Microsoft has confirmed that it’s seeking to acquire Yahoo! Some folks — you know, the open source crowd — will likely bash a proposed Microsoft-Yahoo combo. The VAR Guy, however, is willing to give Microsoft a chance to explain the proposed business combo. Here’s why.
First, a little background. Search engine giants like Google and Yahoo rely heavily on Linux, the LAMP stack and custom open source projects. And Microsoft has been trying to re-invent the LAMP stack with WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, and related tools), notes Mary Jo Foley’s Microsoft Watch blog.
The VAR Guy isn’t ready to bash a Microsoft-Yahoo combo. For all of Microsoft’s weak offerings (exhibit 1: Windows Vista), the software giant has also done a lot of good in the market. Lots of folks forget that Windows NT and SQL Server revolutionized server software pricing models in the 1990s, deeply undercutting the world of RISC-based servers running Unix and Oracle.
So for a moment, open source folks, let’s not pile on Microsoft. Give the company a chance to explain what it plans to do with Yahoo. The VAR Guy is particularly curious about how Zimbra — the open source email platform Yahoo acquired in September 2007 — will operate under Microsoft. The VAR Guy had mixed emotions when Yahoo purchased Zimbra.
Thousands of Web sites are going to try to advance the Microsoft-Yahoo story today. But The VAR Guy is going to sit back and relax on this one.
Kudos to the New York Post for breaking the story. Aggressive Web sites like TechCrunch tipped their hats to the Post this morning for writing the exclusive piece. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has since confirmed that the software giant wants to acquire Yahoo for nearly $50 billion.
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Actually, I’m considering options for my Flickr account should this happen. I don’t see Microsoft acquiring Yahoo to be a good thing for anyone but some stockholders. In the long run, I see it as something that will diminish the value of all that is Yahoo.
Personally, I see this as the end of my yahoo mail account also. I will begin to use my gmail account more often and besides, the gmail interface is so much faster than the latest yahoo beta mail interface.
I thought that Yahoo used BAMP (BSD, Apache, MySQL, and Perl/PHP/Python) not LAMP.
Dinosaurs mating (merging.) Evolution (open source and Google) has past them by. This merger will be as successful as Time Warner and AOL. The wasted investment of MSN can be buried in Yahoo.
Microsoft refuses to see the end of the large-scale proprietary software business model while the rest of the industry turns to a service/consulting business model.
Google remains the top search site because it is the top search site. Until a distributed search engine is developed and adopted by hundreds of thousands (similar to peer-to-peer file sharing), Google will remain on top. And the motivation for a peer-to-peer search engine will be the freedom from (or lack of) the commercial aspects (ads, collection of user data, etc.) that Google must continue to develop to satisfy its shareholders.
#3 dB: Fair point on BAMP vs. LAMP. I will get The VAR Guy to apologize. #4 John Z: Nice analogy with Time Warner-AOL.
The main things that concern me are Zimbra which would probably be shut down and a shining example of a LAMP variant (yes its BSD but I think LAMP now refers to the general idea or combination) being lost. I’m wondering if MS would over time move the Yahoo operations onto a .Net platform and begin spewing performance gain talk whether there was one or not.
This may be very very bad for Zimbra. Zimbra is a successful MS Exchange replacement and I cannot see any reason for Microsoft to keep this train running. I fear this is the end of the line for Zimbra. I hope I am wrong. I truly hope I am wrong.
Zimbra falling under the control of Microsoft is a VERY VERY bad thing. (Zimbra falling under the control of Yahoo is a bad thing too)
However if this does happen and Microsoft kills Zimbra perhaps the Opensource Community will start to work more on the Bongo project. (Formerly Hula Project.) http://bongo-project.org That *could* be a replacement for Zimbra and it’s freely open source.
The Zimbra mess shows the importance of the license open source is developed under. What did the developer think when they read the Yahoo! Public License (YPL). Maybe they did not read it, do you think?
Zimbra. What would be really interesting would be to see a fork of Zimbra compete against the proprietary development model
Cannot fork it. The ZPL and now the YPL prevents that. This is not true open-source. This badgeware. SugarCRM suffered from this problem also but now the are GPL3 so their customers are safe in this scenario. I don’t even think the Zimbra people can fork it even if they wanted to because the logo (which you must leave on *every page*) is trademarked and now MS will own this trademark. It seems they may have shot themselves in the foot with this badgeware license. Badgeware does not protect the customer from buyouts it seems.
Here is something we all can do. This website is trying to get the word out.
http://www.freezimbranow.org/
There is also an online petition at : http://www.PetitionOnline.com/zimbra01/petition.html
Please go here to support zimbra and protect it from Microsoft
[...] worry the email platform will suffer harm – or even death – at the hands of Microsoft. A series of blog reader comments posted on TheVARguy.com earlier today express fear, uncertainty and doubt about Zimbra’s future under potential Microsoft [...]