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Just a reminder, these posts are not legal advice. This site is the personal blog of Mark Radcliffe and the opinions expressed are those of Mark Radcliffe and not those of his clients, DLA Piper or the clients of DLA Piper.

About Me:

Mark Radcliffe

I earned a B.S. in Chemistry magna cum laude from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. I have been practicing law in Silicon Valley for over 25 years and am now a senior partner at DLA Piper. DLA Piper is a new global law firm formed in 2005 from the merger of three law firms. The firm now has 3600 lawyers in 25 countries and 65 cities. My practice is a mix of corporate securities and intellectual property. I work with many startups as well as large global companies. I have had the opportunity to work with companies in many industries, ranging from semiconductor to digital media to open source. I am the General Counsel, pro bono, of the Open Source Initiative and I ran the "Users" committee reviewing the GPLv3 draft.

Microsoft’s Operating System Strategy and Open Source

19/10/08

The question of how Microsoft will respond to competition with  open source software is beginning to be answered. I have already discussed the views of Stanford and Harvard Business School professors in an earlier post http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=74.  

Jean Louis Gasse, a smart entrepeneur and technologist who is now a venture capitalist, suggests that Microsoft is working on a comprehensive strategy for the threat to its Windows operating system which includes responses in all three areas of risk: servers, mobile and desktop.  http://www.mondaynote.com/?p=1022. As he describes it:

Microsoft’s Live services are but a rehearsal for a much bigger act, Microsoft’s Cloud OS, sometimes called Strata. And, based on Microsoft’s own Cloud services, we’ll see a Danger-based smartphone, as proprietary as the Xbox and the iPod competitor Zune.  Put another way, Microsoft’s future business model will borrow from Apple and Google, it will have two components: proprietary devices and “universal” Cloud services

I recommend that companies using open source stay alert for the next month as this new strategy rolls out.

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