Simon Thorneycroft and Jonathan Hodgson

So what does 'proprietary' Microsoft mean?

Another blog post I found interesting was this one covering the argument of Open Source vs "proprietary" Microsoft technologies.

Is it easier to get support from one vendor or multiple vendor or edit the source yourself?

Is it easier to hire a developer with a Microsoft or Linux, mySQL, Java, etc. skillset? I'd agree you can argue most of the time that you should hire for software development skills and not Microsoft skills.

Quoting from the article:

So with all these questions in mind, ask the customer the final, most important question:

 “So your brilliant open source developer gets this thing done, throws the switch and it all seems to be working OK. But then tomorrow he/she looks at this/her bank account and sees that you have paid them an enormous sum of money to get all this done, and they can go open that surf board shop they have always dreamed about. So it’s ‘Thanks for your business but I am out of here, and here is a CD with all the source code on it’”

Now the customer REALLY does have a proprietary solution, but it’s not proprietary to a particular company or technology, but to ONE PERSON!  And this person is now on a beach somewhere…

...

So now let’s compare this scenario with my Microsoft solution. I created the entire solution in a Visual Studio .NET project. Since I used the SDK (Software Development Kits) provided by the various Microsoft products, and adhered to best practices of .NET development, anyone familiar with .NET development who has the same infrastructure components can download the source code and very quickly implement the solution. In fact, people involved in the MSCRM community from all over the world have done just that. They didn’t have to worry about what obscure products I might have used, or any crazy code I wrote myself. It’s all Microsoft, all portable between Microsoft systems, and easy to implement as many times as they need to. Furthermore, they get the ongoing support of Microsoft for the products used, including patches, security updates, service packs, etc.

There is no right or wrong answer and I can argue for both sides. As for having the source code, it doesn't always keep the EU happy - prefer source code as the documentation?