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Microsoft stands firm in the 'great Linux debate'

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Linux Desktop

Andrew Donoghue ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 23 Apr 2004 10:10 BST

Microsoft: Linux is not about to go away tomorrow, we know that, so how is Microsoft and Linux going to co-exist? The answer to that is they already have and you just need an abstraction layer to let that happen and that abstraction layer is Web services. We did a test 18 months ago with some senior people from Microsoft and some from IBM and we had SQL running on Windows and DB2 running on Linux and they were talking to each other via Web services.

The slight fly in the ointment is that while these guys think that the GPL is great, the thing that the GPL makes difficult is R&D. If I invest a lot of money in a new file system and then it is GPLed, then everyone else gets the benefit of that. As an organisation you might get a parasitic organisation that just decides it's going to keep taking that. It puts together just as good an application and services on top of that but doesn't contribute to the community. And that's one of the big problems with the GPL, if you want good R&D then you have to pay for it.

Novell: So that's true and then it isn't, right? Everyone is parasitic on each other. If you assume that the OS is a commodity or should be, it should be free, it should be open, no one should make money off of it, except in supporting it, then that money that you put into code, that you are just going to give away, is a fraction of what you would normally do as everyone else is doing the same thing. People have to start innovating up the stack. If they want to price their intellectual property they have to do it further up the stack which is good for customers. Customers get those better applications rather then everyone spending that R&D budget on something that should be free.

Microsoft: You still haven't answered the question. What open source can't do, that a commercial company can do is to turn around and say we are going to take six or eight million and invest it in research.

Novell: No, we are going to continue to invest in free-stuff but we will also invest in collaboration software up the stack.

Red Hat: We are profitable which we think is responsible as a business. We take that money and we reinvest it. We are investing in new technology. The bottom line is that we are a company that internally has defined its values. We value freedom, we value the choice we give to the community. Those are fundamental values. If we changed our values tomorrow, half our engineers would quit out of principal and that's great-- what a great company to work for. We don't look at this as a give and take -- let's expunge the word parasite.

Microsoft: But you're a commercial company?

Red Hat: And we make money because people find our service and support superior and if they choose to go elsewhere, then we'll work harder.

Microsoft -- Bradley Tipp, national systems engineer

HP/Samba -- Jeremy Allison.

Red Hat -- Paul Salazar, director of European marketing

Sun Microsystems -- Robin Wilton, EMEA programme manager -- Java Desktop System.

Novell -- Matt Asay, director, Linux Business Office, Novell

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So if you upgrade to XP SP3 you can't uninstall Internet Explorer, I'm quite sure I'm having a Deja-vu feeling about MS preventing people from uninstalling Internet Explorer in other Windows products.