With Gates gone, will Microsoft open up?

Amongst the speculation about what Microsoft will be like after Bill Gates' final retirement, some are wondering whether the company might become more friendly to open source.

Of course, the question - like Bill's retirement - is overstated. He's still chairman of the board, and you can bet the board will listen to him.

In large part though, according to this ZDnet blog from Paula Rooney, the answer will be about personalities. Bill Gates built the company by harvesting license revenue, but open source proponents believe we are in a different world now, which will take different people to appreciate.

No one expects Steve Ballmer to suddenly "get" open source, but other Microsoft people have increasing influence.

Scott Guthrie seems more aware of the benefits - as you'd expect from the head of Microsoft's Developer Division. He's already shown some .NET source code, and helped enable Moonlight, the open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight.

However, the real key to Microsoft seeing the benefits of open source is probably Ray Ozzie, currently in Gates' old seat as chief architect.

What does Ozzie think? According to my colleage Mary Jo Foley, Ozzie says open source is a more serious competitor than Google, and "much more potentially disruptive” to Microsoft’s business.

Ozzie's response is to make Microsoft's closed-source products integrate better with open source products from elsewhere.

That shows a certain level of awareness, and the open source community isn't going to complain about that, but it doesn't look like any sudden U-turns are in the offing.