Microsoft & Open Source

Microsoft's stance towards Open Source is really going good.

• Framework Code release
• Codeplex
• IIS 7 - Fast CGI for PHP
• and now joining the Apache Software Foundation for PHP etc are great timelines for M$ and the community.

I didnt find any comment from the other end GNU/GPL leads...

Open Source Initiative approves few Licences of Microsoft

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has approved the Microsoft Public Licence and Microsoft Reciprocal Licence, officially branding them as open source licences.

The OSI approves licences by validating compliance to 10 rules set in the Open Source Definition.

The decision was reached with an "overwhelming majority" of the votes, but not unanimously, OSI president Michael Tiemann said in a posting on the group's website.

Few weeks back news had flown out that Microsoft has planned to give out .Net Framework code under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL). Hope these things are great initiatives from the Software Big B.

IBM, the industry giant is also ready to give its UDB DB2 for free. Last year Microsoft offered, SQL server 2005 Express Edition  without any charge. Also, Oracle in the same time offered its 10g Express Edition for free.

Database giants set their basic version for free, which is mainly due to the free & open source databases like MySql, Postgre SQL etc.,  Basically I work in Microsoft Technologies/Products, but for certain things I still use MySql. Also many hosting companies provide Windows hosting with free MySql database. Even Sun lets its source out & making Solaris 10 free to download. 

So, now a days people are more interested in going for free packages rather closed source / paid softwares. In 2003, when I was working in Indian Red Cross Society, New Delhi, I used to meet many people across the globe & who are from non-IT field talking about free softwares. And now many people here in India prefer free / open source products. In general, students are very much interested in open source softwares, so these are the main reasons for the giants to let their basic versions for free.