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Microsoft Releases FlexWiki as Open Source 340

Posted by michael from the jumping-on-the-bandwagon dept.
davemabe writes "Microsoft is apparently releasing its FlexWiki wiki implementation as an open source project. FlexWiki is the software used to run the wikis over at Channel 9. My question is: Is this software as good as the ever-extensible Kwiki implementation?"
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Microsoft Releases FlexWiki as Open Source More

Microsoft Releases FlexWiki as Open Source

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  • now that would rock!!! microsoft bob on linux, imagine the productivity increase

  • I thought it was a joke (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I read this originally on a press release but dismissed it as a Joke [yahoo.com]

  • /. effect (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greger47 ( 516305 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:24AM (#10373956)
    Well, regarding which one is best, I think FlexWiki wins the /. effect test, showing a 503 Service not available. Compared to Kwiki that doesn't respond at all... :)

    /greger

    • If you find yourself wanting to install Kwiki to look at it while they're being Slashdotted into the ground, you can start by running "cpan" as root. Just type "i /wiki/" and get your scroll-wheel ready ;-)

  • But I thought... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:24AM (#10373959)

    What's with all the open-sourcing of Microsoft stuff lately?

    Aren't these the guys who said open source harms innovation and damages the economy? Can't have it both ways, guys.

    Here's proof. [gearlive.com] Free 27" flatscreen TVs, 17" monitors. [freeflatscreens.com]

    • Re:But I thought... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Swamii ( 594522 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:34AM (#10374098) Homepage
      A lot of people at Microsoft are changing their thinking regarding OSS. For example, Josh Ledgard, MS's "community evangelist", is a supporter of OSS and was key in brining WiX to SourceForge.

      Someone once said about MS's business practices (so no cracks about software bugs please), they make mistakes like any other company, but they'll only make them once. If they discover OSS can help them and benefit them, which it certainly could IMO, they will change their ways no matter how much about-facing they have to do.

      • It's a marketing problem (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:07PM (#10374504)
        Microsoft's problem is essentially little more than a marketing/branding problem. The "problem" is that in many PHB's minds, OSS == Linux/Apache/whatever. Microsoft wants to catch the very tangible benefits of OSS without inadvertantly endorsing Linux/Apache/whatever. Thats why they are choosing the CPL; for the simple reason that it isn't the GPL.

        The bottom line is that, at some level, certain OSS is good for Microsoft. WiX being open is good for Microsoft. So are ASP.NET hosted Wikis. They need to find a way to capitalize on that.

        Microsoft's FUD against the GPL is an attempt to shift Linux's "category" from being "Open Source Software" to "GPLed software". The fact that many biz people are confused about the GPL makes it a more convenient target. Once that association is in people's heads, Microsoft can employ OSS to their benefit, with stuff like this, WiX, and so on.

        It is very unlikely that Microsoft will ever be an OSS company in the same way that Red Hat or even IBM is, but they might be one in the manner that, say Apple, is. Apple's involvement in OSS is little more than the Darwin kernel and a collection of associated goodies, really not that much if you think about it. While this is certainly more than Microsoft right now, it might not always be that way.

  • What!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by bluFox ( 612877 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:24AM (#10373962) Homepage Journal
    They can't do that, They have no right to be good. or who else do we look up to when it comes to evil?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:What!! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by chris_mahan ( 256577 )
        Wait... Who else is on our To Hate list?
        Amazon -> One Click
        Adobe -> Skylarov
        Microsoft -> Developers Developers developers... Stomp stomp stomp (can somebody make a techno tune out of that NOT?)
        Apple -> DRM ridden iPod?
        Sony -> ???
        Sun -> let go of Java already...
        RedHat -> Licence fees for Enterprise Edition? WTF?
        George Lucas -> Boba fired first? (how do you "fire" a laser gun?)

        Oh, but before the bloomer and doomer come along, here's our "To Love" list:

        IBM -> In spite of the chalk-

    • Re:What!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mr2cents ( 323101 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:36PM (#10374819)
      Didn't you hear the news? MS has outsourced all evilness to SCO!

  • From www.flexwiki.com (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ideatrack ( 702667 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:25AM (#10373974)
    If you...

    * interested in a good software, leave this page!

    Likewise good grammar it would seem...

  • I find it ironic (Score:2, Insightful)

    by cyberlotnet ( 182742 )
    "Microsofts third open source project"

    Does the right nut know what the left nut is doing over there?

    One nut is releasing open source projects, The other nut goes as far as to try to make legislation to slow down or stop adoptation of open source.

    Sorry Microsoft, you can't have your cake and eat it to.. MAKE UP YOUR MINDS.

    • Why Not? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Bill, Shooter of Bul ( 629286 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:32AM (#10374072) Journal
      Does IBM Open Source everythig they do? How about Novell? Red Hat? It seems to me, that there are situations where companies can profit from making the code open, and others where it would lose more than it would gain. As time goes on, I think thats just going to become more common.

      • Re:Why Not? (Score:5, Informative)

        by eviltypeguy ( 521224 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:35AM (#10374110)
        Does RedHat "Open Source" everything they do? Why yes, actually. I'm not aware of any product they sell that isn't "Open Source".

      • Re:Why Not? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by ironygranny ( 596328 )
        I think the OP's problem was that Microsoft has been so vocally against open-source. IBM, at least, makes commercials with Muhammad Ali egging on the children of the corn in support of open-source. The issue is not that they should either open-source everything they do or nothing at all, rather that they should just stop talking shit about it if they're going to "participate."

      • Re:Why Not? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by GreyPoopon ( 411036 ) <[gpoopon] [at] [gmail.com]> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:52AM (#10374328)
        Does IBM Open Source everythig they do? How about Novell? Red Hat?

        Umm, I think you missed the point the parent was making. The issue isn't whether Microsoft submits all of the software as Open Source. It's the fact that they are trying to litigate against Open Source while at the same time releasing some of their own projects as Open Source. I don't think you can make the same argument about IBM, Novell or Red Hat.

    • Re:I find it ironic (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:34AM (#10374099)
      Sorry Microsoft, you can't have your cake and eat it to..
      If you have as much moiney as Microsoft, then you can have your cake, eat it, shit in someone else's cake and make them eat it. Buy lots of cake and eat that too. Sell your cake to everyone in the world, but then eat it anyway. Whatever you want to do with cake.. having shedloads of money will open those options up for you. Now, say you're an open source dev trying to give away your software - you should be lucky if you even see any crumbs. Never mind the cake.

    • Re:I find it ironic (Score:5, Insightful)

      by McDutchie ( 151611 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:36AM (#10374120) Homepage
      Does the right nut know what the left nut is doing over there?

      As huge as they are, that would hardly be surprising. Governments are notorious for suffering from this problem, and Microsoft seems to be bigger than many governments.

    • I think they're probably aware just fine. This is the third "open source" project that they have released, and you'll notice that again it's pretty much just crap that's either reinventing the wheel, or crap that is of no value to the community. Additionally in this case, the fact that it's implementing a Wiki system kind of feels like the old "Embrace, Extend & Extinguish" of which they are so often accused. One way or the other, it's opening the source to utterly insignificant projects (in terms of th

    • Actually MS is NOT anti-open source (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WebCowboy ( 196209 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:45PM (#10374904)
      It's more complicated than that.

      I've talked with a few Microsoft partners and developers, including published authors who are authorities in their subjects. These people eat, sleep and breathe Microsoft--the technology, the strategy and philosophy. You might say that they are well indoctrinated in other words. I can tell you that not a single one of them were opposed to the concept of open source. In fact some really like what certain open source projects have to offer and use it themselves. I'm told this is typical throughout Microsoft.

      The REAL issue is the TYPE of open license. Microsoft is terrified of the GPL and I'm not convinced that they understand it at all. They have come to truly believe their own FUD. They cannot comprehend how Linux came to be where it is today by forcing all who "embrace and extend" it to disclose their contributions. They believe the GPL is far more onerous than it really is. For example I was discussing it with a developer and she wouildn't go near GPL projects. She was afraid that anything she compiled and ran under Mono would have to be made GPL because the compiler is GPL. She thought that you could be at risk of being compelled to disclose the source to all the firmware in peripherals you created, and maybe even the schematics, if you wrote a driver for or otherwise made it work with Linux.

      I explained that only the compiler was GPL and that the runtimes were actually *L*GPL which permits proprietary programs to run on the platform. She still thought using the GPL was legally treading on thin ice and preferred BSD licensing as it offered "true freedom" for developers as it was not as restrictive.

      This fits right in with the Microsoft philosophy. The whole company was built on the borrowing of ideas. Microsoft essentially stole DOS from SCP (which created DOS as rip off of CP/M for hobbyists). Microsoft stole the GUI idea from Apple (who had lifted it from Xerox). Microsoft "stole" IE from Spyglass when it needed a browser to play catch-up. It even stole networking code from BSD and the underlying architecture of VMS for Windows NT. To Microsoft, open source is useless if it can't be lifted and incorporated into a proprietary system for profit. How it can be used for direct profit is what defines its value.

      Microsoft is also very cautious about what it contributes as open code and what open projects it participates in--it has to not only be non-GPL. MS open source must not interfere with their revenue streams. For example, regardless of the license, Microsoft wouldn't contribute to Apache because it conflicts with IIS. PostgreSQL is under a MS-friendly license but it competes with MS SQL Server--as such they wouldn't contribute to PostgreSQL, although they might be inclined to steal code from it to put into MSSQL should they find it serves their needs (maybe they should, seeing as PostgreSQL is a superior product to MSSQL).

      I think Microsoft's strategy in spearheading some open source products is to try to establish a new business model. Their profit centres are dwindling--only the OS and Office divisions make a great deal of money--and they need a less expensive development model. They are testing the waters with products outside those divisions. The model is to create a vibrant, popular project in open souce land out of languishing or overlooked proprietary code--the way Netscape spawned the Mozilla project. With the "right" licensing and ownership of the copyrights MS can easily embrace and extend it to release it as a proprietary product (or component thereof), keeping the extensions secret.

      This way, Microsoft only has to maintain "extensions" instead of entire systems. Millions of developers can become familiar with the internals, promoting both internal and third-party development. Most importantly, Microsoft maintains their slight edge because it knows the secret extensions and can create superior products to compete with successful third-party software--in effect letting others create MS Bob

      • Re:Actually MS is NOT anti-open source (Score:4, Informative)

        by omicronish ( 750174 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @02:41PM (#10376113)

        Most excellent post. I've talked to some MS employees and they don't seem to have anything against the concept of open source itself. I feel that the fear of the GPL is purely because of legalities, and probably a bit of misunderstanding as well. It would be terrible from MS's standpoint if some GPL'ed code accidentally made its way into Windows, which results in the open-sourcing of some component they don't want open. And yes, I am confident they do not steal GPL code; it's made very clear internally that such code (and I think other outside code) is unacceptable in Microsoft products because of possible legal issues. Note that I do not mention something like "because GPL sucks ass!" To reiterate, my impression is that it's purely legal with a bit of misunderstanding.

        About your example, a similar thing has happened with .NET. The .NET Framework SDK and compilers are freely available, but the Visual Studio.NET IDE is not. Although the VC++ compiler wasn't free in the past, the SDKs for Windows development have been free for as long as I can remember. Actually, I don't know if this is related to what you've said anymore, but it's an interesting example of how Microsoft places closed, $$ functionality on top of a layer of closed but free functionality.

  • Conversely... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:25AM (#10373978) Homepage Journal
    My question is: Is this software as good as the ever-extensible Kwiki implementation?

    My question is: is there anything Microsoft can do that we won't question?

    Applaud them for their newfound approach to open source. More alternatives are always better. I'll bet this software does something Kwiki can't do.

    • We need a place... (Score:4, Funny)

      by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:38AM (#10374154)

      to store all these implementations - some kind of repository.

      I propose we call it the Kwiki-Mart.

      /thank you, come again
      • Your sig:

        e-had - a purely electronic holy war; i-had - much like an e-had, but it's portable

        Would that make a jihad a Java implementation of an i-had?
    • The author of this article was not unfairly slamming Microsoft by asking whether a new open source project does anything useful that an existing open source project doesn't do already. That's a question that should be asked about every open source project.

    • Re:Conversely... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by HiThere ( 15173 ) *
      Did you notice that the software is being released by individual employees, not Microsoft, under the CPL?

      The implications are that the any patents owned by MS and included in that software AREN'T being released. Should we, perhpaps, just TRUST them to not be planning something sneaky?

      There are a lot of bones beside the trail left by those who did *that*.

  • Credit where it's due? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:26AM (#10373984)
    Is this software as good as the ever-extensible Kwiki implementation?

    You know, Microsoft has done an incredible number of crappy things, and they deserve most of the flak they get, but I don't understand why we can't just once acknowledge them for taking a positive step without making some cheap jab like this.

    "Microsoft released something as open source -- but let's all assume that a non-MS alternative is better even though we haven't made an actual comparison!" How immature can you get?

    Yes, I know I could just stop reading /., but it's an unhealthy addiction... :)
    • How immature can you get?

      Well, given that microsoft's open source != our open source (i.e. ms shared source license vs gnu gpl or bsd), there's no surprise some people are not really overwhelmed by this step.

      A bit greater step would be required from MS to make some of us jumping around in ecstasy.

      s
    • Is this software as good as the ever-extensible Kwiki implementation?

      You know, Microsoft has done an incredible number of crappy things, and they deserve most of the flak they get, but I don't understand why we can't just once acknowledge them for taking a positive step without making some cheap jab like this.

      How is that a cheap jab? It seems like a very reasonable question to me: how does this new project compare to this other existing project?

    • Re:Credit where it's due? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:39PM (#10374839)
      why we can't just once acknowledge them for taking a positive step without making some cheap jab like this.

      ...
      How immature can you get?
      If someone constantly took jabs at you and kicked you while you were down, would you trust them the next time they held out their hand? I wouldn't. It will take a while for MS to build _any_ trust in the OSS/FSS communities, especially the Free Software community.

      If you look at the few Open source apps MS has released, they have all been very insignificant. MS will impress me when they make one of their bigger apps Open Source and Free Source. I am not talking about one of their apps that they sell or generate direct revenue from. I am talking about the tons of other apps they include with their OS or other software that they do not sell. I know i would like to get my hands on explorer.exe the desktop shell and file manager. That code is crap and is always crashing on me even in WinXP SP2. It locks just about every file it touches when you use the explorer.exe file manager requiring using task manager to kill and restart it. It is the biggest headache for me using WinXP at work.

      To me this just seems like a PR effort from MS so they can say "me too" when asked about Open Source. Free Software is by far more important to me then Open Source. I don't care if I can look at the code, I want to be able to do something with the code. Free Software gives you the rights to be able to do something with the code while Open Source doesn't alwasy give you those rights. For example, can I take the FlexWiki code MS is releasing and fork it and do something with it MS does not like or agree with? Are there patents encombering FlexWiki? I cannot get to the site right now to check.

      Ok, I just got to the site and read this from the license (IANAL).

      As a condition to exercising the rights and licenses granted
      hereunder, each Recipient hereby assumes sole responsibility
      to secure any other intellectual property rights needed, if
      any. For example, if a third party patent license is required
      to allow Recipient to distribute the Program, it is Recipient's
      responsibility to acquire that license
      To me (IANAL), that doesn't sound too good. It looks like MS trying to keep a back-door in their "open" source code just in case they have something in there that they can require a license for. Exactly how is this Open Source if it can be encumbered by patents and other "IP"?

  • Why the use of the "F" word in FlexWikiBinaries? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jerky McNaughty ( 1391 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:30AM (#10374038)
    From this page [flexwiki.com]:
    The Welcome to Fuck Wiki Forum 2_666 binaries are available by downloading release...[snip]
    and
    Install and configure your Welcome to Fuck Wiki Forum 2_666...[snip]
    and
    If you are new to Welcome to Fuck Wiki Forum 2_666 or just want your hand held...[snip]
    I almost think that someone, umm, changed that page, because it doesn't make any sense to call it Fuck Wiki to me!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I get it, you're saying hell must have frozen over right, cos Microsoft released some open source software. Am I right?

      You made that story up, for comedic effect. You haven't really been on holiday in hell. That would be, like, dumb.

  • Or is their Save button subject to Slashdoting? It sure looks like /. changes have been made in OneMinuteWiki ... but I can't add mine ;)

  • Information about the CPL (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FunWithHeadlines ( 644929 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:33AM (#10374085) Homepage
    Since this is another Microsoft project being released as open source, let's examine which license they chose. My distrust of Microsoft is such that I would prefer they pick the GPL for releasing stuff, since then there is nothing they could do to later gum up the works (what, Microsoft do something sneaky? Never!).

    In this case, they chose the IBM-developed Common Public License, or CPL. What is the CPL? Here is what the Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org]. Note this section:

    "The CPL is a copyleft license, broadly similar to the GNU General Public License in its terms. The main addition is a patent clause designed to prevent unscrupulous contributors from contributing code which infringes on their patents, and then attempting to charge royalties; in such a situation, the CPL requires the contributor to grant a royalty-free license to all recipients. This additional requirement renders the CPL incompatible with the GPL (in the opinion of Eben Moglen)..."

    Hmm..incompatible with the GPL. Let's see what Groklaw has said about the CPL [groklaw.net]. All right, call me paranoid, but with Microsoft's history, I would tread cautiously. This may be altruistic of them, and maybe they are really nice guys, and trying to be good corporate citizens. Or maybe there is another motive that will become clear in the future. Time will tell.

    • Re:Information about the CPL (Score:5, Informative)

      by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:55AM (#10374353) Journal
      Uh, no, I don't think so. From that discription, it sounds like a totally acceptable license. In fact, from the FSF's page [gnu.org]:
      Common Public License Version 1.0

      This is a free software license but it is incompatible with the GPL.

      The Common Public License is incompatible with the GPL because it has various specific requirements that are not in the GPL.

      For example, it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL.)
      This is the same issue with the latest Apache license. It's good, it's just GPL incompatible. If they ever make a new version of the GPL, it might contain identical requirements.
      • Yep, it's possible that the GPL will follow suite some day. And it's possible that this release will never be exploited by Microsoft some day. I don't have the answers. I was just providing information since I saw lots of "What license is being used?" questions, and I wanted to hint that caution is always warranted before accepting a gift from Microsoft.
        • I can't tell whether your post is a farce.

          And it's possible that this release will never be exploited by Microsoft some day.

          No, what I'm saying is that if the FSF says "We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL." then that means they do not think Microsoft can exploit this license.
    • That's makes the CPL better than the GPL, no? If a piece of GPL software is copyright free, but unusable because of patents, that's not very Free.

      Should there be clauses covering trademarks too?
    • You know... you are just paranoid.

      Seriously.. if anyone is willing to release ANY code that was previously proprietary under ANY conditions, it's a step forward.

      Being GPL compatable is not a good benchmark to judge by... CPL is perfectly acceptable... in ways, it's even better than the GPL.

      This is wiki code.. there is LOTS of good wiki code out there already.. it's a good, open concept. This is just YAWI (Yet Another Wiki Implementation)..

      what's wrong with that?

    • Re:Information about the CPL (Score:4, Interesting)

      by pVoid ( 607584 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:19PM (#10374648)
      Rated informative! [rolls eyes]...

      If my memory serves me right, Linus himself said he would have prefered to use CPL if it existed at the time Linux was born.

    • In fact, the CPL is not inherently evil (but MS is :).

      The FSF uses the GPL for their projects, but they actually suggest that contributors give copyrights back to them. Well, the CPL enforces this.
  • I can hear popping noises as the heads of nerds explode from the "Open source good/Microsoft bad" paradox that has been created.

  • ASP.NET (Score:4, Informative)

    by News for nerds ( 448130 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:37AM (#10374135) Homepage
    As it's implemented in ASP.NET, you are recommended to use IIS to host it with best performance. If you are an OSS-oriented, mono + Apache may be an option. Anyway, comparing it to Perl-written Kwiki is nonsense IMHO.

    • Re:ASP.NET (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ajs ( 35943 )
      Anyway, comparing it to Perl-written Kwiki is nonsense IMHO.

      Not at all. And to all of the people who have said something along the lines of, "why can't we praise them for this release," questioning the quality of one piece of softwre vs. another is a tradition on Slashdot and has nothing to do with Microsoft (other than that they happen to be the author of one of those pieces of software in this case).

      If this were a post about MySQL's latest release, you'd expect questions of how it stacks up to PostgreS

  • Microsoft Released? (Score:5, Informative)

    by enkafan ( 604078 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:38AM (#10374148)

    I'm not totoally sold on Microsoft releasing this software as open source. It was written by David Ornstein [asp.net], who works at Microsoft. While this tool is used internally at Microsoft, and I'm sure MS has the rights to the software too, I just don't think it's fair to David to classify this as a Microsoft Product.

    BTW, David's weblog has a bunch of info on FlexWiki being posted to SourceForge [asp.net].

    • If he works for them, the odds are they have full rights of ownership on anything he develops while in their employ.
    • Not fair to classify it as a "David Ornstein" product either, and not give MS any credit... MS could've never allowed it to see the light of day, but they instead allowed it to be released, as an open source project.

      Give credit where credit is due, to both the man behind the development and the entity behind its' release.
  • .... Can someone provide a nice rundown on why I should choose one wiki package over another?

    License, Ease-of-use, Power, Compatibility, Language should all be in the chart.

    This is getting confusing!
    • I'm one of the Wikipedia team (looking after the database servers mostly) so I can't commment on others but MediaWiki includes these properties which make it interesting:
      Very widely used and understood (Wikipedia and many other places).
      Uses normal words, not CamelCase, for links.
      Supports most human languages (a broad range at Wikipedia places).
      Current version supports MySQL as the database, next version expected to support PostGreSQL as well.
      GPL license, PHP (including safe mode PHP)
      Extreme caching

  • I thought ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JMZorko ( 150414 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:39AM (#10374169) Homepage
    ... that MS employee's were not permitted to participate in OSS projects? Does this mean that, once they release it, they're not allowed to improve it?

    Regards,

    John

  • Check the wiki changelog for some cute little changes that our fellow /.ers have made.

  • Vandalism (Score:2, Informative)

    by e.colli ( 630500 )
    Clicking on rename [flexwiki.com] it shows the message:
    "Due to excessive vandalism, the rename function has been disabled. Once the vandals get bored, we'll reenable"

  • License? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @11:54AM (#10374341) Homepage
    Candera's FlexWiki Contrib [sourceforge.net] uses the IBM license, but the FlexWiki Core [sourceforge.net] project has no license listed. I didn't know you could start a project on SF without selecting a license, I thought it was a mandatory part of the project submission form. Does anyone know what license they are using?
  • They change 'hate' to '!love' in changes to the Wiki. I tried 'abhor' and 'despise' before finding that 'detest' works.
  • I don't see any conspicuous buttons to edit the main page, but the first entry under "Visitor Information" reads "If you... interested in a good software, leave this page!"

    Welcome to the wonderful world of wiki defacement...

  • Hats off to David Ornstein (Score:3, Informative)

    by Shimmer ( 3036 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:03PM (#10374428) Journal
    David is the primary author of FlexWiki. See his blog here [asp.net].

  • What's wrong with a gift horse? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by St. Arbirix ( 218306 ) <matthew...townsend@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:05PM (#10374466) Homepage Journal
    Is this software as good as the ever-extensible Kwiki implementation?

    Talk about looking gift horses in the mouth. That's like seeing Houdini get out of a lock box hanging from a crane and asking "Yeah, but can he levitate?"

    The point is Microsoft put something out that's open source. If it were 30 shades of awesome they'd be selling it instead. For now it's just there for the community to improve upon and keep.

  • FlexWiki was open source long before this. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Talonius ( 97106 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:06PM (#10374487)
    I've got copies download of the source code that were hosted on GotDotNet.

    This might be Microsoft's implementation of FlexWiki (FlexWiki is a BSD license type, if I remember correctly) but FlexWiki has been available for a while.

  • What Wiki engine suitable as PIM? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by guidryp ( 702488 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:20PM (#10374657)
    We use Twiki at work.

    I like it fine, but I was wondering if someone could suggest a really lightweight Wiki to use as PIM (Personal info Manager) on my Windows PC.

    I really like the ease of updating and changing the info flow of wiki (well Twiki so far), and would like a PIM that worked like this. Don't care about collaboration features, this is for personal use.

  • My question is: Is this software as good as the ever-extensible Kwiki implementation?

    How about you do some research and tell us what your decision was instead of asking us to do your work for you? /assholiness

  • Good discussion on open source at Microsoft @ (Score:4, Informative)

    by Skim123 ( 3322 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @12:40PM (#10374853) Homepage
    http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/archive/2004/09/26/23 4591.aspx [msdn.com] - an entry from the MS employee who released one of those MS open-source projects (WiX).

    More commentary... [msdn.com]

  • I've actively used TWiki ( http://www.twiki.org/ [twiki.org]) for a while now and its pretty slick. Its a Perl Implementation and it has a built in versioning system, so it saves all of the revisions of the TWiki docs.

    I definitely recommend it for anyone looking at running a Wiki. :-)

    Take care,

    Brian
    --
    Linux Web Hosting [assortedinternet.com]

  • wait... lemme read this again... Microsoft is going to OpenSource something? I thought putting the two words in one sentence without opposition was an oxymoron??? The world changes I guess...

  • one of the mowt easy wiki-engines: (Score:3, Informative)

    by N3wsByt3 ( 758224 ) on Tuesday September 28, 2004 @02:12PM (#10375848) Journal
    Is just called 'wikiserver' and you can find it on http://www.wikiserver.org [wikiserver.org]

    It has all the basic needs without the bells and whistles nobody uses, but, for most the wikiserver is very, very easy to use and to maintain. Contrary to almost all wiki's you don't have to know anything about webservers, php or other programlanguages, nay, not even detailed knowledge of a wiki is required. It just installs and works out of the bow, everything is straightforward, and I would say this wikiserver is what Ford was to the automobile-industry: it brings it into the grasp of everyone interested.

    The latest version of Rian, wxwikiserver has all what it takes, unless your requirements are ultra-high, and it's coppled with an astonishing ease-of-use - and for once, this is no exageration. I have tried several others, but this one is truelly the most easy one to install and run.

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