Saturday, September 15, 2007 Microsoft to ‘inter-operate’ with open source developers
WITH the increasing number of Filipinos embracing open source technology, the world’s largest software company has decided to “inter-operate” with open source software (OSS) players.
“Our initiative is to cooperate and compete with them,” said Microsoft Philippines Inc. platform strategy manager Albert dela Cruz.
By cooperation, dela Cruz emphasized that Microsoft does not intend to compete with the open source community and the open source way of developing their software.
“We want to compete with the products of open source,” he said.
To show its willingness to collaborate with open source developers, dela Cruz said the company is working with Novell Inc. for technical cooperation in the establishment of an open source interoperabi-lity laboratory.
This is a big step, he said.
Novell Inc. is an Ame-rican software company specializing in network operating systems such as Novell NetWare and SUSE Linux, secure identity management products, and application integration and collaboration solutions.
“The number of users that are using OSS on top of Microsoft is growing,” said Microsoft Southern Philippines sales operation director Magtanggol Bawal in a press interview yesterday.
He said 70 percent to 80 percent of OSS runs on a Microsoft platform such as Windows XP.
In Internet cafés for example, Bawal said that while majority still utilize Microsoft Office due to user preference, some have tried operating Open Office together with Microsoft.
He expressed optimism about the company’s stand in the Philippine software market vis-à-vis the growing acceptance of OSS.
“We are not threatened by the OSS,” Bawal reiterated, saying the company has “grown tremendously” in terms of revenues and size as compared to other open source companies.
Because open source technology is free unlike those developed by Microsoft, whose source code is available under a copyright license, many people have started to use OSS in their computers. (MMM)
