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?"

Comments

Through Money tinted glasses

[brewstate]

"which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?" ALL OF THEM.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

[MobyDisk]

Absolutely! They could even sell their copyrights to Microsoft, and continue development on an open-source fork if they wanted. Heck, Microsoft might even decide to leave the application open source. I think it would all prove to be a very interesting experiment, to see if buying the company was really good for Microsoft, and to see if the community continued development of the product, and which ways the forks went. Quite interesting!

Also note that this isn't really a "threat" to the community because large-scale OSS projects have copyrights owned by a myriad of people, so they really can't be sold. It only applies to companies that develop completely in-house, or require contributors to sign-away their copyrights.

Related note: I work for a company that uses SugarCRM internally, and has modified it (very slightly) for our purposes. SugarCRM would become useless if we didn't have the source.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

[Anonymous Coward]

They are under no obligation to link to the modifications as the application is used INTERNALLY.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

[smilindog2000]

Both Novel and RedHat are publicly traded companies, which means by law they hold their investor's interests above all else. Last time I checked, you could buy pretty much anything from investors at the right price. Microsoft buying Novel and RedHat would cause less of a riot than when Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal.

Novel's market cap: $2B
Red Hat's market cap: $4B
Microsoft's market cap: $292B

Microsoft could easily buy the two largest open-source companies on the planet without denting their reserves. If Microsoft ever suspects Linux is a significant threat, they'll just buy out the largest players. Let's face it... that's how #1 companies remain #1.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

[shystershep]

Only problem with your theory is that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. There would be an amazing number of regulatory hurdles it would have to jump through even to think about buying a company that makes a competing OS.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

[rootofevil]

Microsoft could easily buy the two largest open-source companies on the planet without denting their reserves. If Microsoft ever suspects Linux is a significant threat, they'll just buy out the largest players. Let's face it... that's how #1^H^Hmonopolies companies remain #1^H^Hmonopolies.

FTFY.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

[smilindog2000]

While normally I'd agree with you, I'll risk more "flamebait" mods and predict that the Bush administration would be all for Microsoft's acquisitions. We split up AT&T, yet there were no major hurdles placed against AT&T re-merging. AT&T just bought both my cellular and home phone companies (Cingular and Bell South). They even provide my DSL. I keep my Sprint long-distance as a protest, but 90% of my money now goes to AT&T, half of it without a single reasonable competitor (my land-line). And what about Murdoch buying the Wall Street Journal? Big Business is the current administration's base.

Well..

[Reece400]

Sounds familier to me... http://imdb.com/title/tt0218817/

Microsoft SuSE?

[Nicholas Evans]

And, equally importantly, which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?

Novell has already sold their soul and they're still staring people down. Guess this should be taken as an announcement that we'll soon be dealing with Microsoft SuSE.

Re:Microsoft SuSE?

[bconway]

Keep in mind, Novell sales are up 250% since their deal with Microsoft. Their customers don't exactly seem to mind.

loyality

[avalean]

What i want to know is, will they change the license of the software after purchase?

If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.

[jimicus]

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.

Ballmer hasn't changed, buying companies to EOL

[walterbyrd]

If msft buys any OSS companies, it will probably be just to kill the competition. Remember Foxpro?

Hey, the Borg Gates image fits!

[kilo_foxtrot84]

"You will be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."

This could be funny...

[downix]

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?

Unintended Consequences

[Bazman]

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.

Aaaaaaand, we developers will be dropping

[unity100]

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.

After patent trolls

[marcello_dl]

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?

Re:Evolution of strategy

[laejoh]

"Microsoft" est-elle une firme française?

Re:Be realistic..

[TubeSteak]

Methinks the founders will be too busy cruising around on their shiny new megayachts to worry about such things.. and why not? And why not?
Because everyone knows that submarines are the new megayacht.

Great American Streetcar Scandal; 1936-50

[Hasai]

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Clippy

[dintech]

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.

thank you Microsoft!

[m2943]

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!

Re:loyality - doesn't matter

[Locutus]

What does Microsoft care about changing the license? Do you not realize that first and foremost, Microsoft is likely to just terminate the project?

And I have to wonder how anybody on /. 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 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