The company to make Open Source technologies such as Linux a part of new product launches
Brad Smith, senior vice-president, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, Legal & Corporate Affairs of Microsoft, says that his company will make Open Source technologies such as Linux a part of its new product launches—a significant departure from what the world's biggest software maker pursued until few years ago, when most of Microsoft's products including Windows could not be made to work effectively with other competing platforms.
Excerpts:
How's the Open Source (OS) progressing at Microsoft? How different will be your approach to Open Source when compared with vendors such as Red Hat and others?
The entire ideological debate between proprietary and Open Source is a relic of the past, and we are now moving towards what we describe as 'mixed source', wherein a software platform can have OS and proprietary pieces working together. We are supporting a number of OS projects across the globe and have even created a group called Codeplex within Microsoft. All these initiatives are aimed at giving impetus to mixed source and develop better IP licensing models.
Microsoft is more likely to resemble Apple rather than Red Hat when it comes to the Open Source approach. It (Open Source) is complex—you may need lesser engineers, but more lawyers.
Source: The Economic Times
0 comments:
Post a Comment