Microsoft's Open Source Tipping Point Approaches

Mary Jo Foley invited me to guest post on the ZDNet blogs.  "Frost sightings in Hell" is my thoughts on last week's announcements from Microsoft at OSCON.

I would not presume to suggest that Microsoft is embracing openness and transparency and forgetting its competitive roots.  I still believe ODF will be to Microsoft what the Internet bubble bursting was to Sun Microsystems.  The ODF wars show lobbying at its ugliest and it will only get worse as they fight for survival on the other half of the revenue stream.   It's a big company with lots of players and culture comes from the top of an organization. 

As PJ points out, Ballmer recently announced during the financial analysts meeting, "we've worked very hard on making the value of a commercial company surpass what the open-source community can deliver, because frankly, it's not a business model we can embrace." 

Ballmer still doesn't understand (perhaps deliberately) that it isn't "open source" or "software freedom" against which he's competing, but a collection of business models with different margins and different value propositions.  So be it.  It's not my problem.

I do however believe the company is learning.  Larry Lessig rightly suggested that code is law;  wearing my commercial hat I would also suggest code is currency.  Some at Microsoft are finally participating in the coin of the realm.