WIRED:Are tech leopards Google and Microsoft really changing their spots, or is the new openness just cosmetic?

TWO APPARENTLY unrelated events caught my eye this week. The first was that Sam Ramji, Microsoft’s key figure in engaging with open source developers, has left the building. He’s quitting Microsoft and going to work for a start-up, leaving a number of Microsoft initiatives, including contributions to the Linux kernel and its “CodePlex” open source code-sharing initiative, somewhat in the air.

That Microsoft has worked with the open source developer community at all would be news to many. Apart from being fodder for analysts and public relations, there’s very little business incentive for Microsoft to really co-operate with free software in most of the areas where it operates. From web servers to web development platform, compilers to dynamic languages, open source competes directly with Microsoft’s own products.

That’s not to say that many people aren’t working hard to bridge the world of Windows and the world of open source. The surprise is not that Ramji existed – it’s that he (until now) did that bridging within Microsoft itself.

The same is true of the second announcement: the first public sighting of a undisclosed “skunk works” group within Google, called the Data Liberation Front (DLF). Working out of Google’s Seattle offices and led by Googler Brian Fitzpatrick, the DLF is a small group within the company that works to ensure that, when you need to, you can extract your personal data out from Google’s services. In other words, that if you decide you urgently need to switch your mail handler from Google, or stop using Google Documents, or Google Maps, the Data Liberation Front has written code so you can switch to another provider.

Data liberation at Google seems, at first glance, to be as crazy as open source at Microsoft. The work that the DLF appears to be directly contrary to Google’s own business interests, which are to keep people using Google services, while building valuable services that exploit the vast amount of data they collect from watching you.

But both Google and Microsoft are more than just their business interests. They’re also a community of people, with their own personal biases. Plenty of Googlers want data portability, because they like data portability in applications they themselves would use or support open systems in general. It’s part of Google culture. Similarly, there are plenty of individuals at Microsoft who are friendly to free software, whether it’s because they used it in other jobs or at college, they enjoy contributing to it as a hobby, or (God forbid) they use it at work to benefit Microsoft.

The company has a large research and development division whose internal atmosphere is closer to academia, and where Unix and other free software strongholds are popular as flexible experimental platforms. Microsoft people can support open source; Googlers can like data portability.

But I do wonder whether such individuals can truly combat the general momentum of an institution. Microsoft’s tacit support for open source does not mean it will cease to work against it in many environments. The same is true with Google’s plans for data liberation.

I don’t for a moment doubt Fitzpatrick and his colleagues’ determination to ensure Google’s non-evilness, but any work within a well-governed institution is fenced in by the needs of that institution itself.

The DLF team themselves give an excellent justification for their work in the context of Google: “We think open is better than closed – not because closed is inherently bad, but because, when it’s easy for users to leave your product, there’s a sense of urgency to improve and innovate in order to keep your users.”

But is such a sense of urgency something that Google will continue to desire within its culture? Right now, Google wants competition, because it keeps on winning. There was a time when Microsoft, too, wanted competition – but it quickly learned the rewards of limited competition, to the point of being criminally convicted of monopoly practices.

All companies stumble. At some point Google will change from craving competition to sheltering from it. When that times come, it will be the time when advocates will be most needed within the company. And that is the moment when they will be least powerful.

The cynical might say that is already happening. Microsoft’s interest in publicly engaging with open source came noticeably after its monopoly was challenged in the United States, and questions were being asked in the European Union. One of the first mentions of the Data Liberation Front outside Google came from the company’s testimony before US Congress hearing into privacy invasions in the advertising market – an area where politicians are already questioning Google’s market share.

I don’t think Microsoft’s open source work is purely cosmetic; and I think that the Data Liberation Front is a powerful force for openness within Google. But to expect that either company will sacrifice its institutional biases for a healthy competitive market, or even the preferences of their own employees, is wishful thinking. Ultimately, community values don’t run companies: profit margins do. We need external vigilance as well as internal advocates.