Drowning in their own FUD?
What a few days it has been!
The largest software company in world makes a couple of public statements regarding their business and claim unfair competition1 from the Open Source community (which is, for clarifications’ sake, pretty much anyone and everyone; from students to individual hackers to small and very large corporations world-wide).
What their true intention was, no-one seems to be clear, even Microsoft won’t explain. But the resulting comments from the industry have been nothing short of astounding:
- Novell distances themselves from Microsoft as much as possible,
- Industry experts say their claims don’t hold water.
- Sun’s CEO explains to the would-be litigants why they are heading for meltdown,
- Linus Torvalds tells them to put up or shut-up,
- The author of a report which Microsoft used to start this whole fiasco says they got it completely wrong and about face!
And the list goes on, and on, and on…
From my own perspective I have found a great deal of humour and common sense in the many hundreds of blogs and news articles that have been posted in the last couple of days. There is a real sense that Open Source is gaining ground exponentially and that Microsoft don’t really have an answer.
The publicity this is generating for the Open Source movement as a whole is fantastic. For Microsoft, it must be a total PR disaster.
Out of all the comments and views expressed on-line, those that have been supportive of Microsoft’s stance have been almost non-existent. They don’t look to have many friends right now…
1.Someone PLEASE explain how a company like Microsoft can argue unfair competition? How many times have they been (and still are being) hauled before the courts? How much have they paid out for their patent infringements on others?
