Dries Buytaert

Last week at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), Microsoft and SpikeSource announced their intention to work together to certify a number of Open Source projects on the Microsoft Windows platform. According to the press release, Drupal is the first application that has been tested and certified for Microsoft Windows ...

Because I didn't know this partnership was in the works, and because it's not clear what this really means, I figured I'd let the story develop for a couple of days. It has since been picked up on a number of blogs and news sites, and I got a couple of inquiries about it as well. I guess now is a good time to share what I think about it.

First, Microsoft's willingness to work with Open Source applications to ensure that they work on Microsoft Windows Server with MSSQL and Active Directory support is great –- it helps us bring Open Source software to the corporate world. Microsoft's announcement brings credibility to Open Source software and validates Drupal as one of the leading Open Source CMS applications. That is a good thing.

Second, I've never been close to either SpikeSource or Microsoft's business but hopefully it won't stop with an announcement. It remains to be seen whether they live up their marketing drum. With the help of Larry Garfield we already started planning a redesign of Drupal's database abstraction layer. I'm curious to see if they'll contribute to that, and if they will help us add and maintain MSSQL support in future versions of Drupal core. In the Open Source world, contributions speak louder than press releases.