Open source, a necessity for Microsoft?

Few days ago, I read an article on Yu Cheng’s blog titled Microsoft vs Linux? It says Microsoft “starts a fight with open source community” and is against TomTom.

Now, in the article, Microsoft returned to open source starting to take on Google, but using different strategy which support open source. Last year, it bought Powerset for the natural language search technology and kept it open source-based in order to compete with Google.

In my opinion, this is not only aiming to Google but also to its competitors, especially Linux. Although Microsoft claimed it would make the source code of its systems public, Windows is still not an open source-based operating system due to its restriction on source code which is “you can see but not edit”. Users are still hard to access the core of the system. But open source is the competitive advantage for Linux. Thus, after few years, Linux can be the most dangerous rival for Microsoft so that Microsoft needs to search for a way to prevent this.

Furthermore, because Windows is not open source-based, governments, for example, Chinese government, are concerning about its security. That will directly affect Microsoft’s market in government system. So a necessity of open source strategy is required. We can assume from these cases, open source may become a mainstream in software industry in the future, who knows?


Article from http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/techscoop/17019/microsoft-returns-to-open-source-to-take-on-google

Mentioned Yu Cheng’s blog: Microsoft vs Linux, see http://yuchengbob.multiply.com/journal/item/1