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MS To Become Open Source Friendly Post Gates
ruphus13 writes "Now that Gates has 'retired' from Microsoft, ZDNet is speculating that Microsoft will become much more Open Source friendly. From the article, 'We already see quite a different approach to dealing with OSS and OSS companies from Sam Ramji's group [which is] doing a great job in establishing dialog,' said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange and a former marketing exec at SUSE Linux. 'With Gates' departure, the only mammoth remaining is Ballmer. With him away in a near future, Microsoft will definitely open up. They have to.'" Microsoft could become the world's largest open source company; they've certainly made some concessions to it lately.
I have to wonder if the complexity of modern software is part of the big reason driving OSS, it would seem to me as our systems get faster, we can increase the complexity of our programs ad infintum, and at some point it 'breaks the camels back' and no business can hope to maintain something so large and unwieldy.
I find it questionable to believe that Microsoft would have any reason to support open source. According to Microsoft sales people (not very reliable, but only figures I care to research), Vista has sold millions of copies, providing Microsoft with massive amounts of revenue. Most of Vista sales are in the form OEM agreements, where microsoft continues to utilize its effective monopoly over the market in order to push a product that most people do not want, need, or are even ready to accommodate.
Could it be that microsoft has spent most of its monopolistic capital pushing vista that they now need to seriously consider alternative routes? This is a serious question because I am in no position to where microsoft really stands in the market post vista melt down.
20th century Marxism is not progress...
How many would actually embrace an open source Windows, extend the code, and extinguish the bugs?
Microsoft embracing open source would allow it to hurt them in the short term too. Remember how tolerable XP was? Well open source hacker A has made XP no longer need online registration. XP is free now! So is every Microsoft product. Maybe if the first hack everyone did wasn't to make the software free, companies may think about open sourcing their software to get a superior product in the long term. And you know what the second hack would be: Halo 3 cheats. With the whole code open to look through, cheating video games gets easy.
God spoke to me.
From the article: "... the only mammoth remaining is Ballmer."
You can certainly tell the mindset of the article author, Paula Rooney, and the person who was quoted, Rafael Laguna. Their idea is that it is entirely acceptable and useful to call Ballmer a "mammoth". As in "woolly mammoth" who will go extinct soon, I suppose.
It makes a far better contribution toward showing why Microsoft's management policies should be disrespected if there is some logical substance to what is said.
In my opinion, both Gates and Ballmer make money by being aggressive. That's what they know. That's how Microsoft has made most of its money, by taking advantage of the fact that most of the customers 13 years ago had little understanding of the computer systems they used. They established closed file formats. The managed using the policy of "embrace, extend, extinguish".
Their business management emphasis is away from making money by contributing something positive. For example, Windows Vista is little more than another version of Windows XP that has been modified to require more CPU power so that Microsoft's principal customers, the manufacturers, will be able to sell more powerful computers.
Quote from the parent: "Oh right, after rigging the ISO process with OOXML and their triumph over open standards they're going to go open source?"
MOD PARENT UP!
I suspect they will follow the customers and the money.
So there's actually very little of the company whose business model is compatible with open source licensing.
As they watch their pie slice shrink and then shrink rapidly as open source get a solid foothold, they will have little choice.
I prefer legal software. In comparing licenses, the one that permits legal installation on all the machines in my home vs a one license one machine restriction, a slightly differing interface becomes easy to trade to reject BSA threats.
MS will have to effectively compete, sue like crazy, or shrink.
They are attempting to compete and lock-in, but are failing while OSS expands. It's not just the Unix servers in the target zone anymore. The battle for the desktop is beginning.
The truth shall set you free!
That's Internet Bubble talk.
There's still no definitive evidence that there's a viable business model in an open source, software only company.
Most profitable "open source" companies are in the closed hardware business and just use Linux inside.
It's still an open question whether traditional companies who buy open source companies like MySQL will ever see their investment pay off. What is the balance sheet for Sun with respect to Star/Open Office?
If you had inside information that MS was going to make all their products open source, that would be a great time to sell the stock short.
Har har. Fact is that one generation's Victory or Death struggle is often the next's What's the Big Deal. I work at Sun, and ten years ago, there really were people here who compared Microsoft to the Nazi party. Now we have OEM and Interoperability agreements, and there's no question in my mind that our partnership with the Dark Side^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Microsoft is a Good Thing.
And you know, in the past, many people at Sun have not been friendly to Open Source either. And I don't mean the distant past either. When the decision was made to open up our Java implementations, there were some fairly important people who quit rather than participate. I think it's a safe bet that the culture at Microsoft is undergoing a similar upheaval. They haven't been anti-open source because of Bill Palpatine's mind control, but because a lot of people thought it was a bad idea. I've seen exactly the same struggle at every company that ends up going Open Source.
Given Microsoft's scathing history, including its tendency to promise lots of wonderful things it never delivers, I'll believe it when I've seen it happen for a few years. Microsoft has a lot to apologize for, and I certainly wouldn't be making any concessions for them for at least the next 5-10 years.
This is not the time to be giving MS representatives positions on the boards of say, the Free Software Foundation or the Open Source Initiative.
Microsoft is not a leader in the world of free and open-source software. It is a latecomer---a very late comer. Having a large pile of money doesn't change that, and it's perfectly reasonable to ask Microsoft to prove itself over the course of years before it is to be trusted.
Microsoft could just as easily be using Gates' departure as yet another opportunity to try to fool us all. If that's true, I hope people don't fall for it.
It did, however, answer your point:
There's no evidence of change
It's not conclusive evidence, but it is evidence.
Also:
Well, they'd need to move to an OSS compatible business model for starters but right now they're still mostly about selling boxes of software.
Seems to me they get much of their money from hardware vendors (like Dell) and from large corporations (volume licenses). How many people do you know who've actually bought a boxed copy of Windows?
And because of that, it seems like neither of those customers would stop buying from them if their product could be had for free. After all, Dell pays Canonical for support...
Just guessing... maybe the secret is that Microsoft doesn't actually offer any support?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I said this before and I'm sure that I got modded an idiot or something, but...
I think Windows 7 is BSD based. Look, Vista crashed and burned with everything. It's buggy, has crap for drivers support and they've known this for ages, I mean, it was two or three years behind schedule? Meanwhile Apple built an excellent BSD-based OS and wins approval from everyone. Don't believe for a second that Microsoft hasn't been watching. I think they see where BSD is the strong backbone and that Apple basically poached a lot of the Gnome interface (rebuilt for ergonomics, etc). It would not surprise me at all that Windows 7 follows much the same pattern except that the GUI will follow Vista/KDE much more. And because Microsoft will not have to worry about the backend they can concentrate on the GUI and the drivers and be able to turn it around for early 2009.
That is my opinion. I would like to see differing opinions on this, actually.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Don't you know the new required thought pattern? We aren't supposed to remember how nasty IBM were.
They are meant to be thought of as the poor unfortunate victims of an evil Microsoft, not the over confident and arrogant giant company who's failure to understand the market handed the world of computing to a small company whose owner lived on junk food and didn't wash much.
Being old I remember the time when Microsoft were this great company who liberated the computing world from the Unix wars. A company whose philosophy of getting their product out there cheaply and on everything meant I could finally afford a computer after several years of wanting, but not being able to buy, a Mac.
There was a time when Microsoft were the good guys, where people suddenly found that they could write a product for DOS and it would run on almost any computer. That meant it was possible to become a software house with a lot less effort and money than before.
I rather suspect people just don't realise what it was like before DOS.
Ok it didn't stay that way, or didn't unless you're a big Microsoft fan, but when I were young it was true.
Personally I wish they would get with the Open Source movement. I've been an open source developer for over five years, working with both Linux and Windows, and the lack of high level co-operation between the two camps is, in my opinion, is preventing a huge leap forward in computing.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I just noticed something weird.
Why is everybody else on this thread an AC? What are you scared of?
"One, their love for money trumps their customers interest."
And how is it different from any other company?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)