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Microsoft Planning to Buy Open Source Companies?
mjasay writes "At the Web 2.0 Summit, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted that Microsoft 'will do some buying of companies that are built around open-source products,' suggesting that to avoid open-source companies would 'take us out of the acquisition market quite dramatically.' Ballmer has apparently come a long way since dubbing Linux a 'cancer.' The real question, however, is which open-source companies make sense within the Microsoft product portfolio, both from a technology and philosophy perspective. Novell? 37Signals? Jive? SugarCRM? And, equally importantly, which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?"
"which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?" ALL OF THEM.
Sounds familier to me... http://imdb.com/title/tt0218817/
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
What i want to know is, will they change the license of the software after purchase?
This is an absolutely textbook way of getting rid of competition - buy it and either assimilate their product into your own or simply close it down.
Microsoft aren't bothered about small projects which don't attract much attention. Nor are they particularly bothered about large projects, provided there isn't any serious commercial backing to them.
They're bothered about commercially backed projects where there is the potential to offer significant competition. Their spouting about how "you won't get any real support" (which is probably about their only reasonably sensible piece of FUD) only works when there aren't many commercially backed solutions based on open source software. If I worked for someone like KnowledgeTree or SugarCRM right now I'd be slightly nervous.
If msft buys any OSS companies, it will probably be just to kill the competition. Remember Foxpro?
The only reason i could think of is to buy some companies and extinguish them.
HTTP/1.1 400
"You will be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."
Well, here we go, buying up this open-source company to kill competition. What do you mean our users "forked" our product? What do you mean the staff we just layed off just made a new company to support this fork? What did we pay umpteen gazillion dollars for?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Geek to suit: "Hey look, Microsoft are now *really* getting scared by open source stuff! They want to throw *real money* at it!"
Also, people might now start investing in open source projects in the hope of getting a slice of that MS cash a few years down the line. This looks like a Good Thing.
anything the company that was bought by microsoft was doing. No offense, it is an issue of trust. Microsoft screwed so many partners and non partners in the past. We cant just put that much effort on our spare time into things that can be sent to hell by microsoft in a given point in time.
Read radical news here
the OSS "buy-me" trolls?
1. fork the most recent open release of a recently MS bought out OSS project.
2. improve and offer support for it.
3. Now MS either has to improve its own branch or buy you out too (which is the 3b. Profit!!! part)
I mean, seriously, isn't Microsoft going to prove money can be made with OSS?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I think you have one too many steps in your dream. Shave off that last one, and your dream would be more in line with reality.
"Microsoft" est-elle une firme française?
"If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em!"
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Because everyone knows that submarines are the new megayacht.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This is not a new strategy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Vivendi Universal bought-up mp3.com and bulldozed it, Microsoft bought-up RAV AntiVirus and buried it. Now, M$ will probably do the same with these others; buy-up the businesses and turn them into parking lots.
Regards;
The beautiful thing about the GPL and similar licenses is that you cannot Shut Them Down. Imagine, just for once, that all the code in the whole Linux kernel belonged to Linus (i.e. all contributers would've signed over their copyright or, where not permitted by law, an exclusive license). Now imagine Linus would suddenly decide he doesn't like Linux anymore and change the kernel's license to Microsoft's Windows 95 EULA after running an s/microsoft/linus torvalds/g over it.
Would it change a thing? A bit. Linux couldn't be called Linux anymore, cause Linus would own that trademark. Linus may not continue being the benvolent dictator. Fin. The existing community would fork Linux version (change to new license - 1), call it LOLix and continue as before. It would fork. It would change it's name, but as long as somebody's interested, it would never ever die.
according the TFS Ballmer said companies that were built around Open Source, not Open Source projects.
This - to me - speaks more of people like Linksys, some of the CRMs (as suggested) or perhaps even TiVO . That is companies that use Open Source software in their products rather than those that specifically and only produce Open Source software.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I were a deep-pockets-legal-department-with-gold-plated-business-cards type of company, I'd try it.
I'd be willing to bet that a judge will look at it and say, "Well this part is GPL'd, but you own it, so you can still enforce your GPL rights. This part is not, and because the project is yours, you can do with it what you want."
So, who of you want to cough up the funds to defend against that kind of legal team?
...sound of crickets heard...Daffy mutters to himself.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Too many buttons, indeed.
It'll be a cold day in hell before they sell that company to MS.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
It looks like you're planning an acquisition...
Would you like help?
* Crush the life and soul out of the idea and shelve it.
* Use your new acquisition's IP to bludgeon the competition.
* Add bloatware to Vista.
Instead of buying OSS companies to kill them off, most likely Microsoft would be looking for OSS companies with patents that have been used by other OSS projects, particularly Linux. Once Microsoft owns the company, it can enforce the patent. Forking won't help with a patent violation, particularly if the patent is question is in use by other projects.
Microsoft may be many things, but stupid is not one of them. I would bet substaintal sums of money that the staff will have signed non-competes keeping them from working on any non-MS fork (and maybe any other OSS as well). Actually, umpteen gazillion dollars may not be a bad price to take out the various project leaders. Let us be honest, without good managment familiar with the source, large-scale OSS projects are impossible. And a rapid decapitation may take years to recover from.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
This is great news. Microsoft will give hundreds of millions of dollars to the founders of open source companies, and the software itself will remain open source. This kind of monetary reward can only encourage the development of more open source software. Thank You Microsoft!
What does Microsoft care about changing the license? Do you not realize that first and foremost, Microsoft is likely to just terminate the project?
/. could even give another option a moments notice. Microsoft exists because of Windows and anything they touch gets destroyed if it does not work ONLY with Windows. That's in 20 years of history folks. When Java was knocking on Microsofts door they responded by purchasing promising Java based companies and closing them down. Netscape got the same treatment. Why would anybody not think this was their plan for open source companies they purchased since most open source projects work on more than Windows and that is a threat to Windows? The top level at Microsoft look at everything as a threat first since Microsoft exists because Windows exists and without Windows, they are history.
And I have to wonder how anybody on
And the sad thing is that Steve Balmer was the one saying this yet nobody in half the posts mentioned them just terminating the project. WTF?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
"They cannot compete effectively with open source so they are going to buy as many open source companies as they can and Shut Them Down"
The beauty is in imagining how much of the money they pay for such companies will get funneled back into FOSS projects. It could represent an impressive boost mainly because projects and companies cooperate between them, something MS is unable to do.
Their best shot is to try to own as much intellectual property as possible and that will only take them as far as US-like software patents do exist. These movements are mainly intended to reduce the momentum behind FOSS thus complementing their FUD strategies.
They will kick, they will scream, but they sure look doomed to me. It's only a matter of time now.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com