Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Campus Technology
News
Open Source: A 'Growing Challenge' to Microsoft
8/8/2008
|
|
Open source software topped the list of business "risk factors" outlined in Microsoft's annual 10-K report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, published last week. The emphasis seems a little surprising. For instance, global open source Linux use currently trails at 0.82 percent, while Microsoft Windows dominates the operating system market at 91 percent, according to stats from Net Applications' Market Share.
Microsoft's 10-K report depicts an unlevel playing field. Competitors distribute open source software at "nominal cost," making money off services instead of the software. Moreover, these open source software companies, unlike Microsoft, "do not have to bear the full costs of research and development for the software," the report alleges.
Microsoft lately has made some peace offerings to the open source world and even joined the open source Apache Software Foundation, but the report depicts open source software mostly as a potential competitive threat.
"In recent years, certain 'open source' software business models have evolved into a growing challenge to our license-based software model," the reports states.
The report also suggests that Microsoft's recent publication of protocol documentation for its core products could have an overall damaging effect on the company.
"The availability of protocol licenses may enable competitors to develop software products that better mimic the functionality of Microsoft's own products which could result in a reduction in sales of our products."
Microsoft had initially described its plans to make the protocols publicly available as a major software interoperability policy change. That shift, first announced in February, has led to the release of thousands of pages of protocol documentation to potential competitors. For the most part, Microsoft was compelled to open its protocols as a result of government antitrust legal actions.
Recommended Reading
- Fixed-Mobile Convergence: Dartmouth Beefs Up Cell Coverage, Cuts Costs
Problems with cell phone coverage aren't uncommon on college campuses. There are two main reasons: The beefy structure of historic buildings can block cellular reception within walls, and, on more remote campuses outside cities, signal coverage can be light.
- Thompson Rivers U Deploys Unified Digital Campus for ERP
Thompson Rivers University (TRU) in British Columbia has selected SunGard Higher Education's Banner Unified Digital Campus (UDC) to integrate its ERP systems.
- DV Kitchen Web Video Publishing System Released
DVcreators.net has released DV Kitchen, a new video encoding and publishing application for Mac OS X designed specifically for creating materials to be posted on the Web.
- NEC Debuts 4 Education Projectors
NEC this week debuted four new projectors targeted toward education applications, along with a new MultiSync LCD display. The new NP-series projectors are entry-level models started at $899 but are designed to provide high light output, support for closed captioning, and built-in networking capabilities.
- Security Researchers Uncover Spring Framework Vulnerability
Software frameworks are enjoying enormous popularity these days among a range of developers. It's popularity well earned; frameworks provide powerful tools for building more flexible and less error-prone applications. They generally enhance developer productivity with out-of-the-box functionality. And they can free developers to focus on features instead of common coding tasks.
- 3PAR Server Arrays Integrate Fat-to-Thin Processing
Utility storage provider 3PAR has announced the release of the 3PAR InServ T400 and T800 Storage Servers. The new hardware is built on the company's third-generation InSpire architecture, featuring the 3PAR Gen3 ASIC with integrated fat-to-thin processing.
