Microsoft war against open source is over

Wednesday, 21 October 2009 11:13

For years, the battle between the open source movement and Microsoft bordered on religious warfare. The two sides fired increasingly aggressive shots at one another – from the software goliath's boss, Steve Ballmer, calling open source "a cancer", to the man behind Linux, Linus Torvalds, suggesting that he might "destroy Microsoft" without even trying.

It was a conflict that looked like it could continue for generations. But now, according to one leading voice, the arguments are settled – and the opposition posed by Bill Gates, Ballmer and their followers is untenable.

"If I look at it with some perspective, I think that they are fighting a rearguard action," says the investor, philanthropist and campaigner Mitch Kapor. "The battle is over."

He continues: "At the detailed level, there are a million issues to work out – but will open source kill software? Nobody's saying that."

That may come as news to some who have resisted the open source movement – as recently as last year, Gates claimed that the fundamentals of the open source philosophy meant that "nobody can ever improve the software" – but Kapor has more experience than most of those who have stepped into the fight.

Kapor made his name by co-founding the software company Lotus in the 1980s, which helped bring the IBM PC into businesses thanks to its 1-2-3 spreadsheet program.

Read more: The Guardian 21 Oct 2009