Bergamot wrote:
> Toby A Inkster wrote:
>>
>> * Some companies fund open source projects because they
>> get great value from *using* the software (e.g. Apache is
>> funded in part by Yahoo
>
> I wonder what will change if MS buys yahoo?
If Yahoo are bought out by MS, it will be an unmitigated disaster for both
companies. I'd half like to see this deal go ahead just for the amusement
factor.
Yahoo are an almost entirely PHP and Apache on Linux and FreeBSD shop. It
clearly works for them, but to run services on an open source platform
would not fit in with Microsoft's corporate culture. If it were just PHP,
they'd probably cope with it -- Microsoft provides hosting for Phlanger, a
port of PHP to .NET, and their IIS team have been making efforts to make
the PHP+IIS combo work a lot better than it used to. FreeBSD they might
even be able to deal with. But Apache -- the main competitor to money-
spinner IIS; and Linux with its "evil viral" licence: not on your nelly!
So they'd certainly port them all over to Windows, IIS and .NET. Look at
what they did to Hotmail back in the 1990s [1]. That took them years to
sort out -- Windows NT and IIS simply weren't up to the task. (It was
ultimately to their advantage though. Feedback from the Hotmail team led
to many improvements in Windows 2000.) Yahoo's portfolio is far greater
than Hotmail though. They have the webmail service; YahooGroups (nee
eGroups.com); directory and search engine; news service; Flikr; blogs;
chat; games... The whole effort will be a year or two of the MSN and Yahoo
teams porting and integrating. No new features: just beta versions of
stuff the customers were sure they already had.
Whatsmore, after a merger like that there would be bound to be job cuts.
Any Yahoo employees with half a brain would be keeping an eye on the job
market. Google, eBay, Myspace and Amazon would have rich pickings in the
headhunting game. All the decent employees would find work elsewhere and
Microsoft would just end up with those people without the intelligence or
ambition to look for another job.
____
1.
http://www.securityoffice.net/mssecrets/hotmail.html
--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
[Geek of HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python/Apache/Linux]
[OS: Linux 2.6.17.14-mm-desktop-9mdvsmp, up 28 days, 15:47.]
Bottled Water
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/blog/2008/02/18/bottled-water/ >> Stay informed about: I need advice on how to set-up & run a "social network"..... 
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