Microsoft to Argue Against Free Code --NYT
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) is expected to defend its business model, arguing that giving away and sharing software code could undermine intellectual property of countries and companies, The New York Times reported in its online edition on Thursday.
The company is also expected to acknowledge that it is feeling pressure from the freely shared alternatives to its commercial software, the paper said.
Craig Mundie, a senior vice president at Microsoft and one of its software strategists, will defend this model in a speech given on Thursday at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
Mundie will argue that the company already follows the best attributes of the open-source model by sharing the original program's instructions, or source code, more widely than is generally realized, the paper said.
The speech is part of an effort by Microsoft to raise questions about the limits of innovation inherent in the open-source approach and to suggest that companies adopting the approach are putting their intellectual property at risk, the paper said.
Advocates of the open-source movement say that making the code available permits other developers to tinker with it, find problems and improve the software. The movement has not yet had a significant effect on sales of Microsoft's Office and Windows products in the personal computer market, the paper said.
Shares of Microsoft closed Wednesday at $69.76, off a 52-week high of $82.88, up from a year low of $40.25.
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