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Are There More Open Source Moves on Microsoft's Radar?

Yesterday, we reported on Microsoft contributing drivers to the Linux community, a move that is in stark contrast to the company's long-standing stance toward Linux and open source. In this interview on Microsoft's site, the company's open source czar, Sam Ramji, discusses some of the newer cultural changes with regard to open source that are going on in Redmond. Today, The Register suggests that we may soon see an outpouring of open source initiatives from the software giant. Were the Linux drivers just step one in a wave of parallel initiatives to come?

As The Register notes, Microsoft now has a large set of plug-ins for Microsoft Office, adding that "the plug-ins look like they will join a growing set of add-ons and code for Microsoft Office and Office applications released under Microsoft's OSI-approved open-source licenses." The company's open source plug-ins are available at CodePlex, here.

Microsoft's Ramji also told The Register that the new lines of Linux kernel code it has contributed have a relationship to upcoming announcements in conjunction with Red Hat, and Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization effort. In his interview on Microsost's site, Ramji said:

"Our initial goal in developing the [kernel] code was to enable Linux to run as a virtual machine on top of Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor and implementation of virtualization."

The Linux code that Microsoft has contributed is focused on virtualization, and it's a mistake at this point to assume that the contribution points well beyond that, to other application categories. Virtualization is big business, and Microsoft is realizing that it has to play nicely in data centers and in other environments with operating systems other than Windows. As Dana Blankenhorn points out, Novell also had a lot to do with Microsoft's contributions, and Microsoft and Novell have been partners on Linux-related initiatives since 2006.

Still, there are many ways in which Microsoft is going to have to embrace open source going forward. As we noted in this post, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has already acknowledged that the company is looking into open source browser rendering engines, mentioning WebKit in particular. With Firefox gaining on Internet Explorer, and Chrome starting to contribute to the effort, I'm not surprised by that.

I'm not sure we're going to see an immediate outpouring of open source love from Microsoft. But, make no mistake, open source is going to become much more closely aligned with the company's software efforts over time, partly because it's in Microsoft's best interests for that to happen.
 

• Microsoft
• linux
• Red Hat
• OSI
• CodePlex

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