Interoperability is a B*#&@!
If Microsoft really wants to build some bridges to Open Source, it has to provide some serious steel for the bridge builders.
Tuesday, August 15th, 2006
As I write this, it’s the third week of June, and I’m on a consulting gig in Boston doing some cool high-performance Linux stuff. Unfortunately though, I’m stuck fifteen miles outside the city, in the suburb of Woburn, MA, at an extended stay efficiency suites hotel (albeit a nice one) because I couldn’t get anything closer without bursting a blood vessel of a corporate bean counter. So, naturally the morning commute to downtown Boston is brutal.
Why the long commute? Well, as it turns out, this week is Tech Ed, the big Microsoft education and training conference, where the software behemoth brain dumps on developers and systems integrators, sharing what Redmondware is coming in the the next year. And what do you know? Oe of the big themes that’s apparently come up this week is interoperability of Microsoft products with Open Source.
I’ve been saying for a long, long time that Microsoft should do pursue interoperability with Open Source, and I’ve gone so far to say that Gates’s crew should actually Open Source components of Windows NT, Windows 2000, or large parts of the operating systems wholesale, but so far, my cries have been fallen on deaf ears. At this point, I’m hoping that Microsoft at least takes some baby steps, because any concession from the software giant would be a good one. Interoperability between Windows infrastructures and Open Source operating systems and applications certainly would be a good thing.
