Re: Microsoft motives

[jeremy@xxxxxxxxx (Jeremy H. Griffith)]

On Fri, 11 Dec 1998 14:32:37 -0800, "Marcus Carr" <mrc@allette.com.au> wrote:

>I've read "The Halloween Paper" before and although there is much that rings
>true, I have an inherent mistrust of much of what lives on the web -
>remember the graduation speech attributed to Kurt Vonnegut? I'm not openly
>questioning its veracity, only noting that a keen observer could reverse
>engineer such a policy statement based on Microsoft's behaviour. Assuming
>that was the case, the fact that it didn't originate from Microsoft doesn't
>necessarily even mean that it's not accurate...

As it happens, your "assumption" that the papers involved (there are two)
were "reverse-engineered" is incorrect, so your concluding "fact" isn't 
one.  <bg>  In *fact*, Microsoft has had to acknowledge authorship... see:
  http://www.opensource.org/halloween.html
for the full story, including numerous links to documentation on this.

And, BTW, the papers aren't policy statements, but internal research papers
on Linux and other open-source initiatives intended for the MS policy-makers
as background...  Eric Raymond (the owner of the above Web site, and a well-
known open-source theorist) explains their context well and completely.

That said, you are certainly correct about the prevalence of urban legends,
or maybe we should call them cyber legends... ;-)  My personal favorite is
the "suppressed" interview with Bjarne Stroustrup on the origin of C++...
as a way to increase employment for programmers by sabotaging the software
development process.  LOL!  He's still denying it (quite truthfully)...

-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
  (jeremy@omsys.com)  http://www.omsys.com/

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