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."

Comments

Not Patents

[webmaster404]

Patents, although worrisome will go away in the long run, the main points that MS should get is support Linux , some technologies such as Office would be decent Linux apps that people would pay for if either it was a native Linux version or was seamlessly integrated in WINE. MS needs to stop turning a blind eye to Linux if they ever hope to gain respect and marketshare. Competition improves quality and if MS would port over some of its applications (as badly coded as much of them are) the OSS developers would have to make substantial improvements to get them better then MS's product.

Re:Not Patents

[masdog]

Microsoft doesn't need respect and marketshare. In the desktop space, they still lead. Supporting Linux would only help diminish that lead in Microsoft's key markets.

Microsoft's competition against Linux is mainly in the server space. Linux as a server OS is especially attractive for web-applications, middle-ware, and databases. Corporations like Linux because a single good Linux admin and no licensing fees is a cost savings over a couple of Windows Admins(especially for business critical apps). It is also where the threat of patent litigation will cause legal departments to block new implementations of Linux.

Re:Not Patents

[Bert64]

You cant install 2008 without a GUI...
The graphical layer is still running, the only difference is that it executes cmd.exe (in a window) instead of explorer.exe when you log in. It's not like the pure textmode of a unix system, and it still doesn't support serial consoles and boot without a video card installed like any serious server os.

Re:Not Patents

[darkfire5252]

I've thought about this for some time and I can't find the catch, so I'll bounce it off of you guys. Microsoft is pissing off their user base and risking corporate and government conversions to competitors due to them continually trying to create vendor lock-in. Here's an idea that sounds like the absolute worst thing (from MS's point of view), but I'm starting to think it is the most profitable thing that MS could do, and would guarantee MS's future prosperity in a way that nothing else could:

Make MS products open source. MS is already losing ground among the genuinely technically adept (not those taught to use a particular app, but those who have a greater understanding of computing), so why not join the competition? If that were to happen, MS would instantly gain thousands of pro-bono security reviewers, feature implementers, etc.; they'd have all the benefits that open source projects have. I would bet anything that a team (it would be wise for MS to start it) would form to port MS operating systems onto the Linux kernel. ODF would be written into all Office apps, and the best part is that MS would stand to lose nothing. The open source environment has a way of coalescing around the most mature applications. How many OpenOffice developers would love nothing more than to work all the features they love about OO into Office? If MS truly GPL'd their software, they would gain unstoppable momentum. Developers, developers, developers!

I know, I know, here's the obvious reason this would never work: MS doesn't want to give away their software. The kicker is, people would buy the packaged and supported official OS, even if they could roll their own for free. Look at the Red Hat business model; corporations and other large entities want support, and they want a large company holding their hand and telling them that it will be OK. Your grandmother isn't going to download tarballs and compile Vista because the majority of people will happily pay for convenience. OK, so other people can roll their own MS based packages and try to sell them, you say? MS has the most brand-awareness that has ever existed. Ubunista (now with Office 2007 and Exchange!) will not out sell Microsoft's CollabOS.

It seems to me that MS would retain the majority of their customers, be given the labor that would transform their products into the best software that exists for free, gain market share in the tech crowd as their products mature, and steal developers from their OSS competitors. All at the same time. What am I missing here?

Re:When did Linux stop being a "cancer"?

[christian.einfeldt]

@CannonballHead:

You wrote: So what you're saying is that if it's not open source, it's not good?

No, what I am saying is that Microsoft will continue its predatory practices until its two main profit centers, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, are GPL'd.

I know that not everyone likes Free Open Source Software for all purposes. As it so happens, I am an attorney who runs his law office on Free Open Source Software only (except for Adobe Flash, the only non-Free package in my office). But Free Open Source Software is not suitable for everyone.

Microsoft is a different case, though. Their stock depends on the maintenance of their monopoly position. So they are not to be trusted. No other company is similarly situated in the desktop consumer software market.

Re:But seriously, folks...

[setagllib]

They do this regularly to enhance the .NET platform. IronPython and RubyCLR have had some of their developers hired. Sun is doing similar things for the Java platform. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft will pervert the projects they talent-tap into using other licenses.

Even Microsoft knows that the open source space has a lot of code, ideas and talent they can legally use, but it seems only the developer-oriented teams (.NET, etc) "get it", and even they are largely bound by the corporate culture of anticompetitive practice.

Windows was bootstrapped with a fair amount of BSDL code, in fact. It's interesting to think how terrible the Windows networking API would be if it hadn't been based on the [already rather bad] Berkeley socket API.