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Open Government Doesn’t Equal Open Source
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Posted by Teresa Carlson
Vice President of U.S. Federal Government Sales
(Cross-posted from the Microsoft FutureFed blog)
The term “open” has many different connotations across the federal landscape. According to the president, open government is the promise of transparency, public participation, and bridging the divide between citizens and their government. When it comes to technology, some are connecting the vision of open government with open source software development, but that connection is false and self-serving.
Yesterday, Government Computer News reported that government agencies are increasingly embracing open source software, some in an attempt to lower IT costs. And although many open source applications make sense for specific agency challenges, the idea that open source always equals cost savings is debatable. In fact, a recent Gartner report states that “through 2013, 50% of mainstream IT projects using open-source software (OSS) will not achieve cost savings over closed-source alternatives.” The report goes on to say that although organizations can save on license fees through open source, “they are often merely shifting costs from one area to another (for example, commercial operation support to internal employee support).”
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Building bridges at OSCON
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Posted by Tony Hey
Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research
Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak to many passionate members of the open source community at OSCON 2009 (short for ‘Open Source Convention’) in San Jose, Calif. While Microsoft was engaged in this event at many levels, the goal of my presentation was to shed light on some of the external research projects Microsoft Research is engaged in, since so much of this work involves collaborating with scientists and academic researchers throughout the world. Simply put, some challenges are too complex for one entity to tackle alone, and it’s clear we all need to come together in order to drive true innovation to address global -challenges confronting our health, knowledge and environment.
In my talk, I discussed the organic nature of Microsoft’s open collaboration with the external research community, and described how these programs often surface in response to research needs and the demands of continuing innovation. Recent examples of such collaborative efforts at Microsoft Research are open tools like Project Trident and the Ontology Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007. In both cases, we contributed our technology and innovation to support the widely shared goals of fueling scientific discovery and propelling research and education forward.
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Collaboration, Competition and IP in the Real World
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Posted by Horacio Gutierrez
Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel
In the last few days Microsoft has made a number of announcements that reflect the pragmatic approach the company takes on intellectual property rights and open source software.
- On July 20, Microsoft announced the release of 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community. The code, consisting of three Linux device drivers, was licensed under the GPLv2 license and submitted to the Linux kernel community for inclusion in the Linux tree.
- Similarly, on July 21, Microsoft announced the release of the Microsoft Live Services Plug-in to integrate Microsoft’s Live@edu services with the Moodle course management system. This plug-in is a free download specifically designed for Moodle, and was also licensed under the GPLv2 license.
- Earlier, on July 15th, Microsoft announced a patent agreement with Melco Group, maker of the Buffalo-branded devices, under which Melco’s customers receive patent covenants for their use of devices running Linux and related open source software, in exchange for the payment of royalties to Microsoft.
Some observers question how a company can contribute to open source projects while, at the same time, insisting on respect of its intellectual property rights by its competitors. In fact, these two things are not inconsistent, and striking a balance between them is one of the key things every commercial technology company must do in order to compete effectively in a mixed source world.
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Microsoft Develops Plug-in for Moodle to Aid Teachers, Students
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Posted by L. Michael Golden
Corporate Vice President, Education Products Group
As my colleagues and I talk to teachers, students and educational institutions about their use of information technology, we learn a lot about the applications with the greatest capacity to extend the abilities of teachers and schools to meet the needs of students in ways that are engaging, affordable, and personal.
One of these technologies is Moodle, a free, open-source, Web-based course management system that teachers use to create Web sites for their classes. Typical Moodle sites include class resources, homework assignments and quizzes. With nearly 30 million users in 207 countries, Moodle has clearly developed a loyal following among teachers and students.
At the same time, millions of teachers and students are also using live@edu, which provides collaboration and communication services to support their classroom work. By signing up for Live@edu, schools gain access to a comprehensive suite of services that includes Outlook Live for e-mail, Office Live Workspace for sharing documents and collaborating, Windows Live Messenger for instant messaging and Windows Live SkyDrive for 25 GB of online data storage space. Live@edu works across the full range of computing devices that students already use, giving them ubiquitous access to their coursework as well as powerful communications and collaboration tools.
This got us thinking: How can we integrate Live@edu services and Moodle applications, to make the learning and classroom experience even better?
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A Transparent Look at Office 2010
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Posted by Tom Robertson
Associate General Counsel
Last week was exciting for Microsoft as we hosted the 2009 Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC 09) in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. We made announcements for our company and our partners that will help create opportunities for the IT industry and benefit IT users around the globe.
In my last blog post I took the opportunity of the release of Microsoft Office 2007 service pack 2 to explain how openness and transparency are vital steps in a larger, industry-wide effort to make interoperability a reality. In this post I want to take a closer look at how our efforts to be transparent as to the technical interfaces of our products promote real-world interoperability.
On Monday July 13th, we announced that Office 2010 and related products are available for technical preview by invitation-only. While the products won’t be widely available until 2010, we have already published, in conjunction with the technical preview, thousands of pages of detailed technical specifications for the protocols used by Microsoft products to communicate with Office 2010. The documentation describes each protocol in detail, including technical requirements, limitations, dependencies, and other protocol behavior. Anyone in the world with a web browser is free to review it anytime they want without charge.
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