Microsoft responds to the open source threat ... by announcing an open source content management solution itself

In the article "Workers don't itch to ditch Microsoft ... yet" on the joint venture of IBM and Canonical to put Lotus office applications on an Ubuntu Linux desktop at very low prices, Network World writes "If Microsoft doesn't quickly entice the young generation with open source products that work better than the competition while offering unique functions, instead of asking 'Microhoo?' one day those kids could be asking 'Microsoft who?'"...

Well, Microsoft has responded this question by announcing its "open source, standards compliant, and highly extensible content management sample that can run anything from blogs to big web sites" (this is how Microsoft describes it), called Oxite. You can read more about it at http://visitmix.com/Lab/Oxite and download it from http://www.codeplex.com/oxite. It is version 1, so it will probably be more suited at this moment for blogs than for the "big Web sites", but we all know the capabilities of Microsoft developers, now assisted by a large number of open source developers. It is built using ASP.Net and will probably run best on Windows, although it can also run on Linux and Mac using the Mono work by Novell and Microsoft.

Maybe Microsoft had read this: "While the large closed vendors struggle to steer their supertankers through increasingly unsettled waters, open source looks all the more attractive to budget constrained businesses looking to maximize their cost effectiveness." in the article Open source thrives in downturn. It is indeed going to be interesting to see what kind of momentum open source vendors like Alfresco, Intalio and many others get during this recession.

Or this: "As the recession puts pressure on tech spending, many companies are turning to open-source software to handle more IT tasks" in the BusinessWeek article Cost-Conscious Companies Turn to Open-Source Software