PHP on IIS & SQL, OSP clarifications, Apache Foundation Support and other fun from OSCON08

Several blogs are reporting on the highlights from Sam Ramji’s keynote at OSCON this morning.

Sam announced several items of significance that will dramatically advance the work that Microsoft is already doing with the Open Source developer community.

This is one of those posts where I’m probably better off quoting several others rather than sharing my own commentary.

First of all, from Sam’s blog;

PHP on IIS + SQL:  Microsoft is contributing a patch to ADOdb, a popular data access layer for PHP used by many applications.  The patch enables support for SQL Server through the new “native driver for PHP” built by the SQL Server team.  ADOdb is licensed under the LGPL and BSD.  This is our first code contribution to PHP community projects but will not be the last.

and;

Open Specification Promise:  Microsoft is putting a wide range of protocols that were formerly in the Communications Protocol Program under the Open Specification Promise (OSP).  This guarantees their freedom from any patent claims from Microsoft now or in the future, and includes both Microsoft-developed and industry-developed protocols. 

We have established a clarification to the OSP that guarantees developer rights to build software of any kind and for any purpose using these specifications, including commercial use.

and;

Apache Software Foundation: Microsoft is becoming a sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).  This sponsorship will enable the ASF to pay administrators and other support staff so that ASF developers can focus on writing great software.

Finally Sam wraps up his post with a couple of statements that should be obvious, although I know without them then incorrect conclusions would no doubt be jumped to!

It is not a move away from IIS as Microsoft’s strategic web server technology.  We have invested significantly in refactoring and adding new, state-of-the-art features to IIS, including support for PHP.  We will continue to invest in IIS for the long term and are currently under way with development of IIS 8.

It is a strong endorsement of The Apache Way, and opens a new chapter in our relationship with the ASF.  We have worked with Apache POI, Apache Axis2, Jakarta, and other projects in the last year, and we will continue our technical support and interoperability testing work for this open source software.

You will find more details of the specifics of the announcements over at Sam’s blog.

Andy Oliver over at the Open Source Initiative had the following to say;

I have been working with Sam Ramji and Robert Duffner from Microsoft, and I have been very pleased to resolve the issues that I had with the work they are funding for the Apache POI project. Not only has Microsoft addressed the concerns that I had with regards to patents and OOXML, but they have gone a step further and added the binary formats to the list. By publishing their clarifications to the Open Specification Promise (OSP), Microsoft has acted both in good faith and purpose. For me personally, this is a big step forward. At one time, I donated my Open Source project to Apache, partially out of fear of Microsoft. Now, Microsoft is becoming a key contributor to this project.

Looking at the details behind the OSP component of Sam’s keynote.

Richard Wilder also has a post of his own on Port25. Richard is an Associate General Council at Microsoft and talks about the evolution of the OSP in line with requests that have come to us over the last few months. His post focuses on some significant work that has been undertaken on the OSP Q&A page.

The new Q&A puts many more specifications under the OSP, and makes several clarifications for Open Source Developers;

Q: Is the Open Specification Promise intended to apply to open source developers and users of open source developed software?

A: Yes. The OSP applies directly to all persons or entities that make, use, sell, offer for sale, imports and/or distributes an implementation of a Covered Specification. It is intended to enable open source implementations, and in fact several parties in the open source community have specifically stated that the OSP meets their needs. Moreover there are already a significant number of implementations of Covered Specifications that have been created and/or distributed under a variety of open source licenses as well as under proprietary software development models. Because open source software licenses can vary you may want to consult with your legal counsel to understand your particular legal environment.

Q: Is this Promise consistent with open source licensing, namely the GPL? And can anyone implement the specification(s) without any concerns about Microsoft patents?

A: The Open Specification Promise is a simple and clear way to assure that the broadest audience of developers and customers working with commercial or open source software can implement the covered specification(s). We leave it to those implementing these technologies to understand the legal environments in which they operate. This includes people operating in a GPL environment. Because the General Public License (GPL) is not universally interpreted the same way by everyone, we can’t give anyone a legal opinion about how our language relates to the GPL or other OSS licenses, but based on feedback from the open source community we believe that a broad audience of developers can implement the specification(s).

I would encourage you to read the entire Q&A to understand the full scope of the rework.

Richard’s post also talks about the required level of conformance that is needed for implementations to be covered by the OSP, a topic that has driven a lot of debate for those of us in SE Asia, New Zealand and Australia.

The OSP says that it covers “any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification” which addresses the heart of the conformance issue that was raised.” To the extent it conforms” means that we do not require an implementation to be perfect; this can be because of implementation bugs or an intentional choice because the requirements of the particular implementation do not actually require full conformance. Under the OSP, implementations can be less than fully compliant.

Again, I would encourage you to read Richard’s entire post  to understand the full context.

Reactions so far have been extremely positive.

Matt Asay writes;

This is very cool. It’s also cool that Microsoft accompanied this announcement with a $100,000 pledge to the Apache Software Foundation. Andy Oliver of the Open Source Initiative was instrumental in helping Microsoft work toward both conclusions.

I’m really proud of Sam, Robert Duffner, and the others at Microsoft who made this happen. Given Microsoft’s importance to the software community, this OSP commitment shouldn’t be understated.

And over at GrokLaw Pamela Jones had the following to say;

This is a major change. I haven’t had time to figure out if there are any gotchas. None leap off the page. OOXML is under the OSP. And Sam Ramji has announced also that Microsoft has become a sponsor of the Apache Foundation. And they took the money. Andy Oliver confirms. Are pigs flying, or what?

Well, OK, that isn’t exactly “extremely positive”, but for a GrokLaw comment about something Microsoft is doing to you have to agree it is pretty positive!

I’m still a believer.