve got my own issues with the GPL as I think that it strips the consumer of all of their rights but that’s for a different discussion.
At this point we have a ton of great OSS work going on.
IronRuby is actually accepting contributions back.
Microsoft has contributed 20k lines of code to the Linux Kernel
There’s the CodePlex.com OSS project hosting.
In fact, there’s a list of over 400 projects that Microsoft is participating in actively at http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/directory.aspx.
And that list is not all inclusive as the SQL Server team has contributed code to a lot of different projects including PHPBB.
It’s a fun time to be working at Microsoft as we are in a transformational period finding the right balance between OSS and proprietary code, between selling stuff in boxes to finding interesting ways to monetize online beyond just ad sales and much more.
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[...] There’s a couple of fairly momentous things about that statement. Read more at Microsoft Contributing More to OSS | Josh Holmes [...]
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[...] some amount of Microsoft code in Joomla 1.6Microsoft’s UX Architect Evangelist Josh Holmes on his blog considers this development as an exciting one for Microsoft since it enables them to figure out the [...]
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[...] the latest post to his blog Josh Holmes talks about some of the things Microsoft is doing to contribute back to the Open Source community including code contributions and services they [...]
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[...] the latest post to his blog Josh Holmes talks about some of the things Microsoft is doing to contribute back to the Open Source community including code contributions and services they [...]
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[...] about dissonance. On the day Microsoft crowed that it was letting its employees contribute code to an open-source project – Joolma it fired another shot at [...]
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[...] about dissonance. On the day Microsoft crowed that it was letting its employees contribute code to an open-source project – Joolma it fired another shot at [...]
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[...] about dissonance. On the day Microsoft crowed that it was letting its employees contribute code to an open-source project – Joolma it fired another shot at [...]
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[...] You can learn more about other contributions to Open Source by Microsoft on Josh Holmes’ blog post. Josh is the architect evangelist at [...]
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[...] about dissonance. On the day Microsoft crowed that it was letting its employees contribute code to an open-source project – Joolma it fired another shot at [...]
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[...] qualcosa di più. L’annuncio giunge da Josh Holmes, UX Architect Evangelist, il quale ufficializza il fatto che Microsoft abbia siglato lo Joomla Contributor Agreement diventando così parte [...]
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[...] Recentemente la Microsoft ha ampliato i propri orizzonti nel mondo dell’open source (che rimane pur sempre ben lontano dall’azienda) firmando il contributor agreement per la partecipazione allo sviluppo di Joomla. L’annuncio è stato fatto da Josh Holmes, UX Architect Evangelist di Microsoft, che si è servito del proprio sito personale per diffondere la notizia. [...]
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[...] Microsoft ha firmato il cosiddetto “contributor agreement“, diventando, a tutti gli effetti, partecipante ad una delle più grandi applicazioni PHP open-source attuali. Questo il commento di Josh Holmes, UX Architect Evangelist per Microsoft nel proprio blog: [...]
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[...] Evangelist with Microsoft, has more about the arrangement on his blog: “Obviously it means that Microsoft employees can contribute to Joomla!. That’s exciting all by itself as Joomla! is the second largest PHP application in the world. In [...]
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[...] Holmes, user experience specialist at microsoft, in its Blog very excited about the new collaboration. The Joomla team reported on its portalfor users of [...]
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[...] addition to the technical advances listed above, you have movement from projects like WordPress, Joomla, web2Proj and phpBB to support Microsoft technologies.The obvious end gameI do consider large parts [...]
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[...] Microsoft’un PHP temelli özgür içerik yönetim sistemi Joomla ile çalışmak için bir işbirliği anlaşması imzaladığını duyurdu. Anlaşmadaki en büyük sürpriz hiç kuşkusuz, Microsoft’un GNU [...]
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[...] Microsoft’un PHP temelli özgür içerik yönetim sistemi Joomla ile çalışmak için bir işbirliği anlaşması imzaladığını duyurdu. Anlaşmadaki en büyük sürpriz hiç kuşkusuz, Microsoft’un GNU [...]
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joshholmes: Microsoft Contributing More to OSS $MSFT – http://www.joshholmes.com/blog/2010/04/28/microsoft-contributing-more-to-oss/
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Microsoft Contributing More to OSS including Joomla! http://tinyurl.com/29qnw7t
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Microsoft Contributing More to OSS | Josh Holmes http://www.joshholmes.com/blog/2010/04/28/microsoft-contributing-more-to-oss/
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#microsoft contributes to #joomla! code – http://www.joshholmes.com/blog/2010/04/28/microsoft-contributing-more-to-oss/
I don’t care much for Joomla!, but the fact that Microsoft legal now allows GPL code to be released is excellent news!
And there is also the Live@edu and Moodle add in Published under GPL
http://www.educationlabs.com/projects/moodleproduct/Pages/default.aspx
I have a PPT with some embedded videos on http://bit.ly/MoodleLive
Rob
I would like to hear your reasoning on how the GPL strips _consumers_ of their rights. Are you suggesting that two 3rd parties developing code under a given copyright license can trump consumer rights? If so, how?
@matt – Should have been clearer – Consumer of the code. In other words, the business or individual who leverages the code.
That is great news!
Also if Joomla! is the second largest PHP application what is the first?
@ultrageekuk – largest (by adoption) by a wide margin is WordPress.
Also if Joomla! great article thanks.