Monday, May 21, 2007

The nice face of the evil empire

This morning I attended a portion of the Microsoft Open Source ISV forum. Unfortunately, I had to leave early, but I feel I was there for the juicy part of the event: the Q&A about the Fortune article...

Sam Ramji did a phenomenal job. Being a punching bag for 30 minutes is not easy. He responded to every question politely and called the Fortune article unFortunate... I truly believe his intentions are genuine. He really thinks Microsoft is going to do with open source what they did with the Internet: in 1995 they were not an Internet company, in 2005 you can tell they definitely embraced it. In 2005 they were not an open source company, but he said they will become one by 2015. They still have a long way to go...

The issue I have is with the rest of the company... Although I get the press is always ready to position Microsoft as the bad guy, I cannot believe the CEO is saying one thing and he does not mean it... That the top Microsoft counselors (they are lawyers, best paid in the world, not the last people on the street) release statements to a journalist they did not want to be released. If you spend millions analyzing 235 patents vs. every open source project, and you talk about it, maybe there is some evil plan behind it. At least, it is easy to think there is.

My suggestion? Use the patents you have to indemnify open source companies that are willing to partner with you. In an open way (not as in the Novell deal). You have the patents, you claim you love open source. So do we. Let's all make them disappear.

I know it is hard, but showing a nice face to open source is not enough. You have to back it up with something. You cannot ask to partner, hiding a hammer over our heads...

I'll see you tomorrow at OSBC. I am on a panel at 10:30, talking about innovation and open source. I believe we will also have a desk there. With some of the t-shirts left from the Microsoft event (although Sam took three of them ;-)