I recently wrote a little blurb on Longhorn. Specifically I commended MS for being as open as they are being.

Mike, a frequent commenter here, took offence to a certain part of my post, which he is free to do. Here’s what he didn’t like:

MS is being more open than I’ve seen any company be in the development phase, with the possible (read: possible) exception of Open Source projects

I’ve bolded what he didn’t like. I wrote the “possible” bit knowing it might raise some backs. A little controversy is never a bad thing, after all. Here’s my take on it. Possible?

Yup, possible ;)

Open Source isn’t actually “we’ll do what you say with the code”. Nor is it “we’ll even take what you say into consideration”. It’s more draconian, much more draconian, though it is in an “open” fashion.

Typical Open Source (including Linux, PHP, Apache and MySQL) is, basically “we’re going in a direction, you can do what you want with what we’re giving you”.

After all, when was the last time you got to contribute personally to any of these projects? My experience with the PHP/Apache/Smarty groups has been that the team does as they see fit.

That doesn’t bother me. I said “possible” for a reason. Because, as always, it’ll be up to the project leader.

That applies whether it’s open source or not.

In essence, I feel that Open Source projects are more likely than most corporate projects to ask for this degree of feedback during the development phase. I do not believe, though, that Open Source by definition means that feedback will be sought during development. In fact, it doesn’t even mean feedback will be sought after development.