Microsoft & Open Source

Following on from some of my recent posts on interoperability with open source and choice + community engagement, I wanted to give a quick up on Bill Hilf's recent announcement at OSCON unveiling a new web site giving some new insight into Microsoft's open source strategy. Bill followed the announcement up with a blog post on Port 25. Bill also announced our plans to submit the Microsoft Permissive License (MS-PL) and Microsoft Community License (MS-CL) to the OSI.

One of the things that stuck out for me on the new site was "Participating in a world of Choice" – This is a theme that you can see running broadly across the company to allow customers to select the right tools and technologies to suit their needs. Just check out my post linked above on choice for some interesting examples in the developer space. The other key message was how we are partnering to build bridges with the open source community. Beyond the Shared source programs and our commitment to the Open Specification Promise, there are some specific examples of interoperability achievements on the site such as improving the PHP experience on Windows with Zend or improving the SugarCRM experience running with IIS and SQL Server. SugarCRM is also one of a number of open source members of the interoperability vendor alliance, created as a forum for Microsoft partners to come together and demonstrate real-world interoperability in customer-centric scenarios.

So check out the new open source site and see some of the great new partnerships we've created with the open source community.

Thanks,

Adam