Unfortunately, the feature this bug interferes with now has to be left off in both Windows and Samba because buggy Samba versions are everywhere inside NAS appliances! (That feature was fast transfers… the bug caused them to become very slow transfers)

The Vista balls-up meant more people are using Macs than ever before, more people are using their phones for things they would have used a PC for previously, and Windows is a minority player there, and more traditional desktop tasks are moving to the web, where MS trails Google. Open source gives people more options almost everywhere. Microsoft doesn’t dominate every aspect of our digital life like it once did, which I think means it won’t be able to pull the old stunts anymore: paying lip-service to standards and trying to block off interop work like it tried with Samba. Microsoft was once the filter through which the vast majority of people saw IT in general, but that’s no longer the case. They’re still hugely important, but they no longer have the power to do whatever they want and expect people to toe the line – the bloody noses they got over Vista and their unsustainable open source stance proved that. Microsoft hit probably their weakest point a couple of years ago, and I think that’s been a real shock to them. I think they’ll think twice before trying their old tricks again, their illusion of invulnerability has been shattered by the events of the last few years.

On that front, I think they did in any credibility when they recently tacitly acknowledged that no version of Office will ever generate documents that are fully understandable by a conforming OpenXML Strict implementation (The standardized version – not the “Office 2007 like but not actually like” Transitional version).

I read your blog very often, and I never thought I’d see the day you would have to type that in a response on your blog .

You do know that MS has been a ‘Platinum’ sponsor of Apache for a couple of years now, right? That’s a weird one considering the existence of IIS, and that the ASF oversees many component projects that compete directly with .Net. It’s arguable that they do it just to get the regulators off their backs a bit, but if you’re going to examine motivations of why companies invest in open source, then look at ALL companies – they all do it to further their own agendas, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing; most of the open source economy runs on ‘halo’ benefits from what are hard-headed business decisions. You can’t realistically say now that, as of today, Microsoft’s investments in open source are any more self-serving than those from other companies – it’s just that the business models of other companies were a more natural fit from the start. And some other companies are better at looking holistically at the “long game” – Google in particular, who benefit hugely in business terms from open source and invest heavily too via programmes that are less directly connected, like Summer of Code – because they know that in the round it will all come back positive for them, both in terms of code and community support. They’re firmly in the ‘positive’ camp for open source of course, but they’re still doing it for their business benefit too. They’re just far, far more pro-active.

The majority of the hate for MS these days is either about Vista or IE (both sub-standard and deserved), about dodgy behaviour over standards (deserved) or because of their historical stance on open source. I’m only talking about their stance on open source, and like I say, they totally deserved their reputation of being total assholes on that front. But while we should bear in mind history and definitely keep a skeptical eye on things, you can’t let historical wrongs colour your judgement forever. I’m certainly not being a cheerleader for MS here, they’ve done a lot of bad stuff in the past and I have a lot of lingering mistrust. But I am saying that you cannot deny their stance has changed dramatically – from an absolutely terrible base, but it’s still a change. To deny that, or its significance, is to deny reality because of an emotive argument. If it’s a PR stunt, it as to be the most costly and disruptive one in history.

When the biggest software company in the world and probably the #1 enemy of open source changes strategy, even if that’s just away from the negative rather than strongly into the positive, is that news? Hell yes. Does it mean everyone in open source wants to hug MS now? Hell no – but maybe the less predjudiced ones no longer dream of seeing them burn in hell.

IIRC, a vast majority of MS’s money comes from its Windows and Office lock-in monopolies. All of its other products/services provide very little net income (relatively speaking), or no income at all because they are merely expenditures that serve their wider strategy.

If MS truly starts to play nice, the stagnant pools of Windows and Office will bust wide open and Microsoft will suffer a massive drop in revenue as people stop paying the MS tax and jump off the forced upgrade treadmill. They won’t let that happen willingly; and their customers will continue to have no leverage because of the lock-in (and because nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft).

Their OS-friendly moves probably do play into a long-term strategy (they must know the Windows/Office cow won’t give milk forever), but in terms of the immediate future it is all little more than a PR stunt.

Of course MS is serving their own needs with everything they do. That’s what companies do – you really think Google and IBM are doing OS out of the goodness of their hearts? It works for their businesses. What is important is the tone and the manner in which things are done, and personally I see a significant shift in that at MS in the last couple of years. I completely agree that they’re not at the level of so many others yet, but that doesn’t mean the shift in attitude has not been noteworthy, from the biggest anti-OS stance around to a basically neutral one.

I have not seen MS do anything to ingratiate themselves with the OS world. All I’ve seen is MS make false claims, pay for false reports, do their best to make open standards their own property, be the broker to support any OS troubles (SCO, trying to sell patents to non-OS companies), basically do everything an evil corporation would do. Yes they have done some things to support their products in the marketplace, like open source the .Net Micro framework but I think that is more market positioning then coming around to embracing OS.
Take any popular system that has had troubles with MS and look carefully at how MS has attacked that system.

You should view any large company with scrutiny when dealing with OS, but in my view MS has a ways to go before it even begins to approach level with google, rim, novel, nokia etc etc etc.
BTW Qt 4.6 and Qt Creator 1.3 Release Candidates Available today. GPL and open. Should be just as news worthy as MS no?