Tech pundits are suspicious. But cautiously optimistic that MS is finally opening up.
Microsoft Sings a New Tune—Wants to Play Nice With Open-Source – TechCrunch
Big Evil Wants to Play Nice Now? – Linux Journal
Groklaw is cynical.
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What are they talking about? Microsoft evil?
Case in point: Samba, open source software critical to networking computers.
Google donated $20,000 (some change they found on the dryer) to the unpaid volunteers developing Samba.
“This is fantastic news for the Samba project” said team member Andrew Tridgell, “and will allow us to provide more support for developers who could not otherwise afford the travel expenses to attend conferences. Contributions like these make a huge difference!”.
news.samba.org
Google Pledges Annual Donation to Samba
Andrew Tridgell is an Australian genius, beloved by the open source community. He is one of those who advocates all critical networking software be open source because you cannot trust commercial software made by the likes of Microsoft.
Needless to say, Microsoft did everything they could (without admitting it) to “screw with Samba” in the development of their operating system “Vista”.
It’s the same thing Microsoft has done forever with Apple. They spend millions trying to make their proprietary software work, but imperfectly, with anything non-Microsoft. Most of the time they end up shooting themselves in the foot in the process.
I see Microsoft as a rotting empire. Like the former Soviety Union. The current Chinese dictatorship.
MS must fall as must China. Profitable now, or not.
==== UPDATE. Perhaps the evil empire can learn:
More good press for MS: “IE 8 will support web standards by default. (That sighing sound you hear is the relief of web designers all over the world.) …”
Rick McCharles 