Open Source Advocate Calls for Microsoft Version of Linux

Network World — A lot of open source advocates like to rage against the machine at Microsoft, but when a former Microsoft Research employee says that Windows 7 won't stop Linux from market domination, that's an opinion to note. Keith Curtis, author of the book After the Software Wars, says just that. But he goes further. He thinks Microsoft and its customers would be better off if the company ditched Windows and instead built its own version of the Linux operating system.

Slideshow: Top 10 Open Source Apps for Windows, at a Glance
Open Source Definition and Solutions

Microsoft to 'open source' its Outlook PST filesFive fantastic open source tools for Windows admins

These topics came up Tuesday during my interview with Curtis for Network World's Panorama Podcast series. It was an interesting conversation with someone who has crossed over worlds, from Microsoft employee to free software advocate. But it raised as many questions in my mind as it answered. For instance (at 13:10 in the interview), I asked Curtis how he thinks Microsoft can meet its obligations to employees, shareholders and customers while also morphing itself from a proprietary software maker to an open source company. His answer was surprising: Microsoft Linux. He noted that Ubunto was started with about $10 million -- an amount that Microsoft could lose unnoticed in the cushions of a couch.

Listen:

"I think we could all be running Microsoft Linux. I sent an e-mail to Steve Ballmer about this and he said he wasn't interested," he quips, but is only partially joking. "Microsoft could very easily dominate the Linux market if they wanted to. I don't think they should release all their source code ... nobody would use it."

Given the likelihood of Microsoft Linux (zippo), I asked him if he thought the IT industry, with its giant Microsoft ecosystem, would somehow be better off if Microsoft vanished rather than having the folks in Redmond figure out how to become more open.

"There is an ecosystem around Microsoft but if you look at the ISV ecosystem, that's mostly disappeared. When I joined Microsoft in '93, there would be boxes of software that people would install. But that's almost gone. Microsoft's partners are service providers and hardware vendors. ... whether Microsoft should whither away is a difficult question. I just look at their code bases and the world doesn't need any of their code bases. From the day I started using Linux, I no longer used one line of Microsoft code -- it's been four years now."

Continue Reading