http://www.digizenstudio.com/blog/2007/06/11/take-it-easy-microsoft-will-ya/ Jing Xue's Weblog Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:35:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 http://www.digizenstudio.com/blog/2007/06/11/take-it-easy-microsoft-will-ya/#comment-39555 Shane Isbell Tue, 12 Jun 2007 04:36:23 +0000 http://www.digizenstudio.com/blog/2007/06/11/take-it-easy-microsoft-will-ya/#comment-39555 I think that many Microsofties are genuinely confused about how to handle the open-source community, much as they were confused about how to handle that Internet thing back in the mid-90's. Microsoft is still dealing blow-after-blow to the .NET open-source communities under the belief that they, as a company, need to provide a unified, supported product to their customer. Sun has a history of building the community, letting competing ideas flourish and then standardizing them (as well as buying out smaller innovative companies with many of those ideas). Of course, Sun made the mistake - one that they are now correcting - to think that these applications should be used to drive hardware sales; then along comes IBM with their successful service and support model. Each of these companies has a different take on the value of open-source to their business model; it's unfortunate that many at Microsoft feel that open-source has no (positive) economic value at all. I think that many Microsofties are genuinely confused about how to handle the open-source community, much as they were confused about how to handle that Internet thing back in the mid-90’s. Microsoft is still dealing blow-after-blow to the .NET open-source communities under the belief that they, as a company, need to provide a unified, supported product to their customer. Sun has a history of building the community, letting competing ideas flourish and then standardizing them (as well as buying out smaller innovative companies with many of those ideas). Of course, Sun made the mistake - one that they are now correcting - to think that these applications should be used to drive hardware sales; then along comes IBM with their successful service and support model. Each of these companies has a different take on the value of open-source to their business model; it’s unfortunate that many at Microsoft feel that open-source has no (positive) economic value at all.

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