Virtual Linux Open source News - Microsoft's competitive positioning against open source

I came across this entry on the Lobby4Linux blog. I don't know who writes th blog, or even if she/he is credible, but I found some of the comments interesting. Interesting and a bit worrisome. Worrisome because they paint Microsoft as it should be acting, and not as the backslapping Boy Scout that it has recently painted itself as.

When I talk with my Novell friends, I'm surprised by how naive they are about their recent pact with Microsoft. I talked with one relative newbie who was chattering about "big deals" being done with the help from Kevin Turner (COO) and other senior Microsoft executives. They apparently think that the loser in all this is Red Hat.

They're gullible in the extreme if they really think Microsoft has Novell's best interests at heart. It can't. That would be illegal. Microsoft's shareholders pay it to win, not hold hands with competitors.

Anyway, true or false, you can imagine that this is a plausible scene:

In the early summer of 2006, a meeting took place at Microsoft in Redmond. There were 9 people in attendance and three of them are of "elevated and notable repute". The meeting lasted for approximately 45 minutes and the sole focus of this meeting was Linux.

The Powerpoint presentations, charts and graphs all focused on the projected acceptance and use of Linux and how Microsoft could counter the growth. It is projected by the numbers presented in that meeting, that Linux will become a viable threat to Microsoft Windows by the year 2009 and that by 2012, Linux could gain as much as 60 percent worldwide market share. There is grave concern over India and China. There is also much wailing and nashing of teeth in Redmond over the GPL. It has been dissected to its finest portions in order to find the weakness within that will allow Microsoft to circumvent it. They can find no such weakness. This has amplified the wailing part of the afore-mentioned reaction. It has been decided that any control Microsoft is to have over Linux must be exerted from within Linux itself. Any attack from the outside will only result in failure.

If I worked at Microsoft, I'd be having this precise meeting. Microsoft can afford to take the long view on threats. (Check this out to see how long they've been talking about Linux, the Internet, and other threats.)

And yes, Linux is a threat to Microsoft. Big time. Which is why the only way to read the Microsoft-Novell pact is as a way to neutralize the Linux threat. (Doesn't make it feel very good if you're a Novell employee, but I'm sorry - business is business and Microsoft's business is not Linux. Just about the opposite, in fact.)

So what does Microsoft do? I remember talking with Jason Matusow at a Harvard Business School consortium on open source back in 2003. I suggested to him that the best way for Microsoft to beat open source was to attack its strength: community. Infiltrate and fragment key open source communities.

Jason, being the gentleman (and sophist :-) that he is, demurred, saying "We would never do that." But the Novell deal can be read as a very real step down that path (as can the deals with SugarCRM and others, but I'm more optimistic about those - I see those as ecosystem-building deals, rather than competitive undermining).

From Lobby4Linux:

There is to be a campaign early in 2007 to openly recruit key members of the Linux Development Community, but again; any specific targeted individuals was kept from me with a smile and a shrug. However, if you recall, shortly after Mark Russinovich discovered the Sony RootKit, he was scooped up by MS and his company System Internal/Winterals was quietly purchased by MS as well. So much for any outside innovation of MS software. MS mainly feared his possible future involvement in the FOSS community, a possibility they seemed to think he was considering. It was discussed that a "tactic" to lure FOSS developers would be to "empathize" with their plight, that no one really appreciated their labor...that they would be allowed a percentage of company time to develop for Open Source and their financial burdens would no longer get in the way of their FOSS work...just remember on which side of your bread is buttered."

Microsoft has already started its open source hiring drive: Daniel Robbins, Bill Hilf, others....It will be interesting to see if it manages to lure others - I'm sure it will. It's got a bottomless wallet and the promise of interesting work. And maybe it just wants to hire the enemy to understand the enemy. I can appreciate that. But let's be clear that Microsoft has a fiduciary duty to kill Linux and dominate with Windows/Office/etc.

All of which makes its efforts with Novell almost farcical. It tried with Red Hat, you know. Many moons, but Red Hat wouldn't play ball on the patents "covenant." (Nor should it have.) I have this from multiple sources, and hereby add Lobby4Linux:

Finally, and I must qualify this with a strong "might-or-might-not-be-correctly-interpreted" statement, the Novell/Microsoft Deal was almost the RedHat/Microsoft Deal. From what was discussed in this meeting, it was alluded to that there had been a pitch made earlier that paralleled the Novell Treason. While RedHat was not specifically mentioned, New York was. A mysterious meeting between Steve Ballmer and Matt Szulik in New York had been expected to yield the same results now obvious from the Novell/MS deal. Microsoft went into New York confident of it. One member present at the meeting was ten points past pissed when this was being discussed. Now I'm not saying there were any chairs thrown, or even if the angry person has a history of throwing chairs...the statement made by said individual is easily remembered and thusly quoted.
"I'll have that son of a ***** eating out of dumpsters in less than two years."

Mr. Ballmer, I somehow doubt this, just as your claim to bury Google has been...buried. I have no doubt that you will try, but in Red Hat you've stumbled upon a competitor just as determined as you, and just as stubbornly devoted to the customer, with a tool (open source) that you don't know how to beat. I think you've got a serious game on your hands, and a game where Red Hat holds the winning ace. It's called open source, and the customer is voting with its wallet.

I think you're going to lose.

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