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From the Editors: Microsoft and open source


By SD Times News Team
January 15, 2009 — 
Microsoft has long had a hate-hate relationship with open source—not only with specific open-source projects like Linux, but also with the concept of non-proprietary software.

It’s not hard to see why Microsoft execs like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have been historically vitriolic about open source. Many of Microsoft’s most profitable products have open-source competitors. To name just a few: Windows has Linux. IIS has Apache. SQL Server has MySQL. Visual Studio has Eclipse and NetBeans. Internet Explorer has Firefox. Office has OpenOffice. .NET has Java (which is sort of open source).

Some of those competitors, like Linux-based servers, represent a serious long-term threat to Microsoft’s revenue. Others, like OpenOffice, haven’t had a significant impact. Even so, Microsoft has also had a philosophical difference with the entire open-source movement. Ballmer, for example, has made public statements claiming that open-source software is a cancer and that open-source software is not trustworthy.

One should not blame Microsoft for speaking out against competing products and against a model for software development that’s the opposite of its own closed-source, proprietary-protocols model for customer lock-in. As a for-profit company, Microsoft’s executives have a fiduciary responsibility to consider their company’s revenues. If they honestly believe that open source is a threat to their revenue, they have no choice but to fight against it.

However, it’s clear that today Microsoft does not see open source as a complete threat like it did in the early 2000s, when it was most vocal against Linux and other open-source projects. As our interview with Sam Ramji shows, Microsoft is beginning to provide its product teams with the flexibility to work with open-source software and to consider interoperability with open-source software.

That last point is the key. SD Times doesn’t care if Microsoft ever releases any of its software as open source. There’s nothing wrong with Microsoft’s closed-source business model, as its continuing profits, and popularity, with consumers and enterprise customers show.

What we do care about is interoperability. Microsoft has made some strides in recent years to publish its APIs, file formats and communications protocols. In many or most cases, the impetus behind that release has been compliance with a court order or to head off a challenge requiring interoperability. In each case, it seems like Microsoft has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into releasing the documentation or in pledging not to sue developers who build independent implementations of its protocols.

Microsoft does not yet see that interoperability represents a long-term benefit, and fully open interoperability should be voluntarily, genuinely, fully and enthusiastically embraced. Until the company demonstrates that it truly supports interoperability up, down and across its diverse product lines, all its talk about newfound support for open-source software will mean very little.

The company also needs to get over its incredible hostility toward the GNU General Public License. That’s not to say that Microsoft needs to release any software using GPL. Microsoft is the only major software company that totally spurns the license and refuses to engage the Free Software Foundation or the Software Freedom Law Center to find a way to work with GPL-licensed code. Like it or not, GPL-based code is important to the software industry and to Microsoft’s customers.

We are optimistic that Microsoft is beginning to grow out of its incredible antagonism regarding open-source software. Like many, we are worried that the company gives open-source software more lip service than actual service, and that it may be acting only to comply with court orders or other legal challenges instead of a sincere belief that open-source software can be good for its business. Let’s hope that next year delivers commitments to broad interoperability and engagement with the GPL. Those actions would go a long away toward healing past wounds.


Related Search Term(s): open source, Microsoft


Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/33188
 

Comments

02/15/2009 07:08:29 AM EST

Way to be objective. Seems like the articles on this sight are a waste of time. As a reporter/column writer you should try speaking in a more neutral tone. As if Microsoft didn't have a UNIX before Linux existed. Lol.

United StatesNate


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