Microsoft's Mundie to Continue OSS Outreach

Techie writes "In an interview with eWeek Craig Mundie, Microsoft's new co-head-honcho and chief research and strategy officer, says he plans to continue to push the Redmond software titan forward with its goal of greater interoperability with software licensed under the GPL." From the article: "Even in Bill's own public remarks, he pointed out that he thought his iconic status and the way that was reported tended to overemphasize his role in the company's innovation and execution. This is really a transition that has been in the works for a couple of years, with a couple to go before, and we will see the emergence of a lot of great talent that has today been portrayed as all Bill. This is a company with, in many cases, the best people in the world. "

Comments

I'm not following the question

[smittyoneeach]

Microsoft executives have recently said they are committed to a greater outreach to the open source community and to make Windows software interoperable with that licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Is that a priority of yours and something you plan to move further forward?

I have been one of the principle people architecting the way we are going to step up to this bigger question around interoperability, and that will certainly be a focus of mine going forward, along with Bob Muglia.

Isn't interoperability more a question of standards compliance than licensing? Or did eWeek's question pertain more to 'general interaction', as if Redmond needs to be more aware of the existence of, say, Ogg.

Don't trust Mundie

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't trust anything Mundie says about F/OSS any farther than you can spit. Just a short time ago, Mundie was Microsoft's anti-open-source poster child. Now he's pulling an olive branch out of his ass. Either he's lying through his teeth, or he's talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Microsoft's sins are legion. They have a hell of a lot of work to do before they should expect anyone with a brain larger than a peanut to trust them.

Deeds rather than words.

[Colin Smith]

Ok here's a tip I got from my karate instructor, when someone's spoiling for a fight and are clearly about to start flailing, ask them a question, something dumb, irrelevant and obscure. When they take their eyes off you to think about it (and yup, people do exactly that when they're thinking, one of the reasons mobile phones are so dangerous in cars) you kick them in the balls and run for it.

The moral is watch what people do, don't listen to what they say.

The guys at the top of companies are all politicians, they tell you what you want to hear while continuing as always.

With one caveat ...

[ScrewMaster]

This is a company with, in many cases, the best people in the world.

The best people that money can buy, certainly ... maybe not so many now that Google is on the scene. The problem with Microsoft is how little the use of that talent translates into actual products. One has to wonder if the reason that Microsoft keeps so much highly-paid intellect on staff is more a matter of keeping those brains away from the competition (or from becoming competition) than for developing new products. They've used that principle in their lobbying efforts in Washington: hire everybody who's anybody and make sure that nobody else can have them. A Microsoft spokesperson once called that "sucking the air out of Washington."

Standards may involve licenses

[zzatz]

"Isn't interoperability more a question of standards compliance than licensing?"

Standards often include patented features. Most standards bodies require a minimum of RAND licensing. RAND is not sufficient to allow GPL implementations, however. Microsoft has a history of crafting licenses and patent grants that preclude GPL implementations.

The benefit of open standards comes from opening up competition, by removing standards compliance from control by a sole source. In the current market, Microsoft can crush any competitor that uses the same business model as Microsoft, so 'standards' that may only be used by similar commercial enities don't offer real competition. Only Free software, supported by a business model that can't be crushed by Microsoft, has shown a serious threat to Microsoft's domination. Yes, Apple, Sun, and others have had an impact, but they are vulnerable to changes in management direction. Sun may have saved Java from Microsoft, but they could turn around and sell it to Microsoft. I don't expect that to happen, but it's possible.

Interoperability with standards isn't enough. The standards need to be open, too. There's a lot of professional PR doublespeak about what 'open standard' means, but I rely on one test: can someone write a GPL implementation that complies with the patent licenses?

Re:Let's see if I have this right...

[truthsearch]

That's exactly right. It's more than just a problem in their business model, though. As others have pointed out it's also a problem of mindset and perception. They've had a very long-standing mentality in their management that promotes disconnectedness. They need to change a lot more than their business model. Their management needs to fundamentally think differently about their software.

Tipping point

[rumblin'rabbit]

Microsoft is on the horns of dilemma.

When Linux was only a tiny or isolated part of the OS market, it's was to MS's advantage to do everything they could not to recognize, support, or interoperate with it.

But as Linux reaches a significant size, MS's lack of interoperability becomes a liability. People start not bothering buying Windows licenses because it doesn't work well with their favourite OS (e.g., read and write common file formats), despite the fact that Windows may have functionality they would like to access.

As Windows begins its descent from dominance, it will be forced to start "playing well with others".

This prediction is worth everything you paid for it.

I resent (rather than resemle) that

[PCM2]

Looks it's a computer journal. The job of a computer journal is not to ask hard hitting questions. It's to suck up to your advertisers and to make sure you get their press releases published as articles and to generally act as their publicity agents.

I hear this all the time, and I've come to the resignation that it's just a fact of life that people want to think this way, but frankly it's bullshit.

I am a senior editor at InfoWorld. I can tell you unequivocably that the editorial staff at InfoWorld is not in the business of sucking up to advertisers; indeed, we are not involved in the business of procuring advertisements in any way. Any reputable publication has a "church and state" policy with regard to sales and editorial. InfoWorld does, and I have no reason to believe our distinguished competition at eWeek is any different. (Of course, they're not as good at their jobs as we are, but they're not crooks.)

At InfoWorld we are also not in the business of repurposing press releases, nor do we accept any so-called bylined articles contributed by vendors. Any "advertorial" is clearly marked as such -- it's the rules.

Editorial staff at computer journals do nurture relationships with major technology vendors but that's because it's necessary to what we do -- which is report on IT. We may not print answers to the "hard-hitting questions" as often as you might like. In many cases, however, the reason you don't see answers to those questions in print is because the person we ask refuses to answer them.

You don't have to believe me, of course. But come on -- do I walk around saying programmers don't do anything but eat Cheet-Os, drink Mountain Dew, and add bugs to software?

Re:I resent (rather than resemle) that

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Not answering your question, but taking the opportunity to talk to an InfoWorld editor.... :-).

As someone who makes their living creating interoperable software with Microsoft Windows, I have to say that even with the appointment of Bill Hilf (who is a very nice guy personally) and the Port25 crowd in Microsoft's interoperability lab I haven't seen much of a difference in Microsoft's attitude to OSS and interoperability. That is, they *hate* it :-). Currently they're on a big publicity push to explain to customers (who usually don't understand much of the technical details) how interested they are in interoperability with OSS software, but it's a really hard problem etc. etc. The problem is it's not actually a hard problem, they just need to document the proprietary way they do things. There are few (if any) proprietary protocols on the OSS/Linux side of things.

Interoperability with Microsoft is actually quite easy from their side, as they're the ones who create the difficulties. If Microsoft wanted to promote interop they'd fully document the specs that the EU is asking for in the anti-trust case. A sea change from Microsoft will come if you see them actually comply with the EU judgement. Until they do they can talk up interop until they're blue in the face but they're not actually doing anything about it.

I've sat down with Microsoft execs and tried to explain they need to see GPL software as an opportunity, not a threat. They need to try and work out how to make money with it. IBM has figured this out (so have Red Hat and others). The problem is Microsoft make too much money on their current business model (a monopoly, charging monopoly rent) in order for them to easily change.

It's a problem for them, in many ways I do sympathise....

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

Microsoft words: "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish"

[tm2b]

Snort. Gee, I don't know why anybody would ever be suspicious of Microsoft.

Go read those papers, the "Halloween documents." They aren't just random FUD, those are internal Microsoft documents stating exactly how Microsoft intends to destroy OSS.

"Embrace, extend and extinguish" isnt' a summary that was randomly invented by OSS paranoiacs, according to sworn testimony the phrase came out of Microsoft VP Paul Maritz' mouth in Intel's meetings with Microsoft .

So we're supposed to not be suspicious when they announce that, gee golly, they're serious about embracing?

You're either a fool or a shill.