On Thu, May 03, 2001 at 10:56:26PM -0400, Russell Hires wrote:
> I'm going through Craig Mundie's speech
> (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.asp),
> and I'm thinking okay, here's a scenario: What if MS wants their code to
> get out, not officially, but they release it to certain companies
> (partners, what-have-you), and someone in those companies leaks the
> source to the outside world, either genuinely on accident, or
> "accidentally on purpose", or on purpose, but it's not MS's direct
> doing.
>
> What do you think would happen? I can hear the hackles now as many an
> Open Source developer laughs at M$'s code. The shreiks of criticism
> sound loudly. People say, "I can't believe they did that!" or "Why don't
> they do this, instead?" Then M$ quietly incorporates this stuff. Very
> subtle.
>
> I think they see the power of Open Source, but can't bring themselves to
> admit it. Or their stockholders can't. One of the two. Maybe they're
> realizing ESR's arguments from the book "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"
> about the logical end of the proprietary software life-cycle vis a vis
> the Open Source software life-cycle which is continually open to new
> ideas. Maybe M$ is just hard up for ideas...
>
We are on Microsoft's radar in a bigger way than we realize because they
fear us. We're actually convincing people that Linux is the way to go,
because it's high quality software and it's more stable and secure than
anything Microsoft puts out. Microsoft's had _no_ competition in the OS
market for so long, and this scares them.
Microsoft does not believe in, care for or like OSS, and their "shared
source" hoohah is lip service. It's a way to try to co-opt people
leaning toward OSS. The article is also a subtle warning to Microsoft's
customers to stay away from OSS because of the "viral" nature of the
GPL.
As a university student, Bill Gates railed against other students who
attempted to share code he'd written for a BASIC interpreter. His answer
to them was a diatribe about intellectual property and business. That
incident defines how Bill Gates thinks about software, and how the
company he founded operates. To Gates and Microsoft, OSS is a 60's
hippie idea that is nutty at best. People create software to make money,
after all. Doing it for any other reason is just misguided or psychotic.
OSS people are a lot like Apple people: iconoclastic, passionate and
stubborn. Add to that that we're dedicated, talented and pragmatic. That
combination scares Microsoft, just like our software does. It's not that
they know we're right. They think we're wrong. The problem is that other
people listen to us, which could mean less business for Microsoft.
Microsoft could have done all right if they hadn't become arrogant. But
rather than spend money building their software correctly in the first
place, they got it out the door to feed the revenue stream, and coerced
people and companies into buying it. People built up resentment, and the
government finally caught up with them. Now people won't upgrade and
they're looking for alternatives.
And Microsoft's stuck. With millions of stockholders and a philosophy
based on Bill Gates' university experiences, they have no choice but to
continue on the road they've built for themselves. We represent an
obstacle. So they're dusting off their rhetoric and propaganda, their
new licensing schemes, their police (the BSA), their lobbying
organizations, and their tried-and-true subversion tactics ("embrace and
extend"), and going after us, hammer and tongs. It's gonna get bloody.
I love the smell of silicon in the morning!
Paul
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