Microsoft's Love-Hate Relationship with Open Source

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"Microsoft has changed as a company and is becoming more open in the way that we work with and collaborate with others in the industry, in how we listen to customers, and in our approach to the cloud. We contribute to and partner with open source communities and promote interoperability to make it easier and less costly for customers to develop and manage mixed IT environments"

-Microsoft, in 2012.

"They want open-source software companies to like them and tell everyone what a good friend to open-source software Microsoft is. But it's clear that the goal is not to embrace but to destroy."

-Dave Rosenberg, CEO of MuleSource¹, in 2007.

On April 12, 2012, US-based technology major Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) announced a new wholly-owned subsidiary, Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., (MOT) to enhance the company's investment in openness which included interoperability, open standards, and Open Source Software2 (OSS). The subsidiary, considered as a bridge between Microsoft and the open source community, was a proof of the evolving role of open source development at Microsoft. According to Jean Paoli (Paoli), an open source veteran who was appointed as the president of MOT, "The subsidiary provides a new way of engaging in a more clearly defined manner. This new structure will help facilitate the interaction between Microsoft's proprietary development processes and the company's open innovation efforts and relationships with open source and open standards communities.

This structure will make it easier and faster to iterate and release open source software, participate in existing open source efforts, and accept contributions from the community. Over time the community will see greater interaction with the open standards and open source worlds."

Founded in 1975, Microsoft was the worldwide leader in software, services, and solutions. Historically, Microsoft had been hostile toward OSS and had closely guarded its software code so that its products could not be copied. It had created a closed source ecosystem for developers and had developed software products that were entirely proprietary. However, it had softened its stance considerably over a period of time. According to some analysts, Microsoft had finally realized that it could not afford to ignore OSS if it wanted to maintain its dominance in the software industry.

Introduction Contd... - Next Page>>

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1] MuleSource is a leading provider of open source infrastructure and integration software.
2] Open source software refers to generally free programs that provide access not just to the executable program, but also to the source code. With an open source software product, the code is made available to anyone interested under several licenses unlike the proprietary software, wherein the company owns and controls all intellectual property. In an open source model, the proprietors place the software in the public domain and invite free/ libre and open source software (FLOSS) developers to volunteer their expertise and improve the source code.

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