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Election 2006 (and beyond): Digital Copyright Canada
From: kebera_-at-_Cyblings.ON.CA (Krishna E. Bera)
Date: 2 Nov 1998 21:05:40 -0500
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date sent: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 19:56:33 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <[deleted]>
To: Multiple recipients of list UPD-DISCUSS <upd-discuss@essential.org>
Subject: the Halloween Document
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Info-Policy-Notes | News from Consumer Project on Technology
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November 2, 1998
The Halloween Document
Microsoft has confirmed that this internal document, which was leaked to
Eric Raymond, is authentic. It is the Microsoft strategy to deal with
Linux and other free software platforms, referred to as "Open Source
Software" or OSS by the MS author. Eric Raymond has placed an annotated
version of the document on the web at:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/halloween.html
The memorandum offers important insight into Microsoft's understanding of
the free/open source software movement. It indicates, for example, that
Microsoft needs to attack the process and the culture of the free software
movement, more than any particular company. Eric Raymond sees awareness
by Microsoft that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its
support of open software is a threat to Microsoft's goal of dominating
server markets. These are the excerpts from the document that Eric placed
in his introduction.
Jamie Love <[deleted]> 202.387.8030
<------excerpts from the MS OSS Haloween document-------->
* 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 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 -- if not more
-- 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.
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