Linux Solutions

When Bill Gates hangs up his hat at the end of today, you have to wonder if Microsoft will grow to accept Open Source now that he’s gone.

Observers from both sides of the fence (that’s the open and closed source fence) say the exit of Microsoft’s number one won’t change the computer giant’s attitude to open source communities overnight, but it may accelerate the changing attitude in Redmond.

“We already see quite a different approach to dealing with OSS and OSS companies from Sam Ramji’s group doing a great job in establishing dialog,” said Rafael Laguna, CEO of Open-Xchange and a former marketing exec at SUSE Linux. “With Gates’ departure, the only mammoth remaining is Ballmer. With him away in a near future, Microsoft will definitely open up. They have to.”

Barry Crist, CEO, Likewise Software said, “For much of Microsoft’s history, its primary strategic initiative has been Windows everywhere. Bill Gates was the primary architect of this and it has served the company well in reaching the $50 billion revenue mark. To get from $50 to $100 billion, however, they will clearly need to embrace the non-Windows world. I suspect this will be easier for Microsoft to accomplish without Gates. We see substantive signs of this happening already.”

One open source backer, Juergen Geck, CTO of Openxchange, hints that Gates’ early departure from Microsoft signals the beginning of the end for proprietary software.

“Bill Gates figured out how to harvest from software licensing early on in the game, and built the biggest software company on the planet from it. Selling software licenses has become a triviality,” he said

Although no one particularly expects Microsoft to open source any of its main applications, even Microsoft programmers hope to see more openness and source code releases in the future. Guys like Andrew Brust, chief of new technology at TwentySix, a longtime Microsoft partner and developer in New York believs Microsoft will consider all the options.

“I have a strong feeling that Microsoft will consider anew all their options with regard to open source strategy and the open source community. I think that Microsoft will remain much like it is now it will continue to release commercial software and take intellectual property rights very seriously.

“But I do think you’ll see more open source/shared source/community projects on CodePlex, on the model of the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. I think you’ll see Microsoft engage more closely with open source companies, interest groups and enthusiasts, both within the .NET world, and outside of the Microsoft universe.”

”A good harbinger of this is Moonlight, the Novell-sponsored, open source, Linux-based implementation of Silverlight, and the fact that Microsoft worked with that team to help them get the product built. “Scott Guthrie is largely responsible, as far as I can tell, for this kind of constructive engagement with the open source world, and I think his influence will grow,” he said

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation can’t predict what Microsoft’s new top brass will do but believes open source will continue to put enormous pressure on the company’s margins and closed source ways.

“That depends on Ballmer and Ozzie and the results of what I imagine are some interesting debates internally. There is no doubt that Microsoft has no choice but to acknowledge that the closed development model for building software doesn’t work any more,” he said

“The future of cloud computing and Web 2.0 application development will be built on Linux and open source.”

Others say that Bill gates has set out plans for the next few years, and that his vision will be maintained.

Per Werngren, president of IDE, of Stockholm, Sweden and president of the Internal Association of Microsoft Certified Partners said, “Bill Gates has planned his departure well and today Microsoft is led by so many great leaders. He is a powerful symbol and an icon that we all will miss. But being Chairman is also an important position in Microsoft so he will still oversee long term strategy,”