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Microsoft Open Source Software labs

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6 April 2006 - 2:14pm
Submitted by: coolguys

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Microsoft announced at Linux World this week that they would be 'opening the doors' of their Open Source Software Labs.

Early days - the site went live this afternoon and there is very little content (low signal:noise ratio - flames about Windows streaming video and Microsoft outnumber the useful information).

Overall I think this is probably a good idea - Novell has been using many forms of Open Source Software for years - most visibly with our use of Novell Linux Desktop and OpenOffice - but also with Bugzilla, various Wikis, development tools, test tools - even the software that runs these blogs.

Novell has certainly learned a lot about making software better; we've made our own proprietry offerings interoperate, we've adopted more open standards - and we've been active with many Open Source community projects.

(I'll not forget that we also develop a broad portfolio of open source solutions - from OpenSUSE to iFolder - take a look on Novell Forge.)

Will Microsoft do the same? I hope so - even if it's only about making their own proprietry offerings somewhat more interoperable.

Take a look at the Microsoft Open Source Software Labs here.

What do you think? Will this make Microsoft a better player? Are Microsoft running scared?

Written at: Provo, UT





User Comments

Flyingguy's picture

Can you _really_ be that

Submitted by Flyingguy (not verified) on 6 April 2006 - 9:20pm.

Can you _really_ be that naive? This is nothing but the M$ PR machine at work. M$ does _everything_ _anything_ it thinks it can get away with to utterly destroy anyone they see as competition. I guess you haven't been around long enough to remember them stealing the NW client back in Windows for Workgroups. Or deliberately putting in empty loops when it was Netwares redirector making a call?

Dont you remember them renting a hotel room in Scots Valeey and writing million dollar checks to any Borland engineer that they felt like they needed out of borland to both steal their technology and attempt to cripple their company?

Ohh yeah and just who is the chief architect of C#, none other then Angers from Borland, they wrote him a check for a serious pile of dough to get him to jump ship.

Dont let your gaurd down for 1 second. Microsoft is the ENIMY and should be treated as such.

Eric's picture

Microsoft will probably use

Submitted by Eric (not verified) on 7 April 2006 - 7:42am.

Microsoft will probably use this to steal the best ideas from the FOSS community.

I looked at the Novell forge site. I am impressed. I had no idea you were working on so many things.

Does Novell have a Microosft competitive lab?

Martin Buckley's picture

I'm keeping positive :)

Submitted by Martin Buckley (not verified) on 7 April 2006 - 7:45am.

I'm keeping positive :) After all this is not the same competitive landscape as ten years ago. Open Source is certainly starting to impact the proprietry way of doing things. [Take a look at the Firefox market share - now up over 10%]

sysadmin1138's picture

I think this is a positive

Submitted by sysadmin1138 (not verified) on 7 April 2006 - 2:25pm.

I think this is a positive sign for the open source movement. Once Microsoft starts moving in, you know that they see the area as a threat. Time will tell how deep they go into "adapt and extend" on this stuff.

This will make Microsoft a little better team player. By making their own products interoperate better with OSS, they make companies that make their business by being the glue that keeps enterprise together (*ahem* Novell) have to work harder.

And if they screw up, there just might be a solid GPL-based lawsuit.

Flyingguy's picture

M$ in a lawsuit! HA! M$ has

Submitted by Flyingguy (not verified) on 10 April 2006 - 6:03pm.

M$ in a lawsuit! HA! M$ has flesh eating lawyers, who will itigate you to the death, they have basicaly an unlimited checkbook. The only place M$ has been even remotely held in check is in the EU, ands that ONLY because they cant buy the legal system there, Yet!

One only has to view the consent decree that our Justice Department folded with to understand how hard it is to get M$ to do _anything_ it does not want to do.

- Bill

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