Microsoft: Getting to grips with open source

Microsoft's recent decision to partner with virtualisation specialist XenSource has added momentum to the notion that it is softening its stance on co-operation with the open source community. But while Microsoft can point to numerous examples of sharing its source code and other data, hardcore open source advocates will no doubt argue that it's just pragmatism on the part of a rapacious competitor. 

The company's UK technology officer, Jerry Fishenden, claims Microsoft is part of a "broad ecosystem to enable greater interoperability with our technologies".  Examples include recent partnerships with open source-based commercial vendors such as database giant MySQL, web server vendor JBoss, and most recently XenSource.

Speaking at the Open Source Business Conference, held in London last month, Fishenden told delegates that Microsoft is facing a challenge to decide how much it should co-operate with the competitors. "The concept of 'co-opitition' is nothing new. It goes back 10 years or so, despite debate about its origins in terms of the way competitive companies work together," Fishenden said. "Look at Apple, for example: Microsoft and Apple compete for software market share. But we provide Microsoft Office for Mac, and it is the most successful application suite on a competitive platform."

Another, less well-known example of Microsoft's attempts at creating an open source-like community of developers is the Shared Source Initiative. This effectively supports a series of programmes that provides licences for developers to access and share source code, in seemingly the same spirit as open source projects, such as the Apache web server.

But even this initiative demonstrates that, while Microsoft may be slowly opening up its vaults, it's far from abandoning its commercial, proprietary roots, given that the Shared Source Initiative licences vary in terms of restrictions. For example, the "reference licence" simply allows code to be viewed, while access to its recently launched CodePlex portal can only be obtained by having a Microsoft shared-source licence.

These moves are an indication that Microsoft is responding to a maturing and increasingly mixed IT market, says Fishenden. But he is quick to point out that Microsoft will not abandon its existing licence-based software model.

"Microsoft already has a wide diversity of licensing options," he says. "From the classic, subscription-based model for keeping your software updated; and the Xbox Live system we're setting up of using credits for uploading and downloading games; to the traditional, free proposition offered by Hotmail, the well-established online email service, which has some 300 million users worldwide."

But in this quasi-religious battle between commercial software vendors, led by Microsoft on the one hand and open source supporters of the Linux operating system, for example, on the other, it can be hard to see whether this sea-change in Microsoft attitudes will translate into added value or greater interoperability for customers.

Microsoft is moving in the right direction to promote mixed system environments, but its claims to want to interoperate fully with open source IT components should be approached with caution, says Jono Bacon, consultant for Open Advantage, leader of the UK Linux User Group.

"Microsoft had a fairly immature approach to open source in the late 1990s," says Bacon. "But at least it has recently been making an effort to hold out an olive branch to the open source community. However, all I've seen so far is good intentions, but with no real action to back them up."

The software giant's concept of interoperability, allowing it to compete and co-operate at the same time, does not translate in real terms, he adds. "True interoperability means your software can work with anything you want it to work with. But Microsoft's concept of interoperability is getting its software to work with the bits they want you to be able to work with. It's a one-way mirror in that sense, and I don't think Microsoft will ever be truly interoperable with other vendors' components."

The example of the open document format (ODF) being touted by the industry to ease document interoperability issues is a good example of how far Microsoft really has to go, says Bacon. He contends that...