Pressing Questions of the Information Age: 27 Jan 2005
Open Source Commercial Strategies
Jason Matusow
Microsoft Shared Source Initiative, Director
Slides from the Presentation
Rapporteur's report
On January 27, 2005, Jason Matusow, Director of the Microsoft Shared Source Initiative spoke to 41 students and faculty members of the University of Washington on commercial strategies for open source software with a focus on Microsoft's programs to share source code. Participants came from Business, Law, Economics, the Information School, Computer Science, and Communication among other departments.
Open source software is software whose code is made more freely available for others to use than proprietary software's. This is interesting because this alternative model of software development-allowing many developers to build software collaboratively by sharing code-has come to challenge some of the dominant commercial software businesses who protect their intellectual property more vigorously. In the last few years this alternative model for software production has attracted people looking to make money off of it: for example, by selling services to support the software or by selling software that runs on open source platforms. In a parallel trend, software businesses like Microsoft have begun to make more of their source code available. Matusow's talk looked at these trends.
He began with a look at the business climate for software development and moved into a discussion of why making software source code available may be a good idea: governments believe openness increases trust; developers like more access to technology; consumers perceive "free" software to be a good idea; and academics have a long history of enjoying access to source code.
He turned the discussion to focus on the commercialization of open source software and noted that the most significant trend in open source software over the last 4 years is the investment by corporations in every major open source project. Corporate developers are doing most of the work of developing open source software: For Linux, an open source operating system, 10 of the top 12 developers who contribute the most to the software are commercial developers. As a result of this corporate investment in open source, consumers have better technology and services, and more choices. The trade-off here is that that commercialization of open source software decreases openness as corporations such as Hewlett Packard, RedHat and SAP assert some limitations on how the open source software they invest in can be modified.
Microsoft has learned a few lessons from open source, Matusow said, notably that source code transparency increases trust in the software and that increased community involvement in software development is a plus. Accordingly, Microsoft is sharing source code globally, with 17 offerings attracting 1,500,000 developers in 60 countries. Twelve of these 17 programs give modification and distribution rights.
The audience raised questions on Matusow's talk, some of which sparked interdisciplinary discussion. Notably, one audience member asked how easy it would be for a top developer trained to develop for Windows to switch to develop for the Linux platform. An audience member from computer science responded that it would be a matter of learning new libraries, not that difficult to do.
For more detail on Matusow's presentation, please see his slides .
Jason Matusow's Bio
Jason Matusow is the Director of the Shared Source Initiative at Microsoft Corp. He is responsible for the business strategy and implementation of Microsoft's global source licensing initiative. Under his direction, Shared Source has grown to cover a broad spectrum of Microsoft technologies reaching more than 1.5 million participants around the world. Matusow continues to work closely with the core Microsoft product teams to determine the optimal strategy for their intellectual property assets.
Matusow consults with governments, corporations, academics, and analysts globally on open source software strategy and the business implications of software intellectual property issues. He is also the primary Microsoft spokesman on source licensing issues.
He is a frequent speaker at corporate and academic open source conferences and symposia. Matusow has presented repeatedly for the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for Internet & Society iLaw program as well as the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Open Source Business Conference, Münchner Kreis Open Source, and for prestigious organizations such as Cambridge University, Wharton School of Business, NATO, U.S. Government CIO Council, and many others.
Since joining Microsoft in 1995, Matusow has worked in a variety of positions. He has been in the software industry for 14 years. Before joining Microsoft, he founded his own PC and networking business. Matusow is a graduate of Boston University. |
