BY LOOKING at the Halloween Documents, which are rather old by now, one can see that Microsoft realised it would not manage to compete against Free software. Not unless it turned to criminal behaviour, which it has. It's doing it all the time (c.f. OOXML), but some people hide under a rock and prefer not to see it. Instead, they discredit those who do, typically suing derogatory labels [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6].
Like me, you've probably read articles on how free software, or open source, is going to thrive in 2009, and how businesses everywhere are going to survive the recession by migrating to it.
Perhaps you agree with those views; perhaps you don't. However, what I find most interesting is what people mean by the words 'open source' and, to be even more specific, what business model they have in mind.
We often assume others mean the same thing as we do in the words they use, but the truth is more nuanced than that. The real meaning behind the words is worth examining, especially when someone is trying to sell you something.
Today, for instance, our sister publication in the UK has a piece by Mark Taylor of SiriusIT, calling Microsoft’s very definition of open source a straw man.
Microsoft representatives generally try to establish a world view sympathetic to their own by talking as if the accepted distinction in the open-source arena is between commercial and non-commercial. That definition is inaccurate and its intent is to damage.
The true distinction is between proprietary and non-proprietary. The false distinction between commercial and non-commercial is designed to imply that only proprietary software is acceptable commercially — that is, companies should keep buying the proprietary stuff and leave the non-proprietary to hobbyists.
Pundits in the ICT industry will remember that as country manager for Novell, Masie was involved in the Microsoft/Novell deal of 2006 which was met with widespread controversy and efforts to boycott Novell.
