Opening up in self-interest of Google, Microsoft

Microsoft is launching an open-source foundation. Google is promising to keep user data portable. Both moves seem to cut against the financial self-interest of the two technology giants. Have the gods gone crazy, or are the business strategies of the industry's biggest players more subtle than "Embrace. Extend. Extinguish"?

With a steady adoption of open-source business and development strategies, Microsoft has gone from open-source hater to open-source embracer in just a couple of years:

Created its own open-source foundation, the CodePlex Foundation. Launched CodePlex, an open-source project-hosting site. Started actively contributing to outside open-source projects, including those of the Apache Software Foundation, … Read more

How to blow $3 million in taxpayer funds (UPDATED)

You read things like this and it makes you wonder why IT departments continue to throw away money on proprietary licenses why you bother paying taxes at all [See note below]. In this case, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) spent $3 million on a document management system from Documentum, and it has been a complete waste of money.

The PCAOB tries to blame itself for the waste, but the reality is that it's a combination of overpriced and overly complex software wrapped in a proprietary license, and an effort to force-feed square-peg technology onto round-peg people.

Open source could have dramatically reduced the PCAOB's risk:… Read more