Warriors face off in open-source debate

	CNET Radio Nathan Torkington, conference chairman, talks about the debate surrounding open-source software. (4:09)  • RealAudio • Windows Media

Warring sides of the contentious open-source debate will meet Thursday to talk about the future of software such as Linux in the face of competition from incumbent Microsoft.

At the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in San Diego, Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie and Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann will participate in a panel discussion about open-source software and Microsoft's "shared source" program.

Mundie is expected to explain why Microsoft's vision of shared-source software--in which the software giant makes the source code of some of its products available to customers and partners while still maintaining intellectual property rights--is better than open source. An open-source application is one in which people have the right to see and change its code and are bound to freely distribute any changes they make.

Red Hat's Tiemann will present the case for open source. Red Hat sells a popular version of Linux, the open-source operating system and rival to Microsoft's Windows.

In an interview with CNET Radio, Nathan Torkington, the O'Reilly conference chair, talks about open-source software and what we can expect from the panel discussion.