I think the significant event is that Microsoft is working to become a leader in the open source movement. They are financially supporting Openstate (Perl) and providing technical assistance to Ximian (MONO / GNOME). They have their favourite licences (BSD) and their supporters.
It does not hurt windows or Microsoft to have free software running on the windows platform. Even things which are "Windows clones" (or .net clones, or DCOM clones, or MS-word clones, ...) are not so bad as long as the Microsoft versions are the definitive and "high end" originals that lead the market and set the standard for others to follow. There are really two visions for the relationship between open source and proprietary products in the marketplace: 1) Open source "follows the tail lights" of proprietary software. Innovation is first seen in proprietary products, which eventually become standardized commodities in open source. Proprietary vendors must recupe their investment in the limited period before they are overtaken by open source imitators. With the right licences, open source software can be used as a base for proprietary add-ons. 2) Public research regains the initiative from private research. Substantial innovation would come from widely funded and/or publicly funded research projects that are then commercialised by vendors. Similar to research in other fields, as the body of past results (ie: open source code) gets larger and more sophisticated it becomes more and more difficult and specialised to contribute to what's already there. Commercial operations would specialise in the composition, configuration, customisation, and support of standardised open source components for their clients or their own use. I think both things will happen to some extent and it will take quite a few years before one model will come to dominate the other. A lot depends on the battles over intellectual property rights legislation and the funding levels for open source informatics researchers. -Brian Le Dimanche 3 F�vrier 2002 01:01, Tim Churches a �crit : > On the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list, David Guest wrote, wrt > > "The Register - Gnome to be based on .NET - de Icaza": > > Times change. > > > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23919.html > > I am reminded of a (possibly apocryphal) saying which is reputedly > popular amongst neo-Marxist revolutionaries who suddenly find themseves > in power (e.g. the Sandinistas in Nicaragua): > > "The only thing worse than ruthlessly being exploited by multinational > corporations is not ruthlessly being exploited by multinational > corporations." > ... > > Tim C
