Open Responsibility

Microsoft's Bill Hilf Reveals Its Open Source Strategy

The man in charge of Microsoft's strategy for living in harmony with Linux lays out the company's opportunities with open source and the open source business model.

By J. Nicholas Hoover
InformationWeek
November 16, 2007 06:01 AM

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InformationWeek: Are there any specific areas where you would see Microsoft placing things in an open source development environment as a way to further its own products or to better interoperate with things?

Hilf: When people buy commercial software, really what they're buying is a guarantee. You're buying a guarantee that what you have will perform, and has been tested and there's someone you can call up, and if things go really bad someone's liable if something doesn't work. You're buying this ecosystem of accountability. One of the challenges of open source and really the challenge with the open source business model is: it's hard to replicate that ecosystem of accountability and that guarantee.

Emphasis mine.

In adopting a "Blamers" mentality we have succeeded locking ourselves into our own prison. Instead of looking for a solution to a given problem we have taken up the practice of finding someone else to blame, someone on whom we can place the responsibility.

Open Source is the antithesis of "Blamers". Open Source people, as individuals or groups, who have accepted the full and nontransferable responsibility for their work. By accepting the tenets of Open Source these people are willing to place their work under the scrutiny of the most discriminating critics. In return their work is vetted and documented to a degree that insures the very highest quality.

When we as consumers use Open Source software we are accepting that same level of responsibility. This does not mean that I, as a consumer, am "out in the cold" should I experience any difficulty with an Open Source project. To the contrary, it is the community of developers _and_ critics that rise to my assistance when I have questions or issues. They do so willingly, on their own time, and most often at their own expense.

We need to move away from "Blamers" and the blame game mentality.