The Sikh Geek

What? The Conservatives are going all Open Source on us. The Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, is reported as saying they will “create a level playing field” for open source software and that they could save a heap of money on the Government IT bill. It’s so simple isn’t it? The Register has some more detail and apparently the Open Source guru advising the Tories wouldn’t talk on record although I’m intrigued who it might be? It’s not me! Oh, apparently “Microsoft is a valued employer in the UK” according to George!

Here’s my prediction, Microsoft will go Open Source! You heard it here first, I think? I don’t know when but there are signs. They might not call it Open Source, they might call it Shared Source or something else. What Vista showed was that kind of development is hard, really hard! There were ruptures that people were not happy with the development processes and the management processes. They got there in the end but if I was Microsoft, I’d be asking myself why do we need so many developers working in this way? They might well be asking themselves this?