Microsoft joins the race to open source IT

Anyone questioning the market power of the open source idea should have those doubts erased by today's news from Redmond. (C|Net's own Martin Lamonica took the picture. Nice, huh?)

The launch of Microsoft Silverlight made Big Green seem like a cross between Google and Sun Microsystems. They could have replaced Ray Ozzie with a shaven Richard Stallman and you would hardly know the difference.

Of course the devil is in the details, and Microsoft is nothing without the details. Or, as Anthony Bourdain says, "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter? I can!"

• This is me-too code, an Adobe Flash substitute.
• The whole aim here is to boost .Net, which is Microsoft-proprietary.
• It's all subject to something called Windows Live Platform Terms of Use.
• The actual business models and licensing models were not described at the event but "there will be sound boundaries."

Microsoft is getting into open source just as the race is on to get to the bottom of the open source incline, which is the FOSS-inspired GPL. In other words, a clean-shaven Stallman would have been more believable. But just a little.