Microsoft and Open Source: Plone

I've been playing with open source content management system Plone lately, and I was interested to see eWeek mention Plone in a recent article on Microsoft and open source. One of the characteristics of Plone that I've noticed is that it behaves exactly like a Windows application is supposed to behave. It installs correctly, configures correctly, has all those nice little tabbed interface dialogue boxes, and also is actually usable on the Windows platform. (eWeek's little "open source" piece is available in the print version only, it seems)

Unfortunately, it is all too common -- in my albeit limited experience -- for applications (esp. Enterprise applications) that originate in the open source world to be hamfisted and club-footed in the Windows world. They just don't know how to function, or what the design specs are supposed to be.

However, as eWeek notes, Plone actually installs and seems to function better on Windows than on Red Hat Linux (the only Linux installation I've used it on), and the Windows distribution of Plone also comes with a handy service startup and configuration console. Now that's good product!

(It's just a pity Microsoft didn't make it first!)