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Microsoft Cracking Open the Door To OSS

Posted by kdawson on from the competition-and-coexistence dept.

AlexGr sends us to a long piece in Redmond Magazine on Microsoft's changing relationship to open source. The article centers around a profile of Bill Hilf, Microsoft's internal and external evangelist for OSS. It's an even-handed piece that fully reflects the continuing deep skepticism in the community of Microsoft's motives and actions.

2 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Oh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's an even-handed piece...
    Oh really? What dimension did it come from?

    I've certainly never seen anything in this time/space reality that has been even-handed about the relationship of Microsoft & OSS.
  2. Re:The difference by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But I think that Microsoft recognize the problem they have with FLOSS and are trying (or pretending at least) to co-exist. The FLOSS party line seems to be the eventual "destruction" of Microsoft.

    This is 100% not true. The party line of FLOSS fans is the promotion of free and open source software and advancement of the computer industry in general. If MS actually started developing and contributing open source software without any hidden lock in technologies, FLOSS advocates would embrace them. Personally, I don't dislike MS because they develop closed software. Lots of companies do that, like Apple and Sun and Adobe and I don't have any problem with them and I don't think most FLOSS fans do either. The problem I have with MS is they abuse their market position to hinder the adoption of FLOSS and in the process stifle innovation and slow down progress in the software industry in general. All the commercial companies out there are trying to make money, but MS is the one huge influential company that is lying and breaking the law and refusing to play by the rules everyone else does. They are criminals profiting by hurting the computer industry. That is why they are not trusted or liked by computer people in general.

    People (you know, out there, not "here") by and large don't have a negative view of Microsoft, and ultimately that's what matters.

    A lot of people do have a negative view of MS, not because they understand anything about their business practices, but because their computer does not work and is a stupid piece of crap that keeps slowing down and messing up. I don't think there is anything wrong with trying to inform people that it doesn't need to be that way and there are better options and if the laws were just upheld the whole industry would get better. Ranting incoherently about MS obviously will not give you any credibility, but your strawman argument about what FLOSS people are saying is just that. You're the only one that wrote leetspeak crap about sucking, so stop trying to pass it off as "the community."