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when setup isn't just xcopy

Open Source at Microsoft in 2009.

It was almost ten years ago that I started a little project inside the firewalls of Microsoft called the WiX toolset. I called it a "Community Source" project because inside Microsoft the words "Open Source" only had negative connotations. I never would have guessed that 5 years later I would help reshape Microsoft's approach to Open Source by releasing my little project. Now 5 more years later, Microsoft takes another big step and contributes to the most famous Open Source project of all, Linux.

Mary Jo Foley (who originally broke the news about the WiX toolset) references flying pigs. Todd Bishop (whose write up about WiX printed in the Seattle PI I still have) tosses in a little more historic context. However as I read those blog posts then others then comments all around, I felt like a few key questions were never asked and thus never answered. I thought they were interesting and captured some of my opinions on this topic.

Please note that I'm not on Sam Ramji's team and cannot speak to Microsoft's Open Source strategy. These are just my views of how Microsoft has changed over the years.

Q: Everyone is making this out to be a big deal. Jim Zemlin said this isn't that big of deal, "they're not saving the whales here." Why is this a big deal?

A: Code wise, maybe this isn't that big of a deal. Microsoft is just adding a few drivers to Linux so it will run better on Hyper-V. Anybody could have done that. It's just code right?

Sure, but what is different here is that Microsoft is meeting the Linux community on the community's terms. Linux is released under the GPLv2. Okay, Microsoft licenses these drivers under the GPLv2. Linux has established leaders for the major sub-systems. Okay, Microsoft works with the driver people to understand their requirements. Linux has coding standard that everyone must follow. Okay, Microsoft works on the code to meet those standards.

That's why this is a big deal. Microsoft is participating in the Linux community in a way its never done. Sure, other companies have done this already but I believe this demonstrates how Microsoft continues to learn how to approach Open Source communities and collaborate appropriately. Less than 10 years ago, the interaction could only be summed up as fist shaking and name calling. Now it's about participation for cooperation, competition and co-opetition.

Q: But isn't Microsoft contributing these drivers because they help Hyper-V?

A: In the narrowest view of the circumstances, yes. But if you look at this from a business perspective then I expect that you'll find this is more about making customers happy. If no customers wanted to run Linux on Windows then I'm pretty sure that Microsoft would not have done this work.

What I'm excited about is the fact that Microsoft finally found a way to work with the Linux community to meet a customer request. Instead of saying, "That's Linux's problem, have them sort it out." Microsoft joined the Linux community to solve the problem. Can you see the shift in thinking that occurred here?

Q: But don't you think Microsoft should have done more sooner?

A: Probably. But educating an organization as large as Microsoft about something as subtle as Open Source takes time. I do my small part by working to make my "relatively insignificant geekware" project successful. Announcements like today's recognize the larger efforts made by others.

There's certainly more work to do but in 5 years I think Microsoft has come a long way. I only hope the progress continues (and maybe a little bit faster). <smile/>

 

Distributing culture is hard.

Last week I met with some PMs that work on the east coast. They fly over to the west coast to visit the Microsoft mothership every couple months. Our meeting was one of many face to face meetings they try to squish into a single week before flying home.

At the end of the meeting, one of the PMs mentioned that a couple developers on his team were interested in contributing to the WiX toolset. In fact, one had contacted me previously about participating but he never got involved. Rumor has it he went off and got married. <smile/>

I told the PM that one of the biggest challenges I face leading the WiX toolset is finding and developing contributors outside of the Redmond, WA area. Actually, my track record in maintaining remote contributors is down right dismal. Even now one of the contributors that recently moved back to the east coast is slowly drifting off.

I believe there are several facets to this issue. One of the biggest challenges is distributing the culture that keeps volunteers coming back to WiX toolset. And when I say "culture" here I do not mean "locale". I am talking about the organizational norms and collective history of the participants.

The WiX culture today revolves around the WiX Working Group meetings that happen every Thursday night (weather and holidays allowing). In those meetings status is shared, questions are answered and code gets written. But it goes beyond just making progress on the code that forms the WiX toolset.

For example, at Microsoft setup work is often pushed off to a junior developer or contractor from outside the company. I don't agree with that tendency but it is a reality. Thus there are regularly people using the WiX toolset that are new to Microsoft and often new to "professional" software development.

The result is that the more experienced developers end up sharing a lot of their stories about how to succeed inside Microsoft. Everyone shares stories about which groups are doing well and opportunities across the company. Around review time much advice is sought and offered about the way things work and how to help your manager help you.

To those of you "outside of the firewall" all of that Microsoft career advice might seem like a pointless piece of WiX culture. However, remember that development of the WiX toolset began in 1999 and wasn't released externally until 2004. That means the first 5 years of the WiX culture developed completely within the Microsoft culture.

Anyway, back to my point. There are a great many pieces of the WiX culture that I've done a poor job sharing with those people that don't show up for the WiX Working Group on Thursday night. So, I'm adding a new blog category culture. Under that category I will start sharing the things that I believe make up the WiX culture. Now the funny thing about "culture" is that when you are part of one, it is usually difficult to recognize the pieces that are unique or relevant or even interesting to others. Thus the posting to this category are likely to be very random and many be very uninteresting and other posts may just reflect my personal viewpoint.

To close, I'm also thinking about reshaping what I consider a very difficult problem of distributing culture into a new challenge. How to create a culture that can be distributed. I've seen ideas about that topic so I might dig into those later.

Did I ever mention that I have a minor in Communications? No? Well, keep coding... you know I am.

 

Sun buys Open Source, Microsoft and Google hire it.

This is just a flippant thought so don't read to much into it but I found it amusing enough that I thought I'd share. Last week there was much discussion about Sun buying MySQL. While everyone was discussing what this meant for Sun and MySQL and the "Open Source Business Model", I was trying to figure out why this deal felt unusual yet familiar to me.

Then it struck me. What I found interesting was that most of these discussions were about about Sun acquiring the company MySQL. Sun was "buying the M in LAMP". Then I remembered that Sun had done this before. Sun bought StarOffice years ago that ultimately became the foundation for OpenOffice.org.

Microsoft, on the other hand, tends to hire people with Open Source backgrounds rather than buy "OSS" companies.  I was trying to come up with a list of recent "Open Source hires" when this interview with Sam Ramji showed up that listed some of the most recent people to join the "Evil Empire" (*I* can say that, I actually dressed up like a Stormtrooper to represent the company in public <smile/>). I'd also might add Phil Haack, Scott Hanselman and Rob Conery to the list.

Google, like Microsoft, seems to hire Open Source people more than buy entire companies. I'm thinking of people like Chris DiBona, Sean Egan and Guido van Rossum. But it isn't like I really track Google's or Sun's or Microsoft's, for that matter, hiring and acquisition practices closely. So maybe I'm just making this all up.

Note, I'm not suggesting that "buying in bulk" is better or worse than "hand picking individuals" to build up a company's Open Source collection. However, I do wonder how those different approaches might affect a company's culture. I know that inside Microsoft it feels like Open Source acceptance is growing like slow winter thaw.

 

Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset 3 year anniversary!

Tonight is a momentous night for the volunteers who work on the WiX toolset.  It was three years ago today that we released the WiX toolset to the world.  A number of people like to track the progress of the WiX toolset with numbers.  Numbers like over 700 bugs fixed, almost 360,000 downloads and over 17,000 email messages.

For me though, its about the people.  The people like Bob, Justin, K, Peter, Joe, Jordan, Mike and Fredrik who work with me week after week.  The people like Gabor, Mike, Frederik and many many others who support the community in all kinds of capacities.

Working with these people to provide a toolset that integrates well with your build system and builds the highest quality Windows Installer packages possible.  That's what the WiX toolset has been about for almost 8 years now and the last three, as a part of the Open Source community, have been the most rewarding.

Tomorrow look for some key announcements about the future of the WiX toolset.  The future is going to be a lot of fun!