We're off to see the wizard: Microsoft Open Source - Open Source Software Up the Stack

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February 21, 2008
We're off to see the wizard: Microsoft Open Source

Over at Research 2.0 (see link at right), I’ve analyzed the big-picture on Microsoft’s open-source interoperability “principles” announcement of February 21. Despite the words open source in the press release, the announcement was really about Microsoft’s long-term strategy to move to services. In executing this emerging strategy, Microsoft management could care less about mundane closed or open technology terms and conditions. And it could care even less about standards because all the technology—standard or not, open source or proprietary—will eventually all be behind the curtain. In fact, the press conference was delayed because Microsoft couldn't believe so many reporters and analysts even cared about this subject, and didn't have enough operators to handle the call-in volume.

But Microsoft still has pesky courts and government regulators out there wandering around Oz and it doesn’t need them arriving at the castle like Dorothy and Toto some day. So in the announcement, Microsoft said it was opening the APIs for all of its volume software products (Windows Vista, the .NET Framework, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007), writing some new ones for those that still want to fight about the Open Office XML (OOXML) standard, opening all interfaces used by Microsoft itself in tying its volume products to “other Microsoft products,” and listening even more than ever to its customers.

All good stuff if you like to get down into the engine and get your hands greasy. Most users and enterprises have better things to do.

The open source “news” is that Microsoft basically put its open source software (OSS) agreements with the European Union Competitive Commission into Microspeak. Nothing changes since October from an OSS perspective that I can see.

Attorney Carlo Piana, with whom I spoke in September 2007 when Microsoft lost its appeal at the European Court of First Instance (EU CFI), seems to agree. He said the announcement was “another vague declaration of principles, with no apparent real commitment.” He seems to feel if Microsoft won’t explicitly abandon OOXML then it is not serious about interoperability. I disagree with Carlo only in that OOXML is not an OSS issue. Open standards are not the same as open source and standards are simply whatever most users buy (see Blue-Ray vs. HD DVD, betamax tapes, and so forth).

Red Hat won’t give up its criticism of Microsoft easily even as it works with Microsoft to make JBoss middleware work better on Windows. Red Hat released a statement that said it “regards this most recent (Microsoft OSS) announcement with a healthy dose of skepticism.” It wants Microsoft to drop OOXML (as mentioned above, not an OSS issue and only tangentially an interoperability issue), extend the Microsoft “Open Specification Promise” (i.e., give up all patent protections) and “Commit to competition on a level playing field” (get out of the Office software market I guess). As noted here before, Red Hat increasingly wants protectionism rather than a level playing field. It didn't need government regulations to grow 30%/40% a year in the past. Why is Red Hat whining now?

I am still a little mystified about the free-software-oriented organization called the Protocol Information Freedom Foundation (PFIF) formed in December 2007 to facilitate the EU CFI agreement between Microsoft and Samba. Carlo Piana is a director of PFIF and says the Microsoft announcement does not change any of its obligations under the agreement Samba signed with PFIF and PFIF signed with Microsoft at that time. He says “the PFIF arrangement is there because of a Decision, confirmed by the CFI, which became definitive, and there is an agreement with obligations and a supervising authority.”