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Microsoft's bold march towards open source
Posted on Monday, February 05 2007 @ 06:41:46 EST by linuxwiz |
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Microsoft is labouring under a delusion. While the rest of the
world thinks of it as a software company, it prefers to consider itself
a government department. How else to see its latest scheme whereby, if
you ignore its questions, it will report you to its private paid-for
policemen at the Business Software Alliance?
The logic behind the scheme goes thus. Microsoft's software
is on the vast majority of the world's computers, so any computer you
pick at random is likely to have it on. If you are a company of 200
souls, then you must be using 200 licences. If you have fewer, then
you're ripping Microsoft off. If you don't admit to it, then that's
even worse and you deserve to be taken to court.
Companies might feel their internal IT provisioning to be a matter for
themselves alone, in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing, and
that they are under no obligation to reveal commercially sensitive
information to their suppliers. Microsoft either disagrees or doesn't
care ? much as the UK's TV licensing department has given itself the
right to threaten with menaces anyone who doesn't have a TV and feels
under no obligation to say so. That is the attitude of an organisation
safe from commercial pressure.
But what if Microsoft's logic was sound ? that if you don't have a licence you're guilty until proven innocent?
We would like to suggest that before it becomes too fond of the
idea, Microsoft considers a further natural consequence. We know that
its software contains much intellectual property, some of it the
company's own, some of it licensed or otherwise bought from others.
Nobody suspects Microsoft of using intellectual property without
permission. Yet if absence of evidence is not absence of evidence, then
Microsoft must be the first to agree that its lack of IP infringement
must be demonstrated, not merely assumed. As we know all too well ? as
SCO will have carved on its tombstone ? the very best way to
demonstrate one's innocence is to remove any hiding place.
By Microsoft's own logic, the company should immediately make
all the source for all its products open for inspection. We welcome
these moves by the company, and look forward very much to it making
good on its own, albeit implicit, promise.
Source
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