Microsoft Investing In "Open Source" Lab In Philippines

jaromil writes "Following up its cozying up to OSCON, now Microsoft is launching its first 'open source' lab in the Philippines, paying for a huge media coverage. From the press release it seems they are also advertising the issue of 'interoperability' to outnumber one of the strongest features of open source in Asia: recycling old computers. Any suggestions for good stories about MS interoperability so far? :)"

Comments

Smoke and Mirrors... Otherwise Known as Buzzwords.

[VE3OGG]

This is why I have such a dislike of "big business".

Forget for a moment the wasteful philosophy getting people to upgrade for new shiny (and I am by no means saying the 'upgraders' are guilt free).

Dismiss the fact that Microsoft has no desire to "embrace" open source -- quite the opposite, it wants to control the market with it, or rather redefine the market on its terms -- sure, you can use all of our codebase that we provide as open source, but you only get to plug-in our components, using our tools, with our licensing restrictions.

What irks me most is this marketing bullshit that gets thrown into the air. Right now, reading through the PHB technical mags and rags, one can't go an issue without seeing something on "open sourcing" saving money here, or "interoperability" brings new efficacy to the table, or "free software" causing a major paradigm shift breeding synergy in the multi-faceted workplace.

And that is what this is. It has nothing to do with functionality, and certainly if one goes by Microsoft's track record with open source, it has more to do with embrace and extend.

Now, at this point it would be easy to say: "don't condemn them yet, IBM was once seen as Satan too!" (Not withstanding IBMs frivolity in the patent market).

All I can say to that is maybe, and I damn hope them have learned their lesson. The open source community, however, has been burned far too many times with MS' carrot and the stick act.

Re:GPL

[Ghubi]

I think the Microsoft Public License or the Microsoft Reciprocal License might be more likely.

Make no mistake.

[node 3]

Make no mistake, MS is not, and will not, become a good open source citizen. The only reason they will do something like this is to defend themselves from open source.

Do you wonder why they are doing this in the Philippines? It seems likely that Open Source/Free software is taking a hold there and Microsoft is looking to build a market. Who is going to buy MS software if it's incompatible with what they are currently using (or are in the process of moving to)? This puts Microsoft out of the game. But if they can get free software developers to do the work for them and make their projects compatible with MS software, they are suddenly an option, at which point, MS can do what they do best, which is compete and destroy.

Embrace, extend, extinguish. This is no different.

Embrace: Hey, we'll join your open source club.
Extend: Now that we're compatible, why don't you run some of our software too?
Extinguish: That software of ours that you are now reliant upon? Well, here's the new version, and it doesn't work with your open source software anymore, so pay up, junkie.

Re:GPL

[Bodrius]

Of course, it also allows MS to have a sneaky look at the competition.....

Sure. Because if there is anything open source projects are about, it is secrecy and control of information...

It's not like open source software is... I don't know, *open*, during its development.