Patrick Logan notices that Microsoft still doesn't get Open Source:

Ray Ozzie speaks, and he speaks about Open Source Software. I don't even know what to quote from his statement. They're just not in the right ballpark. The only thing Ozzie communicates here is that he just does not understand the open source community, which _is_ the community for building out the internets.

I have some familiarity with what Ozzie's problem is. Like MS, Cincom is an intellectual property company that has always made its money from licensing software. The Smalltalk community, strong though it is, has always been fractured across multiple non-interoperable dialects. So yes - I understand the problem Ozzie sees, because his is a much, much larger version of what we see.

The similarity ends there, though. Look at how we are responding to this sea change. Our major change going forward is support for Seaside (open source, cross Smalltalk) and GLORP (open source, cross Smalltalk). Our take is that we can continue to make money in much the same way we have, but only if we can add value around open software that enables complete portability of applications between Cincom Smalltalk and other Smalltalks. We believe that you'll get better support and better performance using Seaside on Cincom Smalltalk, but we aren't trying to lock you down to that - unlike the past, your UI level work and your database level connectivity will all be via fully open and portable code. We simply believe that you'll happily choose Cincom Smalltalk on the merits.

Going back to MS, examine Ozzie's comments on open - it's clear that he means "open" in the same way that Unix vendors meant "open systems" back in the 80's. You can see how well that worked out for them :)

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