Clint Patterson from Microsoft:

The open-source development model has yet to demonstrate the ability to support profitable software businesses that can drive the coordinated research and testing necessary to sustain innovation. Many in the open-source software community have shifted to hybrid business models. They are making the same business decisions as any commercial software company in terms of what products and services to give away, what intellectual property to protect, how to generate revenue, and how to participate in the community.

How many times do I have to take a statement about open source made by some guy at Microsoft and explain its idiocy? I don’t know, how many times?

The open-source development model has yet to demonstrate the ability to support profitable software businesses that can drive the coordinated research and testing necessary to sustain innovation

First of all, show me a large scale, production web server running something other than Apache or Lighthttpd (and Linux, for that matter), and I will show you a minority — and, a mistake. I mean, seriously.

Second, people at Microsoft talk about innovation like it’s 1996. What is it that Microsoft is innovating? So far I’ve seen an “innovative” OS X knock-off, an “innovative” IPod knock-off, and an “innovative” Google-like search engine, with an “innovative” Google-like javascript-based web portal to boot!

A strategy meeting at Microsoft must be something like:

“OK guys, let’s take a look at what’s hot these days. Hmmm…. OK. Copy this, this and this. Now let’s get lunch.”

Many in the open-source software community have shifted to hybrid business models

Is the source open? If it’s not, it’s not open source. If it is, what are we even talking about then?

They are making the same business decisions as any commercial software company in terms of what products and services to give away, what intellectual property to protect, how to generate revenue, and how to participate in the community.

These companies are commercial companies. Comparing them to commercial companies in order to say that they are both the same is analogous to comparing an orange with an orange in order to declare that they are both orange.

Open source software packages have copyrights and licensing, and this is nothing new. How in 2007 one could see this as new I have no idea. But it’s not, and it hasn’t been for more than a decade.