14 DAY TRIAL // The relationship between Microsoft and open source grows deeper and more intimate, as the company is laboring to deliver a high level of comfort for customers, running its own proprietary software along with open source solutions. Microsoft is no longer the poster child for anti-open source, although this image seems to have a momentum of its own. The fact of the matter is that, although the adept of a proprietary software model, the Redmond company is embracing open source in the need to provide support to its customers deploying mixed source environments.
In 2007, Microsoft has not only celebrated the one year anniversary of its partnership with Novell, but also the building of a Windows-Linux interoperability lab and the approval by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) of the Microsoft Public License and Microsoft Reciprocal License. The company's CodePlex open source code development initiative is starting to get off the ground and is now at approximately 200 projects. Sam Ramji, Microsoft's director of open source technology strategy, could not be happier with the evolution of open source at Microsoft.
"The strategy is founded on meeting people where they are. Independent of whether or not the application programming layer is a Microsoft technology, we really look at ourselves as being an infrastructure layer, and our job is to support the workload and the development styles that people want to use," Ramji revealed as cited by InternetNews, adding that Microsoft is also working to identify aspects of products that can be opened to developers via open source.
"We're conducting internal briefings and training sessions on what are the policies and how do you think through the legal implications," Ramji added. "The other component is working with product groups on how you go to market and the revenue model. At the end of the day, for this to be sustainable for any company, there has to be a consistent way that additional effort produces additional revenue."
An illustrative example of the focus that Windows-open source interoperability is getting over at Microsoft are the resources made available via Port25. Case in point: Linux/Windows Security Interop: Apache with mod_auth_kerb and Windows Server 2003 R2, a whitepaper put together by Chris Travers, the Metatron Technology Consulting. mod_auth_kerb is of course the Apache authentication module. It is used to authenticate users against a Kerberos KDC, and this also concerns ActiveDirectory.