Brad McCormick wrote: > Sorry, but IBM coped with this situation quite well > in the 1960s and 1970s, with their OS/360 and 370 > operating system code! > > IBM wasn't happy about users modifying their code, and > users understood that if they wanted IBM to fix a problem, > they should back their changes out of the code, and > report the problem against the unmodified code. If you > were a *big* customer, however, IBM was even more lenient.
That was an entirely different era and situation -- large customers who also bought the hardware from IBM (and software was not even covered by copyright laws yet). Today with small PC customers, M$ would ruthlessly prosecute the users who would dare to compile M$'s source code. And M$ would not even make the source code available electronically (remember the big whoo-hoo when some Russian hackers managed to steal a piece of M$ sources last year?). The bottom line is: Forget source code transparency with M$. (There's only transparency in the *other* direction: M$ is allowed to snoop in users' harddisks...) Chris
