The Windows Driver Frameworks are on GitHub

The Windows Driver Frameworks are on GitHub(blogs.msdn.com)

283 points by canacrypto 11 years ago | 79 comments

kriro 11 years ago |

There are actually some strong OS voices in Microsoft. I was at Solutions Linux in France (around 2006 iirc) and there was a Microsoft booth. Since our booth had some downtime I talked to the guy manning their booth who was kind of stranded between Linux distros and FLOSS companies.

He was pretty cool and genuinely trying to advance OS within Microsoft but said it's a pretty frustrating experience overall (his descriptions of the internal processes at Microsoft were pretty interesting). Seems like they have come a long way since, I hope he's still working there. I should have his card somewhere at home :)

So as far as I know there have been developers who were pushing to open source a lot of infrastructure/language stuff for quite some time.

Edit: I think it's no coincidence we see this happening now that Ballmer is gone. He was kind of the villain in the "let's open source stuff" stories I heard.

brudgers 11 years ago | |

Scott Hanselman has been talking about the process of changing Microsoft's culture toward open source on Hanselminutes since he started working there about five years (and a couple of hundred episodes) ago.

The move to open source has been in the works a long time and appears (to me at least) as part of Ballmer and Gates long term strategic plan for the era when they were no longer the largest and second largest shareholders and the company was more beholden to Wall Street.

The new post-founder (ok Ballmer wasn't technically a founder) era at Microsoft has been set up so that Microsoft can operate like a software company again. That means embracing current industry culture. Practices that made sense when software came in boxes and was sold through magazines and connecting meant squawking over POTS, needed to be looked at with an eye toward long term.

Nadella was set up by Ballmer to fall into the pit of success. The super tanker's rudder was changed years ago. The move toward open source is no more overnight than the hardware build quality of the surface.

igorgue 11 years ago | | |

Also, I bet having Phil Haack working at Github changed the mindset of a lot of people, either way, even from the days from Novel and Mono, Microsoft was always cool with opensource.

aceperry 11 years ago |

I must say, I'm very impressed with all of the open source moves that MS has done lately. I wonder if that will drive more adoption of C# and cause Oracle to open up Java. I'm not a fan of C# because it's basically only used on windows systems, despite xamarin and et al.

pjmlp 11 years ago | |

I like both eco-systems a lot, however Java is currently more open than .NET, specially if you look around for available certified JVMs.

NicoJuicy 11 years ago | | |

In this particular case, i'd prefer Windows above Oracle (Java) anytime, considering they deliver malware with their Java Setup...

Edit: Some people give a link to an alterantive download without malware... You know 99% of all Java downloads don't know that, do you?

luisrudge 11 years ago | | |

You're kidding, right? Where is the source code for java compiler and jvm stuff? Can you send a pull request? Can you see the commits? Can you see design meetings about the language? Java is not more open than .NET in any way.

pikachu_is_cool 11 years ago | |

Yeah, especially since you need to pay a regular fee to use Xamarin, and it's not libre software either.

If a free Xamarin came out I'd jump on the C# boat in a heartbeat, which I guess is what MS is trying to do with all this open sourcing (free software-ifying?).

josteink 11 years ago | | |

> Yeah, especially since you need to pay a regular fee to use Xamarin

You can use Monodevelop[1] which is 100% FOSS. AFAIK Xamarin is just Monodevelop with some extra wrappers and custom libraries for cross-platform mobile-development. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

If you're just making normal applications, libraries or web-solutions you don't need Xamarin.

[1] http://www.monodevelop.com/

Rapzid 11 years ago | | |

I have used Xamarin Studio a lot in the past for free. It's the mobile stuff that costs extra. Now I lean a bit more toward Visual Studio as it is free for my purposes.

chrismarlow9 11 years ago | |

From my experience C# was pretty much following Scala down the functional road, and the syntax was quite similar. Maybe you should check out Scala.

Edit: I say "was" because I used to develop C# and had experience porting C# apps to Scala (so that we could run it on linux, lol).

btzll 11 years ago | |

Since most of the income of Oracle comes from Enterprise software, I doubt they will do what MS does in the near future.

NamTaf 11 years ago |

What effect will this have on the ability to boost driver support in Linux, if any? FreeBSD has ndisgen [1], but would this help improve that or a broader set of driver use in Linux?

Secondly, what about WINE?

[1]: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndisgen

ikonst 11 years ago | |

It means nothing. WDF is a high-level framework for drivers on top of Windows NT – basically a convenience library you link with. While using WDF, you can freely call regular NT functions too.

It's like MFC to Win32.

NamTaf 11 years ago | | |

Thanks for the information. I'm not at all involved in driver work so I have no clue. :)

auxym 11 years ago | |

Linux has ndiswrapper

NamTaf 11 years ago | | |

I wasn't trying to imply it didn't have an equivalent ndis tool, I just used FreeBSD as the example as that's my experience. I was more wondering if this would've helped advance these (and similar) offerings.

maguirre 11 years ago |

This is slightly off topic. However maybe someone on this thread can point me in the right direction. Can anyone recommend some good resources to get started writing low-level drivers for windows (books or open source examples)? I work mostly with embedded software on custom project. From time to time I need to interface with Windows machines and the information of this topic has always been limited.

galaktor 11 years ago | |

I too have been finding it hard to find a single reliable and up-to-date source for learning windows drivers. There's a plethora of info online, but lots is out of date and/or scattered and redundant. Even decent paid training is hard to find, at least in my part of the world.

There's a book, but it's old [1]

There's samples, which are fresh [2]

There's a multi part series on Code Project, but it's old (yet much of it still applies conceptually; samples not so much) Part 1 of 6: [3]

If anybody has a good one-stop-shop and updated source of learning I'd very much appreciate it (I'd love a nicely written book on the matter that's not older than, say, 3 years old)

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Drivers-Foundation-Develope... [2]: https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver-samples [3]: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9504/Driver-Development-...

ximeng 11 years ago |

One barrier to developing drivers for Windows is the driver signing policy https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff... which requires you to pay for a software publisher certificate.

frozenport 11 years ago | |

I can live with this. Buggy software drivers wreak havoc and security vulnerabilities. I routinely use expensive industrial equipment without signed drivers, and the problem seems to be a warning from the installer.

stinos 11 years ago | | |

This seems to be the case indeed. The couple of times Windows BSOD'd on me was always because of faulty drivers and more often than not the unsigned ones.

yuhong 11 years ago | |

Win10 even changed the requirements actually: https://www.osr.com/blog/2015/03/18/microsoft-signatures-req...

Personally, I think that signing all drivers off a single root makes sense, but I am concerned about the EV requirement. EricLaw mentioned before that they don't sell them to individuals, for example.

geon 11 years ago | |

Is it any different than the Apple iOS developer license?

Sanddancer 11 years ago | | |

Yes. The certificates Microsoft requires use the standard CA system, and are pretty much bog-standard code signing certificates, so the key you need can also be used to sign other windows apps you make, java apps, mozilla add-ons, etc.

tonyedgecombe 11 years ago | |

I used my Authenticode cert for this, it wasn't very expensive.

ximeng 11 years ago | | |

How much out of interest? I see prices of 180 USD a year on Google search. It's not expensive but for say an open source project which might not be bringing in income it's an annoying cost.

wslh 11 years ago | |

What's the barrier for that? You can develop drivers without signing the drivers and obtain them in the deployment phase.

MrZipf 11 years ago |

The open-sourcing is a sign that MSFT is in a tricky spot (BYOD, mobile, tablet, games) and desperately needs to improve relations with the outside world. Expect we'll also see MSFT using more open source in products to compete effectively though I wonder what'd happen with internal best practices that the outside world doesn't have, e.g. SAL. Will they contribute back? Let's see.

Inside MSFT there used to be minimal credit for releasing source which was a strong inhibitor in the employee review process. And a gratuitously awkward internal process for open sourcing code with no path for accepting changes/contributions. Attitudes are definitely improving.

The major benefit of this particular move will be when you're working on Windows drivers - now you can see and completely grok what a piece of code does until it transitions into the kernel proper.

anon4 11 years ago | |

I think we should stop speculating each OSS effort from Microsoft as a sign of weakness and/or desperation. They might eventually conclude that open-sourcing things makes them seem like losers, rather than strengthening developer relations, which is what they're really going for (among other things, I'm certain).

threeseed 11 years ago | |

It's also a sign that Microsoft sees its future in services.

Which in that case means that protecting the former "company jewels" of Windows and Office ceases to be less important.

cookiecaper 11 years ago | | |

I don't think it's about Windows and Office becoming less important as concepts or products, but that their old sales channel and use cases are outmoded. Windows and Office will still be Microsoft's cash cows; they'll just collect the fees through Azure, OneDrive, and other software-as-a-service packages. Open-sourcing is about keeping Microsoft's platforms competitive so that people will rent Azure nodes.

Microsoft realized they were becoming to FOSS as OS X is to Windows and is trying to counteract that. Microsoft's vision is still valid; they want Microsoft technology running every computer in the world.

ximeng 11 years ago | |

Didn't recognise SAL - assuming it is source annotation language:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15122-f10/lectures/25-sal...

It looks like this can be used:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182032(v=vs.110)....

baxter001 11 years ago |

"we understand there’s no substitute for having OS source available" Ho ho ho.

shmerl 11 years ago |

Will it help making drivers for filesystems which MS doesn't care to support?

Sanddancer 11 years ago | |

Probably not. The filesystem API Microsoft uses, Installable File System, has been in place and used by a bunch of people since the OS/2 days. Support for filesystems like zfs is lacking more due to apathy than anything else.

andreiw 11 years ago | | |

The IFS kit was a separate purchase from the DDK, even. There's a pieced-together header floating around on the web (as well as some OSS drivers for things like ext2)...

whoopdedo 11 years ago | |

Drivers aren't much of a threat to the Windows hegemony because since Vista they've needed to be signed. If you don't mind taking the risk of running with driver signature verification turned off you can get FSDs for XFS and Ext4.

ikonst 11 years ago | | |

Last time I checked, code signing certificates could be had for $400 a year, not an exorbitant price to many tech enthusiasts.

monocasa 11 years ago |

I don't see a patent grant...

elchief 11 years ago |

Whiny ass comments so far. Bravo Microsoft!

throwawaymsft 11 years ago |

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -Gandhi

crazychrome 11 years ago | |

why this quote got down voted? it's exactly how Opensource progresses.

0xFFC 11 years ago | | |

1.Because MSFT doing good job 2. Gandhi was sick person, you can search about it , He was afraid of money/tea and so many things.Those good thing we hear about Gandhi I think most of them are propaganda.

vortico 11 years ago |

I hope Microsoft knows this, but Open Source doesn't imply putting your source on GitHub (and vise-versa). If Microsoft dev teams served source tarballs along with their releases, we'd be just as happy. But perhaps they will actually use the GitHub issue trackers and other neat features, as they are pretty useful.

MichaelGG 11 years ago | |

Uh, publishing your source under a usable license is sorta really the definition of open source. Whether or not you like their dev style or other things is separate and trying to make new definitions. You shouldn't just throw caps on a common description then claim no one is that common thing because you've redefined it.

ghuntley 11 years ago | |

Uh, they have moved their entire development workflow to GitHub pull requests. Fully transparent and out in the open.

Work has commenced on getting CoreCLR (the official.NET run-time) ported and running on BSD and the following PR's were merged yesterday which add initial support for NetBSD and OpenBSD:

https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/pull/453 https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/pull/470

The "port team" is organzing work via the following issue:

https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/455#issuecomment-82...

We are looking for more people to help out, if this is of interest then please goto above and say Hello ;-)

bhuga 11 years ago | |

They have been accepting community contributions on dotnet/coreclr, among other projects:

https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/pulls

BinaryIdiot 11 years ago | |

This is just one of many steps. For instance if you take a look at the following merge someone actually comments regarding what you're talking about: https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/pull/485

Basically many teams are still on TFS versus GIT and will take some time to move over. But once they're moved over GitHub and their internal stuff will be treated more like separate branches and there will be good, useful history instead of simple bombs from TFS.