Microsoft on Thursday took aim at the Linux operating system and other rival software that share their basic instruction codes with the public, saying such freely distributed "open source" software poses a threat to commercial intellectual property rights.
Craig Mundie, senior vice president of the world`s largest software company, blasted the open source philosophy as impractical for businesses like Microsoft in a major address at New York University, and pushed Microsoft`s own more limited "Shared Source" partnering approach.
"Fundamentally, the thing that informs our choice is this belief in protecting our intellectual property," Mundie said. "The really big difference is there`s not as much focus (in open source models)...that you have to make a business out of this."
Open source, with roots in scientific and academic information-sharing, is a software industry tradition through which source code -- the underlying instructions of a program -- is made freely available for use or modification by product developers. Copyright is used to prevent others from charging for such shared inventions.
The philosophy, which became a commercial phenomenon in the 1990s as a popular way of building software to manage Web sites, is seen as a major alternative to Microsoft`s careful guarding of its source code Windows as a trade secret.
In recent months, Microsoft executives have turned up the heat against the open source philosophy. On Thursday, Mundie introduced Shared Source as Microsoft`s rival strategy.
Microsoft gives developers access to its crown jewels, the Windows operating system source code, so they can develop new products or fix glitches. But the company retains ownership of the software code as its intellectual property.
Mundie`s speech, heralded as a major position statement, blasted the open source movement using more forceful language than the typically ambiguous, jargon-filled phrasings of software industry executives.
He described the open software movement as "flimsy," "flawed," jeopardising property rights and threatening to undermine the software industry, a key economic growth engine.
"We recognise that open source software (OSS) has some benefits such as the fostering of community, improved feedback... and debugging," Mundie said. "But there are significant drawbacks to OSS as well."
Open source software creates greater dangers of security risks, software instability and incompatibility and could force valuable corporate intellectual property into public hands, Mundie said.
Open source philosophy emerges as rival to Microsoft view
In recent years, open source development has captured the imagination of millions of programmers across the globe as a new way of working outside the orbit of Microsoft, which had previously dominated computer software design.
Spearheading the development of Linux, the best known of the open source software systems, were companies such as Red Hat, VA Linux and Caldera Systems.
Since 1999, IBM, the world`s biggest computer company, has thrown considerable financial backing behind open source software. Top computer and software makers such as Oracle have joined in.
By contrast, Microsoft has considered open source as a challenge to its way of doing business. The company identified it as a major threat to its business during the federal trial where it was found guilty last year of anti-trust violations.
"It appears to me that Microsoft is putting a general cloud of suspicion over open source software that is unfounded," said Bryan Sparks, chief executive of Lineo, a maker of open source Linux software embedded in a range of computer devices.
The Lindon, Utah-based company is building open source handheld computers, network routers and cable television converter boxes for global electronics customers including Sharp, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and Samsung.
"There are ways you can protect intellectual property with software drivers and proprietary extensions to Linux. Open source developers have found ways to create proprietary software mixed with open source software," Sparks said.
Open source threatens intellectual property - Microsoft
Mundie targeted the General Public Licence (GPL), a basic contract under which most open source software is distributed.
He likened the GPL, which rejects traditional copyright in favour of open sharing of any software design changes, to failed dot-com business models of the past.
"(Supporters of the GPL) ask software developers to give away for free the very thing they create that is of greatest value, in the hope that, somehow, they`ll make money selling something else," Mundie said.
Open source programmers typically rely on selling custom programming or consulting services rather than selling software licences, although open source advocates say that new hybrid approaches that protect commercial development are emerging.
Mundie said Microsoft has made its source code available since 1991, first to academic institutions, then to close hardware partners and more recently to major corporate customers. More than five million programmers now have access to Microsoft`s underlying code, he said.
Mundie said that Microsoft would be expanding its Shared Source effort to additional countries and to independent software companies in the coming months.
Brad Kuhn, vice president of the Free Software Foundation, the group behind the GPL, said Microsoft was trying to confuse the difference between commercial software and proprietary software controlled by one company.
Kuhn said Microsoft pays lip service to the open source philosophy in order to tap the energies of a wide network of programmers but uses those efforts to create software that it alone owns and controls.
"They are trying to trick the issue and change it," Kuhn said.
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