On February 9, 1998, I published the Open Source Definition and the public announcement of the Open Source Initiative that Eric Raymond and I were starting. This was the first time that the general public heard what Open Source was about. Friday, February 8 is the last day of Decade Zero of Open Source. Saturday, February 9 is the anniversary of Open Source and the start of Decade One. It's a computer scientist thing. We always start counting from zero :-)

The 20th February 2008 was one of those 'Microsoft moments', when suddenly, the world changed. Just like when they 'got' the network (and we got NT), or they 'got' the Internet (and we got 'Internet Explorer'). This time they 'got' Open Source and Open Standards and the company is about to make another of their legendary radical transformations... or so they would like you to believe.

My Microsoft Office trial is over. I am not spending $450 just to get Outlook. Gmail and Google Calendar win this game: big time.

Instead of ignoring open source conferences, Microsoft continues to invade them. The latest example: John Frederiksen (pictured), general manager of Microsoft’s Response Point business, is scheduled to speak at Digium AsteriskWorld on February 3. Why is Microsoft paying such close attention to an event for open source IP PBX advocates? The answer is obvious.

This post was actually meant to be a response to a journalist who asked what I thought about the February 2008 announcement by Microsoft on their "Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability". To put into context, this was released on Feb 21st, the weekend before the BRM, so it was not particularly on my mind at that time.

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.

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.

Seriously, I have no clue why everyone feels like February and March are the *perfect* months for holding a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) event. Not only does it make it extremely difficult to choose which ones to attend, it leaves the rest of the year (all the way to the end, when FOSS.IN happens) uncovered, and perfect hunting grounds for companies who are not exactly known to be sending the FOSS world greeting cards at Christmas...

Is Microsoft offering an olive branch to open source and Linux? Or is Microsoft just putting the best possible face on its defeat by the EU justice system, and its recent statements are really just business as usual? If you ask people in the open-source community you'll find answers from one end of the spectrum to the other.