Stories by: Galen Gruman

When Microsoft announced on Thursday that it was changing its business practices to be more open -- specifically to release documentation on its APIs and protocols -- many people reacted with disbelief. The European Commission, which has battled Microsoft for a decade over anticompetitiveness, said in very blunt terms that it didn't believe Microsoft was sincere. After all, Microsoft has made the "open" promise before but never delivered.

The "Save XP" petition asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available indefinitely, not end most sales on June 30 as currently planned, has prompted many readers to suggest that maybe the best answer for those who don't like Vista is to switch to another operating system completely.

Early adopters of open source blazed the trail for enterprise users of this new software model, even though they didn't know where the journey might lead. Some of the territories they pioneered -- such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl -- are now well established. But in other areas, open source is only beginning to make inroads: CRM, portal management, content management, and reporting, for example.