1. The first is that, in spite of the messaging from Microsoft corporate and resulting media firestorm, the Open Source Software Lab (OSSL) has started to roll out its program to help open source ISVs’ products run better on Windows, known as the “NXT” program. This is a pretty standard ISV program, including developer and architectural support, certification, marketing support, and availability to Microsoft’s channel partners. Led by Sam Ramji, this group’s mission is to increase the portfolio of open source offerings that run well on Windows.

I know Sam pretty well from a prior life, and know him to be as forthright, “what you see is what you get” leader as anybody in the industry. At the NXT’s launch event on Monday, Sam went out of his way to be as open and honest as he could about the motivations behind this program and fielded questions about the patent issues and resulting media attention. One of them was the “what about customer value” question posed in my previous blog posting, and we got a satisfactory answer: The program is designed to deliver better value to customers that choose to run open source applications on Windows, and includes all the pieces (developer support, co-marketing, and channel enablement) to make this practically achievable.

While Sam was not empowered to single-handedly resolve these issues himself, his open and collaborative style won him fans from the invited ISV’s. Indeed, many of the ISV’s present (my employer SpikeSource included) signed up for the NXT program at the end of the event. This speaks volumes to a small group’s ability to earn the trust of the open vendor community in spite of difficult circumstances, and without the full support of its corporate parent. The NXT program is a worthy effort - Interoperability with legacy proprietary environments is important to customers, as long as it's done in a spirit of transparency and facilitates customer choice, as opposed to vendor lock-in. We sensed that the NXT program shares this goal, and we hope that the resulting partnerships will continue in a collaborative spirit and result in significant value being delivered to mutual customers.


2. The second is that a lot of smart people in the industry have started focusing on the one area of common ground that the open source community shares with Microsoft: Our patent system, at least as it relates to software, is broken. Designed during a by-gone, more “closed” era, and perhaps still appropriate in some high-fixed-cost businesses (pharma comes to mind), the current patent system creates artificially high barriers to entry for software companies that want to be “open”. Indeed, many open companies have found they can build stronger products, and thus a stronger competitive position in the marketplace, by fostering and leveraging a vibrant community, than by putting an artificial monopoly wrapper around the limited innovative ability of a small group of people. Moreover, most software companies get patents for purely defensive reasons, simply to defend against the few “trolls” who disrupt through litigation and add zero value to the industry, and this adds pure cost to these companies’ income statements. The expense of doing searches and hiring patent lawyers is prohibitive for many smaller companies. This is truly unfortunate, because simultaneous to the rise of open source is an increasingly “long tail” of companies that develop and deliver software around the world, many of whom don’t have the means to do patent searches, hire patent lawyers, or even know what a patent is (e.g. emerging markets with no patent laws). That these small companies even exist (some as small as two guys on a farm – no kidding!) is a testament to the power of the Web and of open communities to empower a good idea, no matter how small the organization behind it. But our broken software patent law system is making it very difficult for them to do business in the USA – still the largest software market in the world.

We sincerely hope that this attention will result in patent reforms and legislation within the United States, and subsequently lead by example throughout the world. The European Commission has already weighed in on this, by simply refusing to grant any more software patents. And key industry influencers such as Mark Shuttleworth have started to weigh in as well, highlighting that our broken patent system, not Microsoft, represents the real threat to our industry. Let’s see if our elected officials are taking notice.

We also sincerely hope that the resolution of this issue will be done in an open and collaborative fashion, involving experts, thought leaders and innovators throughout the community. We should start with honest and open dialog about how to avoid infringing existing patents (as long as the current patent laws are on the books, let’s do the best we can to abide by them), plus dialog regarding what a better software patent/copyright system would look like. What won’t work is what Microsoft Corporate has been doing. “We have patents that are being infringed, but we won’t tell you which patents, how they’re being infringed, or what we will do about it.” This is about as “closed” as one can get. I feel for the Microsoft interoperability lab- As long as they are responsible to a larger organization that behaves in such a closed manner, it will be difficult for them to execute against goals that depend on the participation of the open vendor community. Demonstrably working in a more open manner, or delegating ownership of this issue to the more “open”-minded interop lab, would be significant steps in the right direction.