Embrace, extend, and protect? Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network to 'protect Linux and open source'

This conversation is getting a bit surreal. People arguing about whether we should trust Microsoft? Really?

I don't see why I should trust Microsoft even as far as I trust other gigantic corporations like Google, Amazon, Facebook or Coca Cola. Which is about as far as I can throw a hippo. There's just no chance of any of them ever putting the consumer before the investor or ideals before profit. Except maybe where forced to do so by governments.

In fact, I think it's extremely naïve to ever truly trust a public corporation. We buy their products knowing (and ignoring) that while they might be cheap, or even the only convenient option due to a market monopoly or whatever, they sure as hell don't deserve our trust for either of these reasons. They are not cheap because they want you to have an opportunity to enjoy their products, and they aren't the only option because nobody else wanted a slice of the cake. Ideally we should be able to trust the system(s) to keep the corporations in check and protect our rights, but we all know that these multinationals have more power than some nations.

But hey, capitalism—in the form it takes in the real world—depends on people going against their best interests. Otherwise none of these businesses would have had the opportunity to corner their respective markets as they did.

I'll believe they've "changed" when they make all their new DirectX releases just thin open source wrappers around Vulkan and only support GPUs with open drivers. Now that would raise a lot of eyebrows. Mostly in Nvidia corner.

This conversation is getting a bit surreal. People arguing about whether we should trust Microsoft? Really?

I don't see why I should trust Microsoft even as far as I trust other gigantic corporations like Google, Amazon, Facebook or Coca Cola. Which is about as far as I can throw a hippo. There's just no chance of any of them ever putting the consumer before the investor or ideals before profit. Except maybe where forced to do so by governments.

In fact, I think it's extremely naïve to ever truly trust a public corporation. We buy their products knowing (and ignoring) that while they might be cheap, or even the only convenient option due to a market monopoly or whatever, they sure as hell don't deserve our trust for either of these reasons. They are not cheap because they want you to have an opportunity to enjoy their products, and they aren't the only option because nobody else wanted a slice of the cake. Ideally we should be able to trust the system(s) to keep the corporations in check and protect our rights, but we all know that these multinationals have more power than some nations.

But hey, capitalism—in the form it takes in the real world—depends on people going against their best interests. Otherwise none of these businesses would have had the opportunity to corner their respective markets as they did.

Trusting is indeed the wrong wording. I guess most people here, me including, are discussing if the relation between company and customer is more a win-win or more of a win-loose. Some companies want to earn a profit by somehow improving the situation of their customers in the broadest sense (win-win), other just want to earn a profit while solemnly cheating on their customers (win-loose). Most companies are somewhere in-between of that wide spectrum and some tend to shift a little bit in one direction or the other once in a while imho.


Last edited by jens on 12 October 2018 at 4:53 pm UTC

I'll believe they've "changed" when they make all their new DirectX releases just thin open source wrappers around Vulkan and only support GPUs with open drivers. Now that would raise a lot of eyebrows. Mostly in Nvidia corner.

But just open sourcing their current(and future) DX versions wouldn't be enough? Even if they ported it to Linux? It has to be on top of Vulkan?


Last edited by Kristian on 13 October 2018 at 2:34 pm UTC

http://techrights.org/2018/10/10/lotnetwork-msft-and-now-oin/
A more in depth answer about what it is not a good news as it may seems superficially.
Basically, Microsoft still does tons of patent trolling, he does not have given to OIN the patent used on patent trolling and the move can be seen as a way to legitimate software patent.

http://techrights.org/2018/10/10/lotnetwork-msft-and-now-oin/
A more in depth answer about what it is not a good news as it may seems superficially.
Basically, Microsoft still does tons of patent trolling, he does not have given to OIN the patent used on patent trolling and the move can be seen as a way to legitimate software patent.

I'm never sure about techrights. Their basic position tends to agree with my prejudices, but the style is ranty and the articles always seem mostly to link to other techrights articles; generally it comes off too dodgy for me to trust even though it caters to me.

The style is ranty as hell, but I never saw them lying and even if they mostly source themselves, when they write their articles, the info used are everywhere on the news.
So I'm still cautious about them but no more than with mainstream newspaper from my country

So I looked at the techrights article. It spends a whole lot of words saying little, and it's hard to tease out exactly what it's saying is bad about this. Frankly I think it's quite bad writing. But ultimately it seems to come down to a few things:

1. The OIN itself is problematic because it gets everyone to treat software patents like they're OK. I can see that point, but that isn't Microsoft's fault and I'm not going to consider Microsoft unusually bad just because they're not coming out backing software patent abolition.
2. Microsoft is holding back certain key patents, noticeably FAT-related ones. I'm not quite sure that's actually true, we've talked about the FAT issue, he seems to be relying on the same source, and what it says is not that Microsoft is holding back those patents but rather that relevant FAT-related code is not in the Linux kernel proper and so not protected by what OIN technically does. This again is not Microsoft's fault. If they are holding back those key patents, that is an issue. But it doesn't make all the other patents they are including in OIN irrelevant.
3. Microsoft have been systematically funneling patents to sort of deniably-affiliated patent trolls and siccing those patent trolls on its opponents rather than getting its own hands dirty, thus allowing it to have its propaganda cake and eat its enemies too. Joining the OIN makes no difference whatsoever to use of this tactic. This is a very important point if true, and would indeed make MS joining the OIN a worthless and deeply cynical move. I have seen techrights articles making this claim before. I've never seen anyone else discussing it, whether to agree or debunk it, so I'm not sure if it's true or not.

Side note . . . shouldn't all that FAT stuff be running out at some point? It's friggin' ancient! Have they been pulling those tricks like the pharma companies do where you tweak it a little and get a bunch of extra time?

shouldn't all that FAT stuff be running out at some point? It's friggin' ancient!

[url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT"]exFAT[/url] != FAT. Their patents are still effective for at least 10 years.

shouldn't all that FAT stuff be running out at some point? It's friggin' ancient!

[url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT"]exFAT[/url] != FAT. Their patents are still effective for at least 10 years.

shouldn't all that FAT stuff be running out at some point? It's friggin' ancient!

[url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT"]exFAT[/url] != FAT. Their patents are still effective for at least 10 years.

Oh well.

3. Microsoft have been systematically funneling patents to sort of deniably-affiliated patent trolls and siccing those patent trolls on its opponents rather than getting its own hands dirty, thus allowing it to have its propaganda cake and eat its enemies too. Joining the OIN makes no difference whatsoever to use of this tactic. This is a very important point if true, and would indeed make MS joining the OIN a worthless and deeply cynical move. I have seen techrights articles making this claim before. I've never seen anyone else discussing it, whether to agree or debunk it, so I'm not sure if it's true or not.

They sometimes link to legal decisions https://www.leagle.com/decision/infco20180904118 it's legal stuff so it mostly available but hard to find. Who have founded which patent troll is an info available on wikipedia or on legal site about society creation. Techrigths mostly link second hand sources, but it is still possible to go to the legal source by following links. But then, the legal stuff is pretty much unreadable

I'll believe they've "changed" when they make all their new DirectX releases just thin open source wrappers around Vulkan and only support GPUs with open drivers. Now that would raise a lot of eyebrows. Mostly in Nvidia corner.

But just open sourcing their current(and future) DX versions wouldn't be enough? Even if they ported it to Linux? It has to be on top of Vulkan?

What would access to DirectX source give us? We'd be able to make DirectX better by finding bugs and submitting fixes. That's it. DirectX can't be ported to Linux per se, it's a bunch of Windows core calls. Its API can be re-implemented on Linux, that's what wine does and yeah, maybe wine folks would benefit but nobody else, really. On the other hand the overhead that GPU drivers have just to support all possible APIs is huge. Vulkan solves this and it is a standard. IMHO we don't need Microsoft opening their code, we need them to comply with open standards instead of inventing their own concurrent solution each time new technology comes around.

I'll believe they've "changed" when they make all their new DirectX releases just thin open source wrappers around Vulkan and only support GPUs with open drivers. Now that would raise a lot of eyebrows. Mostly in Nvidia corner.

But just open sourcing their current(and future) DX versions wouldn't be enough? Even if they ported it to Linux? It has to be on top of Vulkan?

What would access to DirectX source give us? We'd be able to make DirectX better by finding bugs and submitting fixes. That's it. DirectX can't be ported to Linux per se, it's a bunch of Windows core calls. Its API can be re-implemented on Linux, that's what wine does and yeah, maybe wine folks would benefit but nobody else, really. On the other hand the overhead that GPU drivers have just to support all possible APIs is huge. Vulkan solves this and it is a standard. IMHO we don't need Microsoft opening their code, we need them to comply with open standards instead of inventing their own concurrent solution each time new technology comes around.

Hypothetically DirectX would be suitable as an open standard, replacing Vulkan, right? I mean from a purely technical stand point, they could open source it and turn it over to some standard's body or something. I ask because I am not well informed enough on the technical aspects.

Edit:

Could you imagine the DX12(or 13 or whatever) equivalent of anv, radv etc?


Last edited by Kristian on 16 October 2018 at 11:43 am UTC

I don't trust Microsoft any more than I can throw them. We know how they work. All the platitudes they have about Linux shouldn't be taken at face value. Maybe they just want to take over the Linux kernel, and make it prohibitively inconvenient to use a forked or older kernel that predates the addition of some really nasty spyware or something like that.

I switched to Linux to get away from Microsoft. And I won't stand for their encroachment on our Operating System of choice.

DirectX can't be ported to Linux per se, it's a bunch of Windows core calls. Its API can be re-implemented on Linux, that's what wine does and yeah, maybe wine folks would benefit but nobody else, really.

Hypothetically DirectX would be suitable as an open standard, replacing Vulkan, right? I mean from a purely technical stand point, they could open source it and turn it over to some standard's body or something. I ask because I am not well informed enough on the technical aspects.

Neither am I, but I infer from what cprn said that DirectX is fundamentally different from Vulkan in that Vulkan is a sort of set of specifications of how stuff is supposed to work, which is then implemented in different OSes and stuff, whereas DirectX is instead an implementation of thingies that tell Windows specifically what to do in language Windows specifically understands . . . an implementation which no doubt has some documentation which may superficially look like a specification, except they aren't, because the specific code comes first and the description of what it does comes second.
If I'm right about that, it means that DirectX is inappropriate for being a standard for much the same reasons the Word .docx format is inappropriate to be a standard. All non-Windows implementations would be second-class citizens because the Windows implementation would be the real thing, and anywhere the "specification" varied from the actual behaviour of the Windows implementation (which would be plenty of places), it's the Windows implementation that would be the reference. And since what it's hooked into is closed code (Windows) it may be hard even to know precisely what the implementation is actually doing.

DirectX can't be ported to Linux per se, it's a bunch of Windows core calls. Its API can be re-implemented on Linux, that's what wine does and yeah, maybe wine folks would benefit but nobody else, really.

Hypothetically DirectX would be suitable as an open standard, replacing Vulkan, right? I mean from a purely technical stand point, they could open source it and turn it over to some standard's body or something. I ask because I am not well informed enough on the technical aspects.

Neither am I, but I infer from what cprn said that DirectX is fundamentally different from Vulkan in that Vulkan is a sort of set of specifications of how stuff is supposed to work, which is then implemented in different OSes and stuff, whereas DirectX is instead an implementation of thingies that tell Windows specifically what to do in language Windows specifically understands . . . an implementation which no doubt has some documentation which may superficially look like a specification, except they aren't, because the specific code comes first and the description of what it does comes second.

DirectX 12, or more specifically the graphics API Direct3D 12 is very similar to Vulkan. Both APIs were built on AMD's Mantle, and I don't see a technical reason why hardware vendors couldn't implement both in their Linux drivers. Vulkan 1.1 even added a bunch of DX12 compatibility extensions which makes the difference even smaller.

However, even if Microsoft hypothetically released an open DX12 spec, (deliberately) breaking their own "standards" and making competitors scramble for compatibility with their own implementations would be par for the course. They don't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to playing fair. I wouldn't trust Khronos either if they had their own platform to push. Instead they have all the interested parties working on a common spec. (Note that even Microsoft is a Khronos "contributor" member.)

There's also the fact that MS would never give up total control of the API. They like their lock-in as long as they're the big dog with nothing to lose.

"even if Microsoft hypothetically released an open DX12 spec, (deliberately) breaking their own "standards" and making competitors scramble for compatibility with their own implementations would be par for the course."

Them not doing this, or anything like it, was intended as part of my hypothetical.

"even if Microsoft hypothetically released an open DX12 spec, (deliberately) breaking their own "standards" and making competitors scramble for compatibility with their own implementations would be par for the course."

Them not doing this, or anything like it, was intended as part of my hypothetical.

I still don't see the point. What would DX12 bring to the table that Vulkan doesn't offer? Many companies have invested a lot in Vulkan support and know-how already. Why would they want to switch to another API now, equivalent or not?

DX12 is more limited in scope and hardware support by the way. It only needs to support XBox and anything that runs Windows 10. Vulkan is supported everywhere from the Nintendo Switch to specialised safety critical aircraft hardware. Vulkan could replace DX12 as is, but not the other way around.

"I still don't see the point. What would DX12 bring to the table that Vulkan doesn't offer? Many companies have invested a lot in Vulkan support and know-how already. Why would they want to switch to another API now, equivalent or not?"

I am not sure it would be useful at all. But in the (unlikely) event my hypothetical came true, it would show a change in attitude on the part of Microsoft, right?

The reason I suspect such a hypothetical situation might be useful is because DirectX has a lot of mindshare, tools, tutorials, books etc and most of all games that actually use it. Have many games ship with DirectX support vs support for open API's?

Hopefully that will change with Vulkan. If open API's are used more and more on the Windows side of things then that will help Linux gaming.

By the way is Vulkan seeing any widespread adoption by Switch developers? AFAIK Nintendo only offers Vulkan as an alternative to their own API's. If Vulkan was the only option for a major console that would also help alot.


Last edited by Kristian on 17 October 2018 at 12:03 pm UTC

The reason I suspect such a hypothetical situation might be useful is because DirectX has a lot of mindshare, tools, tutorials, books etc and most of all games that actually use it. Have many games ship with DirectX support vs support for open API's?

Direct3D 12 is a completely new graphics API and it isn't that much more established in the industry than Vulkan. As far as I know, only a couple dozen games have released on Windows with D3D12 support thus far, and none of them are D3D12 exclusive.

By the way is Vulkan seeing any widespread adoption by Switch developers? AFAIK Nintendo only offers Vulkan as an alternative to their own API's. If Vulkan was the only option for a major console that would also help alot.

I don't think it matters. As long as a cross-platform API is properly supported, it doesn't need to be the only option. Nintendo wouldn't be a likely candidate to do something like this anyway.


Last edited by tuubi on 17 October 2018 at 1:50 pm UTC