eWeek: Microsoft puts more heat on open source; Linux developer community responds

“Recent remarks by executives add fuel to anti-Microsoft
fire in the Linux developer community.”

“As you’re going through a time of tremendous change, as we are
now, the players with a vested interest [in the status quo] are
going to detract as much as possible, and that’s what we’re seeing
right now,” said Allen Shaheen, CEO of ArsDigita Corp., an
open-source e-business platform company in Cambridge, Mass. “People
feel Microsoft has a vested interest in maintaining ownership of
the desktop, and now they’re working to make inroads in the server
world,” Shaheen said. “Linux presents a real threat to that because
it’s an alternative to their platform.”

“They’re just digging themselves into a bigger hole,” said
Jim Jagielski, executive vice president of the Apache Software
Organization and chief technology officer of Zend Technologies
Ltd., in Baltimore. “This makes a lot of people in the open-source
community angry but also kind of sad. After all this time,
Microsoft doesn’t get it.”

“I make my living writing open-source software. The only thing
you can’t do with open-source software is make monopoly profits,”
said Jeremy Allison, senior engineer with VA Linux Systems Inc. and
co-author of Samba, in Fremont, Calif. “I really don’t think
[Allchin’s argument] flies. I can see why they don’t like
it–because they’re not used to sharing.”

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