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Microsoft's Savvy Open Source Move
willdavid writes to mention Joe Panettieri is reporting that Microsoft is continuing their push for open source software interoperability. In the most recent push Microsoft is partnering with a small Silicon Valley company called SpikeSource to certify open source software on Windows 2008. "Despite growing Linux deployments, Windows Server remains quite popular for running open source applications. SugarCRM, the fast-growing open source application provider, is quick to note that many of its business developments occur on Windows Server. And Microsoft itself has sponsored SugarCRM's conferences, in order to stay in front of open source crowds."
... that Microsoft will be writing an ODF module for MS Office?
Didn't think so. Microsoft's idea of interoperability only goes one way.
I don't think there's anything "ulterior" about it. It's pretty obvious: if people are going to run open source software, MS would like them to be running it on Windows. It's therefore in their interests to help open source developers to get their stuff running on Windows - especially where it doesn't compete with any of their own products.
Sure, they may well not really want to help the Firefox or Open Office teams much, but if it's a choice between "PHP on Windows" or "PHP on Linux" I think it's obvious where Microsoft's interests lie.
There's nothing suspicious in that behaviour - it's perfectly plain in my view. Now, unless you count increasing Linux market share as an aim in and of itself, I find it hard to see how MS doing this is something to be dismal about.
Seems to me that Sun are being a bit more savvy in the way they are doing things. First OpenOffice and mysql, now they seem to be partnering up with Canonical (Ubuntu). call me what you will, I'll never trust M$ again.
Yeah, God forbid that a company keep a product that the public wants. Ford! Bring back the Edsel!
Granted, they seem to have fumbled the ball with Vista but let's not get out of hand about their decision to keep XP. I don't think it was meant to fool anyone. You can loosen up your tin foil cap for the moment.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
so Microsoft having just destroyed the international standards organisation to prevent interoperability between word processors, someone manages to write this slashdot summary with a straight face?
Microsoft is happy to have anything running on Windows.
Microsoft refuses to have Microsoft apps support Open Source apps.
It's all one way. It's all Microsoft's way.
Kind of left that out of his background there on his bio page.
Microsoft is interested in anything that sells Windows Server. However, with all of their sword rattling, known monopolistic behaviors, partnering with them still can get you the Black Widow Effect. Just ask 3Com, or Ashton Tate, etc.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
ODF Convertor, is an addin for Office. Microsoft is Funding, and providing documentation and help.
http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/
And let's be honest here. I like to bash MS as much as possible. I use MS at $work and FAMP at home. Windows 2008 and IIS7 took some truely great strides away from the old MS way of doing things. 2008 can be installed without a gui. You can powershell/remote admin EVERYTHING from the command line. In fact, the GUI admin tools use the things written for the powershell/command line administration. Group policies now have preferences, allowing things like making policy on what fields SQL developers need to add when they create tables...what users can consume n% of the CPU, etc.
IIS7 does NOTHING out of the box, and everything is a module. Almost everything that used to be a tab when configuring an IIS app is now a seperate module..even just redurecting an entire site to another url. And the new 3.5 ASP.NET stuff has a real MVC layer in the works for people like me who completely hate ASP.NET PostBack hackery. IIS7 now has full support for FastCGI and PHP is a first class language in terms of performance. I imagine this will hold true for other FastCGI friendly things like Ruby/Perl/Python/RoR/Catalyst/Django.
No, but it does mean open and free specs. It wasn't until the EU forced their hand that the Samba guys had the specs for the SMB/CIFS protocol.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?