I woke up this morning, and as I usually do, I fired up Techmeme and found this article by Matt Asay titled “Microsoft search to be powered by open source”. Matt’s a good journalist, but as I’ve done before (How to get TechMeme’d – write about something bashing Vista), I want to comment on some of Asay’s points.

It looks like Microsoft’s anti-open-source bubble really has burst.

Our anti-open-source bubble, Matt? For a writer who has written about our Open Source strategies a few times, I’m surprised to read that Asay thinks we have an “anti-open-source bubble”. And to quote Asay himself from an article titled “Muglia: Open Source to permeate Microsoft” he’d written in February ‘09 (about 3 months ago):

The reality is that more and more of Microsoft’s products already do include open-source software (including MSN Messenger and Visual Studio), but it’s still refreshing to hear Microsoft acknowledge what most enterprise software companies–including proprietary software companies with much to lose from open source–already know: open source is mainstream.

In 2006, Gartner talked about the importance of code reuse, a phenomenon perfectly suited for open source. Microsoft, by acknowledging that it would rather borrow some open-source code than reinvent every software wheel, is simply being pragmatic.

Open source is not the "cancer" that Microsoft used to call it. It’s just a great, efficient way to develop and distribute software.

Welcome to reality, Microsoft. We’ve been patiently waiting for you to arrive.

While Powerset (and NLP capabilities) are definitely an important portion of our search offerings, it’d be a stretch to deduce from the Register’s original article on Powerset using Hadoop (which is a phenomenal framework for data intensive apps, I might add) that “open-source software appears to be the default choice”. I honestly don’t know what the default choice is, but as several of our senior leaders have said before, you should use the tools that help you do your job best. And I want to reiterate, Microsoft is not against Open Source technologies (see my post “Microsoft Software and Open Source – not mutually exclusive”).

And somehow in between all this, Asay refers to CIO.com’s article about “Microsoft losing its focus” not really clarifying how or what this has to do with Powerset using Hadoop.

I’ve seen FUD like this being spread before – there was this article back in 2005: “It’s unofficial: Microsoft bets business on Linux”. I was excited when I learned that we’d added Powerset to the Microsoft family, and it so happens that Powerset had chosen to use Open Source technologies as they built out their product. Microsoft’s focus is to do what it takes to build out a good online business, of which search is a core part.

Oh, and as for “prime rival Google embraces open source unreservedly”, I happened to notice that Dave McClure’s tweet seems to have gotten retweeted quite a bit:

Update (5/8/09, 2pm PDT): According to Asay’s tweets, it appears that Asay was in fact looking to write an article that would be “inaccurate” and “not boring”:

And it appears that tweet was in response to this one by @offwhitemke:

“ai”

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Since the launch of BizSpark, I’ve heard a lot of comments about how Microsoft is targeting "Open Source" with BizSpark.

From OStatic’s post "Microsoft’s Biz Spark is Another Direct Shot at Open Source":

"[Microsoft's] new BizSpark initiative is being rolled out in 82 countries, and offers many types of incentives to developers and startups. It also steers people toward Microsoft’s products, though, and challenges open source in several ways"

From Matt Asay’s post "What Microsoft giveth, Jive taketh away"

"The Web has been aflutter with the news that through its new BizSpark program, Microsoft is seeding startups with its software to entice them to steer clear of open source. That’s the view from OStatic and others that I’ve read, and it’s probably true, at least in part."

From "Microsoft v/s Open Source. The Startups Win"

"Their latest release of the BizSpark program is a great long term vision to ally with the startups and at the same time take on the Open Source onslaught in their own home ground."

There is no doubt that many startups choose to use Open Source solutions to jumpstart their startups. However, Microsoft’s product offerings and open source offerings are not entirely mutually exclusive. In fact, (depending on which layer of the stack you are looking at) a lot of the open source products out there run perfectly fine on Windows. We have been and will continue do a lot of work to ensure other applications run fine on Windows. A classic example is the work we’ve been doing to ensure that PHP runs well on Windows. Have a go at this slide deck by Garrett Serack for more information:

A very rudimentary web application stack looks something like this:

• Operating System
• Web Server and Database Server
• Web Application Platform

The Operating System layer aside, you can run Free and/or Open Source solutions on top of the Microsoft platform just the same. Given that for startups all products are essentially available at no up-front cost via BizSpark here are some permutations with some popular Open Source technologies (the Open Source technologies, not necessarily free, are in bold) if you’re looking to build a web product:

• Windows + Apache/Lighttpd/Mongrel + MySQL/Postgress + PHP/PERL/Python/Ruby
• Windows + IIS + MySQL/Postgress + PHP/PERL/Python/Ruby
• Windows + IIS+ SQL Server + PHP/PERL/Python/Ruby
• Windows + Apache/Lighttpd/Mongrel + SQL Server + PHP/PERL/Python/Ruby
• Windows + IIS + MySQL + ASP.NET (C#/VB.NET/IronPython/IronRuby etc.)
• Windows + IIS + SQL Server + ASP.NET (C#/VB.NET/IronPython/IronRuby etc.)

I understand some of these permutations may not make the best amount of sense due to a variety of reasons (not tested, no performance/scalability data exists etc.) But the hypothesis that these are invalid permutations is just wrong.

Now I understand that it is one thing to advocate the use of 3rd party open source applications on one’s own platform, it’s a totally different thing to build open source applications. But we are taking small steps in being better citizens of the open source world. Here are a few examples:

• Through the Powerset acquisition, we are actively contributing back to the Apache Software Foundation. [source: Microsoft Revising 'us vs. Them' Attitude Toward Open Source]
• We are platinum sponsors of the Apache Software Foundation. [announcement at OSCON]
• We provided code to ADOdb, which is a database abstraction library that allows PHP-based applications to communicate with a variety of databases.
• The full source code to IronRuby, a .NET implementation of the Ruby programming language, is released under the Microsoft Public License and hosted on Rubyforge.
• Oxite (alpha) is an open source, standards compliant, and extensible content management sample that can run anything from blogs to big web sites.
• The Windows High Performance Computing Server team implemented a messaging component and had it licensed under an open-source license. [source: Open Source is Burgeoning at Microsoft]
• The System Center team implemented OpenPegasus, an open source services broker, for their upcoming release. [source: Open Source is Burgeoning at Microsoft]

You can also find find a list of other open source projects over on CodePlex.

If the BizSpark program had to be positioned as a competitor to something, I’d say it’s somewhat of a competitor to products that are free, and not necessarily open source products.

"ai"

Today at OSCON, Sam Ramji announced that Microsoft will become an official sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). The ASF provides support for the Apache community of open source projects. There are over 60 top-level projects at the ASF that are characterized by an open and pragmatic software license. We have a firm commitment to interoperability with open source and increasing our outreach with the open source development community. As a supporter of open source I am excited that Microsoft has decided to support the ASF.

Sam also announced

• contributions to the PHP community specifically the ADOdb project ADOdb (written in PHP, ADOdb provides an abstraction interface for PHP applications to access many different types of databases). This contribution will enable ADOdb to interoperate with Microsoft’s native SQL Server driver.
• our commitment to interoperability by extending our Open Specification Promise (OSP) to over 150 additional protocols, including protocols built into Windows Server and protocols that are part of the .NET Framework. The OSP guarantees freedom from any patent claims from Microsoft now or in the future, and includes both Microsoft-developed and industry-developed protocols.

“ai”

Last year, Jeff Atwood and I had spoken about ways in which we can encourage development of Open Source projects in the Microsoft Ecosystem. At that point, Jeff decided to throw ads on his blog and to graciously donate a portion of his ad revenue to an open source .NET project.

Today, Jeff picked a project, wrote the check for $5000, and signed off on it. ScrewTurn Wiki is the lucky recipient.

I’d verbally committed to getting Microsoft to match Jeff’s contribution to the project. I personally didn’t want to have much say in the project that gets picked. But I will now work on getting the funds to match the contribution.

Jeff and I will be participating in an Open Source Panel at ReMIX, along with Anil Dash and Joseph Hill with Sam Ramji moderating. We’ll be sure to talk about this in a little more depth then.

I know Jeff has struggled quite a bit to make this happen. He had several amazing ideas to put this plan in to motion, and it wasn’t easy picking just one project. Rest assured, this is just the beginning. Jeff is very passionate about both .NET and Open Source, and I’m looking forward to working with him to excite .NET developers about open source.

"ai"