ZDNet: Open Source Haunts Microsoft

“Q: Just over a year ago, Microsoft senior vice
president Craig Mundie made his infamous comments about open
source. Since then, Microsoft has been rolling out its Shared
Source Initiative. How do you rationalize your Shared Source
Initiative with Microsoft’s views on open source?

“A: One unfortunate thing we did was coming out against open
source–we knew it would be controversial. There is a longstanding
industry debate around source code and what role it plays. IT
professionals have one point of view, developers have another,
business decision makers have yet another and then hobbyists come
at it from an entirely different direction again…

“The fact is that Linux is now competing with Windows. That is
good because it is spurring us on and making us compete better, but
equally, it is difficult for us to say Windows has better
management tools than Linux because all of a sudden people say we
are attacking open source…”

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