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Microsoft Claims 'We Love Open Source'

Posted by Soulskill on from the admiral-ackbar-unavailable-for-comment dept.

jbrodkin writes "Everyone in the Linux world remembers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's famous comment in 2001 that Linux is a 'cancer' that threatened Microsoft's intellectual property. While Microsoft hasn't formally rescinded its declaration that Linux violates its patents, at least one Microsoft executive admits that the company's earlier battle stance was a mistake. Microsoft wants the world to understand, whatever its issues with Linux, it no longer has any gripe toward open source."

14 of 464 comments (clear)

  1. Not too surprising? by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 4, Informative

    This shouldn't surprise anyone too much. Ten years ago some people really thought that Linux was going to replace Windows on everyone's desktop, open source projects were going to kill Office, etc.

    Which never happened.

    The reality is that there's room for both open and closed source software in the world.

    1. Re:Not too surprising? by HermMunster · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's a group of companies that contribute some of their patent portfolio to protect Linux. Attempts at squishing Linux with Microsoft's patent portfolio will only result in a nuclear meltdown in a patent war. Just don't live with the false impression that Linux can't defend itself. And remember, Microsoft is on the loosing end of most patent lawsuits.

      --
      You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
    2. Re:Not too surprising? by Eskarel · · Score: 3, Informative

      SQL Server is gaining ground on Oracle at a rather dramatic rate, it's cheaper, works just as well in most cases, and Microsoft is a hell of a lot less evil than Oracle. MySQL sucks and always has, it's not remotely viable for anything even remotely resembling a large data set and pretty much no vendor anywhere supports it. Postgres is quite good, but has almost no market penetration.

      IIS isn't as good as Apache, but IIS plus .NET is far better and easier to work with than any JEE container I've ever used. As static web pages become less and less of the volume of the web, Apache's superiority is greatly diminshed.

      As for the rest of it, if you're going to be working in a VM environment, then letting anything touch the bare metal that doesn't have to is pretty much crazy. Microsoft supports all their products on VMs so why wouldn't you virtualize them?

  2. Re:My question by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Informative

    Microsoft has been doing this once or twice a year since somewhere around 2003. Just wait, the latest turncoat from the open source community to get hired up for whatever craptastic OSS lab Microsoft is setting up this week as part of its never-ending propaganda campaign will come on here and want us all to submit questions, to which he will give misleading non-answers, just so the vile pigs at Redmond can go "We're trying to engage the community!"

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  3. They really DO love "open source" by Locke2005 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The just have a different definition of what "open source" means than you and I. "Open Source" to Microsoft means that they are free to incorporate other people's work into their software with any reciprocation or release of the modified code. Unfortunately many companies feel this way open source code.

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:They really DO love "open source" by OutSourcingIsTreason · · Score: 5, Informative

      That isn't my experience. Several years ago I worked at a software house that was acquired by Microsoft. The first thing they did was audit our source code to identify all the modules derived from open source. Before the sale could go through we had to rewrite those modules from scratch.

      --
      "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
  4. Re:Meet the 4 stages by HermMunster · · Score: 5, Informative

    Embrace, extend, extinguish.

    Never forget. Microsoft has never helped open source. They have only contributed to their own version of it, which is very much unlike open source as it was defined 10+ years ago.

    --
    You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
  5. Re:Fight to win, sue for peace when you can't by h4rr4r · · Score: 2, Informative

    No DOS stole from CP/M.

  6. Re:Meet the 4 stages by marcello_dl · · Score: 4, Informative

    Your argument is as useful as "War helps camaraderie".

    Please get a lil dose of actual impact of Microsoft on computing experience instead.

    --
    ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
  7. Re:Meet the 4 stages by massysett · · Score: 4, Informative

    Microsoft Research pays people to work on Haskell and the leading Haskell compiler, GHC. GHC is licensed under the BSD license, which is "free" and "open source" by any definition.

    To say this company has "never" helped open source is a bit extreme. Like any profit-making entity, it helps open source when doing so is in Microsoft's interest.

    --
    Penny - plain text accounting
  8. Re:Meet the 4 stages by William+Stein · · Score: 2, Informative

    Microsoft has given significant funding to support the development of Sage and R. In the case of Sage the funding has always been "no strings attached". (I am director of the Sage project, and Sage is licenced under the GPL.)

  9. Re:Meet the 4 stages by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    We'd all be running Apple Macs today if it were not for Microsoft.

  10. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  11. not the original evil by yyxx · · Score: 2, Informative

    Microsoft wasn't the original evil that drove open source; Symbolics, IBM, AT&T, and a whole bunch of other companies were. Microsoft essentially just took over from IBM.