What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

Microsoft provided the desktop operating system for the first PC in my childhood middle-class American home. The year was 1992. This thing came with DOS 5.0 with Windows 3.0, no word processor, and a trial for a faux internet online provider called “Prodigy. ” Later we installed upgraded to DOS 6.2 with Windows 3.11, installed Microsoft Works, and signed up for a real ISP who made it possible to browse the internet through Mosaic after Trumpet Winsock negotiated. Wow, did I ever love this machine and the Microsoft products on it. This was the configuration of this system when I finally retired it after saving up several Best Buy Pre-geeksquad-geeksquad paychecks in 1998 to buy a system with Windows 98, Word Perfect, and Netscape. Disappointed with Microsoft’s distancing itself from the command line, I missed the days of DOS. Also back in those days, Microsoft was making things difficult for Netscape beause Microsoft did not like the fact that Netscape had majority market share in 1998, not Internet Explorer. A multi-year lawsuit ensued. Microsoft continued to litigate to death Netscape yet the suit carried over into the company who bought Netscape: AOL. The proceeds of this lawsuit, going to AOL. Microsoft paid out $750 million to AOL and 5 years worth of litigation costs to buy themselves majority market share. With some of their judgment, AOL set aside 2 million to setup the Mozilla Foundation to own the open source the technology behind Netscape while checking out of the browser scene in 2003. This 2 million of Microsoft money turned into a thriving open source non-profit responsible for Firefox, Thunderbird, and other projects for using the internet.

I tell you this story behind Firefox because I thought the Mozilla Foundation was the only time that Microsoft’s money would go to fund a non-profit. I was wrong.

Sam Ramji of Microsoft was the spokesman to the open source community from within the Microsoft corporate veil. He left.

Mr. Ramji is now the interuim President of Codeplex Foundation, a non-profit “goal of increasing participation in open source community projects.” It does not look like this is a case of a Microsoft employee bailing due to cultural dissatisfaction, as “Initial funding for the Foundation comes from Microsoft Corporation.”

It’s too early to say what this foundation will actually do, but Novell’s Miguel de Icaza is in. While BoycottNovell has plenty of bitter things to say about this, I am going a more positive direction.

What if Microsoft sees the writing on the wall? What if they have decided they can’t compete with an entire world of open source developers? What if the next Microsoft operating system after 7 is open source? What if it has a Linux kernel?

Microsoft will not have majority market share June 30, 2011.