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Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Apr 25, 2007 05:01 PM
from the conference-trolls dept.
from the conference-trolls dept.
tlockney writes "Next week at Microsoft's MIX, whurley will be leading a discussion on 'Open Source, the Web, Interoperability, and Microsoft'. To kick off a bit of pre-session discussion and enlist the help of others in putting Microsoft on the spot, whurley, king of all things open source at BMC has written an article entitled 'Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source'."
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Reason zero (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Reason zero (Score:5, Informative)
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7 reasons Microsoft loves Open Source - RTFA (Score:4, Funny)
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Worded differently (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate when they do that.
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"loves" used very loosely (Score:5, Funny)
Where I'm from, they have another word besides "love" for that.
What's a whurly? (Score:4, Insightful)
This synopsis annoys me because it is written as if we're all just supposed to know what the hell a whurly and a BMC are.
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
No competition = stagnation (Score:5, Insightful)
Arguably this is not true for all their markets, such as development tools and Office, which historically have not been too contested (not lately at least) and yet have not resulted in the same stagnation.
Many people want open source to succeed, because one of the end results of that is a better Microsoft. I've always included myself in that group.
As for the article, I think it's a good read for all the "LOLOL M$ is TEH AFRAID OF THE GNU/PENGUIN ETC" crowd:
Microsoft fears IBM and Novell and CA. It doesn't "fear" Ubuntu or Gentoo or Torvalds. That's the key issue that RMS managed to miss (or probably chose to ignore for the oomph effect) in his incisive analysis of the "Halloween documents".
Re:No competition = stagnation (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have though that reality backs up the opposite: MS doesn't want to open their code or specs.
Right now, they're giving the EU a tough time over specs,
I can't imagine how "They realize open source is their future".
Parent
WHAT? (Score:5, Funny)
7 reasons a mouse likes a cat
7 reasons why oil likes water
7 reasons why intelligent design likes pasta
or
7 reasons why office users like clippy
Hopelessly naive (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, no. Both are threats to Microsoft. Linux, as a product, is obvious.
Open source, as a larger concept, is a threat to Microsoft because it is the antithesis of their power base. Microsoft has gained and held its control over the industry by clutching tightly its file formats and protocols. The only reason we ever got Office compatibility and the SMB protocol in the Open Source realm is because of careful reverse engineering and the hope that Microsoft's patent lawyers would keep their guns holstered.
I think Microsoft is realizing that the problem isn't the source, which is eroding as a base of power, but the software patents. On the one hand, they hold enough to crush pretty much anybody they choose. At the same time, they've already been victimized once by Eolas. The Novell deal shows how reluctant Microsoft is to really enforce their software patents. It's as much a defensive action for Microsoft as it is for Novell. Obviously, Novell can step out from under that Sword of Damocles. Microsoft, however, by not filing a straight-up patent suit, avoids throwing the first punch in a barroom full of patent trolls, all of whom are itching for a brawl.
Linux not the threat; the GNU GPL is (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has made it clear, many times, that they consider the GPL a "cancer" and "Communist". They've also said that "we're not against 'open source'. We like BSD, that's fine. What we don't like is the GPL."
The GPL is their enemy because the GPL proactively defends our freedom. Is the BSD license a Free Software license? You bet! But it doesn't proactively defend our freedom like the GPL does, and it is that characteristic of the GPL that frightens Microsoft to its core. That's also why they're fighting so desperately against the OpenDocument file formats; to Microsoft, actual, true Freedom for users is a very, very scary thing. [mailto]
Catagorized List: (Score:4, Funny)
2. We can steal ideas!
3. We can steal design!
4. We can release a version that doesn't turn off noobies!
5. We can make a proprietary competitor and wipe the original FOSS off the map with our hegemony!
6. We can put out a press release about how we invented something again!
7. We can steal code!
My comment refuting his points (Score:5, Interesting)
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I can't take you very seriously because there is a lot of misdirection and hand-waving in your article. I will give you credit that I didn't see any outright lies, which Microsoft directly uses, though. Here I'll point out some problems with your points.
"They include open source code in their products."
You bring up the TCP/IP implementation as an example. That's not a good idea on your part because it's exactly the example people use to point out why Microsoft likes to let other people come up with good stuff under the BSD license and then selfishly take it with no thank-yous or giving in return. When it comes to a mutual sharing license that they can't take selfish advantage of, like the GPL, they spit venom, lies, quasi-legal lobbying interference with government action, violation of their court-ordered code of conduct from their anti-trust conviction, etc., etc. So basically, your first point illustrates that they just like code that other people open without restrictions so they can just snatch it.
"They support open source vendors."
I won't say a lot here because I'm not familiar with these Microsoft "programs created to test and verify open source applications on Microsoft platforms". If they do that, fair enough.
"They benefit from open source everyday."
It's called FUD. Have you read the content of the "free press" they pay for? That's kind of a twisted way to look at things to say that your competitors benefit you by giving you the opportunity to smear them with falsehoods. You're not understanding what the alternative situation was to this "battle with open source" they've been waging in the press. Before open source was maturing, Microsoft didn't have a big war in the press and had close to 100% market share. Everyone just kept buying it because they had never heard of anything else. Now Microsoft is having to viciously attack to slow the slide of their market share. Open source isn't doing them any favors there.
"They open source code."
Ah, UNIX tools for Windows. This is beating the ground where the dead horse rotted away several years ago. They did a small token action on a minor product most people don't use once, and we're supposed to be reminded of that over and over? That hardly seems like strong evidence to make it one of the "Seven Reasons Microsoft Loves Open Source". That's weak, man.
"They are adopting open source culture."
You're not recognizing what this is. Culture means actually doing something, which they're not. This is co-opting the language of open source to try to pretend to be something good, while remaining the wolf in sheep's clothing. It's the same with their proprietary data-dump of their new MS Office format, which they have ironically called "Microsoft Office Open XML". They want to have that word Open associated with them, even though the format is very closed and does not contain specs enough for anyone else to use it.
"They aren't threatened by open source."
Well this looks like a good place to continue the talk about the office document formats. They are threatened at least as much, if not more, by other forms of openness than just by Linux. Have you kept up with Microsoft's conduct in Massachusetts over the document format decision? They have been putting out some of their most blatant lies to convince them to use the Microsoft document formats, rather than go to a neutral document format that can be used by anyone, including Microsoft if they wanted to stop their tantrums long enough to do it. Read some of Andy Updegrove's blog to find out some of the story about that, including how they fed a false character assasination story on Peter Quinn to Boston Globe reporter Steve Kurkjian. The story was published before they even
Re:I can see microsoft doing what apple did (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I can see microsoft doing what apple did (Score:4, Interesting)
To say nothing of the fact that UNIX and NT are architecturally very different animals.
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Re:I can see microsoft doing what apple did (Score:5, Informative)
Apple not only maintained is own Unix distro of A/UX, sold AIX servers, and created its own Linux distro prior to OS/X, but also ported the Mac environment to other Unix variants, using MAE and laster MAS.
- Steve Jobs and 20 Years of Apple Servers [roughlydrafted.com]
And everybody knows that NT's "POSIX compliance" was a bullshit dance designed to make NT legal to sell to the government. NT never offered anything more than pretend support for POSIX, and it was of no more importance to Microsoft as a subsystem within NT than was OS/2.
Further, since POSIX compatilbility is techniclly a paid seal of approval on a specific implementation of Unix APIs, of course Linux as general idea can't ever techically pay to attach the POSIX trademark to itself in the way Microsoft pretended to.
The reality is that the only value of POSIX is as a general synonym for "Unix-like compatibility." In the real world, Linux currently helps define what that is; NT does not offer this at all.
Are you really trying to argue that NT provides some useful sort of compatibility for Unix apps? Citing the Wikipedia as a source does not do much to create credibility for your conjecture.
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NT POSIX memories. (Score:5, Informative)
In the NT3 timeframe (approx 12 years ago now), there was a big effort to sell NT to companies, such as the one I worked for then, supplying back office /server room style products. Many/most products of the time were running on Unix boxes or similar. We were using Unix x86 boxes (SCO etc) for compter tephony applications. NT had to check a few boxes to encourage people to switch: POSIX and streams driver support. This gave people a reasonable porting avenue to a cheaper OS (NT was about half or a third of SCO's cost at the time).
The POSIX and streams drivers were very inefficient, and were dropped within a short while (once the bait and switch had worked).
This ploy was very clever on MS's part. Using ourselves as a benchmark for people in this space, our customers were putting on some pressure to provide NT based products because they were eating the MS blurb and wanted to reduce costs. Our techies looked at NT and figured out what would be needed to port: POSIX-check, streams driver model - check. So we say that on paper it can be done with trivial architectural change. Marketing start hyping the NT-based offering. The business people say make it so, so we do. Unfortunately we find the POSIX and streams driver model are very slow on NT, so end up having to start doing native drivers and non-POSIX code. We start slipping, marketing starts screaming and the portability gets dumped in favour of getting shipping. The bait and switch has worked.
We never got any benefit from NT POSIX or the MS streams driver. Our systems went from requiring low-end (16-25MHz) 386s to 100+MHz 486. Basically a very bad case of bait and switch.
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Re:I can see microsoft doing what apple did (Score:4, Interesting)
That is certainly a loss for Bill Gates and perhaps the rest of the original cadre of MS corporate officers. Throughout the 80s and 90s, MS was steered consistently toward a "vision" of dominance that really wasn't profit oriented. MS has consistently passed up the opportunity to make profits in its efforts to become the dominant player in different digital markets. It has thrown more money down the toilet to prevent someone else from succeeding in an area where it wasn't good enough to win on merit than many companies had earned during those 20 years.
When MS gives up this foolishness and starts acting like a profit-oriented business, it will almost certainly lose its tarnish and become a respectable member of the business community.
That will be a long-term winning situation for MS. The only losers will be Gates (who has already thrown in the towel), Balmer, and the rest of the original dreamers with their juvenile fantasies about attaining world dominance.
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Re:I can see microsoft doing what apple did (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure who "everybody" is... but such claims ignore history. It ignores the very impressive turn-on-a-dime business strategy Microsoft pulled off after they initially failed to realize the importance of the Internet. And it ignores a historical precedence in the changing of IBM's desktop hardware market when it shifted from a proprietary to commodity platform.
Micorosoft is not going to simply curl up and die. They've proven to be agile enough to react to threats / lost opportunities. And they have the momentum and resources to deal with a suddenly difficult market.
If we're lucky, Microsoft will become the software / OS equivalent of IBM. Sure - they're still powerhouses in the Industry... but they no longer control it. They have influence but have to compete with every other market player for that influence to pay off and drive the market in their desired direction.
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Re:I can see microsoft doing what apple did (Score:4, Informative)
That sounds plausible except for a few minor details. The first of which is the GPL. One of the major cornerstones of the GPL is that there are protections to prevent people from exploiting GPL code in the way MS would certainly exploit it. Microsoft has built an empire of locking every other competitor out (sometimes through illegal means). The famous extend part of the embrace, extend, extinguish ploy would not be allowed by the GPL.
Also, Apple was able to develop OS X not using Linux. Apple acquired NeXT which had developed some advanced technologies used in OS X. Also they based their kernel on BSD which does not have the same restrictions as Linux.
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Re:I can see microsoft doing what apple did (Score:5, Insightful)
If Windows ever used a Linux kernel (hah!), there'd really be very little difference from the current status quo. They'd probably have to fix up the NTFS driver a lot (or use a different filesystem--most users wouldn't notice or care), they'd certainly benefit from all the built-in drivers, but the graphics subsystem would probably be a big showstopper since they'd either have to use X and change a lot of things, or make their own subsystem built into the kernel which they seem to like to do. Other than that, they'd certainly keep their whole system libraries proprietary and secret, which would make it non-trivial for people to run Windows applications on free software. Yes, they could use WINE, but that's still trying to hit a moving target and is developed slowly because of the need for reverse-engineering. Personally, I don't see why MS would ever bother using a Linux kernel; it doesn't provide them much technical benefit.
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Re:I can see microsoft doing what apple did (Score:4, Insightful)
Then again, the NT microkernel seems a bit overstressed for what it's being pushed to do in Vista, and it's starting to show... badly. Two versions from now, they're going to have to replace it with something... 'cause what they got now simply isn't going to cut the mustard (well, unless they up the minimum HW requirements to an 8-core box + 16GB of RAM + four SLI-chained vidcards...)
That said, I do agree that it prolly won't be Linux - MSFT will most likely snag the latest *BSD kernel (one that has no GPL encumbrance) and lock it down good and hard. Then they'll build the world's ugliest set of wrappers and APIs for it, then call the results "innovation".
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Re:Admitted (Score:5, Insightful)
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