Microsoft Open-Sources Edge's WebGL Implementation

[stan-qaz]

Is there any case where this has happened ever? As a matter of fact, the only case I can think of is Nexuiz off the top of my head which was licensed under GPLv2. Xonotic was still made from that though and it's still kicking to this day. What point are you trying to make?

EDIT: Cadega/TransGaming also comes to mind. WINE still won here where Cadega retired in 2011 and WINE continued.

I'm feeling a bit lazy so I'll just give you a Google link to get you started:

https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=microsoft%20embrace%20extend%20extinguish

and a couple results from there that sum things up well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

The strategy and phrase "embrace and extend" were first described outside Microsoft in a 1996 New York Times article titled "Tomorrow, the World Wide Web! Microsoft, the PC King, Wants to Reign Over the Internet",[5] in which writer John Markoff said, "Rather than merely embrace and extend the Internet, the company's critics now fear, Microsoft intends to engulf it." The phrase "embrace and extend" also appears in a facetious motivational song by Microsoft employee Dean Ballard,[6] and in an interview of Steve Ballmer by the New York Times.[7]

The variation, "embrace, extend and extinguish", was first introduced in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial when a vice president of Intel, Steven McGeady, testified[8] that Microsoft vice president Paul Maritz used the phrase in a 1995 meeting with Intel to describe Microsoft's strategy toward Netscape, Java, and the Internet.[9][10]

http://techrights.org/2014/09/05/embrace-and-extend-again/

Microsoft has got a well-established track record of suffocating competition by pretending to embrace it. It is not a theory but a simple fact, and many dead companies exist (or existed) to remind us of this.

In recent years FOSS has been a target of Microsoft’s abusive EEE strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish) and today we present some new examples.

There are several examples following the quote I pasted above.

[timofonic]

FreeBSD is meant for a handful of various platforms. The fact that people like Sony modified the software to their specific platform in no way politically or technically hurts FreeBSD. That's the *entire point* and one of the few cases where it's not completely looked down upon. There isn't a whole lot that Sony can contribute back that would be useful for the current goals of FreeBSD, while Sony is also avoiding any complicated licensing issues that would be attached to say a GPL-based system.

Also given that Apple is what started projects like Clang, I can't fathom where you're going with that.

I'm also not sure what Samsung used and not contributed back to?

To me, GPL issues aren't issues at all. But I'm totally against copyright in a absolute way.

I'm totally against consumer closed systems like copyright systems, smartphones and tablets too.

They did their own OS for mobile phones, but it failed *even more* than Windows Phone. Bad. It died many years ago, they are not "focusing" on Tizen, based on Meego, Mer... (poisoned to die too, Nokia touched it...)

[unixfan2001]

Put the code up under the MIT licence, hope to get lots of free help improving the code, take the code back inside MS and make more modifications that follow the usual MS, embrace, extend, extinguish pattern of making use of useful idiots.

Nope, GPL'd code is all I'm interested in at this point.

Is that why they chose the MIT license rather than BSD, where this would actually be possible?

You GPL zealots sure don't know anything about competing license terms, it seems.

[unixfan2001]

I'm feeling a bit lazy so I'll just give you a Google link to get you started:

https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=microsoft%20embrace%20extend%20extinguish

and a couple results from there that sum things up well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

http://techrights.org/2014/09/05/embrace-and-extend-again/

There are several examples following the quote I pasted above.

None of which has anything to do with their open source efforts.
What the heck is your point?

[computerquip]

To me, GPL issues aren't issues at all. But I'm totally against copyright in a absolute way.

I'm totally against consumer closed systems like copyright systems, smartphones and tablets too.

They did their own OS for mobile phones, but it failed *even more* than Windows Phone. Bad. It died many years ago, they are not "focusing" on Tizen, based on Meego, Mer... (poisoned to die too, Nokia touched it...)

I'm feeling a bit lazy so I'll just give you a Google link to get you started:

https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2...d%20extinguish

and a couple results from there that sum things up well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrac...and_extinguish

[Linuxhippy]

Recently MS seems to open-source a lot of code which actually nobody cares at all. There are already at least 2 open-source WebGL implementations available (Mozilla Gecko's and Google Blink's), so the impact of their code donation is quite limited.

However, they are of course holding back the code which would really make a difference (e.g. their Win32 user-space code , which would e.g. help the wine project a lot).

[cj.wijtmans]

No available sourcecode is NOT open. They did this with the xp kernel source code once.

[starshipeleven]

However, they are of course holding back the code which would really make a difference (e.g. their Win32 user-space code , which would e.g. help the wine project a lot).

Ah come on. You're asking them to commit suicide basically. If Wine becomes feature-complete as even just XP there will be no kind of reason to upgrade to newer windows, and most companies will just switch to a suitable RHEL, Novell Enterprise Linux or whatever.

No available sourcecode is NOT open. They did this with the xp kernel source code once.

What part of "it is published under MIT license" you did not understand? XP kernel wsn't released under MIT license.

[uid313]

People here are complaining a lot and just being negative. Yes, there is a difference between code drops and running an open source projects.
Microsoft do both of these things. It is clearly stated that this is for reference only, hence this time its more of a code drop than running a open source project.

However Microsoft successfully runs many open source projects and are good at it with lots of external contributors, myself have filed issues and patched on GitHub and got replies as well as pull requests merged.

Also for those not in the know, Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer offers the best performance when it comes to WebGL. They are much faster than both Chrome and Firefox.

[curfew]

Also just because source code is available to read doesnt mean its open. Microsoft has done this plenty of times before in the past.

The code is released as open source under the MIT license, so Microsoft isn't doing what it has been doing in the past. It would be useful to establish a basic understanding of things first.

Put the code up under the MIT licence, hope to get lots of free help improving the code, take the code back inside MS and make more modifications that follow the usual MS, embrace, extend, extinguish pattern of making use of useful idiots.

Nope, GPL'd code is all I'm interested in at this point.

You are allowed to fork their code and re-release your project as GPL-licensed, if you're so worried about that.

- BSDs: Most known and recent case is FreeBSD and Playstation 4, but there's tons others in Samsung and Apple's Mac OS X.

Advanced code obfuscation techniques can even make GPL violations very tricky to detect, too.

Eh, no. The question was, has someone put up a project, then received third party commits and afterwards took all that work and merged it into a closed-source project. FreeBSD is not like that, they have remained open and free and there is no proprietary FreeBSD. If the original author wants to release the code under such license that will allow other projects to turn the code into closed-source, then there's no problem. They allow that by choosing to use the specific license.

Recently MS seems to open-source a lot of code which actually nobody cares at all. There are already at least 2 open-source WebGL implementations available (Mozilla Gecko's and Google Blink's), so the impact of their code donation is quite limited.

Additional reference points are always welcome. Two open implementations isn't really anything. Eventually people will want to make progress, not just copy old implementations over and over.