Jaa

Stephen Walli on the inside from the outside

  • Artikkeli

When Stephen Walli left Microsoft a few months ago I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Stephen was the best mentor, guide and support system that I could have ever asked for when the WiX toolset was released publicly. Without Stephen the WiX toolset would not be where it is today. I always look forward to our meetings over coffee/hot chocolate (he gets coffee, I get hot chocolate). In fact, Stephen, it's been a while we should catch up after Easter.

But I really want highlight Stephen's writing ability. A couple months ago he pointed me at his first blog entry where he linked to his essay "When are you going to sue your customers?" As usual, Stephen had captured in a very approachable and entertaining way the ideas that I tried to touch on in the "Patents and Participation in Microsoft Shared Source" section of this blog entry.

Tonight I noticed that O'Reilly published this article where Stephen captures what I feel is the essence of the issues facing Open Source at Microsoft. I was a bit surprised to see that he used the WiX toolset as an example in the latter half of the article. But once again, Stephen has captured in a very approachable and entertaining way the essence behind the release of the WiX toolset as Open Source software.

Highly recommend reading "Perspectives on the Shared Source Initiative" by Stephen Walli.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 27, 2005
    The biggest issue facing Open Source at Microsoft, for someone outside Microsoft, is the way it's diluted by the whole Shared Source confusion. It doesn't do Microsoft any good in the long term to mix up traditional releases of source code to customers (which has a long history in the industry, always under tight control... DEC released a lot of their source as Microfiche only!) with their real Open Source initiatives.