Why Microsoft would secretly love it if its shared source initiative failed

After a couple of false starts Microsoft has played its open source card to perfection. Hostility - characterised by senior VP Craig Mundie's assertion last year that releasing source code into the public domain is "unhealthy" - has been replaced by warmth.

Today if you want access to Windows source code you'll most likely get it. Under the Shared Source Initiative big business, universities and assorted third parties have been offered unfettered access to 90 per cent of XP, 200 and .Net server code.

So far only 150 organisations have taken up Microsoft's public-spirited offer.

And that's the real beauty of the software giant's tactics. Frankly the company doesn't mind if the Shared Source Initiative succeeds or fails.

If it proves popular - and the early signs suggest otherwise - then Microsoft can not only take credit for being responsive to customer needs, it can also claim that its philosophy to allow users to reference, debug but not alter its operating system is a credible alternative to the commercially unviable 'change at will' open source ethos.

If, on the other hand, the initiative continues to be met by indifference Microsoft will feel fully vindicated. Vindicated because it has always believed that it - and not the larger developer community - is the best custodian of Windows. Vindicated too because it has always believed that big business cares little for the plumbing.

This latter point is the crucial one for Microsoft's commercial ambitions. If corporations turn round and say 'yes, we do want to delve into the code' then the open source community - and we're not talking quasi-commercial Linux here - really does stand a chance of ousting the software giants such as Microsoft from their Fortune 500 citadels.

The truth is big business is unlikely to say yes. Not in great numbers at least.