Microsoft Founds Open Source Company
Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. may not exactly be a company that makes immediate sense. Open Source and Microsoft? How does that mix?
At a closer look, Microsoft has quite a few open source, open standards as well as interoperability interest that will be organized with this new subsidiary. For example, Microsoft's contributions to the W3C, especially in the range of HTML5, as well as the recently outlined HTTP 2.0, as well as participation in DMTF and OASIS will find a home in Microsoft Open Technologies. A major task will be to make sure that open technologies will be available to Microsoft.
In an announcement, Microsoft said that Microsoft will continue to engage outside of Microsoft Open Technologies with open source communities as well as foundations, such as the Outercurve Foundation, and the Apache Software Foundation. However, the open source-focused subsidiary is created to provide a structure to establish defined links between proprietary software and open source and open standards and enable Microsoft to accelerate the "release open source software", accept contributions from the community and increase the company's involvement in open source efforts.
You say that like no one ever has ulterior motives. My knee-jerk response was that MS is working some sort of an angle. If they didn't think it was going to PAY off then there's no way they'd be doing it. You don't become a fortune 500 company by doing things out of the kindness of your heart.
People are going to use open source applications and open standard whether Microsoft likes it or not. I'm sure that they would much rather people use an open source product developed by Microsoft than one developed by someone else. You should really take a look at some of the stuff that they've done recently. They've been moving swathes patents into their community promise, various new and experimental developments are done on github, their Hyper-V virtualization modules are in the upstream linux kernel, their F# programming language is now under the Apache license, they provide community hosting and support for numerous open source .NET applications (including the only real web hosting application for Windows). They have a whole section dedicated to open specifications on the MSDN.
Their "ulterior motive" is nothing more than the simple fact that having dozens of competing products serving the same function does nothing but create problems. Microsoft could stay at the head of the pack in the 90s due to a lack of competition (partly their doing) and lack of competence (sorry Real Networks and Corel) but that's easier said than done when facing pressure from giants such as Google, oracle and Redhat.
I don't really like Microsoft because I suspect them of using dirty business tactics. However I do not like people spreading around this very common misconception that rich people must be evil. In principle, the point of capitalism is to give certain people greater wealth than everyone else as a reward for making the world wealthier. In other words, in principle, rich people get a larger angle of the pie of wealth than most people, but what most people don't seem to realize is that this is the rich people's reward for increasing the pie's overall size.
Yes, it actually is! I live in a country where the only viable business is stealing government money. In the USA where there are much, much, much, much more money, I doubt that it is much different. Well, actually there are way too many proven and obvious cases about that there too.
now if only they open-source the windows kernel, that would make windows kernel marketshare much higher
I see microsoft doing this to open up their win8 smartphone/tablet/ultrabook development.
Alot of the machines use proprietary hardware, open up the software/os a bit, and development for these things will take off.
Look at android for example.
Open source to them is just a cover up to gain more control of other companies involved in development of open source products and in the end crush them so that they can make yet another monopoly in a world that has never been theirs. All their open source projects are a proof of that.
MS sold linux servers (at least in the past), partnered with novell, promotes open standards...
Oh yeah?
I want my piece of pie!
cherry pie....
You sound hypocritical to me. You assume Microsoft is crooked because you "suspect them" of "dirty business tactics", then turning around and get down on people for assuming that wealthy people must have done something wrong to get wealthy.
Your statement about capitalism is wrong; it isn't about "giving certain people greater wealth". You have a good point in there somewhere with your pie analogy, but it's mixed up with some confusion about what capitalism is and how it actually works.
Now if kids stop using the "M$" term we'll be all set. I mean Apple is the largest company in the world, Google just made 60% more profit and has like $60 billion in cash, Facebook has so much money they buy pointless little companies for a billion dollars and retards still use the M$ abbreviation.... grow up.
Sorry, I don't mean to be so harsh, it's just annoying is all.
Actually, out of all the companies you mentioned, Microsoft has the highest net profit margin.
Every 3rd dollar MS makes is pure profit and it has been like that consistently for 15 years or more.
However, don't expect any freebies as a result.