Microsoft on open source: "We should have done it earlier"

No, it's not Steve Ballmer pounding the podium in favor of open source, but apparently Microsoft's field is being told to play nice.

At least, that's the sense I get from the comments made by a Microsoft representative at a recent open-source conference:

"We should have done it earlier," said Abet Dela Cruz, Microsoft Philippines platform strategy manager, narrating Monday's panel discussion at the Cebu summit....

"It took IBM about 10 years to be at this stage and it is only now that Microsoft is going in the same direction...Open Source is a broad worldwide phenomenon....[O]verall we see it (open source) as a long standing movement that will continue."

Yes, you should have (done it earlier), Microsoft. But there is still time to do it right. The first step will be to invite open-source application and infrastructure developers, commercial and otherwise, onto your platform without requiring them to sign up to patent pledges. Treat the open-source world with the same respect that you expect. We don't (knowingly) violate your patents, just as I'm sure you don't knowingly violate anyone else's.

Microsoft is finally starting to warm up to open source as it belatedly remembers that it's a platform company, and lots of great (open-source) applications should be making Microsoft's Windows coffers even fatter. But it needs to first stop trying to scare away this opportunity with patent FUD.

Many of us in the community don't want to work with Microsoft on these terms, and won't. Microsoft had signed up JBoss, MySQL, and SugarCRM on interoperability agreements, but then it came out with its patent agreement with Novell. Since that time, how many open-source application vendors have signed up to work with Microsoft? I can't think of a single one off-hand.

So, Microsoft, which do you want? Do you really want to open up to open source, or do you want to continue to try to beat down the movement while simultaneously offering a palsied embrace? Our customers want interoperability, but we can't do it on the terms you're offering.

[MSSlayer]

"We don't (knowingly) violate your patents, just as I'm sure you don't knowingly violate anyone else's." Is that a joke? You think those billions that MS has paid out for patent violations(ignoring the fact that all software patents are invalid) was accidental? Microsoft will never get into open source in any meaningful way as long as the current crop of idiotic and clueless executives are working there. Like the internet, Microsoft has no idea of what OSS is or how to leverage it.

[jonathanmarsh]

I don't know what you mean by "sign up to patent pledges" but it doesn't seem to mean Microsoft's Patent Pledge for Open Source Developers [1] which is a significant step beyond their first move making patent licenses available (even zero-royalty ones) but still requring developers to apply for and execute such a license. Instead Microsoft promises unilaterally to treat you as a developer with "respect" at least in terms of not initiating legal action against you. The open source developer need not "sign up" to anything to benefit from this promise.

I'd also like to point to another sign that Microsoft is playing better with those of us in the Open Source world, the presence of a completely Open Source vendor onstage demonstrating interop with Microsoft technology in a major keynote address [2]. The demonstration showed a distributed .NET application using the open standard Web services protocols, and then we seamlessly swapped out components of the application with parts implemented in Java and PHP (using freely available open source WSO2 applications based on Apache Web services projects). I view this as another data point suggesting that Microsoft may be shifting it's stance toward open source.

Although Microsoft can be slow out of the gate when faced with paradigm shifts such as Open Source, I'm hesitant to count them out as significant. They were a little late to the Internet party but once engaged their momentum contributed significantly to the mainstreaming of the Web.

Thanks for the article,
- Jonathan Marsh
Director of Mashup Technologies, WSO2.

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/osspatentpledge.mspx
[2] http://www.adtmag.com/news/article.aspx?editorialsid=9991