posted on Monday, August 30, 2004 9:22 PM
by
stefandemetz
Microsoft and open source
After reading a bunch of posts from josh
http://weblogs.asp.net/jledgard/archive/2004/08/20/217992.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/jledgard/archive/2004/08/24/220028.aspx
http://weblogs.asp.net/jledgard/archive/2004/08/25/220716.aspx
especially this one
http://weblogs.asp.net/jledgard/archive/2004/08/27/221716.aspx
and articles
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1640591,00.asp
I believe that MS is moving in the right direction in regards to OSS.
The right strategy would be to offload non vital technologies to a "pool"/foundation of all MS partners like ISV,OEMs and large system integrators, so that it can be regulated by some form of commercial contract.
The benefits would be several:
1) redeployment of precious programming resources onto more important things like LH, Yukon and Whidbey and Windows security.
2) better community, developer and ISV relationships
3) perhaps better products(documentation, testing, less bugs) where software original project was underresourced
4) good PR (why not)
My favorite technology to drop off would be WMI,
1) because it's a VERY buggy (just see all the fixes in XP SP2)
2) clumsy, if not badly designed