Bill Hilf: Open Source at Microsoft | Charles

Chadk
excuse me - do you has a flavor?

Just began watching. Whats up with the sound? The sound quallity seems so much better! I love it Cool

Charles
Welcome Change

Chadk wrote:
Just began watching. Whats up with the sound? The sound quallity seems so much better! I love it

The camera I use now has an incredible microphone! This should continue to be the case.

j0217995

And there was much rejoicing

Chadk
excuse me - do you has a flavor?

This is cool. Shows why Microsoft is leaders in the software industry.

And the new camera rules! The sound is so much better

petknep_home

Hmm, very enlightening. Especially the vendor donut model comments.

He really seems to "get" the industry.

erik_
Tablet Power

Wonderfull video. Thanks, perfect interview!

The donut model made it very clear. Amazing to think with, if you place the donuts over eachother. Where you see the difference in core assets, but the same comp assets. Where both companies have best interest to make the application best, because it improves them both. Didn't really see it that simple before the model.

Edit: Why does the apple machine has black bars on the screen? Why isn't it filling the screen?

nektar

Linux is the operating system of choice for academia. This is because it facilitates easier research due to its in-built automation (eg. scripting) powers, its modular design and the transparency in the ways of configurin it. Windows has, on the other hand, an omnipresent gui and poor automation facilities that make it difficult to contact research procedures that require repetition, such as simulations, under it. In addition Windows cannot be tweaked and its components cannot be changed or replaced for research purposes, not because they are not open source but because Windows has not been designed to be modifiable. It is a whole piece of software which is "take it or leave it". However, this need not have been the case and perhaps it is due to Microsoft's poor design in the first place which should be remedied. Thirdly Windows and application configuration cannot be automated or aultered easily because it is not transparent. On LInux you have configuration files but on Windows there is no transparency on where and how an application or service stores and manages its configuration information. Finally, let's not forget that most scientific applications are written to run on Linux and not onWindows. The reason in my opinion is that most software in academia is free as in beer and most free software is also open source. Such software is mostly written or can be found exclusively for Linux and many times does not run on Windows. Thus, the lack of free or open source development on Windows and the concentration by Microsoft on commercial software keeps academia away from Windows. Microsoft should include by default a Unix/Linux subsystem in Windows to enable the use of the existing vast number of scientific resources and tools found only on Unix/Linux. The current Subsystem for Unix-based Applications is not feature complete.
What do you think?

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

You forgot to ask him one of the questions that matter. Whats the Linux distribution he uses? Good interview, Bill is a good guy and its good to see him back on C9

Xaero_Vincent
Sexy me

rjdohnert wrote:
You forgot to ask him one of the questions that matter. Whats the Linux distribution he uses? Good interview, Bill is a good guy and its good to see him back on C9

He was using RHEL 4 on his iMactel. I am sort of surprised he wasnt using something newer and better like SLED 10.

Anyway this video was pretty good. His "donut" theory is spot on at describing the open-source buisness models. Hilf also mentions hybrid licensing that companies like Trolltech use. His position is clearly with Microsoft on which platform to deploy on and its true that most major open-source software runs natively on Windows. For the rest, there is Cygwin and Unix services for Windows.

I think its important to note that Linux is also a great platform to develop on. Mono brings Microsoft's .NET and C#/VB facilities to Linux; Java is still a good platform to develop with. Not to mention the heaps of other languages to use like C, C++, D, Python, Perl, Pascal, Ruby, RealBaisic, Euphoria, Lisp, etc. Linux is fairly good at running Windows 32 and MS-DOS applications as well. But hopefully someone will devise a way into run Windows .NET applications under Linux/*nix in the future.

Regards,
Vincent