OStatic

By Aaron Huslage

Let's face it, open source software runs the Internet. Without it we wouldn't have basic services like DNS, or even the web server that's sending you this page. This isn't a new phenomenon. People have been writing and distributing OSS software since the Internet was born. I'm always amused when people characterize it as a new-fangled thing. That does a complete disservice to the hard work of folks all over the world, and the phenomenal software they have written.

SourceForge, which is behind several media properties including Slashdot, SourceForge.net, Linux.com and Freshmeat.net, is announcing today that it is including OpenID functionality in its SourceForge.net website. OpenID, of course, is an open, decentralized framework for handling digital identities and authentication. It eliminates the need for multiple usernames online. Many big companies, including Google, Yahoo, IBM, and Microsoft (OpenID can be used with Windows CardSpace) employ OpenID. SourceForge's move, and the extent to which it's embracing OpenID, makes it one of the largest implementers yet.

It's hard to believe, sometimes, how little faith the press has in the financial prowess of Microsoft. The company produced the person who became, for a long time, the richest person in the world? Accidental--nothing more, says the press. In the wake of today's news, the press is unanimous in saying that the move culminated a whirlwind, three-month courtship that it initiated on Jan. 31 Game over, in other words. Give me a break. As Om has pointed out, the game has just begun, and there are important things hanging in the balance for open source.

Word around the campfire is that Microsoft is starting to get a bit impatient with Yahoo! That's a good thing, from where I'm sitting.

A report from Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog (on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Web site) has the details, from an unnamed source.

Many online news sources continue to be completely dominated by discussion of Microsoft's hostile bid to acquire Yahoo! And no wonder: a deal of this magnitude has the potential to touch the lives of pretty much everyone living and working online. It's a rare web worker indeed who doesn't use something from one or another of those two companies in their daily lives.

While nearly all of the analysis of Microsoft's offer to acquire Yahoo! for close to $45 billion has centered on the Redmond giant's intent to compete with Google for online advertising dollars, swallowing Yahoo! would also plant Microsoft squarely in the middle of the open source software arena. Yahoo! is so firmly entrenched in open source software-from the server farms that its own site runs on, to its Zimbra division delivering open source apps, to the APIs that it offers to application developers-that Microsoft, as corporate parent, would have no choice but to shed much of its long-standing antipathy toward open source.