[Fwd: best commentary yet on the Microsoft vs. open software fracas]

From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Fri May 04 2001 - 16:29:30 MDT


Everybody likes Microsoft.

-------- Original Message --------
From: david mankins <dm@bbn.com>
Subject: best commentary yet on the Microsoft vs. open software fracas
To: silent-tristero@world.std.com

>From NTKnow:

                          (K) 2001 Special Projects.
             Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/

>> HARD NEWS <<
                             grae bampots exspoosed

         You can't stick a postfix next to a variable these days
         without causing the imminent collapse of society. The day
         after US assistant attorney Daniel Alter told a New York court
         that DeCSS was like "software programs that shut down
         navigational programs in airplanes or smoke detectors in
         hotels" (you know, *those* programs), Microsoft's CRAIG MUNDIE
         was across town, declaiming that the GPL was a virus that
         would shut down intellectual property inside people's heads.
         Craig's speech is all about the nightmarish future of an open
         source world, and is rather heavy on predictions. But then
         Craig's job at Microsoft is to make gambles on the future of
         technology. According Marlin Eller's account in "Barbarians
         Led By Bill Gates", one of Mundie's first acts at Microsoft was
         killing the company's 1993 low-bandwidth Net project in favour
         of the *real* future - broadband interactive TV. That said,
         once Gates caught on to this Interweb thing, Mundie was first
         to catch on. "We'll tune it for all the platforms, then get
         hardware companies to build accelerators for it", he
         predicted, of the Net's most guaranteed success - VRML. Oh,
         then he masterminded that whole WebTV deal, spending $425m MS
         mad money on the sure-fire Internet/TV convergence. "We view
         the Internet as one of the 'features' of digital TV services",
         he eerily prophesised in 1998. "PC this year, PC-TV's next
         year", he again predicted - in 1997. Going further back,
         Mundie features in "Soul of a New Machine" as the nameless guy
         who loses the race to build a supercomputer. His own
         supercomputer company went bust in 1992. Should anyone believe
         his observations about the future of Open Source? As Mundie
         himself once said "We persist. We're driven by some innate
         belief about how these things are going to unfold." Even, it
         seems, when they unfold in completely the opposite
         direction.
         http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56874-2001Feb26.html
                                 - not sure about Eller's objectivity
         http://www.s-t.com/daily/05-98/05-10-98/f07bu241.htm
                                                  - but you know, WSJ
         http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q276/3/04.ASP
             - Microsoft's future doesn't get more "secure" than that

- david mankins (dm@bbn.com, dm@world.std.com)



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