Microsoft and open source

Pretend you join them and tear them limb for limb from the inside. You might think that is cruel, harsh, diabolically evil, but when you know Microsoft is in the picture you know only one word can pretty much describe it all: “Typical”.

That'll be the day

Microsoft has for years been trying to destroy open source community via calculated law suits, generally speaking it has had wins and losses for Microsoft legally, but nothing but loss in terms of public relations. One of the main reasons many claim Microsoft is evil is the fact it goes after unpaid programmers who produce software that may or may not even (in some cases) infringe on Microsoft’s patents.

They try and they fail to stop the explosion in open source, everyday alternative (by and large free) software is becoming more and more accepted in the mainstream. One of the best examples is the boom in an alternative web browsers to Windows’ Internet explorer, and more specifically one prime contender to completely oust Internet Explorer as the dominant internet explorer is Mozilla’s Firefox.

Take that Microsoft, people don’t like your products anymore, well not quite, but you get the picture. To that end what is Microsoft doing exactly? Well it couldn’t win with lawsuits, so now it’s trying an alternative battle tactic, ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’. Uhuh, right, this is Microsoft were talking about, and as such people in the industry are more than a little skeptical this isn’t simply a new plan Microsoft has to destroy, take over, mutilate or in any other manner take out the heart and soul of the free open source community.

Linus Torvalds is one of the bigger names in the open source community

Isn’t Microsoft simply trying to inject its concepts of software patents into the heart of the open source community? If it does that it gives itself the ability to openly wage war against said companies. Technically a not for profit product doesn’t exist to compete with one that is for profit on an open market, but it does hamper the latter products ability to make profit. Simply put, Microsoft’s philosophy of suing competitors into oblivion just doesn’t cut it with what is perhaps its biggest rival in the software industry: the Open Source community.

Open Source never was meant to end commercial software; however it sure is proving to be a force to be reckoned with on a day by day basis. What is happening right now is like what Linus Torvalds (creator of open source operating system Linux) said ‘I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect’.

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