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Microsoft Claims 'We Love Open Source'
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 While Microsoft hasn't formally rescinded its declaration that Linux violates its patents, at least one Microsoft executive admits that the company's earlier battle stance was a mistake.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."
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” -- Gandhi
We've already gone through the first 3 stages over the past 15 years. And just so you're not confused, winning != world domination.
This is what I want to know: Is Microsoft's new stance a sort of "this is the way the world is going, we'd better at least pretend to get with the program," or is it more like "we need to do a better job with PR of covering up our continuing efforts to break and absorb every platform that isn't ours?"
I see what you did there.
I don't see how would this favor MS. For IBM, it made sense as IBM is a services company and works in their favor.
For Microsoft, their business is in selling software, and everybody else is a competitor. In the case of Open Source, a very annoying competitor they can't get rid of easily.
They can start by ending all the funny business with software patents. That would be a first step, but I doubt very much it'll happen. Much more likely that there's some kind of trap here.
One should explain that to Microsoft, who still continues to make not-so-veiled patent threats against Linux.
Microsoft is the enemy of open source, pure and simple.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Your problem is that you seem to view each of Microsoft and open source as monolithic united entities with a single mind and vision.
Sure, I'd fully expect MS to try to slap the shit out of, say, OpenOffice if it's infringing on one of their Office patents. Note that I'm not arguing for whether that would be right or wrong, only that you should expect it.
But there's open source software that does a million other things that Microsoft isn't directly trying to sell a product for. And why wouldn't they, especially internally, be a fan of and use the hell out of any of that?
It is inevitable that Windows and Office will fall by the way-side.
Based on what, exactly?
That's one of the major complaints about Microsoft. When those products go what else do they have? A patent war?
When people stop using databases, what does Oracle really have?
When people stop searching for things on the internet, what does Google have?
At this point there's still no credible threat to Windows on the desktop or Office on the horizon, and anyone who says otherwise is either trying to sell you something or has adopted Open Source as a religion rather than a merely very good idea.
But there's open source software that does a million other things that Microsoft isn't directly trying to sell a product for. And why wouldn't they, especially internally, be a fan of and use the hell out of any of that?
Because they make their living off of providing proprietary software, and to be more precise, they are living off of incremental improvements to existing proprietary software. And the open source model is gradually showing people that they don't have to pay $$$ for good quality software.
What I think has happened is Microsoft sees the pace of the open source threat is making it less of a risk than they once thought. People still buy machines pre-loaded with Windows, and they pick up a copy of Office Home & Student edition for their kids to use in school. The price is low enough that most of them can afford it. And business licensing still rakes in truckloads of cash.
Speaking of business, most are still loading up on Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server, IIS, Active Directory, etc., and the pace of change is not heading to Linux at an appreciable rate.
On the other pan of the scale, it costs Microsoft a lot in terms of money and goodwill to do battle with people who just want to give away free software to poor kids in Africa. P.R.-wise that's an unwinnable battle. It's best to smile and nod, and pat the little ESR-wannabees on the head and say "that's a good boy, go out and play with your GNU friends, the grown-ups want to sell Mommy and Daddy some real software."
If Ballmer is now B.F.F. with Open Source, you can bet that they've done the math and this works out better for them on the bottom line.
John
How nice of them. They apologized for calling Linux a cancer.
Still waiting for an apology for the OOXML atrocity. In fact, it's going to take a lot more than a few contributions and nice words to make me put OOXML and its enormously dirty dealings in the past.
The Internet is full. Go away.
People still buy machines pre-loaded with Windows
In their defense, it's extremely difficult to buy many machines, especially laptops, without Windows. This is one thing that would be really nice to change.
MS Loves Open Source, which knows its place.
MS Hates that uppity Free Software.
www.eFax.com are spammers
... has really been to "embrace" it. (As usual!)
.NET with MS versions of everything the traditional open source world used to provide.
Think about it like this:
- Ms-PL (and 4 or so other licenses)
- CodePlex
- Free versions of Visual Studio
Now developers can write open source for Windows &
Instead of developing with Java or gcc for other VMs or Linux!
main() {1;}
Uh... you do know that Standard Oil was broken up by the government. The reason they don't exist has nothing to do with superior alternatives or market forces. Standard Oil is actually an excellent argument against your thesis because left to its own devices it would almost certainly still be ridiculously dominant.
You say that no one wants to pay for incremental changes to Office or Windows, and yet people spend billions upon billions of dollars doing exactly that every year.
In short, you're arguing that the market will be rational or behave the way you think it should, rather than looking at how the market actually has and continues to behave.
Probably Office will be gone someday... but that day is not coming soon. Just like the day that we stop using so much oil is not coming soon. You don't even have to like Office or Microsoft to understand that -- you just need to deal with the world as it actually is.