Microsoft Toys With Open Source
Jens Eckels
July 31, 2006
After several years of highly-critical rhetoric surrounding core concepts and calls for participation, Microsoft is finally cozying up to the open source fire. The unspoken motive behind the about-face? Money, of course. As more and more enterprises are realizing, open source can open up other much more lucrative revenue streams that are key to their business practice.
The most relevant example is likely IBM, who helped create the “motherboard”of software programs in the Eclipse platform. Recognizing that a standardization of development environments would kick back in the form of hardware support and lucrative consulting contracts, IBM created revenue on the back end. Not to mention the free publicity that comes with the goodwill created.
Similarly, Microsoft may be hoping to rain on the parade of Linux and other open source program competitors, to whom they are losing customers (and press) despite their newfound open source olive branch. Unfortunately, they're several years behind in participation. But, with their undeniable clout and revenue stream, the gap could theoretically be filled quickly. Understandably, neither the Windows source code, nor aspects of MS Office are going to be made available. But, the appearance of even a friendly quote or two signals a turn in the mentality behind open source at the Redmond giant even if visible changes will manifest during an undefined time frame.
This attitude would be a dramatic departure from recent years, where Microsoft execs have been publicly critical of open source. A recent Chicago Sun-Times interview with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer quotes Ballmer as saying Linux is "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual-property sense to everything it touches."
As Microsoft seemingly talks out of both sides of its mouth, Lee Gomes of The Wall Street Journal points out the irony: "The company's Hotmail free e-mail service for years used the FreeBSD operating system and the Apache Web server, both leading open-source programs. After buying Hotmail in 1997, Microsoft tried to replace FreeBSD with its own Windows software. Hotmail insiders said the company found Windows couldn't handle the heavy load, something Microsoft at the time declined to discuss."
Unfortunately for Microsoft‘s leadership, open source is apparently here to stay, and can no longer be ignored. As the behemoth just now sticks their toes in the bathwater, more open source projects contributions are promised by Stephen Walli, who oversaw the process of Microsoft‘s two prior open source contributions.
As he said during a panel discussion by the WSA technology trade association on July 25th, "There's more of that on the way...And it's not just about developer tools. There's other things that we can be looking at when you actually look at the breadth of source code that we have, the breadth of software that we have that isn't actually core (to Microsoft's) revenue stream."
As Meryll Larkin of Seattle area-based Alaska Maritime Agencies told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently, "I would like to believe those days [of Microsoft making it's software unfriendly to competitors] are over. Microsoft is at least giving lip service to cooperation, and at this point I think they should turn more of it into reality. I think they can. I hope they will."
Don‘t we all? After all, one man‘s “cancer” is another‘s lifeblood.
The most relevant example is likely IBM, who helped create the “motherboard”of software programs in the Eclipse platform. Recognizing that a standardization of development environments would kick back in the form of hardware support and lucrative consulting contracts, IBM created revenue on the back end. Not to mention the free publicity that comes with the goodwill created.
Similarly, Microsoft may be hoping to rain on the parade of Linux and other open source program competitors, to whom they are losing customers (and press) despite their newfound open source olive branch. Unfortunately, they're several years behind in participation. But, with their undeniable clout and revenue stream, the gap could theoretically be filled quickly. Understandably, neither the Windows source code, nor aspects of MS Office are going to be made available. But, the appearance of even a friendly quote or two signals a turn in the mentality behind open source at the Redmond giant even if visible changes will manifest during an undefined time frame.
This attitude would be a dramatic departure from recent years, where Microsoft execs have been publicly critical of open source. A recent Chicago Sun-Times interview with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer quotes Ballmer as saying Linux is "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual-property sense to everything it touches."
As Microsoft seemingly talks out of both sides of its mouth, Lee Gomes of The Wall Street Journal points out the irony: "The company's Hotmail free e-mail service for years used the FreeBSD operating system and the Apache Web server, both leading open-source programs. After buying Hotmail in 1997, Microsoft tried to replace FreeBSD with its own Windows software. Hotmail insiders said the company found Windows couldn't handle the heavy load, something Microsoft at the time declined to discuss."
Unfortunately for Microsoft‘s leadership, open source is apparently here to stay, and can no longer be ignored. As the behemoth just now sticks their toes in the bathwater, more open source projects contributions are promised by Stephen Walli, who oversaw the process of Microsoft‘s two prior open source contributions.
As he said during a panel discussion by the WSA technology trade association on July 25th, "There's more of that on the way...And it's not just about developer tools. There's other things that we can be looking at when you actually look at the breadth of source code that we have, the breadth of software that we have that isn't actually core (to Microsoft's) revenue stream."
As Meryll Larkin of Seattle area-based Alaska Maritime Agencies told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently, "I would like to believe those days [of Microsoft making it's software unfriendly to competitors] are over. Microsoft is at least giving lip service to cooperation, and at this point I think they should turn more of it into reality. I think they can. I hope they will."
Don‘t we all? After all, one man‘s “cancer” is another‘s lifeblood.
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