As you might expect, the open source community has given a mixed response to Microsoft's announcement last week that it is freely publishing protocols for its popular software to ease interoperability. Some are cautiously optimistic and some remain hostile. Red Hat, for instance, remains in the hostile camp, according to a story in the Washington Post. No surprise there since Red Hat's operating systems competes directly with Microsoft's wares, and Red Hat wins when Microsoft takes an anti-open-source stance. The hostile crowd say what they always say - that Microsoft has made grandstand gestures of openness before and is doing this one only for its own market advantage. Uh, yes, Microsoft is doing that - as it should.

Microsoft is, and always will be, focused on making a profit. There are a lot of reasons to fault Microsoft for the choices and products it makes, but keeping an eye on profitability shouldn't be touted as a bad thing. Microsoft is, after all, a publically traded company.

In the optimistic camp are Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, Dominic Sartorio, president of the Open Solutions Alliance, and Linus Torvalds, apparently. According to a story in CNet, Torvalds said:

"I may make fun of Microsoft occasionally, and yeah, I think they do stupid things at times, but I think this one was a step in the right direction," Torvalds said in an e-mail. ... "Does it mean people should trust and love them? No," he said. "But I also don't see the point in flaming them over what is clearly at least an incremental improvement."

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