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Microsoft announced at Linux World this week that they would be ‘opening the doors’ of their Open Source Software Labs.
Early days – the site went live this afternoon and there is very little content (low signal:noise ratio – flames about Windows streaming video and Microsoft outnumber the useful information).
Overall I think this is probably a good idea – Novell has been using many forms of Open Source Software for years – most visibly with our use of Novell Linux Desktop and OpenOffice – but also with Bugzilla, various Wikis, development tools, test tools – even the software that runs these blogs.
Novell has certainly learned a lot about making software better; we’ve made our own proprietry offerings interoperate, we’ve adopted more open standards – and we’ve been active with many Open Source community projects.
(I’ll not forget that we also develop a broad portfolio of open source solutions – from OpenSUSE to iFolder – take a look on Novell Forge.)
Will Microsoft do the same? I hope so – even if it’s only about making their own proprietry offerings somewhat more interoperable.
Take a look at the Microsoft Open Source Software Labs here.
What do you think? Will this make Microsoft a better player? Are Microsoft running scared?
Written at: Provo, UT
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