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Good to see that the users of /. are completely biased against Microsoft no matter what they do.

Not everyone is biased, your comment got moderated insightful didn't it ?

This Microsoft = Evil crap gets really old after awhile.

I agree BUT, based on their history, it may be wise to look at what the motives for this move may be.

They are one of the most innovative companies ..

For things like virtualization and Hypervisor:

• the original hypervisor was CP/CMS, developed at IBM in the 1960s
• The major UNIX vendors, including Sun Microsystems, HP, IBM, and SGI, have been selling virtualized hardware since before 2000
• As of late 2006, Solaris, Linux (Ubuntu and Gentoo), and FreeBSD have been ported to run on top of Hypervisor

Microsoft doesn't appear in the list until 2008, so they can hardly claim to be 'one of the most innovative companies' in this particular field.

.. and now they're trying to put out drivers for Linux under a license that guarantees they will be open and free

IF this is the case, then I agree, this move should be welcomed.

.. At every University they presented studies comparing open and closed source software.

Are you basing your statements on what the University studies said, or do you have personal experience of working with both open and closed source software yourself ?

Closed source wins on almost every level; fewer errors, quicker fixes, better performance.

As always your mileage may vary, and if this is what you have found then then this is good. This hasn't been my experience having working in IT developing both open source and closed source software. Many people find that closed source software does exactly what they need, which is fine by me. Best tool for the job and all that.

Open source is a great ideal but just because someone COULD go through and edit and contribute code doesn't mean someone WILL go through and fix the errors

Having worked in (closed source) commercial software for a number of years, I know from experience that the same applies there too. Wherever you are, priorities are subject to a cost benefit analysis.
Just becuse we COULD fix a bug, doesn't mean someone WILL go through and fix the errors, until an important customer notices it.

It could also be argued that Microsoft were able to contribute because the Linux kernel is open source. How many people have the opportunity to see and contribute to the code for the Windows kernel ?

.. very few people are going to sit day after day and produce quality code and products if they don't get paid for it ..

Indeed, and some of the best open source software is produced by people explicitly employed to do just that. By companies like IBM, Sun, Redhat, Oracle, Canonical ... and many many more. I am currently working on a project funded by the UK government to produce open source software for the science community to use.

Microsoft has contributed more to computing than any single company ..

Um, not convinced on that .. I suspect that companies like IBM might be a better contender for that title. Not only do they have a longer history and a wider range, they have also contributed some their patents to the community.

.. but everyone on this site just loves to hate them

Bob Sutor is a darned clever guy. I met him at ISSAC '94.

[...]

He's a lot more clever than you or I and definitely isn't clueless.

So if Mr. Sutor is so interested in getting open source industry solutions and he's such a clever guy, why can't he even convince his own manager colleagues at IBM that it would be a good idea for the Tivoli line?

The products there would perfectly fit the profile, quite a lot of them run under Linux and it really would help the quality of the products.

You know what the reason is? That Mr. Sutor manager colleagues don't give a rat's fart about how clever Mr. Sutor is and prefer to make their sales targets by selling licenses of said products and have no interest in open-saucing their cash cows.

And if Mr. Sutor can't even convince his own employer how good the idea to open-source useful industry applications, why should he have more luck with other vendors?

From a commercial point of view, making products open source makes only sense in certain circumstances. The development of useful open-source alternatives from scratch also need a certain environment to work. If neither is present for an application there won't be good open source software.

Bob Sutor is a darned clever guy. I met him at ISSAC '94.

He's one of the (many) developers of Axiom, but he co-wrote the book and worked on it full-time for years.

He also wrote a LaTeX plugin for Netscape (way back when) called IBM TechExplorer.

He's a lot more clever than you or I and definitely isn't clueless.

Which two products? The specification currently before the standards bodies is not implemented anywhere by any application. Parts of it are. Parts of it aren't. Parts of it aren't even specified. And even if it were, the licensing still does not allow free software implementations. Not even MS Office 2007 supports the specification before the standards bodies.

MOOX isn't helping the ODF standard, which by the way is currently the standard for office documents. It's hurting it. It's even hurting the standards process: MOOX target is the same functionality that is already available in OpenDocument, and ODF is already the standard. OpenDocument already has many applications supporting it.

Novell is history. We all know that. It was up and down for a while, but went down for the count when it signed the deal to infect as much of its product as possible with proprietary specifications during a five year span. We're about halfway through that span.

This ruling may have been a catalyst for IBM's new position and backtracking on their 'outsourcing' patent. http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1869 (posted on Slashdot just a few hours ago http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/05/0449218)

From Sutor's blog IBM adopted a new policy a year ago to sharply reduce business method patent filings and instead stress significant technical content in its patents.

Does this make IBM's new policy seem a bit less altruistic?

http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1633

Where he posts an image of Second Life running under Feisty. Since the image apparently shows his avatar we now know what the IBM dress code is in virtual worlds - Muscle Tee shirts and sunglasses.

Way to shaft all the people who bet their business on your software, bub, by changing the license terms.

Of course, in reality it won't come to that. Prediction: if the GPL3 comes out the way RMS has been saying it will, Ubuntu, IBM and others will fork the GNU system in a heartbeat

But hey, if you really do believe GNU will be forked if GPLv3 comes out looking like the current drafts, I'm ready to bet on that. How about a bottle of good cognac?

even with giving you a benefit of doubt i'd like to call the argument about backwards compatibility a bullshit.

some interesting linked information is here :
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1346

please, read through http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections . pay special attention to sections with "Compatibility Note".
i hope after those documents you'll see what incredible low quality and intentional drawbacks the "format" has.

This is not necessarily FUD - Bob Sutor has a point when he warns against the danger of OpenXML. It is extremely difficult to adopt the specifications (thousands of pages) - and Novell (typical) does it right now in a way that they will have a headstart (even if they contribute code back later). Moreover, they can only hope to successfully implement parts of the OpenXML specs, while providing MS with enough ammo to continue to push their specs over ODF.