Asay's writings are usually insightful and enjoyable, but sometimes he seems overly receptive when Microsoft takes a shot at GNU/Linux (last week he even revealed that he almost worked for Microsoft, but that's another story and a reason to stay cautious [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]). He himself is no big fan of the platform, but he does at least try.
Open source has disruptive potential. Google is disruptive now. Google is making money now in markets that Microsoft covets, while open source is not cutting into a single Microsoft revenue stream. Not one. Red Hat and Novell's SUSE are almost entirely eating away at the Unix market, while MySQL is creating new markets with web properties.
"Microsoft is 'embracing' (and subverting) "open source"."The statement above is very deceiving. Microsoft itself has already warned its investors (in its SEC filing in fact) that margins may decline due to Free software. In fact, Microsoft's last quarter was disappointing, the company expressed its worries about margins only about a week ago and there are other serious issues that are missed in Asay's analysis.
Asay then talks about 'enterprise open source', which is not free and he allows Microsoft's mouthpieces, who mock open source (and South Africans), to redefine what we once knew as Free software. He seems to be confusing the two concepts. Microsoft is 'embracing' (and subverting) "open source". Free Software, which Bill Gates disagrees with and tries to redefine as "dumpware". aka "free samples"), is the real threat to Microsoft. Ozzie just didn't want to use the term "Free software".
In summary, despite my conversations with him, Asay continues to forget what Microsoft really is. And that's just disappointing. ⬆