Bob Sutor gave a fine talk at OSCON 2006 in Portland last week called "The Future of Software is a Blend, but of what?" (slides here). It was a classic IBM talk. He developed an architecture of thinking about using free and open source software in the enterprise. It is obviously a mixed environment between free/open software and closed software. The additional questions of what is commercial or not and what standards-based software is used opens the discussion into a multi-variable landscape that reflects the real world of most enterprise software architectures. Of course, when discussing how one might consider these options against closed product decisions, IBM software choices were made.
Bob's use of language was perfect. For example, when one needed to "step up to a scalable enterprise database", it was of course DB2. (Look for the transition between slides 13 and 14.) This is exactly the sort of perfectly pitched rhetoric we've seen from IBM over the years, back through initial engagements with the Apache and Linux communities, and on through the development of the Eclipse community.
Before the reader thinks I'm bashing at IBM, let's look at Microsoft's OSCON 2006 engagement. Danese Cooper (Intel) interviewed Bill Hilf (Microsoft) during an Executive Briefing session on Tuesday before the main conference opened. Bill is director of the Microsoft Open Source Lab, and helped create Port25, which is a careful view into Microsoft's Shared Source world similar to Channel9.
Danese asked lots of difficult questions, and Bill gave lots of pro forma answers that typically involved: "That's a good question." + a restatement of the question + the scripted response from the Rude Q&A + "Microsoft is still learning from the open source community."
[A Rude Q&A is the document Microsoft teams develop with PR before announcements and events that covers all the questions you DON'T want to be asked by the press and analysts, and what the best response can be. There is an art to writing these documents and it helps keep the message delivery sharp.]
Danese didn't probe too hard because it would have been impolite to beat up a Silver Sponsor, which is pretty acceptable. And in Bill's defense, he's worked extremely hard with Jason Matusow this past few years to get the message to the point that the Microsoft executive team isn't still running around offering personal opinions based on conjecture. So the fact that we didn't learn anything other than the Microsoft rhetoric is being buffed to a very high shine isn't surprising.
But here's the simple difference between the IBM and Microsoft open source strategies. IBM participates. Microsoft talks about "still learning from open source." Port25 is interesting. Re-casting and re-branding the plethora of licenses to the few Shared Source licenses is nice. Cutting a few partnership deals with companies creating products based on open source is just business. Opening a portal where other people can share code is fine. But it all pales in comparison to IBM employees' direct and constant participation in project communities around the open source world, including the creation of their own, for what has to be going on eight years.
Whether it's a lack of executive will, the frenzied fear of IP loss or litigation from Legal Affairs, or the cultural inability to collaborate because of the historical competitive nature of the company, Microsoft professionally talks up a weak story and refuses to actually engage and participate. Maybe it's just pride (which is really just another word for fear). IBM's practiced rhetoric is much much more acceptable and credible, because at the end of the day they participate and contribute. IBM deeply understands the competitive advantage and business credibility it brings.
In the end, Microsoft is going to have to DO something. Be Bold. Contribute. Participate. Risk something. At one point in the interview with Danese, Bill said that Gates and Ozzie support his team's work. There's a huge difference, however, between supporting a mean-well market message and supporting the cultural shift it takes to actively participate.
Vive la Société libre! [With appropriate apologies to de Gaulle.]
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