wtixh061
04-11-2011, 11:55 AM
Does Microsoft have an open-source strategy — beyond finding new ways to thwart Linux and other non-proprietary wares?Sam Ramji, Microsoft;s Director of Platform Technology Technique and the company;s Open Source Software Lab, says it does. And it;s a lot less touchy-feely than this definition, which is on the Microsoft Open Supply Web site: “The Microsoft open supply strategy is focused on helping customers and partners be successful in today;s heterogeneous technology world.”I met with Ramji last week when he was passing through New York on his way to Europe, and had a chance to ask him to provide a succinct definition of what Microsoft means when it refers to its own “open-source technique.”Ramji has been one of the big advocates for interoperability between open-source and closed-source Microsoft software at the company.Ramji and other Microsoft officials have been saying for the past year-plus that Microsoft is signing technology agreements with companies like Novell, BEA, Sun, XenSource,Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (http://www.msoffice2010key.com/), etc. because it wants to help their customers who are struggling with running open-source software alongside Microsoft software. I;ve been a vocal critic of Microsoft;s interoperability claims and have said repeatedly that Microsoft;s technology partnerships look to me more like a way to coerce Linux and open-source-software vendors to sign patent-license deals than a way to provide benefits to customers that they couldn;t get without these kinds of agreements. (Ramji seemingly didn;t hold my opinions against me, although he obviously disagreed with them.)“Our focus is getting OSS on top of Windows,” Ramji said “And I;m focused on (providing) interoperability between the LAMP (Linux, Apache,Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 (http://www.key-office-2007.de/), MySQL,Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (http://www.office-2010-key.co.uk/), PHP) and Windows stacks.”I asked Ramji if he could explain Microsoft;s open-source strategy to me in a nutshell (or at least in a single PowerPoint slide). Here;s what he showed me:So here;s my explanation of this slide: Microsoft wants to encourage the coexistence of two software stacks: a Microsoft Windows stack (Windows, Internet Information Services, SQL Server, .Net) and a Linux-free/Windows-centric LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack — something like a “WAMP.” This slide is a picture of Microsoft;s ideal view of a WAMP stack.Microsoft is looking at open-source software (OSS) as just another flavor of independent software vendors (ISV) software. Microsoft;s goal is to convince OSS vendors to port their software to Windows. But Microsoft doesn;t want OSS software to just sit on top of Windows; the company wants this software to be tied into the Windows ecosystem by integrating with Active Directory, Microsoft Office,Microsoft Office 2007 Professional (http://www.office2007key.ca/), Expression designer tools, System Center systems-management wares and SQL Server database.In cases where customers and software vendors want/need Linux to still be part of the picture for some reason, Microsoft will suggest they use Hyper-V, its forthcoming virtualization hypervisor, to run Linux and Linux-dependent applications.Microsoft;s OSS technique makes a lot of sense for Microsoft. It;s another way for Microsoft to try to make Linux obsolete, and not look as obviously ruthless doing so. And for OSS vendors who are selling a lot of their software on Windows — Ramji repeated a couple of times that more than 50 percent of JBoss; business these days is from software running on Windows — Microsoft;s OSS push isn;t a bad deal,Microsoft Office Professional 2007 (http://www.office2007-key.us/), either.Am I still skeptical about Microsoft;s claims that it;s doing all this interoperability work to help its customers? I am. But what;s your take on Redmond;s grand OSS plan?