OK, time to wave the white flag... I'm a former developer, and while it's been over six years since I've written a line a code, I couldn't resist spending an unhealthy amount of time today wading through the 30,000 new pages of APIs and interoperability documentation on the MSDN site.

In particular, I'm looking for solutions to our "Top 5" hitlist of interoperability challenges, as measured by customer feedback during last fall's customer forum series. My fading developer skills must be failing me, or call me an old fogey, because I'm simply not finding what I'm looking for. Rest assured I'm not trying to express skepticism in a back-handed way - Judging from the announcements and resulting coverage, I really believe this is there - or soon will be there. Perhaps it's staring me in the face, but am just not recognizing it. So, a little help, please? If you find it, please reply to this blog or email me directly!

Continue reading "Our Top 5 Microsoft Interop Issues: A Little Help, Please?"

Once again Microsoft is in the news - This time with a significant announcement regarding interoperability. The media response has been tremendous, and reactions from the open source community have been as varied as ever, ranging from giddy enthusiasm that this is a "major turnaround" to skepticism that this means anything or nothing more than tactical self-interest.

This blogger is taking the view of cautious optimism. While it doesn't represent a fundamental change in business for Microsoft, we see it as a pragmatic reaction to customer demand, and nonetheless resulting in a significant net positive for the industry.

Continue reading "Microsoft's Interop Announcement: A Practical Response to Market Reality"

A day has passed since the end of this year's Olliance Think Tank in Napa, California, and I've had a chance to reflect (and recover).










This is a unique event on the open source calendar, well-attended by numerous entrepreneurs, executives, industry experts and thought leaders in commercial open source. Key trends and issues facing the industry were discussed, plus ample opportunity for offline networking. Not to mention the all-important choice of venue (Napa Valley is the capital of the USA's wine industry) and numerous opportunities to partake in the local product, which helped dull the edges of the many Type A personalities in attendance!

There were several takeaways from this event, with the most significant being that it's no longer a matter of whether open source will succeed, but how. The was a pervasive sense of optimism and excitement at this event, permeating every presentation and offline conversation.
Continue reading "Olliance Think Tank 2008 - OSS Comes of Age"