Sometimes someone at Microsoft…

Sometimes someone at Microsoft releases an interview which is worth reading.

Two small excerpts:

For example, it is harder and harder to continue to define the world of software as a world divided between open source companies and proprietary companies. The truth is that today we’re all mixed source companies. Every company that traditionally comes from an open source background has over time moved to the middle after realizing that in addition to the open source foundation, they also need proprietary offerings that will differentiate their services from others and therefore will enable them to build a viable business.

So at the same time, companies that you could have associated traditionally with a pure proprietary software development model, including Microsoft, you see them today cooperating with open source development projects, even shipping open source code as part of their breadth of their offerings. Over time this distinction, which was mostly an ideological and very emotional distinction, the reality of business is causing all companies to converge to the point where, as I said, in a few years this distinction will be without meaning and we will all be mixed source companies.

Of course, there are areas where the opinions of Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Intellectual Property and Licensing, are still questionable, but they have made some strides in the right direction.

It would be nice to know which are his opinions about the OSP (Open Specification Promise).

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