A columnist finds something to question in IBM's enthusiasm for
open source software, reaching back to IBM's attempt to push MCA on
the computing world to make his case. Where both Microsoft and IBM
are concerned, "both companies have missed the boat entirely":
"The spirit of open source isn't that all software must
be free. It's not an entitlement program for the economically
challenged or the disgruntled. Nor is the spirit of open source a
mandate that everyone should be able to modify source code to suit
personal needs. Not everyone can write code--in fact, programming
is a skill shared by relatively few.
The spirit of open source is that a product--be it hardware or
software--should be designed to accommodate the user, not the other
way around. IBM came to grips with the open source spirit when its
MCA systems failed to infiltrate the industry; other vendors
stepped in and accommodated computer buyers and, therefore,
dominated.
Microsoft has already encountered the spirit of open source by
modifying certain aspects of XP to accommodate the federal court
system. It will most certainly continue to accommodate its
customers when the majority of them are faced with mandatory
registration, dual 52-character code keys, and the somewhat
disheartening prospect of needing to reregister XP after a CPU
upgrade. (And that's only the tip of the iceberg.) Microsoft may
think of itself as the only OS game in town, but it still needs to
sell products to continue being profitable."
