MS To Become Open Source Friendly Post Gates 424
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.
System complexity driving OSS? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:System complexity driving OSS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Speculation means nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Skepticism aside... (Score:2, Interesting)
How many would actually embrace an open source Windows, extend the code, and extinguish the bugs?
Open source could hurt Microsoft long term. (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod parent up! (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [robweir.com] they're going to go open source?"
MOD PARENT UP!
Re:April Fools? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Imaginary Support (Score:1, Interesting)
In theory, M$ Office has support for Word Perfect. In reality, M$ Office does not support M$ Office and this is why OOXML is such a mess. The kind of support they are talking about is just another weapon to them. The sum of their anti-competitive efforts against others is something that does not work for their own customers.
IBM, Sun and others have made real moves to free software. M$ does not have the technical expertise or confidence to do the same. As Steve Ballmer said back in 1995 [time.com]:
You can translate that as they don't care if something does not work for you and you don't want it, they are going to shove it on you anyway. There's nothing new here [slashdot.org] and no change should be expected.
Re:Skepticism aside... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of people would spend the better part of a year reading and rewriting code. By the end of that year, wine would be nearly complete, Windows and Linux would support each other's binaries (probably with a patch to the linux kernel, as I'm sure Linus wouldn't include it with that little testing). and the more broken part of Windows would be fixed. It's hard to tell whether XOrg would include Windows code, or whether they'd fork off another project to support the API. The windows code would fragment into dozens of distros, almost immediately. Of these, maybe a couple would last longer than a half year. There would be lots of interpretations of how to fix or change the windows code to bring it more inline with the linux philosophy. Eventually, I think most people would come to accept Windows as a separate end-product, but that wouldn't stop some people from working on combining them.
It would be a couple of years before the first solid Linux distros started shipping which included support for Windows programs (and actually worked)
"They have to" (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:System complexity driving OSS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather unfair to blame that failure on Bill as it was largely ballmer's fuck up, a trial run to see how the company would function under ballmer's sole control, as it pans out, not very well. As a result ballmer's position is under real threat and he feels it, which is why the defensive public announcement that he will not retire for 10 years, quite clearly he will not voluntarily leave the position regardless of the blunders he continues to make.
M$ as it currently stands can not succeed in OSS as the most important part of generating a income out of OSS is customers service and support, of being able to establish and maintain a quality relationship with customers. Treating them like the enemy with bogus EULA's, licence audits, B$ marketing and some very public deceitful practices makes it virtually impossible to achieve success it what will be a very competitive market, proof of that is M$ continuing failure with MSN.
M$ has no real public, no customer desire, a prime example of that is the complete failure of Zune, even the name shows the level of M$'s customer disconnect. M$ needs to undergo a complete personality transplant and lose the arrogance, ego and bullshit and that will only happen once current management has crippled it's value and made 1/10th of the company it is today, after a shareholder revolt.
Re:In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:In related news... (Score:1, Interesting)
Darn right. There's no point in having a "dialog". Microsoft's actions (ie their software, NOT EULAs/press announcements/legal maneuvering/"gentlemans' agreements") will readily demonstrate whether they're going to play nice with the OSS world or not.
A "dialog" is just a stalling tactic, but it probably works a lot better against commercial rivals than an "insurgency" of various anarchic OSS projects.
Given Microsoft's history, I'll wait and see (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Evidence. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:"They have to" (Score:3, Interesting)
Although Red Hat has made contributions to Linux, the OS was fundamentally done by the time Red Hat became invovled. There may be room for one company to be successful holding the corporate hand as they venture into Linux, but as corporations become more comfortable with Linux they may begin to question if Red Hat is adding any value they should be paying for.
I might be wrong, but.... (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:remember the OLD IBM? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:In related news... (Score:3, Interesting)
I just noticed something weird.
Why is everybody else on this thread an AC? What are you scared of?
Saving Microsoft (Score:1, Interesting)
If I were in charge of Microsoft and interested at all in saving the company, here's what I'd do.
Split the company into three parts. Hmm. No, make that four. Five.
One company handles the legacy junk. Maintains it under current licenses (sans enforcement machinery) in more or less the way it is being maintained now. Maybe some necessary incremental improvements when there's no way to fix a vulnerability in the legacy framework. This company will ultimately be absorbed by the fourth company, but it is necessary for a few years.
Another company focuses on the various problems of open sourcing all the "IP" and "technology" in Microsoft's legacy products. This is important in establishing a way out for all of the customers Microsoft has locked in. This company also consults with the other companies to keep the whole operation clean on licensing. It will probably remain independent, to help it keep the other companies playing fair.
The third company focuses on hosting repositories of foss projects and on building Microsoft-specific distributions of Linux, BSD, maybe Plan 9, Apache, the Gimp, Open Office, PostGreSQL, and many other open source offerings. Oh, Wine, et. al., of course. But no funny business with the licenses. All strictly according to the open source rules, and all regularly feeding funding upstream from that huge capitalization. This company will also remain independent.
The fourth company puts the legacy stuff as unmodified as possible on top of solid foundations culled from open source. Again, no license shenanigans. Nothing from legacy is allowed here until the IP/tech group clears it. And it is kept as cross-platform as possible. This company will be absorbed into the the fifth company in twenty to fifty years.
The fifth company hunts for anything that was actually good from the legacy stuff and implements blue-sky projects to see what shakes out. The products will be primarily released under GPL3 or higher or Apache 2 or higher when implementing stuff that's really new, merged upstream or forked appropriately and without license conflicts when they borrow.
The bulk of the new income stream will be service agreements on the stuff the fifth company produces.
Why should they do this? Because it's their mess and they ought to clean it up, especially since they have all that money from making the mess.
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:2, Interesting)
what alot of people need to remeber ( and i am all linux) is that microsoft is a huge employer. before they just open everything they need to think about there employees. imagine if they just rush into something and have to layoff thousands of people. it would be a blow to the local economy not to mention "Microsoft is now evil for laying people off and it is all because of open source" tweak the business model dont just up and change. i know it is hard to believe but there are alot of people all around microsoft that depend on money comming from them.
Re:Imaginary Support (Score:3, Interesting)
And how is it different from any other company?
Re:"They have to" (Score:3, Interesting)
"When they bought StarOffice, it saved them a ton of money versus buying licenses for their employees."
Actually, no. Prior to buying StarOffice, Scott McNealy forbid his employees to use a word processor with more than 4 features (i.e. a text editor instead of a word processor), so there were no licenses to save money on.
Mysteriously, after Sun bought StarOffice, McNealy stopped talking about how evil office-type applications were.
Re:has done more?! (Score:1, Interesting)
Depends on your definition of "Computer"
Many large companies don't sell computers to buisiness (or governments) anymore. they sell "Solutions".
"Computer" has become synonomous with an x86 compatible running Microsoft windows. People have come to know the strengths and limitations of that model quite well.
IMO, the most successful computer world-wide is the basic calculator: it just works.
The same can be said for the computer chips embeded in your toaster, microwave and car.
DRM is sort of hurting the functionality of computer chips in Audio-Visual equipment, IMHO.