Rich irony of Kevin Johnson's departure from Microsoft
Kevin Johnson, who has headed Microsoft's Windows empire, is leaving Redmond to take the helm of Juniper Networks, a leading network infrastructure vendor.
Johnson, the man who for years fought against open source, and particularly Linux. The man who talked about Linux forking back in 2005 and then who, as head of Microsoft's Windows unit, must have been involved in trying to foster that fork with Microsoft's patent deal with Novell. The same Johnson who, as head of the Windows business, had to have been involved in Microsoft's patent campaign against Linux.
Johnson, the man who now heads up a company deeply indebted to and entrenched with the open-source FreeBSD operating system at the heart of its Junos operating system, as well as Linux.
Yesterday: Open source, Johnson's enemy. Today: Open source, Johnson's friend. Oh, how sweet the irony!
From its Intrusion Detection Platform to the FreeBSD-based Junos, Juniper is in deep with open source. In Junos it has chosen an "open, but not open source" model that may play well to Johnson's Microsoft sensibilities.
Regardless of the model, it is delightful to see Johnson now dependent on the same "patent-infringing" open-source operating systems that he once fought. Who knows? Maybe Steve Ballmer will sue him?
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. 
Open Source is just another competitor, an interesting one, but just another competitor none the less.
Every person who moves from one company to another deals with this change in 'allegiance', whether it is the company's products or their realtionship to the former employer. It comes with the territory.
Interesting sidenote, wandered over to Juniper's site and checked out the area on JunOS where they say very little about the heritage of the OS. In fact, the primary hits from a search for "Open Source" and 'JunOS' was the GNU portion of the licensing.
Guess they don't care about it as much as you do.
At least, as long as he's not some Trojan horse there to force Juniper into a licensing agreement with Microsoft.
Too bad Linux is more efficient, stable, secure, and easier to use than Windows.
It is a shame that Linux market share on the desktop(which is larger than published numbers show, most Linux boxes are boxes from places like Dell and HP and are counted as Windows boxes even though only Linux is on them).
Technical superiority is where Linux beats the snot out of Windows. MS is a marketing company, not a technology company.
I wouldn't suspect that you know it since you truly don't understand what an OS is.
- by Noah Clements July 25, 2008 9:02 AM PDT
- It just shows how silly the cheerleading is. Open source vs. proprietary is just one group of companies competing with another group of companies with another business model. Why in the world should other people get worked up about that (unless it is your company competing in this space - as it is in your case). Some companies in the open source world have a better product than the proprietary competitor does (includes issues of customer service and customization), and vice versa.
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- by Matt Asay July 25, 2008 10:53 AM PDT
- Who said anything about pure? I think you missed the point, Noah: Kevin has been attacking the integrity of Linux/open source at the intellectual property level. He will now be basing his entire business on stuff that a few weeks ago he would have told you violates Microsoft's IP. Does it, or does it not? If it does, will Juniper be next in line for a patent license? i doubt it.
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- by S!egfried July 27, 2008 6:44 PM PDT
- It's just a job Matt...
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(12 Comments)What exactly makes IBM (for example) any more or less moral than Microsoft? Is Richard Stallman the pope granting blessings (I used to love the patron saint of free software shtick - that was funny)? Or to put another way - how does your affiliation with an open-source software vendor make you more morally pure than Bill Gates?