Microsoft 3D Movie Maker Released As Open-Source

[QwertyChouskie]

After reading quite a bit about the process they followed to open source such an ancient program, it really does demonstrate that companies like Microsoft are paralyzed when it comes to source code releases. They will never be able to engage with the modern world of open-source.

MS has been engaging pretty successfully with Mesa. GL/Vulkan on D3D12 is a notable win for users of Arm-based Windows laptops, and the better Arm on Windows is, the more that x86 and Apple have competition, and competition is always good for the consumer.

[kpedersen]

MS has been engaging pretty successfully with Mesa. GL/Vulkan on D3D12 is a notable win for users of Arm-based Windows laptops, and the better Arm on Windows is, the more that x86 and Apple have competition, and competition is always good for the consumer.

They are doing little more than creating shims that their proprietary junk plugs into. It benefits very little outside of their commercial products if you really look past all the artificial hype.

[QwertyChouskie]

They are doing little more than creating shims that their proprietary junk plugs into. It benefits very little outside of their commercial products if you really look past all the artificial hype.

It's not a shim, it's a Gallium driver running atop a standard interface, just like Zink. While I agree that short-term/directly it only benefits Windows, a good selection of available Arm laptops not just from Apple will eventually benefit all consumers, including Linux users.

To be extra clear, I hate modern Windows, but we should encourage positive behavioral changes, not condemn them.

[chocolate]

After reading quite a bit about the process they followed to open source such an ancient program, it really does demonstrate that companies like Microsoft are paralyzed when it comes to source code releases. They will never be able to engage with the modern world of open-source.

That's interesting. Could you share, please?
Cheers.

[sinepgib]

Having companies release the source code to abandonware is a good thing, not sure why so many people are complaining. I'd love to live in a world where all abandonware became FOSS, even EOL OSes, but baby steps are better than no steps at all.

Because everything is a good excuse to hate on MS. I mean, it isn't like they don't deserve it for several things, but open sourcing software whatever old it is is always a good thing. Specially for older computers it's cool to have the older software in a form you could maintain.

[StandaSK]

That's interesting. Could you share, please?
Cheers.

Microsoft open-sourced it, because someone asked them on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1521698902579159040

Foone (the person on Twitter that asked for it) will apparently fork it and try to make it work and maintain it going forward.

https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1521734107163619328

[spirit]

could microsoft opensource msteams ? like this, maybe somebody could fork it and make a real working client on linux ...

[jacob]

MS has been engaging pretty successfully with Mesa. GL/Vulkan on D3D12 is a notable win for users of Arm-based Windows laptops, and the better Arm on Windows is, the more that x86 and Apple have competition, and competition is always good for the consumer.

They also engage more than a little with the Linux kernel, with Rust, obviously git/github and other things. MS will never be an "of en source company" as such but that's ok, they are now an active, generally behaving and valued contributor to the foss community.

[waxhead]

Having companies release the source code to abandonware is a good thing, not sure why so many people are complaining. I'd love to live in a world where all abandonware became FOSS, even EOL OSes, but baby steps are better than no steps at all.

Could not agree more. If does not matter if the code is crap, the program sucks or if the company are sharing worthless crud just to "fit in" onto the entire open source thing. It's free and can be used. The alternative is nothing.


People complain because the contribution is near worthless. Sure it is, but it is still a contribution regardless.

The main point is that in the long run it does not cause any harm with the exception of perhaps a little tactical psychological manipulation, which again lead to some financial benefit. Sure that is negative (depending on your point of view), but all in all releasing the code is more positive than negative..

A lot of amateurs release bad programs as well, yet nobody complains about their lust for glory(TM). I personally dislike Microsoft with a passion, but if people are gonna hate then by all means hate something that matters such as the privacy disaster that most people accepts willingly without thinking twice! Or artificial limits on what hardware can be enabled (cpu sockets limitation) - Now that is something to complain about!!

[sarmad]

People seem to forget that Microsoft has a lot of open source projects. You don't have to be an MS fan in order to give them credit where they deserve it. You can hate Windows and DirectX, like I do, and still give them credit for their open source contributions.

https://opensource.microsoft.com/projects