O’Reilly Network: Can the Samba Story be Retold?

“Finally, the open source community is taking .NET seriously,
and they’re starting to tremble harder than an office building in a
Seattle earthquake.”

“On March 19, an announcement of HailStorm — a new Microsoft
service for providing standardized data exchanges between
e-commerce sites and customers — hurtled down from on high, and
Microsoft critics worry that Microsoft will use it to essentially
put up a toll booth on every data highway. But long before this,
many well-placed observers warn that .NET could crush everything in
its path.”

“Open source advocates ignored it, sneered at it, claimed that
Microsoft will never get it right. But so what? Maybe it should be
right. If it’s a good idea, someone should do it with open source
software too.”

Complete
Story