[p2p-research] Google competes for the future; Microsoft, the past | The Open Road - CNET News

[Paul D. Fernhout]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10381775-16.html
"""
In both areas, open source is Google's weapon of choice, and it's one that 
Microsoft is going to have to figure out quickly if it wants to be a player 
on the Web. The Web is too big for Microsoft to control it, and the Web is 
overwhelmingly open source, as Lotus founder Mitch Kapor states:
     "The accomplishment of open source is that it is the back end of the 
Web, the invisible part, the part that you don't see as a user. All of the 
servers, pretty much, they run Linux as the operating system; they run 
Apache as the basic Web server on top of which everything else is built. The 
main languages out of which Web applications are built - whether it's Perl 
or Python or PHP or any of the other languages - those are all open source 
languages. So the infrastructure of the Web is open source ... the Web as we 
know it is completely dependent on open source."
   Kapor further suggests that Microsoft's war with open source is over, or 
should be over: open source has won. It's essential infrastructure now, and 
hence something that Microsoft needs to embrace, not fight. This isn't about 
open-source religion. It's about pragmatism. Pragmatism that Microsoft, like 
anyone else, can embrace.
"""
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/