Microsoft Keeps Eye on Open-Source Prize

Rob writes to tell us that at the recent Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco Microsoft's director of platform technology strategy, Bill Hilf, outlined why Microsoft is staying involved with open source. From the article: "Challenges of working [coopetively] in the open-source space include the balance between competing and cooperating with a rival, he said. Perception also is a 'big' challenge for the software giant. 'In many regards, the Microsoft open-source story lends itself to a great metaphor of David and Goliath,' he said. 'That is a challenge over perception.'"

Comments

Error in title, please fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Should read "Microsoft Keeps Eye on Open-Source PR"

Re:Error in title, please fix

[NutscrapeSucks]

Back in 1998/1999, MS was telling everybody that OSS would never compete against MS

I would argue that's still the case. OSS (and by that you mean Linux) has targeted the traditional Unix market and done very little to compete with Microsoft's installed base. So, MS lost a huge growth opportunity with all those 'obsolete' Unix/RISC servers going away, but has done very well growing their natural base of desktops/groupware/file+print/intranet despite Linux.

On target

[Jordan Catalano]

Microsoft views open source through the lens of "coopetition from commercial and open-source strategies at the same time," Hilf said.

Did he mean to say "through the lens of a high-powered rifle's croshairs"?

Re:On target

[mqj]

I didn't think you could fit chairs into a rifle.

Freudian slip!!!

[advocate_one]

Challenges of working [coopetively] in the open-source space include the balance between competing and cooperating with a rival,

never a truer word spoken... Microsoft loves to coopt software... hates giving back though... just absolutely loves the BSD license

I guess that...

[Avillia]

A large blue screen saying there was a critical error at 0x000000 is a 'A challenge over perception.' as well? /had to be done.

Coopetition

[Tx]

Coopetition, or simultaneously cooperating and competing with rivals, has long been Microsoft's broader business strategy.

So that's what they call it. Translating the doublespeak, is that a euphemism for "Buying the companies whose IP you need, and crushing everyone else" perchance?

Re:Coopetition

[Kijori]

No, I think it means pretending to cooperate and then forcing them out of business - a euphemism for 'embrace and extend'.

Enemies

[RootsLINUX]

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer."

perceptions

[gEvil (beta)]

Perception also is a 'big' challenge for the software giant.

Indeed. Many people "perceive" their software to be bloated and buggy.

Re:The only reason MS is interested

[niskel]

Umm... I dont thin the EU wanted the source at all, they wanted proper specs and documentation for the SMB protocol (?). MS was trying to avoid giving anyone anything useful by licensing the Windows source for lots of cash and a very restrictive lisence that would not actually let FOSS use any knowledge gained from the source. On top of that, there is still no good specs/docs for SMB, which was what was asked for in the beginning.

Perception

[truthsearch]

Perception of Microsoft: "There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft." - Bill Gates

talk about flipping a metaphor!

[Infoport]

I've heard that David and Goliath metaphor before... ...except that usually Micro$oft is the Goliath.

I can't belive that they DARE to try to use David vs Goliath as a metaphor in THEIR FAVOR!
Poor little beaten-down monopoly....

PR

[truthsearch]

Ever wonder why they have a problem with their public perception?

"On the desktop, we have a strategic win today (monopoly). We must keep the desktop." - Presentation, Microsoft Executive Staff Retreat, May 10, 1990

"We are engaged in a FUD campaign to let the press know about some of the bugs. We'll provide info a few bugs at a time to stretch it out." - Brad Silverberg, July 22, 1991

"Objectives: FUD DR DOS with every editorial contact made." - MS-DOS 6 PR Plan, November 1992

"look what znix is doing! cut those fuckers off." - Brad Silverberg, May 19, 1992

"Five minutes after any agreement is signed with Microsoft, they'll be thinking of how to violate the agreement. They're predators. They crush their competition. They crush new ideas. They stifle innovation. That's what they do." - Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, Quoted by Matthew Szulik at a U.S. Senate Hearing, Dec 12, 2001

Could be their corporate conduct.

Is this a case of david defeating the goliath

[ravee]

Ultimately, Microsoft is coming round to the fact that it cannot write away the open source movement. There is a very popular saying : If a group of weak sticks are bound together, the combined strength can be even more than a single stout stick.

GNU/Linux and Open Source softwares are like the multiple weak sticks which have come together to become very strong. And microsoft is realising that it is not going to be a cake walk any longer.

The end users are the one who are going to benefit from the whole thing.

Re:Is this a case of david defeating the goliath

[truthsearch]

Actually they realized it years ago. From a quarterly report filed with the SEC by Microsoft on January 31, 2003 (emphasis mine):

Item 2. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations...

Challenges to the Company's Business Model. Since its inception, the Company's business model has been based upon customers agreeing to pay a fee to license software developed and distributed by Microsoft. Under this commercial software development ("CSD") model, software developers bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenues received from the distribution of their products. The Company believes that the CSD model has had substantial benefits for users of software, allowing them to rely on the expertise of the Company and other software developers that have powerful incentives to develop innovative software that is useful, reliable and compatible with other software and hardware. In recent years, there has been a growing challenge to the CSD model, often referred to as the Open Source movement... The popularization of the Open Source movement continues to pose a significant challenge to the Company's business model, including recent efforts by proponents of the Open Source model to convince governments worldwide to mandate the use of Open Source software in their purchase and deployment of software products. To the extent the Open Source model gains increasing market acceptance, sales of the Company's products may decline, the Company may have to reduce the prices it charges for its products, and revenues and operating margins may consequently decline.

Re:Is this a case of david defeating the goliath

[EvilIdler]

Are you calling open source developers a bundle of sticks?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faggot

What did anyone expect?

[ninja_assault_kitten]

MS to stick their head in the sand and hope OSS will go away? "Know your enemy better than you know yourself."

Microsoft has used opensource code before...

[fak3r]

The BSD Licence allows for code to be used for proprietary software w/o the need to redistribute ala GPL, one of the reasons BSD is seen as more 'corporate friendly'. Plenty of history here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_Micro soft_Windows and if you're in Windows you can see traces of BSD throughout. One example, drop to a CMD line in Win32 and...

c:\> strings.exe c:\WINDOWS\system32\ftp.exe | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.

IBM?

[CSHARP123]

Microsoft views open source through the lens of "coopetition from commercial and open-source strategies at the same time," Hilf said.
MS had always competed with IBM. IBM is seen has very good to Open source. IBM still makes profit benefiting from open source. MS may be thinking along the same lines and I think they are not able to come up with a viable business plan of how to make use of open source movement that do not hurt their bottomline of MS OS and MS Office.

Re:The only reason MS is interested

[rs232]

Just using the conference to confuse, confound and inject a little fud ..

"I personally don't believe tech support calls for a commodity product is sustainable,"

No one ever made money out of Open Source ..

"In many regards, the Microsoft open-source story lends itself to a great metaphor of David and Goliath," "That is a challenge over perception"

One way of meeting the challenge is to hire on the best out of Open Source taking them out of the Gene pool.

"Microsoft has benefited from OSS, has participated in OSS projects, and feels that OSS will continue to have an important role in the ecosystem"

Pronouncments like this also give the impression that MS is in some way directing the development of the Open Source model. That and the use of the word 'open' at every opportunity. It's called stealing mindshare.

"We have an impact from what people call the ripple effect ... What would actually happen if we were in that environment?"

We hope to gain some control over that environment by engaging with it. He also had this to say previously ..

When we think about criteria around interoperability, we will have a great foundation in Longhorn to help exercise the criteria around that."

Open Source does not equal Open Standards.

But MS Open Standards does not actually mean the protocols and interfaces are in the public domain does it. A royalty free license is still tied to Microsoft. But keep on repeating the word 'open'.

"Linux is somewhat inferior to commercial offerings when considered as a general-purpose desktop operating system"

I'm sorry Bill, but you just lost your credibility. (Sent from a SuSE Desktop. No viruses, no blue screens etc ..)

http://fudwatcher.blogspot.com/

Re:The only reason MS is interested

[just_another_sean]

Ha, if the EU wants decent specs and someone who understands how SMB actually works they better look to someone else besides MS.

big companies love open source

[DeveloperAdvantage]

Of course Microsoft will keep an eye on open source. I think open source is of huge benefit to large commercial software companies. Here's why.

The open source movement provides a huge ecosystem of software projects which a large company like Microsoft can monitor. When a large company sees a successful open source project, they know there is value to what the project is doing. A level of demand is thus established. Then, they can do some research and try determine whether or not there is a successful business model which can be built around the project, i.e., whether or not the project can be made to generate cash. If it can, then they can decide an appropriate strategy to profit from it, either through purchasing the company or its talent, or simply duplicating the company's work.

There are few other industries where so many talented people are willing to work for free.