| Microsoft's Open-Source Plan: WAMP Instead of LAMP |
Feb. 04, 2008
My long-time friend and colleague Mary Jo Foley recently talked with Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of platform technology strategy at the company's Open Source Software Lab. The subject of their conversation was: "Exactly what it is Microsoft is trying to do with open-source software anyway?"
The answer? "Our focus is getting OSS [Open-Source Software] on top of Windows." Or, as Mary Jo aptly put it, "WAMP" (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) instead of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl).
The point is that Microsoft, so long as it has to put up with open-source programs, wants to turn OSS into just another Windows software stack. Linux, well, that's another matter entirely.
As Mary Jo points out, the Linux interoperability deals have tended to be long on hype and patent FUD, but short on delivery. I would argue that Novell's Microsoft partnership has HREF="http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3193384788.html">worked out for Novell, but as for Linspire, Turbolinux and Xandros, well, no, I don't see it.
The irony of all the Linux company deals, however, is that the most important thing a Linux business could get with a Microsoft partnership is network interoperability with Microsoft's proprietary protocols. Specifically, any Linux that can work and play well with AD (Active Directory) has a much better chance of being sold into a Windows-based company's IT department.
So, what's the ironic part? Thanks to the European Union smacking Microsoft around for its monopolistic practices in Europe, Microsoft was forced to open up its network protocols to anyone willing to pony up 10,000 euros. As Jeremy Allison, one of the developers of Samba, the open-source CIFS (Common Internet File System), told me at the time the EU/Microsoft deal came down, "If the Linux companies had only waited, they could have had everything they wanted from Microsoft without any patent FUD."
He's right. Of course, few people at the time, certainly not me, thought Microsoft
would give up so easily. What Microsoft hasn't given up on though is getting rid of Linux. The one message that came loud and clear to me from this interview is that Microsoft is only interested in open source only in so much as it can help them keep Windows at the center of the business desktop and server.
Pragmatically, open-source companies have to work with Windows. At the same time, though, any Linux business executives must keep in the forefront of their minds that Microsoft will never be a friendly partner. Actually, forget that, Microsoft has always been, is now, and always will be a hostile partner.
You can work with the enemy, though, and get productive work done. You just need to never forget that Microsoft will never really be a friend to Linux or open-source software.
Technology business history is scattered with the remains of companies that thought they could get a fair shake. It's been that way since Microsoft paid Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Product to whip up QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) for $50,000 in 1981 and nothing has really changed about Microsoft's great white shark business practices since then.
—Steven J. Vaughan Nichols
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