14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft would simply love to see all open source innovation happen on top of its own proprietary Windows operating system. The statement belongs to Microsoft Chief Executive Office Steve Ballmer. Present at the "The Online Opportunity" event in Microsoft's London office in Cardinal Place, Ballmer addressed the differences between the open source and commercial business models for client and server operating systems. The most pressing issue for the Redmond company, expressed by General Counsel Brad Smith and Vice President of Intellectual Property and Licensing Horacio Gutierrez back in May, is the fact that free and open-source software infringes on over 235 Microsoft patents. In this regard, Ballmer yet again reiterated Microsoft's commitment to convince users to pay it for using open source solutions that infringe on its intellectual property.
"I think there are multiple business models, for software and services in the future. We happen to believe in what I call a commercial model for us, because it is a little hard to rent the office space here, unless we have revenue. But that does not mean that there is one model that inherits the Earth. We're saying, as a commercial enterprise, we're engaged in commercial software, and there will be other people who choose for whatever set of reasons, and whatever set of business objectives to engage in an open source approach. So that's our strategy: to compete. When we have products that have open source competitors we need to offer better value. Our products need to have more capabilities, they need to be better supported, have more applications, mode device support. We have to compete, where there's a direct overlap", Ballmer stated.
Of course the main focus is Microsoft's flagship products vs. open source rivals, namely Windows and Linux and Office and Open Office. Ballmer revealed that Microsoft has done a lot of work to attract open source innovation on Windows, deterring it from the Linux platform. The illustrative example Ballmer used was related to the efforts poured involving a tighter integration of PHP with Windows. In essence, Microsoft would benefit from open source components focused on it rather than on Linux. But at the same time, Ballmer simply could not stay away from the issue of patent infringement.
"We spend a lot of money, the rest of the commercial industry spends a lot of money, on research and development. We spend a lot of money also licensing patents, when people come and say 'Hey, this commercial piece of software violates our intellectual property'. We'll either get a court judgment or will pay a big check. And I think that it is important that the open source products, also have an obligation to participate in the same way, in the intellectual property regime. That's why we've done the deal we have with Novell, where not only we are working on technical interoperability between Linux and Windows, but we also made sure that, for the appropriate fee, we can provide Novell customers with the rights to use our patented intellectual property", Ballmer added.