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What's the Business Case for Microsoft and Open Source?
Friend of perl developers everywhere, Jeremy Zawodny, has an intriguing question: "If you had to explain to Microsoft why they should change their
attitude toward Open Source, what would you say?" For more about this, read on...
From Jeremy: "If you had to explain to Microsoft why they should change their
attitude toward Open Source, what would you say? More to the point,
how can Microsoft benefit from better supporting or even adopting
Open Source in their business? (Replace IIS with Apache, for
example.) Does it make sense for them? Are there ways that they can
use Open Source as a competitive advantage without pissing off the
Open Source community in the process? Which of their products would
make sense on Open Source platforms? How can the Open Source
community help Microsoft? Or is this a lost cause? IBM has made it
work. Can Microsoft?
I ask these questions because I may have the chance to talk with folks at Microsoft about Open Source. And it only makes sense that I look to the community for input. So let's hear it. Flames won't help. Thoughtful answers and ideas very well could."
- score -1, naive
- score -1, simplistic
This is a serious proposition and about as objectively applicable as "-1, Troll".... will probably be very difficult to transition to an open-source model. Basically they are in the widget IP licensing business, they only make money by selling complex components that other companies can script together. As such they have a very good business plan in targeting the mass market (consumer ignorance + millions of units). OpenSource makes business sense for small specialised niches (where the money is in the expertise/consulting e.g. tax laws), academia where you'd want to encourage uptake of new technology (which always require more hacking), and long-term infrastructure where you absolutely must be able to access data/devices beyond the longivity of any single supplier.
So long as MS can make high margins on the components, control the "works under Windows xyz" trademark, and can buy out any disruptive upstart, I really don't see why they'd be motivated to open-source anything.
LL
IBM is an OSS advocate because:
If I were to approach it, I might challenge MS to think outside the box and compete against themselves.
Take Apple's strategy of supporting an OSS-based OS (Darwin) and adding in strategic closed source bits to productize it. Perhaps they could move some small fraction of their $40 Billion war chest into support Darwin itself. Could you imagine the boost that Darwin would get from $4-$5 Billion? (Only 10-12% of the MS Cash holdings.) This could energize their developers on their current products to take OSS seriously and spur them to produce better products.
Perhaps more importantly, this could sap mindshare and community away from Linux. How many Enterprises would field an MS-supported Open Source OS before Linux? A lot, I think.
I c# went totally open source, it would at least have that over Java. In my experience 95% of developers have a negative attitude toward M$, and making c# open might help with this. I think developer opinion is important because they often choose which products/languages to use. Personally I would never choose M$ development languages over Java because of the closed/platform dependant nature.
Can Microsoft use open source?
See the mightly lion. See the lion kill the OS/2 wolf. See the lion scare away the Borland tiger. See the lion beat up the Lotus dog. See the lion tell all the other animals what to do.
See the little mouse scurry around. See the mouse eat nuts and seeds, things too small for the lion to bother with. See the plague of mice. When the lion pounces on one, they all scamper around and confuse it. See the lion trying to scare them with its mightly roar. See the lion going crazy trying to stop thousands of them all around it.
Can the lion eat the nuts and seeds that sustain the mice?
Can Microsoft use techniques of open source?
I think it may be that one reason the M$ doesn't want to open source itself is that it would reveal that it's already using a buncha open source internally anyway. This would of course be a violation of the GPL and would open M$ to lotsa legal and pr problems. Just a theory of mine.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
It's hard to know where Microsoft would benefit from Open Source (remembering that they can already, ahem, borrow BSD'd and similar code) without knowing how much each product contributes to the company financially and how much each product costs, but, if I were to hazard a few guesses, it would be these:
1. IIS==>bit bucket
IIS does not dominate its market and has a wretched reputation. IIS extensions are available under apache, and the apache license would allow Microsoft to make its own proprietary extensions to a Microsoft-supported license.
It would make a world of sense for MS to bite the bullet, declare apache their web server, and add MS-only content in the form of proprietary mods.
2. SQL Server.
Big asterisk here. If SQL Server contributes serious net dollars, I might continue to ride it for a while.
However, SQL Server faces fierce competition at the high end from Oracle and DB2. The continued visibility of Open Source is exposing it to danger in the middle from solutions like PostgreSQL and MySQL, products that conspire to take the profit out of the segment.
I can't help but think that Microsoft could learn something here from the tremendous success of Access. Nobody buys Access because it's a great database. They buy Access because it's a database they can use. Microsoft can open up SQL-Server or they could even get more radical:
base a new database on PostgreSQL, perhaps with extensions to ensure that current SQL-Server databases are cleanly supported.
Then, without having to R&D the database (and, not coincidentally, gaining a marketing point in terms of customer flexibility), focus on proprietary tools that make developing and admining the thing easier. Maybe special additions (as separate proprietary products) to help exploit the Windows platform.
3. The Access back-end.
As I said, nobody buys Access because it's a great database.
4. Outlook Express.
A little danger here, because it might make it easier to clone Exchange. However, this could be a sort of "reverse-samba": Outlooks showing up in all kinds of strange places and on all kinds of strange platforms where it never lived before. Why? PHBs. Nuff said.
5. NetMeeting.
C'mon, guys. The whole purpose of NetMeeting is to let people in remote locations participate in a meeting. MS doesn't charge for the basic client, anyway. Opening this means that Windows can communicate with anyone else using the NetMeeting softwareThis one seems like a no-brainer, especially as a revenue stream might be found in enhanced software for originating sites as opposed to mere participants.
6. Whatever MS calls it's instant messenger.
That would be a great stab at Yahoo and AOL, and, for MS, wonderful irony.
Anyway, those a re a few of my ideas.
The only thing they can do is fight their customers and the government to maintain their stranglehold, grabbing as much cash as they can get away with before they are pushed aside.
I'm not sure you could make an effective case for Microsoft to use open source. Open source works for IBM because they are at heart a hardware company, and secondly a service provider; open source means less spent on software development and more software which runs on their hardware. Further, they can help open source projects and provide support and consulting to companies who run open source applications on IBM hardware. nVIDIA benefits in a similar way: they make hardware, and more OS support for their cards equals more potential buyers.
Microsoft depends entirely on software for its existence. Contributing to open source probably seems counterproductive from their point of view. Why should they loan out their expertise to support open source and possibly help competing products to emerge? Open source means revenue loss in the eyes of upper management. MS would have to change their business model to more consulting and service rather than software development in order to benefit from open source -- a big change considering how MS has grown by becoming the biggest software developer around.
I'm not quite sure who you will be talking to and what exactly you mean, but if you're talking to the programmers, prepare to be surprised at the attitude. I was a contractor at Microsoft. What language did I program in? Perl. While there, I worked alongside Linux advocates and other free software fans. I heard more Windows bashing there than I have at my non-M$ jobs. The programmers there are geeks. They're likely to already agree with you.
Now if you're talking to the marketing or legal departments, good luck. I don't know if they can even turn on their computers.
The notion that Microsoft could learn from how IBM has handled Open Source ignores the fundamental difference between Ms and IBM. IBM has cleverly decided that hardware AND software margins are nice to have, but they are primarily a vehicle for services revenue. While Ms has a non-trivial consulting organization, (minuscule in comparison to IBM Global Services, though) it is chartered as a cost-recovery group (they try to bill enough to pay for themselves) but they are not a profit-and-loss center. MCS is there to plug in expertise where needed to advance strategic goals which all boil down to selling more and more lucrative software. Even if Microsoft owned ALL of computer systems consulting business (Windows AND UNIX/Linux) worldwide I don't believe it would not begin to approach the revenues it now receives from software. From a business point of view, "doing an IBM" and moving software to OpenSource hoping to make money on services would be insane for Ms. .Net does not get walled off from OS inputs.
The best hope is to get Ms to consider co-operating with key OpenSource projects like Ximan Mono so that the future MS world of
So mayby this time we can learn from history, the CBDTPA,DMCA and ilk legisilation should be raising a few "red flags" before they can do as much damage.
I like most people agree that it would be a long road to get MS into the Open Source Arena. MS's Shared Source initiative may be as far as they go. However, I'm not ever sure that something like MS switching to Apache would be good. If MS switched to Apache, I imagine that you would have something like 80-90% of the world's websites on Apache...I think there is some value to heterogeneity in the software world. If everyone was on Apache and some devastating hole was found, you would have 90% of the world's web servers compromised (yes, yes, I know it is less likely to happen than with IIS). I personally believe that good solid standards are the best thing in the software world. Interoperation is more important than a universal code base.
Wouldn't you want to have some say or credit in naming a piece of software where you have > 60% of the contribution?
At least he does not want to name it Richarm.
Linus named it all after himself!
Having GNU in the name is a credit not just to GNU, but to the thousands of developers who have contributed to the GNU system.. RMS is fighting for credit for you and me, and you don't even realize that.. It sucks that people choose to bash the same guy who brought you the very GPL which has led to all this Linux-success.. singlehandedly, and sometimes without an apartment to live in because of his insistence...
If you are so opposed to GNU and RMS, Why don't you stop using GNU/Linux and write your own GNU/Linux, Iamthefallen? And of course, GCC, , GDB, Emacs and all other GNU tools.. written by GNU (and again, largely by RMS)...
There are huge problems with making a business case for Microsoft encouraging Open Source. Their business model in which they would evaluate the case is antithetical to all but a token onvolvement in Open Source. Any business case (Open Source or not) would need to either fit into (or expand on) their existing model, or come up with enough evidence that a new business model is superior to theirs.
If you have a superior business model for a Software company than Microsoft's, your time is better spent developing it into a real business rather than telling it to Microsoft. Please do so.
The other problem is you are talking to "Folks at Microsoft". From everything I've heard it's fairly easy to convince programmers and other developers at Microsoft that Open Source software is a good thing. The problem is that their Exeuctive Management is convinced that Freedom is a bad thing. What little use they make of Free Software with such a mindest is likely to be exploitive. Bill Gates has esentially said he really likes the idea of Open Source licenses like BSD, because Microsoft can take those programs, adapt them to thier needs, and not worry about contributing the changes back to the community. In my opinion, there has been more than enough exploitation along these lines, we don't need someone encouraging more.
In my opinion, the only really tactic is to toss the "Business Case" idea aside, and convince Microsoft that a healthy Free Software community is important to Microsoft. This is a tough call, but here are some arguments:
Key technologies they Microsoft makes a great deal of money off of were developed by a healthy Free Software community:
* Email
* World Wide Web
Having further development, in the Free Commons, will expand the computer industry as a whole. Microsoft currently has 90% of the industry, if it has only 70% of an industry three times as large, it's making more money. A healthy Free Software community can help make this happen without Microsoft having to shell out significant amounts of money.
On the flip side of the equation, many industries have a healthy commons and still make money hand over fist:
* Law
* Medicine
* Engineering
The bottom line is that Microsoft's executive management needs to be convinced that Freedom is not bad for their health before it's worth getting them involved in "Open Source".
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Open mind, insert foot.
...then go one step further. The usual fate of an old technology company when confronted with a disruptive technology is bankruptcy or buyout. So goes the examples in Christiansen's book. There is no bankruptcy in the case of M$: no debts and $40b in cash. And no successful alternate revenue sources (maybe services) to switch to.
And a total inability to change. And its not like it would use any cash to buy any of the open source companies, and senators and presidents just aren't that expensive. So, the question is, how long can it possibly last, and what if not bankruptcy?
So, I predict that sometime in the near future, say 2004 or 2005, there will be a vote among the board or shareholders to liquidate the company for the value of its cash and other assets. Some company will buy Office, and presumably open source it. Some other company will buy Windows. How much do you suppose they are worth? And so on. The market gives us the breakup that Judge Jackson couldn't quite get. You can estimate what share price is likely to trigger this scenario, but don't forget to take into account the capital gains taxes. Then estimate what earnings and market conditions would make shareholders value it there. I figure it will happen when M$ has to lower the price on Office to $50 for everyone, to stay competitive.
The really interesting question for me, instead of gratuitous M$ bashing, is how will the Open Source model morph, change, expand, etc. Ten years from now, what disruptive technology (if any) will come along and change everything again?