Open Source: Microsoft Loves it and Oracle is its Biggest Enemy

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was extremely frank about his opinions about Open Source, back in 2001 he turned out to say that 'Linux is a cancer' that threatens Microsoft's intellectual property. Although Microsoft's point of view about Linux and the claimed patents infringement did not change, a relevant shift and change of mind happened as stated by Jean Paoli, Microsoft's General Manager of Interoperability Strategy.

"Microsoft loves Open Source" he stated in a recent interview with Network World, "We have worked with open source for a long time", Paoli also said that confusing all Open Source software with Linux was a big mistake of Microsoft, "That was really a long time ago [and w]e understand our mistake."

But Open Source developers have a different opinion, Microsoft is still seen as a 'wolf in sheep's clothing'; not only Microsoft executives explicitly stand against software freedom principles -as Bill Gates did in 2008 when he said that Open Source ensures "that nobody can ever improve the software"-, but several legal actions have been taken against companies that use Open Source, like GPS Vendor TomTom, and companies like HTC and Amazon were forced to pay licensing fees as Microsoft is still claiming that Linux and other open source software violate 235 Microsoft patents.

(CC-BY stev.ie)

On the other hand, Oracle is becoming the 'real enemy' of Open Source, in the last week the company made two major moves that were not liked by the Open Source community, it first stopped its involvement in OpenSolaris with the implosion of the OpenSolaris Governing Board, then it sued Google over alleged misuse of Java in the Android operating system.

Tough critics came from Adobe's open source and standards director as well, David McAllister said in a recent blog post that Oracle is now leading the new 'axis of evil' against Open Source. "I have no problem making money from open source code," he wrote. "I have no problem with others doing so. I do have problems with removing community involvement once it has shown that it can create, drive, and maintain such efforts."

McAllister said that Oracle also failed to mention anything about OpenSolaris in its recent keynote speech at LinuxCon 2010.