Microsoft's many open-source faces
Microsoft is a very big company, so perhaps it's not surprising that it hasn't been able to articulate a coherent message around open-source software. While the Redmond giant has largely distanced itself from earlier criticisms of open source as "anti-American," "a cancer," etc., it struggles to present a coherent, consistent face to the open-source world.
This isn't just true in Microsoft's criticisms of open source, but also its praise.
On the one hand, Microsoft has put TomTom, a major GPS device maker, on the defensive by suing it over patent infringement, including claims against TomTom's use of Linux. Two weeks later, Microsoft released !exploitable Crash Analyzer, an open-source security assessment tool.
This falls in the same week that a book was released by a senior Microsoft intellectual-property attorney highlighting the machinations Microsoft engineered to get around the GNU General Public License in its controversial patent covenant with Novell.
A week later, Microsoft launched Web App Gallery, a service that makes it easy to deploy a range of open-source content management, gallery, wiki, and blogging tools. Almost in the same breath, Microsoft is urging open-source vendors to not promote their cost advantages and instead focus on value, a competition that Microsoft presumably feels it can win.
And now Microsoft has published an official position paper on its open-source views, which says lots of happy things about open source, while cautioning that open source isn't a panacea.
What the !%!%!% is going on? Has Microsoft listened to itself lately?
Of course it has. Microsoft is simply going through growing pains as it learns to adapt to the open-source friendly world in which it lives. Any big company will both compete with and collaborate with open-source software, and Microsoft is no exception. What we're witnessing is the natural inconsistencies made public through Microsoft's efforts to get open source right.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I had to read the MS White Paper three times and it was unbearable every time, made me feel dirty or sick or both, I guess.
My soul has scares from TSR programs, DOS busy flag, GetMessage and DispatchMessage and what have you.
I'm done with this. Joel Spolsky has written very well about Microsoft, being a former Microsoftie, and I will not repeat it here. Let me just say that Microsoft is completely, utterly irrelevant.
Peace,
Björn Sveinbjörnsson
Software developer.