Ballmer: We'll look at open source, but we won't touch
Steve Ballmer is at least willing to talk with the open-source crowd now, as his comments at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008 demonstrate. He's just not willing to actually engage in open source as an appreciable part of his company's business. Fair enough.
Ballmer lacks the imagination to conceive of a world where Microsoft could open-source code and still make a lot of money (He's apparently not heard of "Google."):
No. 1, are our products likely to be open-sourced? No. We do provide our source code in special situations, but open source also implies free, free is inconsistent with paying for lunches at the partner conference. (Applause.)
But at least he's willing to work with those who do grok that the future of software business (meaning: money) is open source:
Will we interoperate with products that come from like Linux, from the open-source world? Yes, we will. Will we encourage people who want to do open-source development to do it on top of Windows? Yes, we're proud that the best PHP system in the world is actually the one that runs on Windows today, not the one that runs on Linux.
So we're going to encourage open-source innovation on our platforms, and around our platforms. And, you know, we see interesting things where bits and pieces of technology, commercial companies are now starting to provide it in an open-source form or to digest in an open-source form. And we're open to that as well. But our fundamental business model will remain kind of commercial software, advertising, enterprise licensing, etc.
You've come a long way, Ballmer. I hope you recognize that you have a long way to go, but progress is progress.
One word of caution: Don't make patent licensing a hurdle that your open-source (or proprietary) partners have to leap to do business with Microsoft. We won't. Novell plugged its nose and did it in the name of interoperability, but it has rarely mentioned the patent covenant since then (not exactly a ringing endorsement). Microsoft may have noticed that its partner announcements with leading open-source companies like MySQL dried up after the Novell deal.
Make Windows an open platform for our mutual customers and we're ready to do business. That may not mean open source today, but it should also not mean entrapment through patent deals.
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. 
The weaknesses in Linux have nothing to do with a software license. That you think so totally discredits you.
Sure someone could comb through the open source code and could see an unchecked buffer or a missing format character. There would be no other information available in the code to make it exploitable. That happens by running the binary through a debugger to see how the code was compiled and that that shows how to exploit it. Fuzzers don't need source code. The metasploit framework doesn't need source code and hand crafting an exploit doesn't require source code.
Jobs: We'll look at open source, but we won't touch
And replace windows with OSX
Make OSX an open platform for our mutual customers and we're ready to do business.
What has apple done for the open source community? Why don't you discuss the closed nature of apple's products instead of talking about how you have 10 macbook pros in your hourse?
2. I haven't seen Google providing its source for search so people can make the most of it.
3. I haven't seen Adobe provide its source.
Its easy to hate, but lets remember to current golden children hasn't provided a ton in this realm either....
1) http://www.macosforge.org/
2) http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flex:Open_Source
Why yes, Apple and Adobe both offer up source! They have also built models around selling support and products around these offerings. My biggest complaint is that Ballmer associates Open Source with Free. My mom brought me up better than that. Remember that mail you got about the 'Free' vacation you can received in the mail, all you have to do is stay at their resort and listen to a short 2 hr message about the property. For some this will be fine, I am willing to spend a couple hundred dollars to pay for the room if I can spend that 2 hours with my family. The goal of open source is choice. The source code is available should you choose to use it. If you want help, it will cost some money. I am not asking Microsoft to give up the source code for Exchange, but why not open source components of Windows that make it easier for 3rd parties to integrate.
Notice their "love" of AGPL?
Sanjiva Weerawarana
http://sanjiva.weerawarana.org/
Founder, Chairman & CEO of WSO2
http://wso2.com/
Apple is heavily involved in Webkit (webkit.org) and have contributed to the Khtml layout engine.
OS X ships with Ruby, Java, Samba, Apache web server, X11... and I'm sure even more open source products.
Apple has closed what hardware can run their OS, but they are by far more embracing of open source that Microsoft ever has been.
Also, the comment that their are weaknesses in Linux (by the way, OSX is based on BSD) due to the open source nature of the code is laughable... as if paid, closed source developers never introduce defects.
I would agree that most people don't care if the code is open or proprietary, but quite a few do. I've worked at various companies which have modified the source code of open source projects for use on internal systems... this would not be an option with proprietary software.
Ballmer doesn't get it and never will. This is why every year MS is increasingly irrelevant. It is also why that their eternal following of the true innovators always falls short. They simply do not understand what they are copying or why.
If/when Google puts its search algorithms into Open Source and is still able to make gobs of money, then your argument makes sense. All the FOSS folks calling on MSFT to open source Windows seem to miss this point.
In short: do try to know what you're talking about; if you're thick enough to think OS X was based on Linux you're probably not smart enough to know if Apple have ever contributed anything back (clue: they continue to contribute back all changes to all open source parts even though this is not required).
No, none of these companies are saints when it comes to such things but only Microsoft has expressed a desire to bury F/OSS in an unmarked shallow grave at midnight. Only MS has at any point actively tried to destroy F/OSS. Only MS has waged a large-scale anti-Linux campaign then tried to bully people into paying them to use it with a bundle of nebulous and possibly entirely fictitious patent threats.
It's as dumb as asking why SCO get so much hate.
- by blinky32 July 16, 2008 3:15 PM PDT
- The issue of open source has largely become an issue of branding. People like Google and Apple for who they are and what they represent (or how they have branded themselves) - vibrant and innovative companies. However, both Google and Apple take more from open source than they give back. Google's "Summer of Code" is a half-a$$ed olympics in coding for teenagers. Apple's products are owned because of their cult status rather than their usefulness. I am using Macbook Pro as a professional (with Ubuntu and Windows running in VMWare). Apple makes solid hardware and they do have an excellent operating system. That does not mean however that they love open source. OS X is based on open source and yet Apple has given nothing back to Open Source as a community. Absolutely nothing.
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(15 Comments)On the other hand, Microsoft's products *are* very useful and they are designed for professionals (especially the OS). Yes, it takes some tuning and yes it takes good hardware to run it on (OS X also runs on relatively expensive/selected hardware only). I have five machines with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 2003 and they all work without a hitch because I do not install crap like many people do and I do not click on ads and worm links Google delivers to every home. With Macbook Pro, I can take my entire "lab" on one machine and run whichever OS I want. People who whine about OSes all the time have no clue what OSes are and how to use them effectively. This has nothing to do with whether something is open source or not. MS, Apple and Google all protect their intellectual property by keeping everything closed-source because that is their competitive advantage and their source of revenue. Google software is another example. Yes, it works well but it uses a lot of brute force to get things done. Software that requires football fields of servers to run effectively is hardly well-designed. But, Google's branding machine wants you to think that football fields populated with servers like Fort Knox is populated with gold is a very cool thing and the way to get things done. Apple wants you to think that shiny colorful plastics equals innovation. Apple's first innovation is OS X Leopard on Intel Platform. Before that, Apple gave us a lot of half-baked products in a nice packaging (sluggish machines for a lot of money).
For me, software is not about politics. It is about getting things done and I intend to use *everything* from Google, MS and Apple to get things done. And make some money, of course.
Or, do you buy your Apple products as an ego extension?