Topic: Q&A 2009: Microsoft engaging with Open source

[h.janssen]

Well, there is an interesting question

Working with PHP is just some of the stuff we do at the OSTC. But it seems that the PHP work is getting more exposure.

The OSTC (previously called the Open Source Software Lab) actually has been around for about 3 years. And for the last 2 1/2 or so years we have really started participating in a more direct way with Open Source.

Today for example we are platinum sponsors for the ASF.

But more concretely we invited the Mozilla foundation to come up to Redmond for a few days just before Vista was released to work with them on what Vista would bring. We did the same thing a year and a half ago with the Apache Software Foundation for Server 2008.

You also might be surprised to know that we have been working very closely with the Samba community. We host several machines in our labs that are used directly by the Samba community for interop testing. And I have an engineer on staff who ensures Samba is tested against 2003/2008/ 2008 R2/Vista and Windows 7.

But what is Microsoft expecting to gain from working with Open Source and Open Source Projects?

I can give you a long flowery answer that marketing would be excited about. But really what it comes down to is that the OSTC's mission is to Make Windows The Best choice Platform for Open Source
                 Communities
                 Development
                 Deployment

The approach we are taking at the OSTC is one of collaboration. We do not go to communities and say this is what we bring and need. Instead we go to communities and ask what can we do to assist in making your project run better on Windows.

And that has really been the genesis of our work in PHP. Making PHP on Windows the best PHP experience anywhere. And that work really has started with PHP 5.3. But more about that in a next post from me.

Our customers are asking for a better heterogeneous systems environment, and it helps the OS community to reach different customers.

Thanks,

Hank.

[ober]

Thanks Hank.  I think this question was asked most often by those of us "behind closed doors" that knew about your upcoming involvement here. 

I guess my only remaining question would be how Microsoft plans to attack the predominately Linux-based hosting companies that are out there today?  Surely you must be taking the approach that this would be more for local, intranet based installations versus large scale hosting since tapping that market would probably be a long, very hard task that would take several years to see any progress in.

Or is MS truly thinking they can break into that market?  I assume then that the monetary gain would be in licensing of Windows servers... and once again, I think that would be a hard battle to win since you can get many distros of linux for hosted servers for nothing or much less than most MS licenses.

Your thoughts on this?

[h.janssen]

Well, that is the fortunate part of me belonging to the engineering side of the house So the answer is going to be heavily engineering focus.

My knowledge of the marketing side around licensing and cost is something that I am only very limited involved in.

But is Microsoft interested in taking more share from Linux? Of course we are. I am not going to make any excuses there.

The OSTC approach and goals are a little differently here.

We want to make sure that the customer has the choice to run all Microsoft technologies and OS technologies on the same platform.

If the only thing we would do is make PHP at parity with other platforms than there would be limited interest by existing deployments to switch. New deployments will be more of an easier market to participate in.

But our work on PHP has taken on many aspects. For example, one of the things people that drives people to deploy on a specific platform is the value add that that platform brings.

So we have started adding value to PHP through for example proving a native SQL server driver. It is available now. But we are also going after some other things people have been asking us for. Active Directory connectivity, Exchange and office document formats for example.

It is the OSTC's intent to provide seamless connectivity for those Microsoft value add technologies to the PHP language.  So you can stick with the language and it's feature you love, and if you so choose add Microsoft technologies nativity from within PHP.

[ober]

I guess the follow-up question is whether or not those new libraries/drivers will be available without IIS or a windows server then?  Does PHP 5.3 contain these new libraries/drivers and can they be used with Apache?  That would be the icing on the cake because I cannot tell you how frustrated I was when using the MSSQL driver.

The other things like AD, Exchange, and Office interactivity would be fantastic as well.  I'm curious to know the progress and options you're adding with Office compatibility.  Is there a driver that will allow you to create office docs natively?  Right now I'm using a 3rd party class to create Excel documents and while it gets the job done, I'm sure a group like yours could do it a little more cleanly?

[h.janssen]

None of the work we have done in 5.3 or the SQL Server driver has any dependency with IIS. You can use any web server you want.  IIS on Windows does run much better than Apache on Windows though.

But all changes made are made in PHP itself. And anybody running PHP on Windows will get those benefits.

[ober]

Awesome.  Thanks for answering that.

Can you comment on the Office document capability?