Re: NEWS: Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun May 06 2001 - 13:36:15 MDT


Michael Wiik wrote:
>
> "Emlyn" <emlyn@one.net.au> writes:
> > Probably no-one here has an opinion about this...
> >
> > Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/technology/03SOFT.html
>
> Well, I've been trying in my own incoherent way to spark discussion
> about such issues and how they fit into a pattern of increasing ULE.
> Imho replacing the gov't with luddites as extropian enemy number 1 is
> such a brilliant move it's hard to believe it wasn't planted by some
> intelligence service. I didn't like em much when I started on this list,
> but in many ways I wish the cypherpunks would come back.
>

Microsoft is making an ass of itself once again. If innovation and
profitability and all other goodness and apple pie was not present in
Open Source then Microsoft would have nothing to say about it. It would
not need to. But MS cannot with a straight face claim that proprietary
software and methods like its own are at the forefront of innovation,
give users and innovators outside of Microsoft the maximal value, much
less that they are more secure and more dependable. Microsoft is the
enemy of progress, not those of us who see that progress is best served
by opening software and and other information sources that greatly grow
in value by being maximally available and useful.

It is true that the old pure software business models are in trouble.
But it does not follow that the future must be constrained to support
old models that have been found seriously lacking.

- samantha



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