Microsoft Open Source Software labs April 6, 2006
Posted by in : evilzenscientist , add a comment-
Microsoft announced at Linux World this week that they would be ‘opening the doors’ of their Open Source Software Labs.
Early days - the site went live this afternoon and there is very little content (low signal:noise ratio - flames about Windows streaming video and Microsoft outnumber the useful information).
Overall I think this is probably a good idea - Novell has been using many forms of Open Source Software for years - most visibly with our use of Novell Linux Desktop and OpenOffice - but also with Bugzilla, various Wikis, development tools, test tools - even the software that runs these blogs.
Novell has certainly learned a lot about making software better; we’ve made our own proprietry offerings interoperate, we’ve adopted more open standards - and we’ve been active with many Open Source community projects.
(I’ll not forget that we also develop a broad portfolio of open source solutions - from OpenSUSE to iFolder - take a look on Novell Forge.)
Will Microsoft do the same? I hope so - even if it’s only about making their own proprietry offerings somewhat more interoperable.
Take a look at the Microsoft Open Source Software Labs here.
What do you think? Will this make Microsoft a better player? Are Microsoft running scared?
Written at: Provo, UT
