Even Microsoft has realized that open-source cannot be ignored. For years, Microsoft’s open-source strategy has basically been to destroy or ignore open-source software, and it seems like they have not gotten much smarter. Microsoft’s “Director of Platform Technology Strategy and the company’s Open Source Software Lab” recently explained the company’s open-source strategy to ZDNet. If this is really the strategy Microsoft intends to follow, it is almost comical.

As far as I can tell, the theory is this: let open-source people port their applications to Windows and hand them a piece of rope so they can tie themselves to all of Microsoft’s proprietary products and cannot leave. (And if you need Linux, use Microsoft’s virtualization technology to run it on Windows.) As you can see, this is not going to work.

Perhaps this strategy would work if Microsoft had an absolute monopoly on the OS market, but if that is what they are thinking, I have bad news for them, once they catch up to the 21st century.

If anyone can figure out what Microsoft is thinking, please let me know. I sure can’t figure it out. Unless.. I know! This is how Balmer will make everyone port their applications to Windows!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Opinion, Other OSs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.