I am not going to comment too much on Linus Torvald’s comments in this Linux Magazine article, because I feel they are very transparent and they mirror my own.

I’m a big believer in “technology over politics”. I don’t care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don’t have to worry about licensing etc issues.
I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.

There are ‘extremists’ in the free software world, but that’s one major reason why I don’t call what I do ‘free software’ any more. I don’t want to be associated with the people for whom it’s about exclusion and hatred.”

He also went on to say, that people bashing Microsoft for submitting drivers, and congratulating the likes of IBM for doing the same are being hypocritical.

I agree that it’s driven by selfish reasons, but that’s how all open source code gets written! We all “scratch our own itches”. It’s why I started Linux, it’s why I started git, and it’s why I am still involved. It’s the reason for everybody to end up in open source, to some degree.
So complaining about the fact that Microsoft picked a selfish area to work on is just silly. Of course they picked an area that helps them. That’s the point of open source – the ability to make the code better for your particular needs, whoever the ‘your’ in question happens to be.

Does anybody complain when hardware companies write drivers for the hardware they produce? No. That would be crazy. Does anybody complain when IBM funds all the POWER development, and works on enterprise features because they sell into the enterprise? No. That would be insane.

So the people who complain about Microsoft writing drivers for their own virtualization model should take a long look in the mirror and ask themselves why they are being so hypocritical.

Two thumbs up Linus.

Tags: Hyper-V, Linus Torvald, Linux, Microsoft

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Have you ever been asked to program something as simple as this chain lock for a door:

And after it has gone through the design process, usability groups, your corporate intigration team, and any Tom, Dick, or Harry that wants to put their finger print on the project to get credit.  You end up with something like this:

At least it looks pretty, and functions once as intended. However every time the door opens after that it fails to work as the user would assume, and gives a false sense of security.

This is a major security flaw and these are the exact situations, as programmers, we are hired to prevent. I am not talking about chain locks on a door, but programs that were suppose to serve simple processes, but after going through the design and review machines it came out looking like some Frankin-program.

This is why as developers, we must create unit tests based off requirements and not based off of the program we have created. It is usually easier to get a unit test to pass after we have programmed something, but often times that leads to a false sense of security for both us as developers and the users who rely on the program. If the second, pretty-looking-lock, was properly unit tested based off the requirements of the first lock, it would have never made it’s way in to the high priced Le Meridian hotel in Paris.

Be sure to unit test to provide both a sense of security for you as the developer and an expected experience for your users.

Tags: ALT.NET, Le Meridian, Starwood, TDD, Unit Testing

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