Bruce Perens: Microsoft And Apache – What’s The Angle?
For a decade, Microsoft was open source’s worst enemy, combating it at every turn. But last week Microsoft joined the Apache open source project as a platinum sponsor, promising to put $100,000 per year into a project that beats its own IIS (Internet Information Services) in the market. Microsoft also made some of their patents available for use in GPL software like Linux without a royalty.
Has Redmond given up the fight? Or is this just their latest strategy
Just a few years ago, Microsoft exec Jim Allchin called open source “an intellectual-property destroyer, I can’t imagine something that could be worse than this for the software business and the intellectual-property business.” Craig Mundie called it unhealthy and economicaly unsound.” But that was the old Microsoft, not the new cute one with an Apache feather in their hair and Bill Gates gone forever.
News Source: Datamation
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