Microsoft's Reaction to OSS Adoption

inode_buddha writes "Eric S. Raymond has the eighth "Halloween" memo available here. It looks like Microsoft is really beginning to notice the national and corporate movement towards FS/OSS, and is reacting accordingly."

Comments

Re:Is it just me...

[br0ck]

We've discussed this one before. He's not just doing it to be cute, he's trying to avoid--perhaps ineffectively since this is a modified copy not a derivitive work--copyright violation. From the FAQ.

Would you please make un-annotated versions available?
No. As it is, my defense against a copyright-violation suit by Microsoft would have to make rather creative use of the exemptions in copyright case law relating to journalism, satire and commentary. I fear that making un-annotated copies available would place me at significant legal risk.

Re:Is it just me...

[Doc Hopper]

His main claim to popularity comes from writing "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". The problem is that the seminal understandings that sprang from that lightweight volume are now considered common knowledge. ESR was the first to codify into easily-understood form the innate truths about free software development that people had long since suspected.

He's come out with some more good ones (in particular, I like "Homesteading the Noosphere), but he hasn't written any work with more impact than than "Cathedral". He was also the first to publish the original "Halloween Document", which showed that Microsoft was, at last, taking the GNU/Linux threat seriously.

These days, almost everybody in the free-software/OSS development world understands the difference between the Bazaar and Cathedral development methods. They often consciously choose one or the other, or to develop according to Cathedral methodology, and transition to Bazaar after initial successful release. People understand the success of the development of GNU/Linux now, and despite what some will try to say, most really didn't until 1996 and the CaTB publication.

Lately, he's mostly a critic. Fetchmail is very slow on the development side these days, and his efforts to create a new build system for the Linux kernel were not accepted (killer effort, though, and well thought out, just too politically charged and too sweeping of a change for most people's tastes). However, he's still an exceptionally influential self-appointed Linux advocate. His opinions are read by millions of readers in and out of the free software community.

For the bio on the stuff he's done that has had a massive impact on the free/oss software scene, check out his bio: http://tuxedo.org/~esr/resume.html

Regardless, he has many publications in print and does a lot of speaking conventions. Like Bruce Perens, who is also influential in the community, he chose the role of public advocate for GNU/Linux for himself, and has been very successful in that role.