We are hosting a confab in Seattle this week with fellow evangelists from around the world.
We kicked the day off with a keynote from Sam Ramji, Senior Director of Platform Strategy.
He was pumped from all the announcements from OSCON on Friday July 25th.
In summary, he covered :
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. We have tested over 100 community PHP applications and found them to run on IIS with no changes required. Hank Janssen and Garrett Serack of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft have been championing this work from the beginning, and I thank them for it. 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. I am grateful to Andy Oliver, the creator and maintainer of Apache POI, for contacting me back in June with a hope that Microsoft could supply the necessary rights for POI. These include: rights for Office Binary document formats; Open XML; and the right to intentionally subset, have partial implementations, or defects in implementation of these specification. Andy offered his thoughts here. 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.
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.
We have tested over 100 community PHP applications and found them to run on IIS with no changes required. Hank Janssen and Garrett Serack of the Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft have been championing this work from the beginning, and I thank them for it.
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.
I am grateful to Andy Oliver, the creator and maintainer of Apache POI, for contacting me back in June with a hope that Microsoft could supply the necessary rights for POI. These include: rights for Office Binary document formats; Open XML; and the right to intentionally subset, have partial implementations, or defects in implementation of these specification. Andy offered his thoughts here.
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.
More details on the Port25 Blog : history.forward()
Techmeme has a lot of coverage
Pretty cool!
Last night, I headed out to Malt and Vine to listen to Mary-Jo Foley speak about her new book Microsoft 2.0.
She was interviewed by Todd Bishop, the Microsoft watcher at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Todd has Audio: Mary Jo Foley on 'Microsoft 2.0'
I was very fortunate to get the copy of my book signed by the author.
It was a nice turnout, and I bumped into a bunch of familiar faces (Hi Lili and Kip!)
Mary Jo was asked which blogs she reads and she called out Steve Clayton and Long Zheng – cool, I know both of them. My brush with fame!
Speaking of fame, Dan Fernandez does a good job of listing the Microsoft folks mentioned in the book, which I will repeat for my own nefarious purposes.
I was going to add how many of these people I know, but that’s a bit too self indulgent.
It’s that time of the year again - Pi Approximation Day (π).
I’m wearing my special PI t-shirt to celebrate
I love the spiffy design
For my American friends wondering what I am on about, it’s to do with the way the date is written – 22/7 – LOL!
Today is “Take Our Daughters & Sons To Work Day 2008”
I brought Emma along to spend the day with me
She took in her laptop to keep herself busy
We’ve gone to meetings together, played Rock Band and participated in a raffle (and lost)
She even drew mushrooms on my whiteboard
As the day ends, I asked her if she can describe what I do.
She says I type a lot, talk a lot and drink lots of water.
Yup – that about sums it up!
I looked up and realized that today is 11 months that we arrived in the US of A.
11 months!
It’s also Bastille Day – so here’s a special song to celebrate
I have a trip to Atlanta this week and the weather forecast looks ominous
Let’s hope it improves during the week
I’ve registered my kids for the annual “Microsoft Take Our Daughters & Sons To Work Day 2008”, to be held on Monday, July 21 2008.
Yes, I’m getting flashbacks of the Arrested Development episode about Take Your Daughter To Work Day
The goal of the day – let them see what it is I actually do and hopefully I can convince them to write a story about the experience.
I am going to have them shadow me during the day, attending meetings and other stuff like that. (Hmmm maybe I can get them to tidy my office ……)
I’m even getting them their own Microsoft ID card. How fun!