Slashdot: What's the Business Case for Microsoft and Open Source?

If you had to explain to Microsoft why they should change their attitude toward Open Source, what would you say? More to the point, how can Microsoft benefit from better supporting or even adopting Open Source in their business? (Replace IIS with Apache, for example.) Does it make sense for them? Are there ways that they can use Open Source as a competitive advantage without pissing off the Open Source community in the process? Which of their products would make sense on Open Source platforms? How can the Open Source community help Microsoft? Or is this a lost cause? IBM has made it work. Can Microsoft?

Totally looking at it from the wrong angle. Microsoft is not going to support OSS because at the present time it completely undermines their business model. It's not in Microsoft's best interests to replace anything with it's OSS equivalent, as doing so would make it easier for customers to migrate off of Windows in the short-tem. See my thoughts on how Microsoft may respond to the longer-term OSS threat on the desktop, and how the .NET CLR is a hedge against the decline of Windows.

However, there are plenty of Microsoft offerings that could be Open Sourced without harming their cash flow and strategic interests. Two that scream out to me are the Power Toys and the utilities distributed with the Resource Kit. Providing the source to such applications would benefit Microsoft's users without bolstering the GNU/Linux movement.

1:39:36 PM | Comments:

CNN: Mobile Gaming with BREW [via Slashdot]

12:11:18 PM | Comments:

Digitimes: NEC demontrates spoken Japanese-English translation using PDA [via Slashdot]

12:08:40 PM | Comments:

Crossed the 10k hit mark, woo-hoo!

11:58:53 AM | Comments:

Slashdot: Palm m100s - A Pattern of Defects?

It appears that Palm's low-end units have a pattern of digitizer defects.

11:41:37 AM | Comments: