Can We Take Microsoft at Its Open Source Word?

It's a radical departure, this news from Microsoft (MSFT) that openness between its products and the rest of the universe is more than a hollow platitude. To take Microsoft at its Word, given this release, is to open an era of an entirely new Microsoft. But is it?

For Microsoft's admitting Thursday that it needs to be more open, should meaningfully support standards, should allow developers access to APIs, should make its documents easy to share, should build new interoperability-friendly APIs for its major products -- this is also admitting that it has tried to thwart or undo these very avenues to progress in the past.

This has to be more than trying to appease the European regulators.

So Microsoft's declaration to embrace openness is at the same time a mea culpa, that it has been employing dirty tricks to seal its products off, and has tried to punish those that would seek to make productivity from the interchange between Microsoft's products and the rest of the universe. And it has been doing it all as a convicted monopolist.

And so we are now supposed to move on. Please see this as a new era of openness, we were wrong (while the price was right), and now we're going to play nice. We love open source, and standards, and API access, and third-party developers. Sorry, so sorry, let's move forward.

So they say.

And to pair this new air of openness with the acid hostile takeover bid for Yahoo (YHOO) offers a few potential insights, if not underscores deep internal conflicts, in Redmond.

It is odd that the road to openness demands the takeover of a foe, nee friend. One week we need to outbid the world to grab a company distinctly different from our own (for the engineers), and the next week we need to better love the sharing between people and technology (for the engineers).

What? These market movers strike me as at crosscurrents, at best, or more likely some kind of bi-polar method to software development and deployment amid an advertising-crazed upset of the monopoly apple cart.

And yet, too, the odd pairing makes sense, if you're a cynic.

Because by seeking to buy Yahoo, Microsoft is also making some major mea culpas. By trying to buy Yahoo, Microsoft is in effect agreeing that open source is essential to any competitive, world-class datacenter or cloud fabric of the future. And so then Microsoft needs to change its tune about open source. Sorry, we goofed. Now we'll just buy an open source cloud infrastructure.

If by seeking to buy Yahoo, Microsoft aims to broaden its reach as a purveyor of IT functions as services (beyond the Live stuff to date), then openness and interoperability between its products and Yahoo's services is a must. And again, Microsoft needs to change its tune about openness and interoperability. Sorry, we were wrong about the Web. It's not going away. Our interfaces won't necessarily be the gateway to the Internet assets you need and seek.

If by seeking to buy Yahoo, Microsoft aims to use industry standards to integrate its Windows Everywhere arsenal with the rest of Yahoo -- and most enterprises or portals, for that matter -- then Microsoft needs to change its tune about its depth of use and commitment to open industry standards. Sorry, we should have played nice all along. Who wants proprietary formats, anyway?

For Microsoft to make the Yahoo merger work, the announcements Thursday have to work too. By buying and integrating Yahoo into Microsoft, in essence, forces Microsoft to be integrated with a much larger slice of the real world. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

But what happens after the Yahoo merger, assuming they integrate it all (or at least make it interoperable, presumably leveraging the very standards they so long disdained)? What's to say that everything that Microsoft is pledging to do today, they decide not to do in two years?

Is there no going back? Or is this the means to the ever-larger platform play that Microsoft could not attain -- of extending one monopoly to another? Is this the Web-as-platform acquisition that leads only to increased advertising revenues at the cost of the demise of the original monopoly and those juicy license fees?

I do like what I'm hearing, I just wish it was easier to believe that Microsoft by its very nature has changed along with the need for it to change.

It seems easy for Redmond to cop these mea culpas. It's not as easy for me to forget what made them necessary.

Comments

[MarcelMcSweeney]

To Quote: "underscores deep internal conflicts, in Redmond...It is odd that the road to openness demands the takeover of a foe..it reflects a bi-polar method to software development."

1.) The underlying author's assumption here is socialism works.
2.) I'm not clear why buying Yahoo contradicts the value of supporting open source developers? I see a clear parallel. Open Source people will work with MSFT's products as a way of getting in doors that were previously closed. I think you jumped the gun with your thesis that you see clear contradictions in MSFT strategy; I don't see any contradictions but for the ones you unsuccessfully tried to sell to your readers. If you want to insult MSFT while appearing objective, you'll have to try again.

[User 142738]

I think we’ve misheard Microsoft’s intentions. Lots of very wealthy, very successful, and very proprietary software packages have been open–source. Open source (which works) ≠ socialism (which doesn’t).

There’s the full possibility that Microsoft will make some Web–enabled software whose client is open–source, but whose server is locked up tight. Even if not, I’d rely on the numbers MSFT releases about their sales of Vista and Office.

[Homer]

"it has been employing dirty tricks to seal its products off."

they tried to make a buck, actually a few billion; isn't this also the goal of its competitors. Unless you're recommending socialism.

I'll expect to soon read an article from this author flattering GOOG for securing an almost monopolisitic position in its space.

[User 155013]

Microsoft has a plan that ultimately has nothing to do with being nice to open source developers or allowing anyone access to their API's without a (at the moment free) license. They desperately need to widen their influence on the net as they are being passed by on all sides and run the risk of being marginalized in the next 5 to 10 years.

If Google or others establish a net based free office suite that can be used with open source server software, then Microsoft will be left on the downhill slide. After all, no one knows better than the boys from Redmond the attraction of free software and what it does to the competition. They just never imagined a model where it could all be free.

Steve Ballmer hasn't changed his stripes. Ray Ozzie isn't striking off on his own to lead Microsoft to a new future where we are all one big happy family. There is a plan and it involves using free engineering labor to regain world supremacy. After all, if open source programmers voluntarily write code that ties their offerings tightly to existing Microsoft products - how can the socialist judges in Europe object? The people will have spoken.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[Tom B]

"There is a plan and it involves using free engineering labor to regain world supremacy"

yes. And coders aren't dumb. MSFT will end up with the same sorry cast of collaborators they have now.

[codewiz51]

As an aging software developer, I float between OSS and Microsoft development environments on a daily basis. For those espousing that this article advocates socialism, I am amazed and heartily disagree.

Microsoft, at least from a technical perspective, has historically borrowed from the Open Source community and not contributed much content back until very recently. When MS had to implement TCP/IP protocols, way back in Windows 3.1, they allegedly took the stack (software code) from an operating system called BSD 4.4. (Here's my source www.heise.de/newsticke... in German and to be fair, here's an article claiming to counter: www.kuro5hin.org/?op=d...;sid=2001/6/19/05641/7... although they sidestepped by saying the did get the code under a BSD license.) The BSD license allows this behavior.

What they do not want is to work with the GPL license, which forces them to turn over any improvements they make in the code back to the community.

Yahoo is probably the largest user of FreeBSD operating systems and Apache web servers in the world. Both FreeBSD and Apache use the BSD style license model. Microsoft knows this, and they understand the licensing implications of the BSD style license. Whatever MS obtains from Yahoo, it may be "open source", but it does not have to be released back into the community that originally developed the software. I'd also like to point out that Apple did something very similar with their operating system call OS X. They actually adopted FreeBSD in it's entirety for the base OS. See www.trollaxor.com/2004... for one side of that story.

So in conclusion? Only time will tell if they mean what they say. I am not prepared to trust them until I see results.

[Homer]

Quote: "establish a net based free office suite that can be used with open source server software, then Microsoft will be left on the downhill slide."
I'm not clear why this is new? Anyone is free to offer competing software...It use to be called public domain now it's called open source.
You hit the nail on the head when you said "If..." because with a few "If..." comments about microsoft's potential future moves, Google would be left on the sidelines. The bias is so thick it can be cut with a knife.

[blah-blah]

Take technology stories, add bias from someone who doesn't even work in IT(often never even used the product) and you end up with....seeking alpha comments!

[Homer]

i agree

[Homer]

Microsoft... they desperately need to widen their influence on the net

This is true for all technology companies.

[blah-blah]

Agreed

[codewiz51]

I do not agree.

"Open Source people will work with MSFT's products as a way of getting in doors that were previously closed." Really? Exactly what doors are closed to OSS?

If you really are in IT, you must work in MS only enterprises. You might find this lecture interesting: www.youtube.com/watch?.... It's by Bob Sutor and it spells it out like is, not how it should be.

[Homer]

Really? Exactly what doors are closed to OSS?

I thought you OSS people hated MSFT because of all the doors that are closed to you due to MSFT dirty tricks. Now you appear to be saying OSS developers have nothing to complain about; all doors are wide open to OSS. This makes no sense; you MSFT bashers need to get on the same page. You're never going to win an election if you keep changing your platform. No pun on changing platform.

[ZarathustraDK]

None of the doors labeled "Fair and Sensible" are closed to OSS. However there's a friggin' huge door labeled "Monopoly" which is obstructing the hallway to these doors. Guess who made that door...

And please can somebody kill off the word "socialism"? It seems to me it's simply a placeholder for "communism" these days. OSS is neither. OSS does not concern material goods distributed in a society; it concerns information about how to create/use tools "out of nothing" which will benefit the common good. Big difference there.