Why Microsoft is wary of open source
By Joe Wilcox
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
June 18, 2001, 4:00 a.m. PT
There's more to Microsoft's recent attacks on the open-source movement than mere
rhetoric: Linux's popularity could hinder the software giant in its quest to gain control
of a server market that's crucial to its long-term goals.
Recent public statements by Microsoft executives have cast Linux and the open-source
philosophy that underies it as, at the minimum, bad for competition, and at worst, a "cancer" to
everything it touches.
Behind the war of words, analysts said, is evidence that Microsoft is increasingly concerned
about Linux and its growing popularity. The Unix-like operating system "has clearly emerged
as the spoiler that will prevent Microsoft from achieving a dominant position" in the worldwide
server operating-system market, concludes IDC analyst Al Gillen in a forthcoming report.
While Microsoft's overall
operating-system market
leadership is by no means in
jeopardy, Linux's continued
gains make it harder for
Microsoft to further its core
plan for the future, Microsoft
.Net. The plan is a
software-as-a-service
initiative, similar to plans from
competitors including
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and
Sun Microsystems.
One of the cornerstones of
.Net is HailStorm, which is
built around the company's
Passport authentication
service.
Microsoft.Net and HailStorm make use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) to pass
information between computers based on Windows and computers using other operating
systems. However, many .Net components--such as Passport, and server-based software
including the company's SQL Server database software and BizTalk e-commerce server--only
run on Windows. "The infrastructure to operate XML Web services relies on the Windows
operating system and the .NET Enterprise Servers," Microsoft's marketing literature states.
Microsoft needs to control the server operating-system market if HailStorm and all the .Net
services and subscriptions associated with it are to succeed, analysts say.
"HailStorm itself by definition needs Microsoft-provided or -partnered services, which means
Microsoft's or its partners' servers," said Gartner analyst David Smith. "In that sense, Linux is a
threat to .Net."
Microsoft is expected to spend hundreds of millions of dollars marketing and developing .Net.
Virtually every product from the company ties in to the plan at some point.
While Linux hasn't displaced Windows, it has made serious inroads. Linux accounted for 27
percent of new worldwide operating-system licenses in 2000, and Microsoft captured 41
percent of new licenses, according to IDC.
Overall, Gartner estimates Linux runs on nearly 9 percent of U.S. servers, with worldwide
projected sales of nearly $2.5 billion, reaching about $9 billion in 2005.
But Linux continues to gain credibility, particularly because of the massive support provided by
IBM, which has pledged to spend $1 billion on Linux development.
In attacking Linux and open source, Microsoft finds itself competing "not against another
company, but against a grassroots movement," said Paul Dain, director of application
development at Wirestone, a technology services company based in Chicago. "My guess is
that they are now under pressure to defend themselves against the criticism from the
open-source and free-software communities--whether it's justified or not--as well as companies
like IBM that are aggressively marketing Linux. In order to combat that, they have to use strong
language to get their point across," Dain said.
Increasing Linux use makes it more difficult to spread the .Net message. That, in turn, has led
to a string of comments from Microsoft executives publicly denouncing Linux and open source.
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it
touches," Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.
Critical of change
Microsoft has also criticized the General Public License (GPL) that governs the heart of Linux.
Under this license, changes to the Linux core, or kernel, must also be governed by the GPL.
The license means that if a company changes the kernel, it must publish the changes and
can't keep them proprietary if it plans to distribute the code externally.
Other open-source projects, such as FreeBSD, allow changes that are kept proprietary. That
provision was one reason FreeBSD proved appealing to Wind River Systems, the dominant
seller of operating systems for non-PC "embedded" computing devices such as network
routers.
Microsoft's open-source attacks come at a time when the company has been putting the
pricing squeeze on customers. In early May, Microsoft revamped software licensing, raising
upgrades between 33 percent and 107 percent, according to Gartner. A large percentage of
Microsoft business customers could in fact be compelled to upgrade to Office XP before Oct. 1
or pay a heftier purchase price later on.
The action "will encourage--'force' may be a more accurate term--customers to upgrade much
sooner than they had otherwise planned," Gillen noted in the IDC report. "Once the honeymoon
period runs out in October 2001, the only way to 'upgrade' from a product that is not considered
to be current technology is to buy a brand-new full license.'"
This could make open-source Linux's GPL more attractive to some customers feeling trapped
by the price hike, Gillen said. "Offering this form of 'upgrade protection' may motivate some
users to seriously consider alternatives to Microsoft technology."
Ray Bailey, information services manager at the Bergquist Company, said a recent meeting
with Microsoft changed the technology direction of his company, which manufactures
electronic components and other goods.
"Our IS team agreed that, due to Microsoft's changing of the licensing rules and the manner in
which they have given us less-than-adequate time to process those changes, we are seriously
looking at other platforms," he said. "Linux is a strong contender for our next server because of
the low-cost nature of the licensing."
Internally, Microsoft seems somewhat torn on how to approach the open-source movement.
While Microsoft denounces the move toward free software, it does recognize at least some of
the value of open-source development.
"Microsoft views open source as a competitor, but it's hard to treat it as a competitor,"
Gartner's Smith said. "So they have to attack basic tenets, mentality, way of life and thought
processes."
Since last year, Microsoft has made available to hundreds of its larger customers copies of its
closely guarded Windows source code. The company hopes its best customers can help it
improve Windows.
Microsoft has been touting plans to broaden Windows source-code access to business
partners in an initiative it calls its "shared-source philosophy."
In particular, Microsoft wants to emulate the spirit of cooperation that has spawned groups of
volunteer Linux programmers. "Having a sense of community is a good thing. It's one thing
we've watched with interest," Craig Mundie, senior vice president of advanced strategies at
Microsoft, said in a recent interview. "The more of that we can foster in our community, the
better."
Building a better community
Microsoft hopes to imbue its programmer network with some of this community spirit, Mundie
said. "The Microsoft Developer Network hasn't been one where there was a lot of dialog
between (developers) and with Microsoft developers."
Though Microsoft will be expanding how it engages directly with those who see Microsoft's
source code, Microsoft isn't going to extend the right granted to many members of the
open-source community--the power to change the software. People may submit bug fixes, but
"customers aren't trying to buy the rights to produce derivatives," Mundie said. "In general,
we're going to control that reintegration. We worry a lot about uniformity and avoiding
fragmentation."
But how far Microsoft is willing to go with open source appears limited, said Smith, who noted
that while attacking Linux, the company promises to support the Unix variant through .Net.
It's "a nice PR story for Microsoft to talk about the possibilities about .Net on Linux," he said.
"It is true that Linux can participate in those .Net services, but don't expect Microsoft to provide
any incentive or anything else that would make that possible."
Dain said Microsoft's attacks on Linux and open source may in the long run benefit technology
buyers. "Personally, I think the talk on both sides--Microsoft vs. open source--will end up
benefiting consumers in the workplace and at home. There definitely is competition in the
marketplace, and this battle simply proves the point."
And while MS may have the advantage in the home consumer space with Windows, it's still
the underdog in the large-scale enterprise server space.
"To many people, including myself, implementing a Microsoft solution is a much more
cost-effective way to go than a Sun or other high-end Unix/mainframe solution," Dain said.
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