10/19/2005
Microsoft Releasing Source Code
This is in response to the Slashdot story seen here.
We probably will see a bunch of shared sourced or open sourced Microsoft apps in the next few years but there are a couple of considerations that must first be evaluated. First Microsoft is a large corporate entity with a certain culture, that culture needs to be changed. We’re slowly seeing the changes today. You can see this when a guy at the bottom contributes to an open source project and his boss’ boss’ boss’ boss’ boss goes on record with the media saying that “Open Source kills babies”. The evolution in their corporate culture is slowly happening but stills needs some time to trickle upwards. Right now the execs see open source as the new catch phrase and are trying to show off that they know what it is and they are catering to customers. (i.e. the hiring of Daniel Robbins, of Gentoo Linux fame, for Linux projects).
Secondly they need to go through a massive code review for two reasons primarily because the legal team knows Microsoft is everyone’s favorite (easiest??) target for a lawsuit (this doesn’t mean a victory… just to initiate). They need to know where every single line of code came from and what are their rights to that code before they can open the code up. Because you know the first thing the lawyers will do is try to find someway to sue them for stealing source code. They need to guard themselves against “SCO vs IBM” type lawsuits.
The other reason they need to complete this code review is because they need to track down and fix as many of the security holes in their software that they can do in a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise this code will be used to ferret out security holes and we will see a new wave of security issues like no one has seen before, because admit it, Microsoft products do run on the majority of machines today. The media will portray this as Microsoft handed the hackers the tools and Microsoft will see a lot of their business dry up because companies won’t know if they are safe if they go with Microsoft. Once they release this cleaned up code, they will be able to smuggly throw it in everyone’s face saying “See we’re not so bad after all.”
Addition:
I also posted this on Slashdot with the article, you can see that here and see people’s comments there.
Filed under: 2 Responses to “Microsoft Releasing Source Code”
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October 19th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=12308
October 20th, 2005 at 1:04 am
Not really sure as to the purpose of that comment since it’s basically the same thing that Slashdot does.. Provide a quick summary so people don’t have to RTFA.