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Microsoft’s (desperate) open source love affair

March 12th, 2010 General

Microsoft and open source

Microsoft and open source, those are two things that traditionally don’t mix. Quite the opposite; the more hardcore members of the open source community tend to view Microsoft as just one step not more than Satan.

But while much of the open source community has small like for Microsoft, Microsoft is really trying desperately to send some like back. The Redmond giant may have its own business reasons for doing so, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft is contributing to open source in more ways than most public are aware of.

For example, did you know that Microsoft is giving $100,000 per year to the Apache Software Foundation, making it one of only three “platinum” sponsors (the additional two are Google and Yahoo).

Microsoft’s flirtation with open source

Microsoft’s aid of the Apache Software Foundation is just the start. The company is actively effective with and contributing to the open source community in a number of additional ways. Here are more examples:

One of Microsoft’s more significant open source connections comes from a slightly unexpected source: Bing. Microsoft does work on HBase (which originated from Powerset, a company Microsoft bought in 2008), and HBase is an vital part of Apache’s Hadoop project. The Powerset technology is used for parts of the Bing search engine, so that would mean that parts of Bing use open source code. Imagine that.
Microsoft has made contributions to PHP, making it run better and quicker under Windows and with MS SQL Server.
Microsoft contributes to Apache’s Stonehenge incubator project (a project that promotes platform interoperability).
Microsoft has sponsored the development of an open source NFS client for Windows at the University of Michigan.
Microsoft is behind CodePlex, a portico for hosting open source projects. It’s the home of more than 13,000 projects.
Microsoft has an open source community portico called Port 25 on its TechNet site.
Since 2006, Microsoft is in a partnership with Novell to grant integration between Windows and Linux. This has resulted in for example the Novell-sponsored Mono project, an open source implementations of .NET.
And let’s not forget the bombshell Microsoft dropped last summer, when it contributed 22,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. Albeit not without some drama.

Microsoft may not be 100% comfortable with open source, at least not yet, but they seem to be effective on it. Hopefully this is a positive trend, a sign of a cultural change at Microsoft.

Climbing out of a hole of lost goodwill

It’s not going to be simple for Microsoft to get the open source crowd to really trust the company (not that they ever did). Microsoft has spent years digging itself into a pretty deep hole in terms of lost goodwill. Getting out of that hole will be a steep climb, and a bit of a marathon.

Considering all the antagonistic relationships Microsoft has with various open source projects, it’s not so weird it’s been labeled by many as a “huge terrible corporation.” Windows versus Linux, IIS versus Apache, Internet Explorer versus Firefox, Microsoft Office versus OpenOffice.org, etc.

Though, it looks like Microsoft is slowly accepting that Linux and open source in general is both here to stay and a break down to be reckoned with. Since 2006, Microsoft has been focusing its efforts toward interoperability rather than confrontation, for example via its collaboration with Novell.

And maybe, just maybe, a lot of public at Microsoft are tired of their bruised image and want some goodwill thrown their way for once.