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Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source
tlockney writes "Next week at Microsoft's MIX, whurley will be leading a discussion on 'Open Source, the Web, Interoperability, and Microsoft'. To kick off a bit of pre-session discussion and enlist the help of others in putting Microsoft on the spot, whurley, king of all things open source at BMC has written an article entitled 'Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source'."
To say nothing of the fact that UNIX and NT are architecturally very different animals.
Um, no. Both are threats to Microsoft. Linux, as a product, is obvious.
Open source, as a larger concept, is a threat to Microsoft because it is the antithesis of their power base. Microsoft has gained and held its control over the industry by clutching tightly its file formats and protocols. The only reason we ever got Office compatibility and the SMB protocol in the Open Source realm is because of careful reverse engineering and the hope that Microsoft's patent lawyers would keep their guns holstered.
I think Microsoft is realizing that the problem isn't the source, which is eroding as a base of power, but the software patents. On the one hand, they hold enough to crush pretty much anybody they choose. At the same time, they've already been victimized once by Eolas. The Novell deal shows how reluctant Microsoft is to really enforce their software patents. It's as much a defensive action for Microsoft as it is for Novell. Obviously, Novell can step out from under that Sword of Damocles. Microsoft, however, by not filing a straight-up patent suit, avoids throwing the first punch in a barroom full of patent trolls, all of whom are itching for a brawl.
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Were the kernel Linux licensed under the BSD license, MS wouldn't consider Linux a threat. It's because of the *license* that the kernel Linux has that Microsoft is scared silly of it. That goes for anything else that's released under the GPL--Samba, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla/Firefox, KDE, *anything*. Why? Because they can't just lift GPL code without providing source. That's why their Services for UNIX is based on BSD, not GNU/Linux. It's also why Apple used a lot of FreeBSD code for the core of Mac OS X (the non-GUI parts).
Microsoft has made it clear, many times, that they consider the GPL a "cancer" and "Communist". They've also said that "we're not against 'open source'. We like BSD, that's fine. What we don't like is the GPL."
The GPL is their enemy because the GPL proactively defends our freedom. Is the BSD license a Free Software license? You bet! But it doesn't proactively defend our freedom like the GPL does, and it is that characteristic of the GPL that frightens Microsoft to its core. That's also why they're fighting so desperately against the OpenDocument file formats; to Microsoft, actual, true Freedom for users is a very, very scary thing.
There would be absolutely no reason for Microsoft to port Win32 on top of Linux. The NT kernel is more than capable as the OS. It is a microkernel design with isolated loadable plugin subsystems. Win32 just happens to be the subsystem with which most people are familiar. Microsoft has released other subsystems, including their own limited POSIX subsystem and an OS/2 subsystem (which was the original subsystem as Windows NT was designed to be OS/3 with IBM, until Windows 3.0 took off). Later Microsoft bought Softway and further developed the Interix POSIX subsystem releasing that as a part of Services for UNIX which is now a free download for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 and ships on the DVD for a number of the Windows Vista versions.
What MS could possibly do is instead further extend Interix to include more compatibility with one or more flavors of Linux, including support for ELF binaries. They could include an implementation of X11 on top of the desktop composition engine with little trouble. There have been implementations of X11 for Windows for some time already. Microsoft doesn't really have a lot of reason to do this.
Ultimately the two things that would benefit Windows the most would be for Microsoft to finally allow security to trump third-party legacy and enforce the security model which has been in Windows NT since it's inception. It's already more granular than the security model available in Linux. Third party software could be addressed potentially by either including a VM environment which emulates Windows XP or Windows 98, sort of like Mac OS Classic, or through fine tuning this virtualized jail concept that User Account Control enforces.
The other thing that Microsoft could do, and they are slowly moving in this direction, would be to finally make Windows into a microkernel. The source of the majority of the instability in the system is due to faults in drivers and since drivers are loaded into kernel mode the only option the OS has is to fail, according to the security standards set by the US government in C2. If the drivers were instead loaded into a separate privelege level, such as ring1 or even ring3, the OS can protect itself from those drivers and degrade gracefully in the case of failure. If ATI's piece of garbage Catalyst driver fails the video would go away and the OS could attempt to restart it a couple of times before deciding to fail.
Note that Linux is not a microkernel. Neither is Mac OSX despite it's Mach underpinnings. In both cases a fault in the driver causes the OS to fail, e.g. kernel panic. The best reference OS for a microkernel is QNX.
That is certainly a loss for Bill Gates and perhaps the rest of the original cadre of MS corporate officers. Throughout the 80s and 90s, MS was steered consistently toward a "vision" of dominance that really wasn't profit oriented. MS has consistently passed up the opportunity to make profits in its efforts to become the dominant player in different digital markets. It has thrown more money down the toilet to prevent someone else from succeeding in an area where it wasn't good enough to win on merit than many companies had earned during those 20 years.
When MS gives up this foolishness and starts acting like a profit-oriented business, it will almost certainly lose its tarnish and become a respectable member of the business community.
That will be a long-term winning situation for MS. The only losers will be Gates (who has already thrown in the towel), Balmer, and the rest of the original dreamers with their juvenile fantasies about attaining world dominance.
I posted a comment there on his page, refuting his arguments. It wasn't too hard to rationally shoot most of them down. I was able to refute 6 of 7, but one of them I just wasn't familiar enough with. Here's the comment if you're interested:
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I can't take you very seriously because there is a lot of misdirection and hand-waving in your article. I will give you credit that I didn't see any outright lies, which Microsoft directly uses, though. Here I'll point out some problems with your points.
"They include open source code in their products."
You bring up the TCP/IP implementation as an example. That's not a good idea on your part because it's exactly the example people use to point out why Microsoft likes to let other people come up with good stuff under the BSD license and then selfishly take it with no thank-yous or giving in return. When it comes to a mutual sharing license that they can't take selfish advantage of, like the GPL, they spit venom, lies, quasi-legal lobbying interference with government action, violation of their court-ordered code of conduct from their anti-trust conviction, etc., etc. So basically, your first point illustrates that they just like code that other people open without restrictions so they can just snatch it.
"They support open source vendors."
I won't say a lot here because I'm not familiar with these Microsoft "programs created to test and verify open source applications on Microsoft platforms". If they do that, fair enough.
"They benefit from open source everyday."
It's called FUD. Have you read the content of the "free press" they pay for? That's kind of a twisted way to look at things to say that your competitors benefit you by giving you the opportunity to smear them with falsehoods. You're not understanding what the alternative situation was to this "battle with open source" they've been waging in the press. Before open source was maturing, Microsoft didn't have a big war in the press and had close to 100% market share. Everyone just kept buying it because they had never heard of anything else. Now Microsoft is having to viciously attack to slow the slide of their market share. Open source isn't doing them any favors there.
"They open source code."
Ah, UNIX tools for Windows. This is beating the ground where the dead horse rotted away several years ago. They did a small token action on a minor product most people don't use once, and we're supposed to be reminded of that over and over? That hardly seems like strong evidence to make it one of the "Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source". That's weak, man.
"They are adopting open source culture."
You're not recognizing what this is. Culture means actually doing something, which they're not. This is co-opting the language of open source to try to pretend to be something good, while remaining the wolf in sheep's clothing. It's the same with their proprietary data-dump of their new MS Office format, which they have ironically called "Microsoft Office Open XML". They want to have that word Open associated with them, even though the format is very closed and does not contain specs enough for anyone else to use it.
"They aren't threatened by open source."
Well this looks like a good place to continue the talk about the office document formats. They are threatened at least as much, if not more, by other forms of openness than just by Linux. Have you kept up with Microsoft's conduct in Massachusetts over the document format decision? They have been putting out some of their most blatant lies to convince them to use the Microsoft document formats, rather than go to a neutral document format that can be used by anyone, including Microsoft if they wanted to stop their tantrums long enough to do it. Read some of Andy Updegrove's blog to find out some of the story about that, including how they fed a false character assasination story on Peter Quinn to Boston Globe reporter Steve Kurkjian. The story was published before they even
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