Open-source debate rages

Despite recent changes to Microsoft's licensing strategy for some software, the debate between commercial software developers and the open-source community continued to rage on Thursday, as top executives from Microsoft and Red Hat met at an industry conference.

Craig Mundie, senior vice president at Microsoft, echoed his company's long-standing claims that commercial software is but one choice in a large software ecosystem driven by customers, vendors, academia and the government, during his opening remarks at the O'Reilly Open Source conference here. While Microsoft stands accused of undermining the strength of open-source software development, Mundie contended that open source is a valued part of the software economy, but is not an approach his company will fully embrace any time soon.

"Microsoft has no beef with open source," Mundie said. "We happen to like and will continue to pursue commercial software as a business model Microsoft believes in. Ultimately, the market will tell us if that choice is a good one."

Mundie's comments were deflected by Michael Tiemann, CTO at Red Hat, who said that Microsoft's claims are a ruse to hide the company's dominance and control over choice in the software market.

"To build an architecture of trust, it is better to be open than to seem open and better to be trustworthy than to seem trustworthy," Tiemann said.

Microsoft has recently opened some of its software code on select products under its recently released Shared Source License. Under the terms of the license, users can see and even alter some Microsoft code for noncommercial purposes.

This new license, however, is just a mechanism to steer users' focus away from Microsoft's ability to monopolize parts of the software market, Tiemann said.

Top Microsoft executives have come out against open-source projects, such as Linux, that rely on licenses like the General Public License (GPL), claiming that they "fundamentally undermine" the commercial software model and pose a threat to intellectual property. The GPL mandates that any software incorporating source code already licensed under the GPL becomes subject to the same terms of the license.

Mundie delivered a biting commentary on the downside of open-source software during a presentation at New York University's school of business in May. His comments at Thursday's conference, however, were tempered by his claims that other Microsoft executives mislabelled open-source software as a "cancer" in various public remarks.

"(The comments) were just unfortunate," Mundie said during a press conference held after the debate, claiming that Microsoft meant to criticize the GPL specifically, instead of open- source software as a whole.

Tiemann did not take Microsoft to task for its past comments on either open source or the GPL but instead centered his attack around the future of software development and how Microsoft could control an Internet-centric model of computing built around Web services.

"The stakes are very high in how we construct the future of the Internet," Tiemann said. "Do we want a winner-takes-all scenario for whichever company ultimately creates that particular piece of intellectual property that maximizes interoperability (across systems) or do we want to create a commons?"

Tiemann's remarks met with repeated outbursts of applause from an audience largely made up of open-source advocates. About 100 of the audience members wore plastic red hats, the signature trademark of Tiemann's company.

This sea of Red Hat allies appeared to make Mundie uncomfortable at times as he sent sharp glares toward several audience members who barked out comments during the debate and he called some of Tiemann's remarks "snide" at the press conference.

Nonetheless, Tiemann championed Mundie for engaging in the debate, calling him "brave" and applauding his support of the even-keeled nature of the discussion.

While the battle between the executives went on for almost 3 hours, neither of them altered their traditional stance on this long-running point of contention.

Tiemann suggested that open-source fans inside of Microsoft were beginning a "civil war" and asked the vendor to change its practice of patenting technologies and controlling code.

While some open-source followers work at the Redmond, Wash., giant, Mundie assured Tiemann that Microsoft's upper management decides how the company will proceed with its technology.

"In some senses, it is easy to poke fun or think you know what is going on by looking in from the outside," Mundie said. "But, there is a single purpose in the management and leadership of the company. If people don't like what the company wants to do there is no indentured servitude. The company is clear about what it wants to do. There is no civil war at the management level."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.