In a major turnaround for Microsoft, the company Thursday promised "greater transparency" in its development and business practices, outlining a new strategy to provide more access to APIs and previously proprietary protocols for some of its major software products, including Windows and Office.
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charlesgoodwin
16 years 32 weeks 2 days 16 hours ago
How is this embracing open source?
Surely embracing open source would be releasing some of or all their major software franchises under an open source license so users can support themselves (e.g. NT4 users could maintain NT4 now Microsoft no longer supports it).
No, this is not embracing open source. This is pandering to a market that enjoys the benefits brought by open source, threatening to marginalize Microsoft if it doesn't cooperate with developers of open source developer applications. This is just Microsoft simply trying to maintain its monopoly by throwing us crumbs off of it's plate. Microsoft would kill open source if it could.
Don't be fooled.
aboutblank
16 years 32 weeks 2 days 5 min ago
I disagree. The rhetoric of
I disagree. The rhetoric of open source is that the open source development method uses the power of the community to create better programs. This move by MS allows open source developers to create better programs. Microsoft are merely publishing their APIs and file formats. This action isn't really "embracing open source" but it does help anybody that works with these APIs which would include Open Source Developers.
This action is not particularly relevant to those of us that believe proprietary software subjugates users (to the proprietor) and is therefore evil. Pretty much everything of Microsoft is proprietary software and this action doesn't improve the liberty of any program to any user. MS software remains proprietary and should be avoided.