MS & the Open Source Community?

Link: history.forward() - Port 25: The Open Source Community at Microsoft. The boys from Redmond have been quietly reaching out to the the Open Source Community for quite some time and now apparently they are doing it in a much more public way.

This is obviously a recognition by MS that open source is a force to be reckoned with and is here to stay. MS is changing its world view because events on the ground have forced them to. They are pragmatic. They are neither good nor evil. They are behaving as a rational monopolist would, despite the fact that their monopoly is "not what it use to be."

The same is true for Google. They are neither good nor evil. They will simply behave (as they should) like a rational monopolist. When companies possess this kind of market power they both influence, and are controlled by, the market.

But as we all know, this is not always the case. IBM missed the PC opportunity. Microsoft missed Search. Why? Because they were "out innovated" and because their existing monopolies got in the way. This will happen to Google as well, but not in Search. MS did not steal IBM's mainframe market, they invented an entirely new industry. Ditto Google.

What about Big Law? They are not likely to be unseated from their respective areas of market dominance. But if history is a good teacher, they are likely to be out innovated and likely as well to miss the transformation that is occurring in the practice of law. Their existing "monopolies" will get in the way.