Microsoft open to open source?
For most of its corporate life, Microsoft Corp. has built its software monopoly -- and earned billions -- around the idea that software should be sold, not given away, and that the blueprints ought to be shielded by a high-security fortress of technical safeguards.
The company's very public campaign against the idea of freely sharing its software blueprints, called source code, came to a head early last summer. Microsoft's notoriously outspoken chief executive, Steve Ballmer, told a reporter that a competing "open-source" system called Linux was "a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual-property sense to everything it touches."
Today, Microsoft is singing a slightly different tune.
Microsoft learns a lesson from competition
cnn.com
The open source and the GPL-based free software movements have both attracted an army of software developers, says Kuhn, that presents a whole new type of competitive challenge to Microsoft.
"I think Microsoft is threatened by this competitor because it's a competitor like no other they've faced before," he said. "It's a band of volunteers from around the world ...writing software for the public good. And a lot of them are making money off treating the public well."
Al Gillen, an analyst with IDC who follows Microsoft, said the company likely realized it needs to share its source code with some customers if it wants to keep them happy.
The software giant also likely realized that if it isn't more open with universities, it risks losing potential future employees and tech-smart consumers to more freely available open source systems.
The company also realized its tactics of vilifying the open source movement was simply making it look like the bad guy, said Gillen.
"It's not doing Microsoft any good to take that position," he said. "There is something Microsoft can learn from open source."
But perhaps the damage is already done.
Microsoft's public talk about how much it dislikes the open and free software approach has served to unite what was a fractious community of advocates -- as well as draw more adherents to the movement, said the Free Software Foundation's Kuhn.
"Microsoft is helping us by making us a story," he said.
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