on March 19th, 2007

Outspoken CEO Steve Ballmer has publicly likened open source to ‘cancer’ and ‘communism’ but that isn’t stopping Microsoft from infiltrating a bastion long dominated by renegade developers and tech geeks. In just a few years, the Redmond giant has launched an open source software lab, developed a framework for making Microsoft source code more broadly available, created an online portal for collaborative development projects, and swapped olive branches with long-time Linux rivals such as Novell.

Such overtures to the open source community, however, have often been met with skepticism and snickering. After all, Microsoft has much to gain from embracing the open source community – and plenty to lose by turning its back. And that’s not just according to industry analysts. Reads the company’s 2006 annual report: “The popularization of the open source software model continues to pose a significant challenge to our business model.”

So what steps is Microsoft taking to legitimize the open source movement? Better yet, is the open source community ready to welcome this long-time Linux foe into the fray?

Inside Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab

Nestled within its sprawling Redmond campus, amid towering trees and open trails, sits Microsoft’s Linux/Open Source Software Lab. Here, more than 300 servers plus a range of PCs, collectively run over 40 Linux distributions, together with many different versions of UNIX. Dubbed ‘an experiment in interoperability’, the lab acts as a center for open source analysis, testing and benchmarking. And it’s within these walls that scores of programmers and system administrators explore how open source software interoperates with Microsoft’s own technologies.

Says Bill Hilf, general manager for Microsoft’s platform strategy group and a former IBM Linux deployment specialist: “The Microsoft Open Source Software Lab aims to increase our line of sight into open source software, including Linux, address interoperability between open source and Microsoft software, and provide our customers with the hard data needed to help them make well-informed business decisions.”

That’s not to suggest, however, that the Linux/Open Source Software Lab’s activities are strictly in the spirit of higher learning and number crunching. According to reseach firm IDC, overall revenue for servers, desktops, and packaged software running on Linux is expected to exceed $35.7 billion by 2008. Because a mix of Linux and Windows servers can make for a complex IT environment, Hilf says businesses are demanding “a greater level of interoperability and integration from their IT vendors.”

“There’s no doubt that there’s a public relations element to [Microsoft’s Linux/Open Source Software Lab],” says Vince Londini, a research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group. “But Microsoft has a lot to learn. If they want their software to be interoperable with any number of open source projects that are going on, they have to know how they work.”

Microsoft/Novell: A Marriage of Convenience

If there’s a little bit of ‘know thine enemy’ in Microsoft’s open source strategy, there’s no better example of this than the company’s recent pairing with Novell. Last November, Microsoft and Novell announced a set of collaboration agreements to develop a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft products work better together. Consider, for example, making it easier on businesses running Microsoft’s Windows operating system to install Novell’s open source-based Suse Linux. The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective products.

Although a peculiar union, the Microsoft and Novell marriage promises to ease the burden on system administrators in charge of managing today’s heterogeneous IT environments.

Says Michael Goulde, a senior analyst at Forrester Research and a former product manager at Microsoft, where he worked on open source competitive strategy: “Just having non-Microsoft technology potentially being well-supported in a coordinated fashion is good news for customers. It’s going to simplify a lot of complex environments.”

But no sooner had Microsoft and Novell shaken hands than open source supporters began to cast doubt on Microsoft’s true intentions and what the alliance could mean for the future of open source.

“The Novell announcement simply brought to the surface again the huge pool of distrust towards Microsoft,” says Londini.

Contributing to the Open Source Community

But bloggers’ missives and analysts’ reservations have never prevented Microsoft from forging ahead and attempting to establish a foothold in the open source community. As far back as 2004, the company launched Port 25, a community website designed to facilitate a deeper dialogue around the interoperability issues surrounding Windows, Linux, UNIX and open source software.

Then there’s the Microsoft Shared Source Initiative which provides a framework for sharing Microsoft source code with customers, partners, developers, academics and governments worldwide. In fact, Microsoft claims that more than two million developers are currently using 80 of its source code offerings.

And finally, CodePlex is an extension of Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative that provides an online community portal for developers to innovate and actively participate in collaborative software development projects.

Whether, in a philosophical twist, Microsoft is whole-heartedly embracing open source, or, as its detractors suggest, is parleying open source software into a lucrative business opportunity, is certainly cause for debate. But if diplomacy is to reign, Londini says, “You have to look at Microsoft’s open source outreach as being as much about trying to tear down its image as the evil empire as it is about learning about software.”

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