A look at how Microsoft and its former employees/current partners have been subverting the “Open Source” label while redefining what it actually means

Open source fans are buzzing about Microsoft’s latest move to open its APIs, which follows along the path it has been on recently. Microsoft’s announced intention to open APIs to its Vista, .Net, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange and Sharepoint software is no-doubt big, but it also comes as more and more traditional software and even hardware vendors tailor their strategies to address the pervasiveness of open source software in the enterprise.

Companies which are faking/misusing “Open Source” are named and shamed, but Microsoft, which violated the GPL several times last year and casts “Open Source” as “Open APIs”, gets a free ride

t seems we’ve arrived upon Microsoft open source. In the last couple of years, whenever there was discussion of Microsoft’s open source projects and efforts such as CodePlex or Port25, there was typically the standard open source response: it’s not OSI-approved; it’s not real open source.

" Of all the accusations Microsoft has levelled over the years against open source, perhaps the least contentious is that it lacks the tight integration offered by Microsoft's own products."

More new signs of Microsoft poisoning Free software using sponsorships, acquisitions, and Mono.

One minute ago Microsoft made one of its first "open source" moves under the new Microsoft Reference License: the team in Redmond announced they'll make some .NET libraries available. I say "open source" because to me, open source means you can easily access a .tar or .zip of the code. Microsoft's effort is a bit more cumbersome.

As you probably have heard or read about by now Microsoft has made another deal with another open source company. This time Linspire has signed a deal with Microsoft to license VOIP and Windows proprietary media formats and true type fonts. My question is why? There is no need as those technologies are already in the open source world.

Novell is working with Microsoft to help Microsoft cooperate and contribute to open source projects under open source licenses, and sticking with the existing standards to do so. Keen observers of the tech industry might note that this is a bit of a rarity, but it’s something that I hope we’ll see more of from Microsoft.