Microsoft launches open source foundation - and it isn't April 1

Sam Varghese
Friday, 11 September 2009 08:42

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft is continuing to try and keep the free software and open source world guessing by announcing that it has set up an open source foundation to enable "the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities."
It is interesting to note that despite being hosted under a .org domain, the Codeplex Foundation is a commercial body. The reasons? Oh, Microsoft always has some spin about things like this.

Here's the spiel: "While the Codeplex Foundation may eventually evolve into a charitable non-profit, the requirements for a charitable non-profit are more stringent. The set-up time for such an organization would have been longer, and the planning process considerably more complex. Given that we wanted much of the planning for the Foundation to take place in an open, transparent manner, it made more sense to launch quickly but minimally, and then begin the dialog with industry partners and open source community members that will ultimately shape the Foundation."

Yeah, it was really urgent to set up this foundation. There was an urgent need for such a body given that there are none... hold on, there are quite a few such set-ups doing the same thing, aren't there?

That this move comes shortly after the company was caught trying to sell anti-Linux patents to Allied Security Trust, a patent-holding firm that provides its members permanent access to patents that it purchases and then sells the patents to others, is of course a detail that will not be mentioned in the same breath.

This kind of tactic - the good cop, bad cop routine - is as old as hell. The worry is that senior people in the Linux and wider FOSS community seem to be always trying to tell the rest that they should take a benevolent view of Microsoft's actions.

Jim Zemlin, the head of the Linux Foundation, is one of those who has always argued for a softly-softly approach but after the patent stunt, even Jimmy seems to have lost his cool.

The story about the sale of the patents appeared in the Wall Street Journal; the Linux Foundation acted swiftly and the patents were bought by the Open Invention Network, which purchases patents to prevent patent trolling.

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