The new draw of open source: innovation

“I wasn’t really upset, but I was still mildly irked by Gianugo
Rabellino’s part of the opening session, where he (wearing his
Senior Director of Open Source Communities for Microsoft hat)
highlighted separate customer needs for commercial and open source
software, and highlighted Microsoft’s approach to handle the needs
of open source customers with open core and what they call an “open
surface” model.

Open surface is where the core of the software remains under a
proprietary license but it can be accessed with all sort of
nifty-keen open APIs, open add-ons, and the like. Walli and I just
looked at each other, rolled our eyes, and started muttering: “open
surface” is just the shared source message, repackaged.

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