As you know, Microsoft made an offer last week to buy the number two on the Internet market, Yahoo.
This merger makes economically sense for both companies :
Although Yahoo is a giant, its annual revenues and profits both deceived investors. Its products are technically good and innovative but Yahoo cannot compete alone against Google, especially on the very profitable market of the online advertising.
Microsoft is still a major player in the software industry, but the increasing market shares of open-source products and its relative weakness on the Internet market obliged them to a reaction… and what a reaction !

Both companies could save a lot of money if they would put their IT infrastructures in common, and their different target audiences make them natural partners. Talks between both companies in order to merger already took place two times in the past but they could not be achieved. Now, Microsoft is investing a lot of money to counter Google on its own ground : the web.

As we have seen, this merger really seems to be a great deal for both companies.
Now I will explain the bad consequences this could have.

First, the fact that Microsoft is one of the most evil companies regarding the privacy of the users is really not a good sign. Just to know that Redmond’s guys can take over such products as Flick’r, Yahoo Mail or Yahoo 360° and their huge user basis sends shivers down the spines of anybody willing to keep an acceptable privacy on the Internet.

Then, and this also a real concern for Free Software supporters, Yahoo is one of the biggest fund provider for the development of projects such as PHP or FreeBSD and a great sponsor of OSS (Open Source Software) in general. Given the MS policy against Free Software, this is not good news for them and for those who use them, that is to say, everybody (at least indirectly).

Last but not least : one of the most promising open-source project, let’s say the jewels of Yahoo’s open-source crown, Zimbra, is directly threaten. This project is an alternative to Microsoft Exchange and is a really promising tool. If MS takes Yahoo over, there will be no surprise if Zimbra dies.

Instead of having the 3 components
- MS Active Directory
- MS Outlook
- and MS Exchange

the companies could have chosen these 3 programms for their collaboration suite :
- openLDAP
- Evolution (on Ubuntu)
- and Zimbra

I think Microsoft cannot tolerate such a direct threat to one of its core products, so maybe it is time for the guys of Zimbra to remove the last barrier that could ensure the future of their baby : put it under the General Public License and save it from a licensing change !

Even though this merger could benefit both companies, this will not do any good to Free Software and I really hope, that Zimbra, at least, will be preserved for the future.