Microsoft’s Craig Mundie is coming off almost as a statesman by comparison to his opponent in a debate this morning at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. Red Hat’s Michael Tiemann used his talk to bait the Redmond bear, while Mundie calmly explained Microsoft’s views of open source software.
In other words, we’re hearing nothing new this morning so far. Maybe the panel following the debate will be more useful.
UPDATE: It is. Clay Shirky just got Microsoft’s David Stutz to say that it will be possible to make a round-trip query/response using Hailstorm services without “phoning home” to Microsoft servers.
Stutz is one of the most interesting people at Microsoft. He’s unabashedly serving his corporate masters, but he’s full of independent thought. He tried to duck Shirky’s question but ultimately bowed to the audience’s demand to say yes or no.
Mundie just said that “Microsoft has always published the APIs” that let programmers write software to run on its operating systems and other products. Microsoft’s use of undocumented APIs has been a source of controversy in the past.
At a press-only session following the debate, Mundie and Tiemann discussed the issues in considerably more depth. It was striking to hear the degree to which Microsoft is backing off from its rhetoric about the GNU General Public License
We’re not against the GPL, Mundie said today. All Microsoft wants is for people to understand the issues, and then make informed choices.
I asked him to reconcile his reasonable approach with the scalding noise from his colleagues. Steve Ballmer has called a the GPL “cancer” on the body of technology. Mundie’s response, essentially, was to say that he’s spoken to Ballmer, who tends to speak heatedly in the heat of the moment.
In general, Microsoft has gotten the best of this debate today, I think. Few here trust the company any more than they did yesterday. But they are seeing, in Mundie and Stutz, a company that’s at least willing to discuss key issues. They may not like the answers — surely they do not — but they have to respect the engagement in a vital conversation.