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Has Microsoft Suddenly Awakened to Open Source?

Is open source finally making sense to Microsoft? Jeremy LaCroix sees a number of reasons to believe so. He notes that within only six months, the company has contributed 20,000 lines of code to the Linux community, given away countless copies of Windows 7, launched its CodePlex foundation, and announced that it is opening up the .PST data format behind Microsoft Outlook. I think it will be a long time before Microsoft fully wakes up to the benefits of open source, but some divisions hear the call, and more will over time.

It's significant that Microsoft is making as many open moves in six months as it has. The launch of the CodePlex foundation is a clear sign that the company sees that it can benefit from open source models. At the end of last year, we also covered CEO Steve Ballmer's concession that Microsoft may switch its Internet Explorer browser core to an open source alternative, and he mentioned WebKit in particular.

If you've listened to Microsoft's stance on open source in the past, you've heard a lot of talk about it representing competition. But what the company is slowly realizing is that by identifying open source components and community models that work, it can reach its goals faster and do so more efficiently. It's non-accidental that Mozilla's Firefox browser is eating Internet Explorer's lunch. Look no further than the huge ecosystem of useful extensions, built by the community, for IE. Microsoft will eventually come around to open source across its operations. Until then, it will probably happen silo by silo. 

• firefox
• Microsoft
• Internet Explorer
• CodePlex

by Subal Gupta on Nov. 11, 2009

Their FOSS Czar, Sam Ramji, took off from the company. Is it because his work was done, or there is not much he could do?

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by Xi Huang on Nov. 11, 2009

Microsoft has always been 'embrace and extend'. Why will they be any different here? It is true that they have been supporting oss for a while but the reality is that oss has caught up to their applications. Most users do not need all the new functions in their software so what are they going to do? They have to find new ways to make money. Azure, perhaps?

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by an anonymous user on Nov. 12, 2009

Wait... What about Microsoft using GPL'd code from codeplex without providing the source code?

Case in point: the Microsoft tool to convert the img file for Windows7 to iso.

The case with Microsoft and Open source will end when:

- They stop attacking open source in all fronts,

- they open Windows source code.

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