Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 17:21:40 +1030 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Microsoft's Open Source strategy (was: Ariel Faigon: The Holloween Document (fwd)) Message-ID: <19981102172140.J354@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <199811020606.XAA00655@harmony.village.org>; from Warner Losh on Sun, Nov 01, 1998 at 11:06:57PM -0700 References: <199811020606.XAA00655@harmony.village.org>
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[following up to -chat] On Sunday, 1 November 1998 at 23:06:57 -0700, Warner Losh wrote: > I got this on a linux list that I'm on and thought I'd forward it to > this group. It seems relevant. It will likely make you mad. This isn't -hackers material. I'm currently reading the full version (which I've tidied up a bit of remnants of Microsoft formatting and put at http://www.lemis.com/microsoft-tactics.html). It doesn't make me mad. And maybe the stuff below is misleading. It's an interesting (if long) document, but I haven't got to the end, where I expect to find some recommendations. Greg > Read carefully and Please distribute widely. The document is long > I just quote some crucial parts of it] > > http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/halloween.html > > - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Here are some notable quotes from the document, ``OSS'' is the > author's abbreviation for ``Open Source Software''. > > Vinod Valloppillil (VinodV) > Aug 11, 1998 ¨C v1.00 > Microsoft Confidential > [only a few excerpts follow, read the link above for the full details.] > > * OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat > to Microsoft, particularly in server space. Additionally, the > intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits > that are not replicable with our current licensing model and > therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat. > > * Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic > evidence ... that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded > by OSS projects. > > * ...to understand how to compete against OSS, we [Microsoft] > must target a *process* rather than a company. > > * OSS is long-term credible ... FUD tactics can not be used to combat it. > > * Linux and other OSS advocates are making a progressively more > credible argument that OSS software is at least as robust ¨C if > not more ¨C than commercial alternatives. The Internet provides > an ideal, high-visibility showcase for the OSS world. > > * Linux has been deployed in mission critical, commercial > environments with an excellent pool of public testimonials. > ... Linux outperforms many other UNIXes ... Linux is on track to > eventually own the x86 UNIX market ... > > * Linux can win as long as services / protocols are commodities. > > * OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server > applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, > simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing > new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market. > > * The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the > collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet > is simply amazing. More importantly, OSS evangelization scales > with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization > efforts appear to scale. -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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