Keith Curtis has just written a book about the future of software.
Enterprise Computing. That in itself isn’t unique. More unusual is that Mr. Curtis, an 11-year veteran of Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, believes deeply that open source is the future of software.

Today we have Keith Curtis joining us for a discussion on Linux. Curtis spent 11 years as a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft before examining Linux and the open source side of things, which resulted in a change of perspective and a published book.

"Keith Curtis, an 11-year veteran of Microsoft, takes a programmer’s approach in “Software Wars,” attempting to systematically build a case that free software can help pave the way for a 21st-century renaissance in many fields ranging from artificial intelligence (cars that drive themselves) to the human journey into space (space elevators). For Mr.

You'd expect, as my friend Preston Gralla did, that when someone says "proprietary software is eventually going to be doomed," and that Microsoft's future might best be served in releasing its own version of Linux, that he'd be a Linux fan. Wrong: this prophet of Windows doom and gloom was Keith Curtis, a former Microsoft Research staffer. Could he be right?

Keith Curtis, author and former Microsoft programmer, makes no bones about his view that open source puts the software giant's wares to shame.

Bill Gates probably will not sing the praises of Keith Curtis, a programmer with Microsoft for 11 years who's now left the fold and written a book about why the Redmond way will fail. Oh yeah, Curtis is not afraid to speak his mind as a Linux guru, either.

Former Microsoft employee Keith Curtis publishes new book After the Software Wars on lulu.com. The key to faster technological progress is making software free, he writes. The difference between free, and non-free or proprietary software, is similar to the divide between science and alchemy.

It's easy to forget that Microsoft is a software company. Given our near ubiquitous exposure to the Windows operating system (OS), many people don't think of an OS as software in quite the same way as an application - or "app" as it is increasingly becoming known. Of course Microsoft is a software company. What does Microsoft think of open source?

Keith Curtis spent years as a Microsoft programmer. Then he quit and became deeply enthusiastic about source development. This is his story: