Can it be that human curiosity, creativity and cooperation will
overthrow the Titan of Greed?
Forwarded Message (thanks to Michael Popadopoulos):
================
Its free and it works.
By John Naughton
London OBSERVER Sunday November 8, 1998
There is a saying in the computer business that 'only the paranoid
survive'. The man who has taken it most to heart is Microsoft's Bill
Gates. Although he is the richest man alive and his company has a
stranglehold on the world's computer screens, Gates is forever looking
over his shoulder, trying to spot the newcomer who will wipe him out.
One can understand his anxiety. The pace of change in the computing
industry is such that if you blink you might not spot the threat.
Gates blinked spectacularly in 1994, when Netscape was founded. He
failed to appreciate the looming significance of the Internet, and
Netscape had captured a huge slice of the Web-browser market before he
woke up.
From that moment onwards, Microsofts corporate ingenuity was devoted
to finding ways of crushing Netscape. Its crass attempts to do so
eventually stung the US Department of Justice into launching the
anti-trust suit which is currently being decided in an American court.
But while the eyes of the media are on the trial, those of the Net
community have been focused on a leaked Microsoft internal memorandum
which is far more revealing than anything released in court. For it
shows that Gates & Co have finally realised where the Next Big Threat
is coming from. And its nothing to do with Netscape or browsers.
Theyre yesterdays battlegrounds.
The memo is now all over the Net (eg at
www.opensource.org/halloween.html). It was written by a Microsoft
engineer called Vinod Valloppillil last August, but is known as the
Halloween memo because it was leaked last weekend. Its purpose is to
explain to Microsoft bosses the threat posed by a free operating
system called Linux and the Open Source software development community
that built it.
To appreciate the memos significance, you need to remember that
Microsoft dominates the world market in operating systems, the complex
programs which transform computers from paperweights into machines
which can do useful work. The Windows operating system is the jewel in
Gatess crown, and anything that threatens it threatens his companys
dominance.
Microsofts long-term strategy is to move us all on to a version of it
called Windows NT (for new technology). But NT is in trouble. The
release date for the next version has been postponed so often that it
has had to be renamed Windows 2000. And as NT flounders, the worlds
attention has focused on a rival operating system called Linux which
offers many of the same facilities as NT, is incredibly reliable and
is free.
Linux is free because it was developed collectively across the Net by
skilled programmers working in the Open Source tradition which created
the Internet and which holds that software should be freely accessible
to the community. The name comes from the fact that source code is
computer-speak for the original version of a program as distinct from
the version you buy and install on your computer. If you have the
source code, you can do whatever you like with it.
Linux is powerful and stable because it was created by clever people
working collaboratively on the source code and because its been tested
to destruction by more programmers than Microsoft could ever muster.
The Halloween memo warns Gates that Linux and its ilk pose a serious
threat to Microsoft. It argues that Open Source software is now as
good as if not better than commercial alternatives, concedes that the
ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of
thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing, and
concludes that Linux is too diffuse a target to be destroyed by the
tactics which have hitherto vapourised Microsofts commercial rivals.
The people who built Linux cannot be driven out of business, because
theyre not in business. Henceforth, Microsoft will be fighting not
another company, but an idea. The reason Linux is so powerful, reasons
Valloppillil, is that its basic building blocks its technical
protocols are free, openly distributed and not owned by anyone. The
only way to kill it, therefore, is for Microsoft to capture the
protocols by pretending to adopt them and then extending them in ways
that effectively make them proprietary. The new (Microsoft) revisions
will surprise, surprise be incompatible with the free versions. Gates
calls this process embrace and extend. In reality, its copy and
corrupt.
The coming battle will be between closed shop versus Open Source,
commercial paranoia versus altruism. The outcome is already
predictable. Microsofts difficulties with Windows NT show that some
software is now too complex for even the richest, smartest company.
Instead of trying to subvert Linux, what Gates should do is release
the NT code and let the collective IQ of the Net fix it for him. He
wont do it, of course, which is why his company has just peaked. If
you have Microsoft shares, prepare to sell them now.
** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
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