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Microsoft Gets a New Open Source Chief
mjasay writes "Microsoft just promoted Sam Ramji to run its growing Linux and open source operations. The former head of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, Ramji has a long history with open source, having built out large-scale open-source based applications while at Ofoto, and continuing to run applications like World of Warcraft and Office 2003 on WINE. Microsoft has been putting increasingly open-source savvy people in this role, starting with Jason Matusow and most recently employing Bill Hilf in the role. Ramji has made friends with many in the open-source business and development communities, but will his promotion spell any sort of an about-face for Microsoft in its patent policies? It's unlikely, but at least it demonstrates a step in the right direction."
Microsoft won't change their patent policy, regardless of who is at the helm of their open source division. That policy is set at the top and won't change until Ballmer and Gates are gone for good.
My Sysadmin Blog
It doesn't hurt Microsoft to be well versed in the ways of their rivals, even if they do not practice thier techniques themselves.
"Taboo, like anything else, goes in and out of style."
When I saw the video of his Heise conference talk I thought, he looks like a trade fair presenter without any clue of the underlying technology. I can be wrong. But at least he is no person that appears to have the required independence and integrity required for the job. Why don't they take Miguel who is almost assimilated. At least he is an open mind and has an independent record of achievements outside Microsoft. I believe that Office on Wine is a pretty inspiring idea of cross-plattform. In the 90th Microsoft wanted Win32 everywhere but then it went on the anti-Linux ideology road and promoted unreasonable patent policies in nations abroad. When you see how Jason Matusow promoted OOXML you can clearly see that these persons do care less about technologist-friendly business pratices. Developers, developers, developers, was Ballmers slogan. I start to understand why. The company forgot to take the opinion of its developer community serious and inspire them.
I will remain skeptical of Microsoft until the day it GPLs its source code for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, and adopts ODF as a standard. Until then, Microsoft will be the same Microsoft that just last month engaged in cheating and fraud to get its MOOXML specification accepted as a standard.
This is not to say that I hate Microsoft or wish their stock ill. But it does mean that Microsoft's business model is based on leverage its monopoly on the consumer desktop operating system and its office productivity suite application. Relentless, merciless competition is deeply embedded into Microsoft's business structure, much more so than other proprietary software vendors. Because Microsoft's business structure depends on maintaining its monopoly status, they will not tolerate any competition at all in that space, and they will resort to both legal and illegal (anti-trust) means of achieving their goals.
Microsoft... blowing hot air?
Nothing new.
Honestly, I don't care whether they're lying or whether they're just incapable of delivering on their promises. Either way, there's no reason to suddenly trust that Microsoft really means it this time.
http://outcampaign.org/
Bullshit. This is simply their attempt to own open source. They want to embrace, extend, extinguish.
Their model has nothing to do with the decade old definition of open source.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
...it seems to me that any major commercial software company would be insane not to follow open source closely.
When most people start talking about open source, they quickly turn into armchair intellectual property lawyers and the discussion veers toward talk of business models, patents, copyrights, licenses, and so on. It's easy to forget that the primary product of the open source movement is a lot of really interesting code.
What's more, while this code may be copyrighted and licensed, it's generally patent-unencumbered. This means that Microsoft is free to take pretty much any interesting and novel idea that might come out of open source and rip it off -- rewrite the basic algorithm in C# and slap it into a commercial, closed-source product.
The best case the open source community could come up with is to say that Microsoft's code was a derivative work of their own, copyrighted code -- but that would require A.) money, for B.) lawyers, who C.) gain access to Microsoft's code in discovery, and D.) luck out, in that Microsoft failed so miserably to write code that didn't resemble the open source original that they left an obvious smoking gun.
What are the chances? It's not like there aren't any good programmers at Microsoft.
In other words, in an age where most corporations are trimming R&D to enhance their bottom lines, Microsoft (and every other software company) has an amazing R&D resource in the work of the open source community. And hell, if anything really amazing comes along, it wouldn't be too difficult to wave a bunch of money under the developer's nose and get their efforts working for you, full-time.
What's not to like?
Breakfast served all day!