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Are vendors afraid of open source?
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| For Microsoft to state that open source is a risk to their business is
| perfectly valid. Heck, as an investor, I'd be weary if Microsoft's MD&A
| section didn't say anything about open source as a risk. It's perfectly valid
| for Michael to suggest that Microsoft should include a discussion on how they
| intend to leverage open source.
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http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2008/08/are_vendors_afr.html
Is Microsoft trying to kill Apache?
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| That recognition perhaps brings us to the kernel (no pun intended) of
| Microsoft’s motives. It has a vested interest in improving interoperability
| between PHP and Windows as this would help it reduce the drift of PHP to
| GNU/Linux platforms. Coughing up $100,000 would be a minuscule price to pay
| for stopping that drift but it is also an admission than Apache has beaten
| Microsoft’s IIS (Internet Information Services). Or perhaps it will only be a
| Pyrrhic victory of sorts. Microsoft are now free to take Apache source code
| and proceed to amend, tweak or customise it to the point of what Bruce Perens
| has called “engineered incompatibility” At that point Microsoft could repeat
| the successful disaster of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, only this
| time it would be Apache and with all the attendant broken web standards that
| tormented web developers—but this time on the server instead of the desktop.
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http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/is_microsoft_trying_to_kill_apache
Recent:
Bruce Perens: Microsoft and Apache - What's the Angle?
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| But Microsoft can still influence how things go from here on. If they have to
| live with open source, the Apache project is Microsoft's preferred direction.
| Apache doesn't use the dreaded GPL and its enforced sharing of source-code.
| Instead, the Apache license is practically a no-strings gift, with a weak
| provision against patent lawsuits as its most relevant term. Microsoft can
| take Apache software and embrace and enhance, providing their own versions of
| the project's software with engineered incompatibility and no available
| source, just as they forced incompatibility into the Web by installing IE
| with every Windows upgrade.
|
| IE is derived from Mosaic, the original Web browser, open source with a
| license similar to Apache's. So, this isn't a new strategy. The plan, then,
| could be to have Microsoft servers vie for dominance with their own –
| Microsoft specialized – versions of Apache applications. Or it could be that
| Microsoft sees itself replacing Linux in the market as a hosting platform for
| open source....
|
| So, this $100,000 contribution and the partial patent grant aren't about
| interoperability. It's for publicity, and to convince government regulators,
| not the most technical people in the world, that Microsoft has joined open
| source and is now a well-behaved company, no anti-trust issues at all. The
| bad part for open source is that Microsoft is increasingly in a position to
| speak to European legislators as an insider in the open source community
| while requesting increases in software patenting that would block open
| source.
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http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3762786/Bruce+Perens+Microsoft+and+Apache+-+Whats+the+Angle?.htm
Recent:
Microsoft and Apache
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| It all sounds good. But Apache is no threat to Microsoft, their projects run
| on Microsoft systems and their license doesn't prevent "embrace and enhance".
| Linux, GNU, OpenOffice, those are more of a threat. This is, obviously, a
| strategic move by Microsoft. I'm trying to convince myself that we
| didn't "get owned".
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http://technocrat.net/d/2008/7/25/46596
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