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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."
Recall a few years ago when Steve Ballmer was pooh-poohing the threat of open source? How delicious it is to see the ogre admit what everybody knew was true. Open source is killing them.
Yes, but why SHOULDN'T a company just pay M$ to take care of 95% of their IT needs?
Not trolling, just asking the FLOSS freaks if they can come up with something better than "Microsoft is bad, mkaay?"
>Why is everyone so blinkered they always assume Microsoft employees are evil and anti-OSS?
History.
>Indeed I've come across plenty of projects on Sourceforge that look promising but haven't been maintained for years, and others that could do
>with an additional boost.
Boost away, nothing is stopping you.
>If you want to slam the guy for this statement, compare with proprietary software from a company that goes under. If your vendor disappears you
>are ecompletely out of luck, whereas with OSS you can at least hire a consultant to help you out.
Which is the point he somehow forgot to mention.
Otherwise known as "rape and plunder". </troll> :-)]
[Mod me down if you like, but you know it's true.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .