Microsoft and FOSS: uneasy bedfellows

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 25 June 2009 07:27

Business IT - Technology

There was some inconclusive discussion about patents. While Hodge showed us a list of technologies which form the Microsoft Open Specification - there is a promise not to sue if these are used - he, understandably, could not offer any clues on the licensing of patents in Mono , for example.

This issue is under much discussion these days but given that patents are akin to countries' nuclear arsenals (Hodge's analogy), it is the upper echelon of Microsoft that will decide on licensing. Technically competent people are unlikely to have much influence in this direction; marketing droids will hold sway.

Both Hodge and Odolphi were extremely professional and one almost feels bad to be critical of the event. But having experienced Microsoft's operations in the past, one can't blame the individual for wondering if this is all genuine or a carefully staged show.

I particularly remember the arrogance on display which I witnessed over the years I attended the Gulf Information and Technology Exhibition in Dubai. This was in the late 80s and early 90s and the Microsoft stall was always the biggest and loudest. Things seem to have changed quite a bit.

There appears to be a number of younger, better educated and worldly-wise people within Microsoft who are aware that if the company does not make overtures to open source, then they may well be on the scrapheap ten years down the track.

These folk are technical people and while they would not like to give up the competitive advantage, that decades (of practices which have at times been illegal) have provided, they would  like to engage with open source in a way that gives them some credibility and improves their currency.

But what I call the GOP exists within Microsoft as well, the party of old white men, and it must be undoubtedly difficult to get a company of that size and with people of so many different orientations to sing from the same song sheet.

One practical example of the oudated approaches to a project was on display recently when a competition to promote the use of Internet Explorer 8 was hosted on a web page that could only be viewed if one was already using this version of the browser. (Incidentally, Hodge said this particular stuff-up would be reviewed within the next few days.)

The last time I witnessed a similar event, it was at LinuxConf 2009 where one Lawrence Crumpton came unstuck in the face of a rather vociferous crowd. Maybe that's why smaller gatherings are preferred.

In terms of positives, I came away with an 8GB USB drive, something which I was thinking of buying one of these days as the old 4GB one is now proving to be too small. I also met a number of very decent tech types.

And Microsoft the company? What did it gain from the event? I'm not one hundred percent sure, but these words from the late Dr Laurence J. Peter come to mind: "An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance."