SCN: Open source

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes  

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(John Markoff, NY Times)---Microsoft is preparing a broad campaign 
countering the movement to give away and share software code, 
arguing that it potentially undermines the intellectual property of 
countries and companies. At the same time, the company is 
acknowledging that it is feeling pressure from the freely shared 
alternatives to its commercial software.   

In a speech defending Microsoft's business model, to be given on 
Thursday at the Stern School of Business at New York University, 
Craig Mundie, a senior vice president at Microsoft and one of its 
software strategists, will argue that the company already follows the 
best attributes of the open-source model by sharing the original 
programmer's instructions, or source code, more widely than is 
generally realized.   

The speech is part of an effort by Microsoft to raise questions about 
the limits of innovation inherent in the open-source approach and to 
suggest that companies adopting the approach are putting their 
intellectual property at risk.   

Advocates of the open-source movement say that making the code 
available permits other developers to tinker with it, find problems 
and improve the software. Although the movement has not yet had a 
significant effect on sales of Microsoft's Office and Windows 
products in the personal computer market, the company wants to 
enter the corporate software market, where open source has gained 
ground.   

In his speech, Mr. Mundie will argue that one aspect of the open-
source model, known as the General Public License, or G.P.L., is a 
potential trap that undercuts the commercial software business and 
mirrors some of the worst practices of dot-com businesses, in which 
goods were given away in an effort to attract visitors to Web sites. 
G.P.L. requires that any software using source code already covered 
by the licensing agreement must become available for free 
distribution.   

"This viral aspect of the G.P.L. poses a threat to the intellectual 
property of any organization making use of it," Mr. Mundie said in a 
telephone interview this week.   

I.B.M. in particular has been heavily marketing the free Linux 
operating system.   

Mr. Mundie does not identify I.B.M. by name in his speech, which 
was provided beforehand, but he says that large companies are 
naïve in adopting the open-source model.   

"I would challenge you," he said, "to find a company who is a large 
established enterprise, who at the end of the day would throw all of 
its intellectual property into the open-source category."   

An I.B.M. executive said that his company had considered the 
issues surrounding the protection of intellectual property and had 
decided that it was possible to follow both a proprietary and a 
shared business model, even one based on the G.P.L.   

The executive, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, 
said, "If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as 
you know, we have a lot of lawyers."   

In February, Jim Allchin, a software designer at Microsoft, became a 
lightning rod for industry criticism when he said in an interview with 
Bloomberg News that freely distributed software code could stifle 
innovation and that legislators should be aware of the threat.   

Mr. Mundie said he would elaborate on Mr. Allchin's comments 
while also trying to demonstrate that Microsoft already practices 
many of what he called the best aspects of the open-source model.   

"We have been going around the industry talking to people," Mr. 
Mundie said, "and have been startled to find that people aren't very 
sophisticated about the implications of what open source means." 
He acknowledged that the open-source movement was making 
inroads.   

"The news here is that Microsoft is engaging in a serious way in this 
discussion," he said. "The open-source movement has continued to 
gather momentum in a P.R. sense and a product sense."   

He said Microsoft was particularly concerned about the inroads that 
the open-source idea was making in other countries.   

"It's happening very, very broadly in a way that is troubling to us," 
he said. "I could highlight a dozen countries around the world who 
have open-source initiatives."   

Mr. Mundie said that in his speech, he would break the open-source 
strategy into five categories: community, standards, business 
model, investment and licensing model. Microsoft, he said, in 
support of the community ideal, already has what he called a shared-
source philosophy, which makes its source code available to 
hardware makers, software developers, scientists, researchers and 
government agencies.   

Microsoft would expand its sharing initiatives, he said. But he 
added that the company's proprietary business model was a more 
effective way to support industry standards than the open-source 
approach, which he said could lead to a "forking" of the software 
base resulting in the development of multiple incompatible versions 
of standard programs.   

He cited the history of Unix, which has been replete with 
incompatible versions. Although he acknowledged that the open-
source approach had created new technologies, he said that 
business models using the open- source community were suspect.   

"It is innovation that really drives growth," Mr. Mundie said, arguing 
that without the sustained investment made possible by commercial 
software, real innovation would not be possible.   

He reserved his harshest criticism in the text of his speech for the 
G.P.L., a software licensing model defined by programmer Richard 
M. Stallman in 1984.   

"This is not understood by many sophisticated people," Mr. Mundie 
said. "The goal of the G.P.L. is sweeping up all of the intellectual 
property that has been contributed. That creates many problems 
downstream, many of which haven't come home to roost yet."   

Mr. Stallman has made a distinction between the open-source 
software movement and the G.P.L., which he designed as part of the 
free software movement that he led.   

In a response to Microsoft's Mr. Allchin in February, Mr. Stallman 
wrote: "The free software movement was founded in 1984, but its 
inspiration comes from the ideals of 1776: freedom, community and 
voluntary cooperation. This is what leads to free enterprise, to free 
speech, and to free software."   

Today a proponent of the open-source software movement said he 
thought that Microsoft was taking a clever approach in its challenge.  
 

"It's very clever of them," said Eric Raymond, president of the Open 
Source Initiative. "Instead of attacking the entire open-source 
movement they've singled out the one license that is in a sense 
politically controversial."   

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company  





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