Proprietary software can't control the world: even Microsoft now says it can co-exist with open source software.

Jurgen Geck held what looked like a silver bullet between his thumb and index finger. "This is a Fisher Space Pen," he said--a pen developed for NASA astronauts in space, a pen, whose ink just keeps on flowing, able to write upside down and even underwater. "It's sophisticated, it's costly, it's very nice and very shiny," Geck said.

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Geck is chief technology officer at Suse Linux, an open source software outfit now owned by Novell, and he's about to make his point: "The Russians just used a pencil."

Simplicity itself. Proprietary software like Microsoft's is the shiny, expensive alternative; the open source software Linux is the obvious simple solution, according to Geck, who added: "The pencil never would have made it in a closed-source environment."

To which Microsoft's general manager for platform strategy, Martin Taylor, groused: "You can't use a pencil underwater. I guarantee you that."

The panel, "Software Strategies: Proprietary vs. Open Source," started out congenially even though the stakes are high in the fight between Linux and Microsoft. The Linux operating system and Apache servers, both open source, have gained market share, slowly eroding Microsoft's piece of the pie. IBM, HP, Oracle and other giants are fighting Microsoft, in part, by leveraging Linux and other open source software.

Korea is an important test case because it is introducing some open source computing to counterbalance its dependence on Microsoft. Hyun Jin Ko, president and CEO of the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency, says he is pushing open source software, not to beat up on Microsoft but to ensure competition and innovation in the IT field, with the marketplace as the final judge. "This discussion is not, 'Are you with us or are you our enemy?'" Ko said. "One side cannot blame the other side. It's just different strategies."

A few years ago, the debate sounded like a food fight, with Microsoft stating that open source posed a danger to the free market system. The responses from the other side did little to dispel the notion that the open source community consisted solely of arrogant software punks.

Both sides have reined in their excesses and become far more businesslike. It's a given now that Microsoft's Windows operating system and open-source Linux will both be around as major forces. Within the constraints of that reality, however, there's every incentive for both sides to play tough.

Geck asserted that the open source discussion too often focuses only on free software. The key to understanding open source, Geck said, is the GPL, the general public license, that allows anyone to see a source code and change it for themselves or others, provided they make those changes available to everyone. "The GPL enforces cooperation," Geck said, "and the cooperation of people is really what's at the core of the power of the operating system."

To that, Taylor replied: "I don't spend a lot of time on these big, meaty rich industry-type issues, these philosophical debates. I actually spend my time with customers and I've never once had a customer ask me, "What are your thoughts about the GPL?"

Geck shot back a few minutes later, answering a question about whether signing up with a specific Linux company instead of Microsoft is just trading one master for another. He said Suse and Red Hat "come from the same ancestry."

"Technically, we're pretty much the same," he added. "So if you go from Red Hat to Suse or, God forbid, Suse to Red Hat, it's not that difficult--not like the .Net lock-in that Microsoft is going for." (.Net is one way Microsoft ties its systems together.)

"That just wasn't nice, Jurgen," said Taylor, shaking his head. "It just wasn't nice at all."

Taylor, gloves off, praised Linux while casting Suse's future in doubt: "Let me first say that Linux is here forever, in some form or in some fashion. Let's just say that Jurgen leaves and Novell goes under. Another company will pick up distribution of Linux."

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Then he noted the large variety of Linux distributions and said that "it's important to know that Linux is not Linux is not Linux," but that "Windows is Windows is Windows." In other words, Linux has many varieties, but Windows is seamless.

Geck groaned loudly, shook his head and muttered: "NT is XP is Longhorn? Sorry." Translation: The whole notion that Windows is seamless is a joke.

Jumping in from a relatively neutral position was Shirish Netke, chief strategy officer for Aztec Software. "The good news about operating systems is that there's a choice," he said. "The bad news about operating systems is that there's a choice."

Netke laid out what he sees as the most compelling argument for including open source as part of an enterprise IT system: readily available components built on a commoditized and open operating system with which a company can create customized applications to get jobs done. Customized software a decade ago meant powerful but inflexible, proprietary code, and if a company bought it, they were stuck with high costs of switching to something new. Open source components, at least theoretically, push switching costs down near zero. "This is not just Linux or any operating system," he said. "It's about tens of thousands of pieces of software that are part of an ecosystem."

Governments around the world are pushing open source to one extent or another. Others, like Korea, are pushing research into open source and developing systems to help both business and the private sector. The way Ko sees it, "the government's role is to foster a competitive environment. In our industries, we have a regulation that your market shouldn't go over 50 percent."

But, he added, "We have no intention of forcing government ministers to use Linux or any other operating system. We don't know at this time which [approach to software] will be successful. That will be decided by the market."

But the market seems to be demanding choice. That means the days of depending exclusively on Microsoft seem to be ending--and Microsoft knows it.