Open source, shared source or secret sauce?
ZDNet | at | by Mike
Eighteen months ago, Microsoft opened up its source code to large organizations. After years of pressure from the open-source movement, it gave 2,300 companies the chance to see the innermost secrets of the Windows operating system. But, says Microsoft, only 150 wanted to look.
But in the long term, there are lots more things to be said. In the end, the open-source community will thank Microsoft for pushing the debate on. Let's face it, the polarization of the debate can get pretty sterile--it's all too easy to apply the usual cliches of Open-Source-Good and Microsoft-Evil.
"One of the great myths of open source is that everyone wants to look at source code," said Jason Matusow, shared source manager at Microsoft. "We have approached many hundreds (of companies), but most have turned us down. Most say 'We are manufacturers, we don't do source code--that's your job', and others say they expect their systems integrators to deal with any source code issues."