Remember when Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, publicly slated open source, well Linux actually, claiming that it was like a “cancer” that threatened Microsoft’s intellectual property?
Well Microsoft’s Jean Paoli recently told Network World that the software giant’s earlier opinion on open source had been a mistake and declared “we love open source” and added “we have worked with open source for a long time now”.
So what’s going on?
Paoli, who is the General Manager of Microsoft’s interoperability strategy team, said that their mistake was to equate all open source technology with Linux but that was “really very early on….that was a long time ago”.
Apparently Microsoft now wants us all to understand that whatever their issues with Linux, it no longer has any ill feeling toward open source.
So does this mean that Microsoft is now happy to support open source in its entirety including Linux, or are they deceiving us?
I mean Microsoft are not exactly renowned for giving anything away for free, however, under the “Microsoft Public License” which is Microsoft’s own version of open source, they have released some technology so maybe they’re just slowly adapting to the changing times.
“Today, really, the world is around mixed IT,” Network World quoted Paoli as saying.
“Today it is a reality that many customers, if not the majority of customers I talk to, use Oracle and Red Hat and Microsoft and IBM and VMware and Google, etc. It’s all around what we are calling mixed IT. You have commercial software and open software together, in many, many cases.”
That’s true but not everyone believes that Microsoft have really changed their attitude towards open source. Some techie sites are merely hinting that all is not what it seems but others are openly scathing.
It was only 3 years ago that Microsoft claimed that Linux and other open source software had violated over 230 of Microsoft’s patents and although they didn’t get very far with doing anything about it, something has changed.
It hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that the popularity of Linux and open source in general has been steadily growing lately, and at the expense of Microsoft, so maybe Microsoft are keen to be seen to be doing the right thing.
What do you think, have Microsoft really changed their tune about open source or as an article in PC world put it – is it just another feeble attempt to pass the wolf off in sheep’s clothing?
