Microsoft Acknowledges Open Source As a Bigger Threat Than Google

ruphus13 takes us to ZDNet for an analysis of comments by Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, about how open source is "much more potentially disruptive" to Microsoft's business strategy than Google. Ozzie also spoke about the future of Microsoft's search technology, which will develop with or without Yahoo. There is a related interview at OStatic with several Microsoft employees about how they view and interact with the open source community. The head of Microsoft's global open source and Linux team is quoted saying: "The other thing I think is missing is implementation of a basic principle of economic fairness. Thousands of developers have put very hard work into building software used by millions of people and companies, yet only a fraction of these developers are rewarded financially. Currently there are perfectly good projects that have been abandoned by their developers despite being used by large corporations. Subsequently the projects fall out of use. This is unnecessary waste that would often be prevented by making it easy for companies to pay the developers directly. I think it's important to solve this so that the sustainability of open source projects is improved."

Comments

Re:MS fails to deliver

[FishWithAHammer]

Spoken like somebody who's never administered anything beyond his desktop and maybe his grandma's.

You aren't going to get far on "Microsoft can't do it". IIS7 has gotten excellent; it's on par with Apache. Exchange blows the doors off anything that OSS has. Sharepoint is unparalleled in the OSS world.

It is important to be honest instead of simply some drooling fuckwad. I prefer OSS too, but lying about Microsoft helps no one and doesn't even make your dick bigger.