Can open source make Mike Lawrie a winner?

Mike Lawrie (right), the one-time IBM executive who tried and failed to turn around Siebel Systems (now part of Oracle) is back in management with a British outfit, Misys, and betting on open source for a turnaround.

The company is dumping some of its product businesses and concentrating on online services. But what may be most interesting may be how it's planning to offer free code.

Specifically, it will release open source code for harmonizing medical records and handling carbon trading.

No word on which license it will use for this, but its medical records product was already being pressured by OpenEMR, a GPL product.

Most of the word on Misys comes from a single Sunday Telegraph article. The current Misys Web site is terribly opaque.

If Misys wants to compete effectively in open source that will have to change fast.  Open source is more than free code, it's a transparent way of doing business.