Comments on: Microsoft search to be powered by open source

The software giant's long-held and deeply rooted enmity toward open-source software appears to be crumbling, if its new Kumo search technology is any indication.

[trboyden]

Matt,

Microsoft has used Open Source for quite awhile now, it just doesn't brandish it. At the core of Active Directory - which makes up their key network infrastructure, lies the Open Source LDAP directory service. They also use Kerberos, another Open Source application, for the core of their authentication service.

But I agree, it is in Microsoft's best interest to accept and build upon industry standards for the sake of interoperability and continued innovation. The areas I believe you are hinting at being office suite file formats, messaging & collaboration services, and web browsing/rendering i.e. Microsoft Office, Exchange, and Internet Explorer.

Microsoft's biggest hurdle is perhaps convincing themselves they can make money selling open sourced versions of their core products. Open Source does not have to be free - Apple's model is evidence of this (the Mac OS X operating system is built on an Open Source core) - and the benefits of community input, review, and the PR good will, can well outweigh any perceived downsides of doing so.

[monkeyfun14]

The kernel it self is open source but there is so much overlaying code that is proprietary.

[odubtaig]

LDAP and Kerberos are standards, not source.

[Random_Walk]

Agreed with odubtaig...

...though in fairness Windows 2000 used the BSD TCP/IP stack source code (open source), hotmail.com used FreeBSD servers for years (post-acquisition) before Windows was finally capable of running it (again, OSS), and microsoft.com is cached through Akamai, which uses Linux to server microsoft.com pages (at least until recently, though if you followed it, you could tell that Microsoft tried to munge the agent string - seeing "IIS 6.0 on Linux" was a laugh riot, to say the least :) )

[open_source_sucks]

Random_Walk get your facts straight.. Windows 2000 did *not* use the bsd stack. The TCP/IP stack in windows NT/2000+ was completely written in-house.

[someguy999]

This post isn't saying MS is all about Open Source but is the author trying to funny with the statement of "Google embraces open source unreservedly"? Seriously? hmm... ask all of the advertisers who are forced to treat the Google Ad results as a black box and the "you should be happy with what we gave you" m.o...

Woo-hoo, they developed an OS and made it open source... la-ti-da... so did UNIX/Linux/Red Hat/...

There's one thing to say Google has a couple good examples show their openness to it, there is another to say "unreservedly" for god's sake, they had their mystery servers only until recently (that's "open")?

[lonestarState]

If you can't make up your mind which search is better. Make your own search and show it off. I have my own custom search made by BuildaSearch.com, but designed by me. Using a none custom search is like driving a car with an advertisement for some business. My business is my own and so is my search.

[aMUSICsite]

Want to bet that the search results don't return open source alternatives to MS products very high in the listings ;)

[jimmyed2000]

Microsoft has been stating for a while that they are and will be shipping open source components in their products. The economics of it are just too compelling.

James

[GajaKannan]

"reads like it was written by an open source-friendly IBM"

I think the author did not know that IBM owns most patent in the technology and probably overall than any other company in the world... That does not sound Open source-friendly.

IBM's zOS, AIX, , DB2, Web Sphere line of products, Lotus suite of products(comparable to MS Office) are not open source...

Lets not forget "dont be evil" Google that has their own line of Google apps (MS office like products) that did not use openoffice.org format, instead they used their own properitary format...

End of the day, all these (IBM, Google, MS, Apple, Oracle) companies are open sourcing only the products where they dont own market share and only opensource tools/products where they could not compete with their competitors... It is funny reporters that should vet all the vendors equally does drink koolaid from one vendor and bash others for similar practice on a different product line...

[pentest]

If MS builds an OS built on a solid structure, such as Unix, then we can say MS has finally joined reality.

[open_source_sucks]

Yeah. Right. Put any flavor of unix on 800+million computers and see how 'solid' it is.

[pentest]

OK, let's put it on 10 billion machines, since Unix can run where Windows can not.

Unix(and Linux) is rock solid, everywhere. Sorry that you can't deal with reality.

[kiwibuntu]

Using open source is as much part of a competitive strategy as incompatible formats and proprietary lock-in - depending on the circumstances. If a vendor is trying to break into a market it might try the former; if it is dominant in a market it is more likely to fall back on the latter. Sentiment has little to do with it. Microsoft may well be going through a cultural shift with respect to open source but we should pay attention to their behaviour in the areas they dominate. Apparently their support of ODF is technically compliant but not genuinely interoperable (see http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/update-on-odf-spreadsheet.html). The news about Kumo is still good though.

What was missed here is that Hadoop runs on the Java platform. Not only is Microsoft using open source but they are using it on a platform that directly competes with their own .NET platform.

[quux]

"Microsoft for years has been warning the world not to use open-source software."

Linkbait, Matt. Betcha can't find any actual cases of prominent MS spokesmen actually doing this.

[taf09]

Ok, I'll take the bait...

"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches,"

and

"The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source,"

Steve Ballmer in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times June 1, 2001

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.

Fortune Magazine, May 28, 2007

[57Jack]

Oh please. The second quote is obviously about GPL. GPL, in my opinion, IS a virus. As a software developer, if I used any GPL code, I'd be forced to open-source bit of code that interfaces with the GPL code. Open source is NOT synonymous with GPL (and thank god it isn't).

[ushimitsudoki]

To keep this relatively short, here is just one quote each from some senior MS executives. I have dozens more, each one referenced at: http://meandubuntu.wordpress.com/ms-and-floss/

Bill Gates:
"[Open Source creates a license] so that nobody can ever improve the software.". (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/bill-gates-what/)

Steve Ballmer:
"There was the technology shift potentially to open source that we confronted four or five years ago, where we?ve done a very good job of competing against that new technology/business model. Today we live in a world where I think people worry about the risks in software plus services, and advertising, both of which I want to talk about during my talk today. And what do I tell our people, the only way to really win this game is to go out there and do it every day. Nobody talks as much today about the risks in our business that come from Linux and open source. They?re still there, they?re going to be there every day, and yet we?ve done a very, very good job, I think, in the marketplace versus those risks." (http://www.microsoft.com/msft/speech/FY08/BallmerFAM2008.mspx)

Jim Allchin (Co-President):
"Open source is an intellectual-property destroyer?. I can?t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business?. I?m an American, I believe in the American Way. I worry if the government encourages open source, and I don?t think we?ve done enough education of policy makers to understand the threat.?" (http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-257001.html)

Eric Rudder (Senior VP):
"[Visual Studio Expresss] products are still in their beta phases, but we actually had more than a million downloads of Visual Studio, which is quite healthy for a developer tool. I think it will really help us in our competition with open source." (http://www.microsoft.com/msft/speech/FY05/RudderFAM2005.mspx)

Will Poole (Senior VP):
"A second area is looking at open source. There have certainly been perceptions within the enterprise that open source is a less expensive solution for desktop computing. Through our Get the Facts and other campaigns, we?re showing that that is largely not the case. And we?ve fitted emerging markets, the phenomenon of what we call 24-hour Linux, where a custom" (http://www.microsoft.com/msft/speech/FY05/PooleFAM2005.mspx)

Kevin Turner (COO):
"And we are going to compete to win in the Linux and open source area. Tremendous progress has been made by the teams on open source and going against Linux" (http://www.microsoft.com/msft/speech/FY06/TurnerFAM2006.mspx)

[pentest]

"Oh please. The second quote is obviously about GPL. GPL, in my opinion, IS a virus. As a software developer, if I used any GPL code, I'd be forced to open-source bit of code that interfaces with the GPL code. Open source is NOT synonymous with GPL (and thank god it isn't)."

That is misinformed.

[irdac]

Is Microsoft going to sue itself over the 200 odd patents its Kumo team are using in their open source software product?

[PeterVescuso]

Two things occur to me about this piece. First, it?s pretty clear Microsoft has been moving to embrace open source and the community. One example is the OSS strategy paper they released in March acknowledging that it?s a world where customers have choices, including open source. Another and perhaps more tangible example is Codeplex.com Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. Lots of code available for .Net and other folks.

Second, while the senior management of many large commercial development shops still eschew open source (mostly out of FUD I believe), even a company like Microsoft with its vast resources sees the value in using open source to speed development rather than reinventing the wheel. Black Duck estimated that in the US $22B of development is redundant and would benefit from open source. (http://www.blackducksoftware.com/development-cost-of-open-source ). Examples like Microsoft (and Google, etc.) will compel the others to follow.

Peter Vescuso
Black Duck Software

[dsterry]

It is good to see Microsoft embracing free software. Maybe they are getting concerned that their proprietary ways are not sustainable. I'll consider it a bigger victory when they begin calling it free software though rather than always relying on the "open source" term. Open source is a development model while free software is a solution to the social problem that is non-free software.

[sodablue]

It's not open-source Microsoft has been critical of. It's the GPL.

[ushimitsudoki]

Microsoft has been critical of "open source", of "linux", and of "the GPL". ("Critical" is a nice understatement - "outright waged a campaign of lies and deciet" is much closer to the truth.)

Microsoft has directly identified "open source" as a threat and competitor to various aspects of Microsoft's business.

There are dozens of sourced quotes from all levels of Microsoft employees here: http://meandubuntu.wordpress.com/ms-and-floss/

It is dishonest revisionism to pretend that Microsoft has limited its campaigning to anti-GPL statements.

[AppleSuxLeo]

Nothing wrong with that...My Windows PC fires up into Express Gate (based on Linux) in 5 seconds and lets me surf 100% safe as it can`t be written to. I also use it for Skype and IM.
This is all possible because of the forward thinking of Asus , maker of my MOBO.

[eudefender]

Microsoft needs to get real.

[ralfthedog]

When Microsoft stops using Windows on the server level and starts running BSD or Linux it will be a start. Use of Open Source software does not automatically turn a bunch of talentless hacks into skilled programmers. Why would they choose to run Hadoop? Java on the server has never been my idea of stripped down lean and mean efficiency.

If Microsoft wants to have anything that smells remotely like a chance, they will:

1. Ditch Windows for this project. Start with the most stripped down version of Linux or BSD they can find and add the fewest and smallest services they can get away with. Less is better.

2. This goes along with 1, but dump IIS. They need to run the smallest, leanest version of Apache and SQL they can build. The project they are running is probably a bit to big for MySQL so they would be better off running Oracle.

Microsoft is addicted to the big giant four door cars with their own satellite TV (If not cable) and a swimming pool. They need to learn (Like many other OS makers) that an OS should be the little two seater sports car that is nothing but an engine, suspension and two seats (AC and stereo are optional and strongly discouraged).