Shebanator

A few more articles worth reading on Microsoft’s anti-open-source FUD war.

First up is Jonathan Schwarz’s open letter with Free Advice for the Litigious, where he explains how Sun dealt with the open source competition. A choice quote:

With business down and customers leaving, we had more than a few choices at our disposal. We were invited by one company to sue the beneficiaries of open source. We declined. We could join another and sue our customers. That seemed suicidal. We were offered the choice to scuttle Solaris, and resell someone else’s operating system. We declined. And we were encouraged to innovate by developers and customers who wanted Sun around, who saw the value we delivered through true systems engineering.

Next up is Daniel Eran of RoughlyDrafted, who compares how Apple and Microsoft have approached open source, in Microsoft’s Unwinnable War on Linux and Open Source. He has some particularly harsh things to say about the Mono project, which I think are overstated. But there also is a strong kernel of truth in there:

We already know that Mono development exists at the whim of Microsoft, and that dangerous looking stalactites of patent threats point down from above. Mono developers insist that Microsoft is a changed company and would never let anything bad happen to developers working to extend the features of its .Net.

Microsoft’s own icy embrace of Mono developers is to offer a license that allows them to do anything but offer commercial software. Mono is nothing more than a training camp on how to serve Microsoft that leads to a do or die diploma ceremony at the end.

Finally we have Steven O’Grady of Redmonk doing one of his trademark Q&A discussions. Its great stuff, and though he does try to walk a fine to not offend Microsoft (one of his customers), in the end it seemed pretty clear how dismayed he was by this move on Microsoft’s part:

Microsoft has spent the past few years rehabilitating – at great expense and great effort – a highly negative public image. One that, importantly, did not terribly impact its ability to do business, but one that left the firm with very few defenders and advocates. It was, in many respects, the least loved firm in the industry.

While the Microsoft of the past year or so was certainly not beloved, it had gone some distance to changing the minds of many, persuading even some ardent critics that they’d learned a great deal from their past behaviors and emerged as a more responsible corporate player. Agree or disagree, articles describing the new “kinder, gentler” Microsoft abounded.

And then there was yesterday. Depending on how Microsoft proceeds from the statements made to Fortune, I could see virtually all of that hard won goodwill evaporating overnight. Whether their business is as immune to the negative sentiment as it was in the past remains to be seen, but I know that if I intended to compete with social movements – as Microsoft obviously intends to – I’d be trying to make friends, not enemies.

I think that says it all. My fearless prediction is that 5-10 years from now people will look back at yesterday and see it as one of the pivotal moments of the software industry, one where Microsoft turned their own customer base against them.

[Update 12:54 Pacific] Eben Moglen of the Free Software Foundation explains the Microsoft threat far better than I ever could:

[Update 05-16-07 10:49 Pacific] One more good link: Andy Updegrove does another Q&A.

~ by Andrew Shebanow on 15May07.

Posted in Openness
Tags: Microsoft