OSNews > Thread > "RE: Make OSS work with Active Directory? " by tomcat

MS' Open-Source Strategy: a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 1st Feb 2008 20:39 UTC, submitted by WillM

"Does Microsoft have an open-source strategy - beyond finding new ways to thwart Linux and other non-proprietary wares? Sam Ramji, Microsoft's Director of Platform Technology Strategy and the company's Open Source Software Lab, says it does. I met with Ramji last week when he was passing through New York on his way to Europe, and had a chance to ask him to provide a succinct definition of what Microsoft means when it refers to its own 'open-source strategy'."

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RE: Make OSS work with Active Directory?

by tomcat on Sat 2nd Feb 2008 01:30 UTC in reply to "Make OSS work with Active Directory? "

Member since:
2006-01-06

How about making Samba or something else work seemlessly with Active Directory, instead of having to modify the schema to fit some odd configuration of LDAP? That means working with OSS developers such the Samba team to get stuff working right. In other words, I'll believe it when I see it, but I won't hold my breath.

I think that MS would do that, if it weren't for the fact that most of the people trying to "work seamlessly with Active Directory" are actually trying to replace it -- not interoperate. So, seriously, why would MS work to eliminate the usefulness of its own product?

If MS was doing this for customers' benefit, they'd have made something like this work a long time ago. As it stands now, they clearly only care about getting a slice of the pie for money's sake, not for the customers' benefit. They're a business, that's fine. But please don't pass it off as you're being the customer's friend and doing them a favor.

Substitute "competitor" for every occurrence of "customer" in your statement. Because that's what we're talking about here, not the customer. MS isn't in the business of making its own products useless. The fact that others can't easily replicate what they do is primarily what gives them value. Anybody who thinks that they're going to give away that advantage to competitors is high -- or delusional.

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