Tim O'Reilly explains why Microsoft's Craig Mundie has been invited to address the O'Reilly Open Source conference in San Diego in a couple weeks. I'll be there with bellzon, and I'm really looking forward to the debate.
what struck me most about Jim Allchin was that he is just as much a "true believer" as Richard Stallman or Eric Raymond. He wasn't at all the cynical plotter he'd been characterized as. He really thinks that Microsoft has a better mousetrap, and he believes he is doing the right thing for the industry. He really doesn't believe that Microsoft-scale businesses can be built with free software.
In Microsoft's view, the system that maximizes profits for software developers is one that maximizes the capability for investment, and thus innovation. Of course, I believe Microsoft ignores the fact that a great deal of innovation happens outside the commercial sector, and that they have profited enormously from open source development efforts, which have pioneered new innovations that they could then exploit commercially.
