Microsoft Planning to Buy Open Source Companies?

mjasay writes "At the Web 2.0 Summit, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted that Microsoft 'will do some buying of companies that are built around open-source products,' suggesting that to avoid open-source companies would 'take us out of the acquisition market quite dramatically.' Ballmer has apparently come a long way since dubbing Linux a 'cancer.' The real question, however, is which open-source companies make sense within the Microsoft product portfolio, both from a technology and philosophy perspective. Novell? 37Signals? Jive? SugarCRM? And, equally importantly, which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?"

Through Money tinted glasses

"which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?" ALL OF THEM.

GPLv3

"which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?" ALL OF THEM.

Any that have tech they want, but are at risk of moving to GPLv3, I'd say.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

Absolutely! They could even sell their copyrights to Microsoft, and continue development on an open-source fork if they wanted. Heck, Microsoft might even decide to leave the application open source. I think it would all prove to be a very interesting experiment, to see if buying the company was really good for Microsoft, and to see if the community continued development of the product, and which ways the forks went. Quite interesting!

Also note that this isn't really a "threat" to the community because large-scale OSS projects have copyrights owned by a myriad of people, so they really can't be sold. It only applies to companies that develop completely in-house, or require contributors to sign-away their copyrights.

Related note: I work for a company that uses SugarCRM internally, and has modified it (very slightly) for our purposes. SugarCRM would become useless if we didn't have the source.

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They are under no obligation to link to the modifications as the application is used INTERNALLY.

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"ALL OF THEM."

Agreed. Business is business. Just because M$ owns an OS based company doesn't make the code closed.

The bigger issue is if M$ ends up buying all the cards in the game, and starts to sprinkle proprietary code into the OS code what happens to t

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

Both Novel and RedHat are publicly traded companies, which means by law they hold their investor's interests above all else. Last time I checked, you could buy pretty much anything from investors at the right price. Microsoft buying Novel and RedHat would cause less of a riot than when Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal.

Novel's market cap: $2B
Red Hat's market cap: $4B
Microsoft's market cap: $292B

Microsoft could easily buy the two largest open-source companies on the planet without denting their reserves. If Microsoft ever suspects Linux is a significant threat, they'll just buy out the largest players. Let's face it... that's how #1 companies remain #1.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

Only problem with your theory is that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. There would be an amazing number of regulatory hurdles it would have to jump through even to think about buying a company that makes a competing OS.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

While normally I'd agree with you, I'll risk more "flamebait" mods and predict that the Bush administration would be all for Microsoft's acquisitions. We split up AT&T, yet there were no major hurdles placed against AT&T re-merging. AT&T just bought both my cellular and home phone companies (Cingular and Bell South). They even provide my DSL. I keep my Sprint long-distance as a protest, but 90% of my money now goes to AT&T, half of it without a single reasonable competitor (my land-line). And what about Murdoch buying the Wall Street Journal? Big Business is the current administration's base.

Re:Through Money tinted glasses

Microsoft could easily buy the two largest open-source companies on the planet without denting their reserves. If Microsoft ever suspects Linux is a significant threat, they'll just buy out the largest players. Let's face it... that's how #1^H^Hmonopolies companies remain #1^H^Hmonopolies.

FTFY.

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Both Novel and RedHat are publicly traded companies, which means by law they hold their investor's interests above all else.

False. Completely false, but often misconstrued as the truth wrt public companies.

The truth is that companies must adhere to their

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Who cares. If the product was OSS and GPL or BSD licensed. the OSS community can always fork it and continue on unhindered.

That is the incredible power of OSS. you cant make it go away, you cant take it from the people.

Even if you make it illegal, it's

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Careful. That's what software patents are for.

Luckily, what will happen if MS buys RH and starts forcing people to pay for their patents is that they will discover US patent law extends very little beyond its borders.

As I said before, it's sad the US tech

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One word: SysInternals.

They were open source, and they sold up to MS. Now their code is being slowly neutered. In another year or two their really useful utilities (FileMon, RegMon, et al) will either be history or blind to accesses to 'sensitive' information.

The /. Borg icon is right on the money...

First of all they were never truly open source. They released the source code to their command line apps, but not the cool gui ones. Thats not to say the source code wasn't useful, but it was more of a learning tool than anything, and they were not foste

Well..

Sounds familier to me... http://imdb.com/title/tt0218817/ [imdb.com]

Microsoft SuSE?

And, equally importantly, which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?

Novell has already sold their soul and they're still staring people down. Guess this should be taken as an announcement that we'll soon be dealing with Microsoft SuSE.

Re:Microsoft SuSE?

Keep in mind, Novell sales are up 250% [computerworld.com] since their deal with Microsoft. Their customers don't exactly seem to mind.

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Neah...

Does not compute. Neither financially, nor strategically.

Whatever people say about MSFT it actually has a very good M&A group. If we discount one stupid affair in France it has a nearly spotless record. It has to be in a company that does not in

loyality

What i want to know is, will they change the license of the software after purchase?

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What i want to know is, will they change the license of the software after purchase?

Well, sure, most probably: it's what Microsoft Does(tm). However, it won't change anything for versions previously released under real open-source licenses. It's called a "

Re:loyality - doesn't matter

What does Microsoft care about changing the license? Do you not realize that first and foremost, Microsoft is likely to just terminate the project?

And I have to wonder how anybody on /. could even give another option a moments notice. Microsoft exists because of Windows and anything they touch gets destroyed if it does not work ONLY with Windows. That's in 20 years of history folks. When Java was knocking on Microsofts door they responded by purchasing promising Java based companies and closing them down. Netscape got the same treatment. Why would anybody not think this was their plan for open source companies they purchased since most open source projects work on more than Windows and that is a threat to Windows? The top level at Microsoft look at everything as a threat first since Microsoft exists because Windows exists and without Windows, they are history.

And the sad thing is that Steve Balmer was the one saying this yet nobody in half the posts mentioned them just terminating the project. WTF?

LoB

Clippy

It looks like you're planning an acquisition...

Would you like help?

* Crush the life and soul out of the idea and shelve it.
* Use your new acquisition's IP to bludgeon the competition.
* Add bloatware to Vista.

Be realistic..

which companies could look their communities in the eye after selling to Microsoft?

Methinks the founders will be too busy cruising around on their shiny new megayachts to worry about such things.. and why not?

Re:Be realistic..

Methinks the founders will be too busy cruising around on their shiny new megayachts to worry about such things.. and why not?

And why not?
Because everyone knows that submarines are the new megayacht.

If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.

This is an absolutely textbook way of getting rid of competition - buy it and either assimilate their product into your own or simply close it down.

Microsoft aren't bothered about small projects which don't attract much attention. Nor are they particularly bothered about large projects, provided there isn't any serious commercial backing to them.

They're bothered about commercially backed projects where there is the potential to offer significant competition. Their spouting about how "you won't get any real support" (which is probably about their only reasonably sensible piece of FUD) only works when there aren't many commercially backed solutions based on open source software. If I worked for someone like KnowledgeTree or SugarCRM right now I'd be slightly nervous.

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They can however wreck some havoc on medium sized projects with corporate backing. Then again if there is corporate backing already what stops those corporates from forking?

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. In many fields, there aren't a

Stumbling block

Apparently they're really upset that Linux won't sell to them...

Ballmer hasn't changed, buying companies to EOL

If msft buys any OSS companies, it will probably be just to kill the competition. Remember Foxpro?

Probably buy and extinguish.

The only reason i could think of is to buy some companies and extinguish them.

Hey, the Borg Gates image fits!

"You will be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."

This could be funny...

Well, here we go, buying up this open-source company to kill competition. What do you mean our users "forked" our product? What do you mean the staff we just layed off just made a new company to support this fork? What did we pay umpteen gazillion dollars for?

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Now, that may be the key! Why do you think they fear OSS so much? It renders the buy-out strategy useless.

Wait, wait, wait...

Microsoft may be many things, but stupid is not one of them. I would bet substaintal sums of money that the staff will have signed non-competes keeping them from working on any non-MS fork (and maybe any other OSS as well). Actually, umpteen gazillion do

Unintended Consequences

Geek to suit: "Hey look, Microsoft are now *really* getting scared by open source stuff! They want to throw *real money* at it!"

Also, people might now start investing in open source projects in the hope of getting a slice of that MS cash a few years down the line. This looks like a Good Thing.

Aaaaaaand, we developers will be dropping

anything the company that was bought by microsoft was doing. No offense, it is an issue of trust. Microsoft screwed so many partners and non partners in the past. We cant just put that much effort on our spare time into things that can be sent to hell by microsoft in a given point in time.

After patent trolls

the OSS "buy-me" trolls?

1. fork the most recent open release of a recently MS bought out OSS project.
2. improve and offer support for it.
3. Now MS either has to improve its own branch or buy you out too (which is the 3b. Profit!!! part)

I mean, seriously, isn't Microsoft going to prove money can be made with OSS?

surely this is a non starter,,,

..any open source project "team" they buy can will be pointless as if there is enough support the last version will be forked by the community if there is a perceived need. I mean, call me simplistic but isn't that the main strength of open sourced project

Pre-empt Google

This sounds more like he's planning to pre-empt Google from buying those companies. Buy-and-kill doesn't work with open source projects, as the source is already out there and anyone can start another company based on the same code.

The on to get!

Get Red Hat!!!

37Signals!

Has to be 37Signals [37signals.com]:

We believe most software is too complex. Too many features, too many buttons, too much confusion. We build easy to use web-based products with elegant interfaces and thoughtful features. We're focused on executing on the basics beautifully.

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Too many buttons [37signals.com], indeed.

It'll be a cold day in hell before they sell that company to MS.

Hahaha....

SugarCRM?

Hahahaha... hahahaha.. Jesus, you can't make this stuff up. Thanks, Slashdot!

No..., Microsoft isn't after SugarCRM, a PHP CRM system.

It's not after Novell either, since this would undermine their Windows brand. You probably understand that sudden

New MS Slogan...

"If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em!"

Great American Streetcar Scandal; 1936-50

This is not a new strategy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy [wikipedia.org]

Vivendi Universal bought-up mp3.com and bulldozed it, Microsoft bought-up RAV AntiVirus and buried it. Now, M$ will probably do the same with these others; buy-up the businesses and turn them into parking lots.

Most likely OSS companies with patents

Instead of buying OSS companies to kill them off, most likely Microsoft would be looking for OSS companies with patents that have been used by other OSS projects, particularly Linux. Once Microsoft owns the company, it can enforce the patent. Forking won't help with a patent violation, particularly if the patent is question is in use by other projects.

thank you Microsoft!

This is great news. Microsoft will give hundreds of millions of dollars to the founders of open source companies, and the software itself will remain open source. This kind of monetary reward can only encourage the development of more open source software. Thank You Microsoft!

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I think you have one too many steps in your dream. Shave off that last one, and your dream would be more in line with reality.

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"Microsoft" est-elle une firme française?

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The beautiful thing about the GPL and similar licenses is that you cannot Shut Them Down. Imagine, just for once, that all the code in the whole Linux kernel belonged to Linus (i.e. all contributers would've signed over their copyright or, where not permit

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The beautiful thing about the GPL and similar licenses is that you cannot Shut Them Down. Imagine, just for once, that all the code in the whole Linux kernel belonged to Linus (i.e. all contributers would've signed over their copyright or, where not permi

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"They cannot compete effectively with open source so they are going to buy as many open source companies as they can and Shut Them Down"

The beauty is in imagining how much of the money they pay for such companies will get funneled back into FOSS projects.