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Dave Stutz's Parting Advice To Microsoft
thasmudyan writes "Like probably many others I followed the recent link to Heise only to get a much more interesting story than the one about Mozilla/OpenOffice: Dave Stutz, an influencial guy at Microsoft, is resigning his position. He posted an open letter to his ex-employer and this rest of the world, explaining what MS is doing wrong in his opinion. I thought it made an interesting read, maybe Open Source projects should consider some of the key points (as MS seems to be too slow to adapt, it may be good time to move faster than 'the industry')." (Read this Slashdot post from 2001 to see an interesting interview with Stutz about "shared source" and .NET.)
He used a Microsoft security hole to go back in after he left and post it on their website.
What would it take to put a clause in the GNU license that says "except Microsoft" ;-). Note that that was a joke.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
What was this guy doing at some random company selling windows, desktops and office material? I know it's impressive they can fold windows and even whole offices into small lightweight boxes, but personally I only trust hard heavy furniture.
This note was originally published at John Munsch weblog on January the 14th.
.NET to fail and fail badly
.NET "rebuttal" that I linked to above, "For non-profit use VS.NET can be had pretty cheaply, especially if you know anyone that is in college somewhere." Pretty cheaply? For a non-profit (that means charities, churches, universities, the hobbiest who is going to give away his work for FREE)... pretty cheaply? Wow. That is well and truly pathetic. To try and justify it, and say, oh well, you can try to scam an educational discount so it won't be so dear, is even more pathetic.
.NET commercials with William H. Gacy telling you how great it is without really ever telling you anything about it? Microsoft doesn't trust .NET to stand on its own technical merits and it knows it may go like cod-liver oil down the gullets of a lot of people who have seen how the company works behind closed doors even if it were the tech shiznit.
.NET just in case there wasn't any grassroots community who actually wanted to do it. Or maybe just in case there was and they couldn't control it.
.NET for other platforms? If those same people were working on giving us new libraries and new tools for an already existing language instead of pouring in the thousands of man hours it's going to take to build a copy of the C# compiler or a .NET version of Ant and JUnit?
Lots of reasons why I want
It's benefits a criminal organization. Not one that's been found guilty of crimes once or maybe twice, but lots and lots of times. Those crimes are many and varied, but here's just a few of them: Stac Electronics v. Microsoft, DOJ v. Microsoft, Sun v. Microsoft.
P.S. If you want to split hairs, Stac v. Microsoft isn't a criminal action, it's doesn't stem from a criminal abuse of their monopoly like the other two cases. Instead it was just a case of a small company being driven out of business by willful patent infringement, theft of trade secrets, etc.
Microsoft isn't just one thing anymore. It's too damn big for that. I'm sure even Bill himself knows better than to think that he truly controls the whole ship because it's become big enough that he can't possibly know all the projects, people, etc. anymore. But even a really large company still has a kind of collective personality that it exudes and a large part of the personality both internal and external to Microsoft for many years now is that of a total control freak.
If they don't own it, if they don't control it, if they didn't create it, if it doesn't have a broad stamp from Microsoft on it, then they don't want it. Sometimes it's sufficient for the thing to merely exist and they'll refuse to acknowledge it, other times they need to actively stamp it out because they can't control it.
When was the last time you can remember Microsoft saying they supported a standard? That is, not something they invented and submitted a RFC for, an actual, take it off the shelf and re-implement it without renaming it or "improving" it so it doesn't work with anybody else standard. C++? Basic? HTML? A video or audio codec? Java? Anything?
I'm sure there's something, somebody will point out their excellent support for TCP/IP or something and I'm sure that's true. But if you were to look at Microsoft as a person in your life, you'd wonder what was wrong with him or her such that so much had to be controlled by that person.
When your business is selling the operating systems that 90+% of everybody uses, software development tools should not be a profit center.
Why should I have to plunk down a couple of thousand dollars for a "universal subscription" in order to have access to compilers and basic development information? Sun doesn't have to do that? On this point I'll quote from the
Marketing. Have you been "lucky" enough to catch one of the
So they are going to pull a page out of Intel's bum-bum-buh-bum "Intel Inside" playbook and try to sell the brand like it's sneakers and cola. Trust us, you'll look cool if you use it, and we'll keep hammering the brand on TV so somebody who doesn't have much tech savvy in your organization will ask you if you are using it, or have plans to port to it, or whatever, even if he hasn't got a clue what "it" is in this case.
They don't trust you. They don't like what they can't control and they can't control you. They can try and they always will keep trying but ultimately you are going to see them keep trying to do things and always keep a step towards the door just so they can bolt if they have to. Want to see what I mean? Go visit GotDotNet sometime if you haven't already been there. It's the grassroots community website that Microsoft put up to support
Ever been to SourceForge? Of course you have, everybody has because that's one of the hubs of all open source projects. You can go there and get the source of thousands of cool open source projects and it really serves the community well. There's even hundreds of projects now that list C# among their programming languages. So why did Microsoft feel compelled to create their own GotDotNet Workspaces that is clearly just a ripoff of SourceForge?
A few reasons are fairly clear: First, at many of their workspaces you don't get in unless they know who you are. Ever been stopped at SourceForge and asked for a name and password to look at a project? What about download binaries or source? No? At GotDotNet you will, lots of projects are marked with a lock. Second, forget about all those messy licenses that Microsoft might not approve of, you don't need to worry your little head about BSD vs. GPL vs. LGPL. You've got the one true workspace license that you have to agree to, or else you won't be putting your project there. Lastly, well it's kind of obvious, but it's really all about control isn't it. After all, if you aren't under their thumb, that has to be a bad thing. So a SourceForge that they control is pretty much a requirement, isn't it?
It's a really sad way for a lot of people to waste a whole lot of time rebuilding that which already exists. Wouldn't the whole computing world be a lot better if there wasn't a team of people, maybe a couple of teams of people building complete copies of
In the end, we'll all just be left with another way to do the exact same thing only in a different language. Lord knows the world benefits now from being unable to share media between France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the US, and Japan because we can't all speak the same language. I benefit every day from the fact that I can't read a Japanese manga I might enjoy or understand a TV show from Europe. Once you are done building this tower, go build a few more right beside it using Perl, Python, and Ruby too. They're all trailing behind in certain areas, we need to make sure the same set of stuff is reinvented and rewritten for all of them too.
people are "influencial" (as in "financial"); at other places, they are merely "influential".
And we're posting open letters from a PHB why? The guy managed to throw so many meaningless buzzwords into the first paragraph that I started to get a headache just from reading it. If this is what passes for 'influential' at MS, it explains a lot about the quality of their software.
Top execs at Microsoft do understand OSS very well. This is one such example. I think they understand OSS much better than others and are able to come up with counter arguments that may sound silly to regular OSS supporters but do help Microsoft's point get across the corporate and home customers. It would be stupid to assume that they don't get what OSS is when you hear them making totally insane arguments against OSS.
- Jalil Vaidya
Wow. Without reading the rest of the article, would anyone know what that paragraph meant?
--naked
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Visit TheOpenCd.org project burn copies for you and for any businesses or schools you know. each copy you give away is 4-500 dollars Microsoft does not make or hold people in a strangelhold.
/ in dex.html
http://www.theopencd.org/mirrors.php
the ISO is about 300 megs or if you want Office alone
get it at:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/1.0.2
Linux already has enough ground an influence to make Microsoft want a piece of that pie... They will try to do something 'innovative' with it, hoping to control that too. And as I read in a story a few months ago, they may just build the next Windows on Linux, but I doubt we will see something quite like that.
But what if M$ tries to get in the Linux market? Would you guys use it? I mean, is it about Linux to you guys or strictly OSS?
it's not been uncommon these past years for MS employees to expand their embrase by leaving on such supposed terms that allows them to be accepted elsewhere where they otherwise would not be. And in time to undermine any competitive ability against MS, of where they go. Note: such leaving doesn't mean they sold their stock in MS.
.net patent applications should be enough indication of MS intent to bait and switch and commit acts of entrapment, etc....
AS an example: what remains of the Amiga Intellectual Property is now controlled bith directlky and indirectly by MS thru Gateway held patents and an agreement they have with MS and former MS employees now in important positions at Amiga Inc.
The Recent
Here on slashdot even, there is an infilteration of MS from the spectrum of buying ad space to posters.
He, rather eloquently, makes the point that has been made over and over again here on /. about what MS should do. It also points out weak points in MS's strategy that need to be exploited. The question is who is best suited to take advantage of these ideas. Some companies seems to be headed in this direction but is anyone, commercial or Open Source, already on this path?
IMHO, I think that M$ will never be able to recover from these stigmata because M$ refuses to change. For example, I go to the University of Wisconsin Platteville and we aren't going to be able to renew our M$ contract for next year. Why? Because M$ has decided that the amount we paid a few years ago to renew is no longer sufficient even though we have not deployed any new software from them!
Another unfortunate side effect is that fact that the students who were able to purchase software at discounted educational prices are going to be hurt to discover that their licenses won't be valid any longer! So try explaining to a student who knows nothing about computers that the $30 he forked over for Office XP was just wasted.
"This food is problematic."
The problem with all companies once they reach a certain size is that they develope ego's twice their size & are blind to the obvious. Perhaps it's not the company M$ & more like the leaders of Corporations who have been so successful at their ways that they become blind to the fact that they're rules no longer apply in an "Accelerated learning" world as the result of the Internet & the Open Source method. However, unlike the Open-source world, where everyone has a different view, the individuals @ M$ probably firmly believes that the world of the M$ leaders are the Holy Scriptures of the information age since they are the one's who dominates the market. In short, Bill is surrounded by nothing more then Yes-Men, who so idolizes their idol that they are blind to the surrounding changes happening to the rest of the world. At least one person has seen the light, & may other follow his enligtened path.
Right. We 'wannabe' wealthy criminals so badly that we offer our work freely to the world.
Step 2: profit!
Microsoft actually happens to adapt to things very quickly at times, in comparison to organizations with their size and complexity. Some large corporations take years to adapt to the presence of a new product, a new strategy, or a new competitor. Microsoft has, in the past, made big changes in weeks.
Sure, a small development team may be able to change directions more quickly, but that's an apples-to-oranges comparison.
So, if MS really wants to adapt to something, they will, and they will do it quickly, and they will roll over anyone who tries to stand in their way. And, as far as I see, their current strategy is still making money and is still leading the software industry.
Just for concession's sake, though... the fact that the open source movement (or for that matter, Apple) has been able to live and thrive on the niche markets and margins of the software/hardware industries is a great credit to their tenacity and robustness. It's a difficult market out there...
worse yet, his writing is atrocious.
This guy has an ego problem. The whole world has to know why HE'S quiting? A lot of people "oppose" what MS is doing. So what? I cant believe he HAD to type all that BS. Of couse it's all like - the molecular structure of the photon is perpendicular to I am smart, I know all - crap. Look pal nobody will remember you or your BS article. It's my opinion that this guy is a complainer/whiner and I hate those types more then MS. Oh yeah fok MS!
The reason most people use OSS is because of M$'s business practices.. they're disgusting, and OSS is the alternative.
Java has killed VB and .Not is dead.
Linux has killed windoooze in server market
now Linux is taking over the desktop.
Time is ticking for this M$ evil company to vanish.
is he saying that jobs isn't out of his mind?
To any seasoned observer, the points in his letter were obvious to the point of banality. They may seem like revelations to an "executive" (read: heard about the internet at HBS or on a golf course) audience, but to the rest of us (apologies to Woz), this is like an open letter declaring that the atmosphere contains nitrogen.
"Stop looking over your shoulder and invent something!"
That's just it: Microsoft has never invented anything. Everything Microsoft ever sold (with the possible exception of that first BASIC interpreter) they either bought or stole (sometimes both) from somwhere else. Microsoft can't innovate because they've never known how.
Well there IS also a big problem with OpenSource. The problem of no one is responsible for problems, damage and other stuff.
I like to give you a good example of problems that I found with OpenSource and which are hard to track down because the developer doesn't feel to follow rules.
Example:
GNOME 2.2 there are a lot of inconsistences in the UI as you can read here. People tried to contact the developers, wrote patches but everything seems to be a waste of time since you can't convince the developer of the customer needs. The reply is usually 'go fix it yourself' or 'create a patch and sent it to bugzilla' or similar stuff. OpenSource will never be able to program the way the customer needs the software. OpenSource mostly program the way the developer likes it. If you look at commercial Companies such as Apple for example. Most of their applications look equal, feel equal and behave equal because they spent a lot of money into their design, their usability and their programmers. All this is missing on OpenSource. If we talk about little applications then no one bothers but as soon as it starts to get complex where many people need to work together as a team in a big project then things start to suck. OpenSource is definately a good idea but on the long run I don't see it to stay successful. Specially if you as developer work freely on your program and realize how other companies such as RedHat, Sun, SuSE and many others outsource your hard work and sell it for cash to other people.
I don't know if you people understand what I'm upto but I like to encourage you to think about this stuff for some minutes.
- Developers seriously like to get money for their work.
- OpenSource is a free ticket for companies to have your shit outsourced for cash.
- You work hard on your own project trying to reach some big stuff with other community members such as in a GNOME project but you always fail to convince them because everyone plays as an individual instead in a team.
Don't think and belive blindly that OpenSource is the best thing that happens for you. There are also big disadvantages in OpenSource.
Cool.
The translation is easy enough. After years of denying that "the network was the computer" MS got caught flatfooted by the internet. They cater to the business now, but have not really come to terms with it.
Least of all the fact that its very existence renders their bread and butter, the shrink wrapped software product, obsolete.
That clear it up for you?
I guess this post is now both off topic and redundant. Go figure.
KFG
Some people seem to think that the letter suggests that Microsoft should embrace OSS or that the letter is saying something very positive about OSS. The letter does no such thing.
It's a very candid evaluation of what the threat of open source looks like from someone who is not really interested in the values and politics of the movement and doesn't see open source as innovative:
There you have it. His point, if you read the rest of the article, is that Microsoft is too focused on the PC-client side of things, and that's hopeless because anything Microsoft can create on the PC client document-centric side of things the Open Source "cloners" (his word) will just copy and give away for free, and this eats into MS's profit margin. He wants Microsoft to go into network-centric software that will presumably be difficult for open source to clone.
Basically, he sees OSS as cheap, inferior copies of MS's beautiful software (the "best client") not worthy of admiration except for the fact that cheap customers are willing to settle for the inferior thing.
First off, Stutz by his own admission is trained as a musician. This "software architecture" thing appears to be more or less a lark.
His list of contributions (to MS and otherwise) in recent years appears to be:
- "WebClasses" - a failed alternative to VB components for Microsoft Transaction Server
- the "Shared Source CLI" - the underpinnings of Microsoft's vastly successful C# implementation
It seems Microsoft hired this guy to be their token, quirky open-source iconoclast and Stutz got more than a little upset when nobody wanted to listen to him.If he were genuinely an influential guy, then he would have used whatever political power he wielded to further his own goals, either inside Microsoft or outside. Instead he spent his time writing an O'Reilly book, ironically, to convince people that .NET was not such a bad thing after all.
People who are influential don't feel a bipolar-esque need to bemoan their employer and make Cassandra forecasts of doom and gloom; they work to get what they want. It's people who are not influential who end up blogging a "fuck you, you are stupid" letter to their former employer.
Before this gets modded down as flamebait, I'm not attacking open source so much as questioning the exponents you choose.
"Any move towards cutting off alternatives by limiting interoperability or integration options would be fraught with danger, since it would enrage customers, "
He was spot on with this - they made MSN break Opera browsers and it sure pissed off a lot of people, (especially me).
I have a side question to any Yahoo staff here.
Your terms for being submitted to Yahoo Directory include the requirement that the site must work properly across different browsers.
You have MSN, msn uk etc. listed under Portals in the World Wide Web section.
Many of MSN portals still do not work properly in Opera. What procedure do you have in place for delisting those Microsoft sites that do not support different browser?
SO I ask this: how can a post asking a question about open source be offtopic?
... even if it is in PHB babble.
It's offtopic because the topic is a story on why a guy left Microsoft. NOT Mozilla or web browsers in general. If he wants his question answered, he can post it as an ask slashdot question!
On this topic, I hope M$ continues to ignore this guy. It could be very scary if they actually do anything he says
... also a very nice collection of free software for Windows. It's what I use, and I've been very happy with it.
:)
Plus the mascot is cute.
I really like this comment of his:
"...and disgruntled Microsoft wannabes have poured huge quantities of often inferior, but nonetheless requirements-driven, open source software"
synthesist.net runs on Apache.
it seems unlikely I'd use it. Not necessarily because it was MS, although that would be part of it ( as someone who ran an all Windows shop for years they've damned well *earned* my distaste).
No, it would be because they did it on the Apple model. Take an open source core and heavily wrap it in a propriatary shell.
Odds are I wouldn't like the shell either, and would be just as constrained from changing it as I am in changing Windows now ( where I have to hack the executable binary just to change the label on the "start" button).
I've already rejected a pure Linux company's offering for similar reasons. That would be Lycoris. Why should I accept MS's?
KFG
Some parts of it were coherent and insightful, but he also said stuff like:
Unfortunately, network protocols have turned out to be a far better fit for this middleman role, and Microsoft, intent on propping up the PC franchise, has had to resist fully embracing the network integration model. This corporate case of denial has left a vacuum, of course, into which hardware companies, enterprises, and disgruntled Microsoft wannabes have poured huge quantities of often inferior, but nonetheless requirements-driven, open source software.
Huh? Open sourcers are "disgruntled Microsoft wannabes"? Most open source software was created because either
a) There WAS no such program, and someone needed it
b) There was a program, but it lacked certain features/was too expensive/the author just wanted to write a new one, etc
He clearly understands how big a force the Open Source community is becoming, and how it will affect Microsoft - but he doesn't seem to grasp the reasons. And his remedy was very vague to me. So, Microsoft should stop looking over their shoulder, and go with network apps instead of their OS... what network apps would those be? Yeah, if Microsoft doesn't change and roll with the punches, they surely will be going down. But I'm not sure their future lies in some fluffy concept of platform-independent "networked applications". I don't think we'll see a networked linux version of Office anytime soon, but it's good to know the ol' 800 pound gorilla is starting to get anxious.
"Microsoft must survive and prosper by learning from the open source software movement and by borrowing from and improving its techniques
So that's what they call it now "borrowing" well whatever makes them sleep at night.
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
watching Rainbow Brite, didn't you? Come on, you're among (cough) friends. You can admit it.
KFG
A good letter but lets hope Bill Gates never reads it!
Out of curiosity (and I humbly apologize for being off-topic here), are fan-lists replacing karma as /.'s sense of 'leetness'? I'm seeing less and less "karma-whoring" and karma-based metatalk, and more and more discussions about friends/fanlists. Are we looking at a second generation of Slashdot society?
If so, cool. Karma should be about how well your posts foster the community; friends/foes should be about whether people agree with/like what your posts are saying.
*looks at his 'fans' list* gee. That's sobering.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
There's a lot of reasons Linux/OSS users don't use Microsoft:
Even if those issues were addressed, it doesn't change the fact that Microsoft's history has been one of "extend and embrace". Regardless of how good their Linux products would/could be, it would be difficult to accept them unless Microsoft changes as a company.
My favorite quotes:
Recovering from current external perceptions of Microsoft as a paranoid, untrustworthy, greedy, petty, and politically inept organization will take years.
Linux is certainly a threat to Microsoft's less-than-perfect server software right now (and to its desktop in the not-too-distant future)
My absolute favorite: Any move towards cutting off alternatives by limiting interoperability or integration options would be fraught with danger, since it would enrage customers, accelerate the divergence of the open source platform, and have other undesirable results.
There are many clever and motivated people out there, who have many different reasons to avoid buying directly into a Microsoft proprietary stack.
I like how he doesn't judge people who go against MS - he respects their intellect and their decision making process. OSS folks should do the same for those of us who make the decisions to use MS in certain areas.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
To anyone who read the article, the above post is obviously just a copy/paste job without any added INSIGHT by the poster himself. Therefore, by definition, it is not "Insightful", but "Redundant" and should be modded as such. Thank you.
really serves to show how out of touch with OSS he really is.
Naturally MS, and MS's employees, would be most aware of the OSS software specifically designed to make the switch easy for Windows users. This is also the software that the MS oriented computer press focuses on, and the software that new Linux users are most likely to come in contact with.
Just because the innovation is below your radar doesn't mean it's not there. Linux is now the OS of choice for those doing innovative work, particularly in the academic setting, most because it's the most viable OS for *doing* just such work. It's free, you have the source, and the right to dick with it all you want.
If he wants an example of something the OSS model has already produced he could start with the World Wide Frickin' Web.
KFG
Which you can't. BASIC was an academic teaching language developed at Dartmouth College.
Bill just wrote a propriatary interpreter.
KFG
tshak is IMO a paid microsoft astroturfer.
.NET to fail post)
i've said it before and i'm saying it again.(check my posts)
one day i will write a book,
[rant]
i am the jumbie the troll who watches the Astroturfers but is hampered in her noble policing effort by being limited to just 2 posts a day and karma so low i'm coming back as a tampon.(a hundred curses on my nemisis cowboyoneal and his slashsource)
one day my karma will rise AND YOU WILL RUE THE DAY!
[/rant]
(if you look back on tshaks posts you'll also see he often rises to the 100 reasons i want
Quit Slashdot Today!
spunky little bag of adolescent testosterone today, aren't we?
KFG
That's his point. What do I spend time on my computer doing? Well, I use emacs (for coding), freeciv (for fun), slashdot and indymedia (for news).... What's out there on the net is as important as what's in here on my computer. It's a big shift -- and one M$ has been trying to ignore.
Of course, what's on the computer seems to make a whole lot more money than what's on the net, so this decision has done well for them so far. They just can't keep it up.
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Forecast for the year 2023: MS to be a much less dominant player, if around at all.
yes. you sure nailed him in his coffin. his quote says:
"all (100%) open source software is inferior and there is no exception, and it is all sucks and there is no way I would ever be caught using open sources and I have a stepson and I named him Christine..."
hate to spoil it for you, 15yr_old@home, but the majority of open source software is an overwhelming pile of dog shit. There are exceptions, but overall, the signal to noise ration is very, very, very, very small. For every apache, there are 20,000 PHP projects designed to imitate Slashcode. I am sure that commercial software suffers from the same, but each piece of commercial software isn't written with an emotional/political agenda in mind.
now, go back to your gamecube and whack off to zelda or something.
"But what if M$ tries to get in the Linux market? Would you guys use it? I mean, is it about Linux to you guys or strictly OSS?"
Maybe. Corporate types are skittish when it comes to open source stuff. They have reason to be. Licensing can be a killer if the project can not say "We can sell this as part of our project" freely without providing source. The effort involved in some engineering projects drives the cost. Managing cost is what makes or breaks a project. AFAIK the only entity that can get away with using open source products in their projects without generating complaint is the government. Open source compilers and tools are a no-no for most governement contracts (at least where I work). It would be wonderful to use open source tools for our projects as a way to drive costs down.
Linux in the lab would be sweet indeed. If it came from Microsoft the suits would trust it in a way they do not trust it now.
bob@Osprey:~>
It is very doubtful that this guy understood the completeness of Microsoft's future strategy. Although PC software will continue to be a big seller, Microsoft is working on web application services, mobile services (PocketPC, Smartphones, tablet PC's) and there is this entire .NET effort you may have heard about. To state that MS doesn't see this change in the industry is laughable. Additionally to say that MS doesn't sell pieces of the Office suite as seperate products is incorrect and casts doubt on the entire analysis.
I work at Microsoft, David Stutz was influential. He was the driving force behind the closest Microsoft has come to Open Source with his efforts on the Shared Source CLI. Your post is uninformed garbage.
Disclaimer: The above comments do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. They are solely my opinion.
This is the #1 reason Linux et al will achieve the famed world domination in the not too distant future.
It is like a rite of passage for the best and the brightest. Look at the cost benefit ratio to your CV (cost measured in time, benefit measured in getting a desirable job) of having some of your code accepted into a key high profile OSS. There is no better way to spend your time. This will secure that the very best this world has to offer will add value to OSS. No corporation however rich can match that. No one.
There is currently 1000+ people working on the various aspects of the Linux kernel. (source IBM) How can anyone organization match that. It is like NASA in the 60's or the Manhattan project during later part of WW2.
The idea of MS innovating its way out of this is silly. Innovations will arrise at the grassroot level and continue to rise to the level the initial idea merits. Attracting the skills needed at the appropiate levels thru a natural selection process from an endless pool of talents.
Help fight continental drift.
Remember that there are different open source models out there. The BSDs, for example, are very corporation friendly (even MS used the BSD networking stack).
BG
An excellent flamebait troll! My regards, sir!
..just a thought, but maybe you have misread or misconstrued a lot (not all but a lot) of the anti microsoft and what you see as anti corporate posts on slashdot. What I see more, and I agree with, is that people are anti unethical behavior and criminality, and anti what happens once any entity has a lot of power with little or no check to what they do with that power.
The obvious example, following the main thread focus, on microsft, where millions of people have noted that they did, in fact, abuse their position, that they got to a dominate position via some pretty questionable means, and that their security models combined with this position have put people in the "pretty much stuck" position of spending a lot of money to be abused on an ongoing basis. yes, I am aware of "don't use their stuff", well, this has been answerd over and over again by noting it's pretty hard to not be affected by "their stuff" whether you use it or not, especially if your clients and cuistomers are still using it. Catch 22 there, so we will get past that sticking point, it's been answered. We all use the net, and all of us are affected when a significant size hole appears and gets exploited, and once a pattern of many years time and of noting exactly where those holes appear and exactly who is responsible for them and how much money they continue to make by this inclusion into the internet world of this swiss cheese approach to expensive software, well.... I mean, really.... the sky IS really blue.
As to "corporations", recent revelations over the past couple of years have proven there is a lot of outright lying, obfuscation of finances, over hyping to small investors to shill up stocks worth to absurd and reckless levels-fraud in other words, and so on. It's not a true black and white issue, it's more a pick an example (examples again, say microsoft, enron, etc) and point out data and take it from there, normal empirical analysis. the gestalt is, there sure is a lot of criminality going on, and people are beginning to wonder exactly how widespread this is, after example after example comes to light. It's endemic, and probably epidemic, if you would allow a small amount of anthromorphism to be used to describe it..
Of course this can be called bashing, but to millions of people it's "bashing" based on the reality of an obvious need to bash. Blaming the victims for a crime committed against them is not considered to be an intellectually viable form of expression that is valid, at least not amongst rational civilized people.
Now for me, a regular old 'murican capitalist, and a proponent of self-reliance and independence, and ALSO a proponent of above board rational and ethical business behavior, there are some corps I think do a good job, and others I can see as being..well.. crooks is the word. Serious crooks, crooks who not only need some fines, but some jail time. Want an example? any of the corporations who sold weapons of mass destruction materials to saddam back in the 80's, when he was obviously using them in warfare. any of those corpos officers, chucked in the pokey. the corporations dissolved. Well now, that would sure be an interesting set of bignames now, wouldn't it? I have more examples, that is "enough" for ocnversational purposes. And yes, I could name names, but anyone with google access can find out as well.
And to add to the stewpot in the fines and jail list some of the more bribed politicians who behind the scenes and in collusion with other industry heads (and being conflict of industry heads themselves) and semi-faceless regulatory bureaucrats, who have allowed this sort of behavior to become a lot more of the "norm" then what people are comfortable with. Yep, fines and jail. Yep, their businesses dissolved, as being "not in the public interest". Cross the line, do the time. It's like that for joe little guy, should be the same for frederick fatcat.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to "bash on crooks". I think it's perfectly acceptable to go back to the original founders ideas on state chartered corporations, wherein they were tasked with not only following normal business laws and ethics in order to do their business and accumulate "profits", but they also had an additional duty to be of the public interest and benefit, and if it can be shown a continuuing pattern of unethical behavior, that said corporation should be dissolved, with no thought to whatever "profits" are involved,no more than any petty gangs busting would involve consideration of their "profits", and that officers of said corporation should be brought up on criminal charges, as well as civil charges. No one really much cares what the "financial considerations" are when the local crack house gets taken down, this exact same philosphy should be applied on any scale, because, well, a crime is a crime is a crime. I know as joe littleguy that the system cares not about my profits if I should be convicted of a crime, they are more than happen to seize or incarcerate. It's "funny" to note the regardings these very large enterprises the almost total lack of significant level fines and significant numbers of corporate officers who fail to make it to the pokey once busted and convicted. It isn't the bashers' fault that we notice this, in fact, it's an ethical and moral and common sense stance to take..
This doesn't happen enough to suit my tastes, and I maintain that if it did, we wouldn't be seeing near the bad business that occurs, nor the amount of boom and bust cycles, and practically speaking on a tech oriented forum, the IT and internet world would be more robust, more profitable and not less, and much more secure. That it doesn't happen enough is just obvious-thee is no provision for a "who watches the watchers" in our modern "system". We have a theoretical way to do that, but with the seizure of our governmental system by two for-profit organizations, who operate in a "scratch my back and I'll scratch you'rs" mode, a lot more than what they will admit to, you can see how this system is broken and how abuses will continue. Occassionaly, in order to show they are "doing something", they will "sacrafice one of their own" in order to throw a bone to the "bashers", but it really is more of a busywork facade than any true expression of "cleaning up business and it's partner government".
please excuse remaining typos, spent enough time on this post for now
>>Note that that was a joke.
>Well, he is not so much telling them to embrace open source, but to borrow from them.
Are u trying to look smart ?
Mircosoft is DYING
hehehehe, couldn't resist. We here this everytime someone leaves a BSD project. But the fact that he also had some insight to dispense (it sounds like he was in a consulting-like position) indicates he does not feel Microsoft is headed in the direction to succeed.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
While needing a little spell-checking, this is one of the most insightful posts I've read here in a long time, and is a logical, well thought-out response to all those who get upset someone says something bad about Microsoft.
The sins of Microsoft for charging big money for crap like Windows ME deserves a class-action lawsuit. You could argue Windows 98 was not much better than Windows 95.
In the linux world, how dare RedHat charge for their shipping of each version of RedHat. All they do is add new versions of packages and maybe change the kernel. (That's all sarcasm, btw. And consider RedHat as the archetype commercial linux distro.)
There are plenty of costs associated with managing releases from a company standpoint and Apple has been very generous in its updating of Mac OS X. We got disk journaling as a freebie, as an example. With Jaguar, maybe Apple's mistake was not manipulating people with marketing. Should they have called it "Mac OS Y"? Would that make you feel better about spending money? Or are the new features and performance what you want to spend money on?
If MS can improvement the standard with better support on their own platform, it is a benefit to all Windows user. C++? yes, it is not following all the ANSI standard. MS claims that they'll provide better support on ANSI standard in next version. Basic? Who would like to do Windows programming with standard Basic? I think VB is really a merit for RAD. HTML? When you found that you can't read standard HTML with IE? Yes. MS support lot of their own extension, but they never give up the standard (only those stupid web designers/programmers give it up by writing something for IE only). Video and audio codec? Is there anyone can't play MP3 or Ogg under Windows? Is there anyone can't play DivX under Windows? WMA, WMV, etc... is proprietary. But who decide the popularity of it? Not MS, but those stupid developers/CEO/CTO and the users. Java? Sorry, it is not standard, even C# can claim it.
If you're running a company, everything should be profitable. If you wanna contribute to the world, please code for free software. If there is no developer pay for such expensive tool, how can a OS obtains 90+% of users? Why there is developer willing to pay for such expensive tool?
Are you wanna agree with "One language/platform rules them all"? Then why you don't say, if everyone uses Windows, then we all need not to trouble for cross platform, compatability, or even waste the time on porting software? Or you believe in "One Java rules them all" is better than "One Windows(with VS) rules them all"? Think about why there's GNOME and KDE, why there's MySQL and PostgreSQL, why there's C++, Java, Perl, PHP, etc.. and why we all have different DNA.
Really too much anti-MS post here. I also don't like MS (and Sun too), but better provide right reasons. MS is evil not because we're anti-MS.
this guy is very articulate and has much more of interset to say than the original post
I think that if MS were to go open source, they'd almost certainly "pull an Apple," and go with BSD, due to the licensing issues involved. And that'd be fine with me - all is not Linux, you know.
LOL
I find it amusing that you would use DNA in your defence of the beast
"Distributed Network Computing" anyone else remember that! Micrsoft don't
You might as well advocate Microsoft Bob
He clearly understands how big a force the Open Source community is becoming, and how it will affect Microsoft - but he doesn't seem to grasp the reasons.
To the contrary, it seems clear that he grasps the reasons, and points out that Microsoft isn't paying attention to those reasons. He doesn't say "requirements-driven, open source software" with nothing in mind -- this man knows exactly why open source software exists and thrives, and I believe this is main idea he's trying to get across.
He's saying "Wake up, Microsoft! You're so impractical that people have come down to making their own small software in leiu of buying your expensive bulky crap! Unless you change your closed-minded ways, the people will toss you aside in favor of the streamlined customized software they've always wanted, which the open-source movement will give them."
-=[You cannot consistently judge this statement to be true.]=-
"Christensen obselescence" refers to Clayton Christensen's book: "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail". Christensen is a professor at the Harvard Business school. He is a renowned expert on disruptive technologies, which is really what the Innovator's dilemma is all about, and thus, the reference to the Internet and Open Source.
But, getting the two confused is understandable, they are both BYU grads. :)
you cannot because if you read their eula they cannot be held responsible for damages done by their product.
i'm afraid not, you have to wait for patches, just like you do with open source applications.
the difference here is that you can fix the problems with oss applications yourself or hire someone to do it for you. this is not possible with microsofts business model. if there were enough people interested in the patches for gnome 2.2 they should have forked it.
you say that opensource will never be programed the way the customer wants it. linux running on the new ibm hardware, openoffice being deployed in many organizations across the planet, motorola using linux as their os for their phones , are all examples of opensouce fullfilling the customers needs. not all customers have the same needs, and microsoft will have customers for a while to come.
as software becomes a commodity item, businesses will start to consider using oss to reduce development costs. if you want to sell a pvr, you're not really concerned with making money on the software. if you can find a cheap opensouce platform to build on and get your product to market for less money in less time it's going to be hard for the propritary solutions to compete.
opensource applications will get that polish it needs from companies who want to take advantage of the large code base available. these will be companies who need software to power their hardware-which they intend on making their money.
-- john
And (except for the horrid font smoothing) I love it. I agree that Jaguar is much better than what came before. The point is that if the content is good enough, people should and will pay for it.
sulli
RTFJ.
How hard is it to put in an a href??? Now every person who wants to visit your links will have to copy and paste them. And to top it off the second one won't even work because the crappy Slashdot software put a space in it.
n dex.html
http://www.theopencd.org/mirrors.php
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/1.0.2/i
Dave Stutz is a sellout. Granted you're not working for a "Hitler regime", one should never part a company by burning bridges. Forgive me for my corporate principles, but this just isn't the way to go. If you publish a letter like this in poor taste, what are your chances of getting employment in the future based on your newly discovered level of credibility? I wouldn't hire someone who distanced himself from his previous company in this manner. What does that say about his level of trust? Sure, his ideas are marketable, but isn't his integrity also on the line?
Not on technical grounds, for that is where the author's argument appears to hold a lot of truth. /. orthodoxy.
No, it's about organizations. The genius of Bill Gates is that his vision extends to the people as well as the tech.
Them peeps want a system that doesn't bother them with case sensitive strings and granular file permissions. Furthermore, eye candy=good, command line=bad.
Peeps are as likely to abandon 'Doze for Open Source as they are to exercise regularly, eat healthy things, educate themselves, and live peacefully with their neighbor.
If you roger up for any of the activities in the previous para, you are not a representative sample. Sorry.
This is not a pro-Microsoft troll, for all it might appear to contradict the
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The point of that quote is that open-source software is primarily requirements-driven, where M$ software is primarily profit-driven. It's understandable that this man believes everyone who writes a program to replace one that M$ makes is a "Microsoft wannabe" ... he's been working for them most of his career.
At least he recognizes *why* people are driven to replace their M$ products.
And for that reason it's very understandable that he'd be running Apache rather than IIS. He would otherwise be quite hypocritical.
As for you, I think you're switching contexts from "open-source" to "independent". Plenty of independent software sucks, open source or not. And plenty of open source software is awesome, independent or not. You just can't combine them like that.
-=[You cannot consistently judge this statement to be true.]=-
Then with a "no Microsofts" clause wouldn't there need to be a company included, called Microsoft? God, i'm bored. sorry....
why run from Vincenzo?
BASIC was invented by John Kemmeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College. They implemented it as a compiler, and it was later adopted as an interpreter on a number of minicomputers and microcomputers.
Microsoft's contribution was to reimplement a very tiny ( But they have yet to impress me with any actual technical innovation.
OpenSource will never be able to program the way the customer needs the software.
Nor does Closed source. What the hell good does it do me to have all the overhead of a GUI interface on a headless server? I do NOT have any use for an integrated media player on a file server. If a program is open source, and GPL, then, if the original programmer won't fix it, well, I can always go in and tweak the software the way I want, or pay someone to do it for me. Do you think MS or Apple will do that for me?
If you look at commercial Companies such as Apple for example. Most of their applications look equal, feel equal and behave equal because they spent a lot of money into their design, their usability and their programmers.
As true as this is, they never asked me what I want from their system. So, all their stuff looks/feels/behaves equal, but doesn't do it in a way that I want it to. Open source gives me the ability to have it done the way I want it to be done. Big Big difference there. The median average of any group leaves the majority of the group unsatisfied.
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
My bad. I just did a search for "Christensen" and "obsolete" and banged through the resulting pages. I screwed up by not looking at the first names and used the first name of the first hit, which didn't result in much data. Sorry and thanks for doing the "research" correctly.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
No one has respect for innovators who are kept whores of a mega-corp.
Why do you, David Stutz, get so soft and warm and mushy about your (former) employer? Can't you see what a vastly better place this planet will be once their pernicious influence on the computing landscape is scrubbed away?
Unless your article was a disguised way of telling MS why they suck; but it really does seem like a heart-felt bit of advice to the vicious monster you love; an agonizing "Dear John" letter sent as you set out for other climes.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
That's why I don't support Suse, Lindows, Xandros, or UnitedLinux. Taking an entirely opensource group of software and then dropping a small fraction of proprietary code that if removed cripples the distro or prevents redistribution is something I don't believe in and try not to support. Using your example of what Apple did, at least they did it right. They used BSD software properly and thankfully didn't try to hijack linux which is what the above companies are more concerned with. I've gotten flamed in the past for complaining about Suse in particular, but considering how Redhat and Mandrake opensource some very good gui admin tools, Suse just ends up looking stupid for the way they treat Yast.
It's a hard line to walk. On one hand I believe the core distro should be free but at the same time you should be able to run whatever closed source apps you want on top of that. For example I would have no problem running a port of Photoshop on Debian, but I would never support a proprietary version of APT no matter how well it worked. I also REALLY don't like companies basing their distro on Debian and then adding a lot of proprietary crap and preventing distribution. That really makes no sense and I always write the companies telling them they should have used one of the BSD's instead.
My logic may be flawed but that's just the way I feel. If the future of linux is distros in which many parts become proprietary and they all cost money then I'll just use something else. It's not about being cheap either. Its about having a quality free OS available that truly belongs to the community and is above commercial interests.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
"Dave Stutz, an influencial guy at Microsoft"
If the guy is so influencial why didn't MS follow his advice before he left? I can understand how you might want to give some parting advice to your employer, but releasing it to the world suggests his motive is really publicity for himself rather than any real concern about the future of MS. Looks like he's positioning himself for Guruism.
Windows ... makes a hell of a good client
disgruntled Microsoft wannabes have poured huge quantities of often inferior ... open source software
We don't want to be Microsoft. We want software that works. And our software works. Yours didn't.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
To pick just one thing, however, I would have to object to him saying MS should start selling 'components', ie selling Word instead of Office, or a web server instead of Windows. Sorry, man, but that has been done before. That kind of thinking is exactly what made Windows and Office successful; rather than having to go out and purchase a hodge-podge of products to get things done, you could go and get the MS 'swiss army knife'.
For example, my company buys Office. Some people only use Word, some use Access, some use Excel a lot. But the beauty of it is that, with one product purchase, just about all our user's needs are covered.
It may be cheaper for Bobby the college student to just purchase Word since he will never use Access, but when you are a company that needs to provide an application for a thousand users, its nice to have a single purchase cover so much ground.
Likewise with servers. Maybe I will be setting up a server as a web server, or a file/print server, or whatever. But they are all built on a single platform, which makes it easier to come in and fix; if an IIS server is having connectivity issues, I troubleshoot it the same way I would any other NT Server.
Sadly, this guy just sounds like he is venting, and doesnt even have valid points. The vagueness of the whole thing just sounds like consultant-speak- i.e. I dont know how you are doing things, but you are doing them wrong.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
In the book of Illiad, Chapter 3, Verse 29 through Chapter 4, Verse 10
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Well there IS also a big problem with OpenSource. The problem of no one is responsible for problems, damage and other stuff.
:)
Hmm, last I checked, I can't sue most of the closed source companies for any damages to my data that their software may cause (indirectly or directly) as their "shrink wrap" license prohibits it.
OpenSource will never be able to program the way the customer needs the software.
Neither does closed source. When's the last time you could go to Adobe and say "I need suchandsuch feature right now, can you add it for me?" Nope.
If you look at commercial Companies such as Apple for example. Most of their applications look equal, feel equal and behave equal because they spent a lot of money into their design, their usability and their programmers. All this is missing on OpenSource.
They are different libraries providing different feels, yes. And this is the reason Red Hat included a theme for KDE and Gnome to make them look the same. Yet, there are a fair amount of complaints I have with the Windows Explorer and I'm not completely happy with the Mac OS desktop, although I like it now in Mac OS X more than I did previously. Thus, closed source isn't perfect there, either.
Specially if you as developer work freely on your program and realize how other companies such as RedHat, Sun, SuSE and many others outsource your hard work and sell it for cash to other people.
Depends, some OS developers are getting compensated for their work, as there are project developers working for some distros.
- Developers seriously like to get money for their work.
Yes, people, in general, like to get paid for work. However, a good portion of OS programmers I am willing to bet are professional programmers who do this on the side because some personal fulfillment doesn't get met at work.
- OpenSource is a free ticket for companies to have your shit outsourced for cash.
Can be. Not always.
- You work hard on your own project trying to reach some big stuff with other community members such as in a GNOME project but you always fail to convince them because everyone plays as an individual instead in a team.
Team play is hard to achieve sometimes even in a closed source environment, that's where people get reassigned, let go, etc... Happens in the OS world, too. People have left projects, or in some cases, kicked out.
I'm not saying that OS is the perfect solution, but it works pretty well for some companies, and I would venture to say that there is room for more companies, if they can get it right. Red Hat manages to
But even a really large company still has a kind of collective personality that it exudes and a large part of the personality both internal and external to Microsoft for many years now is that of a total control freak.
That sounds very cyberpunk. Next thing you know, Microsoft is run by an AI from orbit.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Microsoft pays a lot of money to demonstrate to investors that it does R&D, but the bottom line is that Office and Windows bankroll the company. I have not seen one innovation from their research dept make it to market. Please indicate if you have contrary proof.
We make exceptions
The problem isn't the concept of Open Source, the problem is the type of people currently doing open source. If you have a community of traditionalist unix geeks who put only a fraction of the work into the user experience that they do into technical stuff, their efforts at creating quality desktop software will suck. Why was the Open Source community able to create things as technically brilliant and requiring so much technical effort like Apache and the Linux kernel (in just a couple years), yet have not been able to create a consistant and usable linux UI for over 10 years? Because the unix developer culture does not value usability and the majority of Open Source People come from the unix developer culture.
"But, but, but" people say "but Mac OS X is unix, and they've been able to validate the concept of a unix desktop." Just the opposite. The mac developer community is inherently different from the unix developer community. Mac developers value putting a lot of work into the user experience, and you can see this in the fact that Mac OS X has been able to accomplish in 2-3 years what traditionalist unix developers have not been able to do for nearly 20. If anything, Mac OS X's success does the opposite of validating linux on the desktop--it shows that linux on the desktop is severely lacking in the mindset needed to create successful desktop software despite their over-abundance of programmers and technically minded-people.
I'm not saying that Open Source is damned to failure, I'm just saying that it needs a major house cleaning and the traditionalist unix developers who don't give a damn about end-users and who are intolerant of the "nit picking" needed to create quality UI's need to be replaced by people who care enough to do a quality job. Out with the bad, in with the good.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
In fact, I'm still on 8. There's no accounting for taste though, and I don't really care for the XP desktop, actually prefering 98.
As such I get along reasonably well with KDE when working in GUI mode.
It takes all kinds to make a world I guess.
KFG
Microsoft has never done an Ogg Vorbis codec nor a DivX codec. It's often a big hassle when someone asks me how to play Oggs or DivX:s with default Windows since I haven't used Win for a few years.
Some examples:
Late entry into networking. Let Novell capture small business networking for many years.
Late entry into GUI interfaces. Let apple (and others) have a modern GUI interface years before a successfull MS version.
Late entry into IDEs (Integrated development environments). Borland was the first commercial success with Turbo Pascal (and incidentally the first successful TSR app called Sidekick).
Late entry into browsers. I can clearly remember using Mosaic and Netscape two years before I saw a decent MS browser.
Late entry into office suites. Can anyone say 1,2,3 or Wordstar?
Late entry into OSes. Gary Kildall had CPM long before Microsoft bought DOS from Tim Patterson.
Late entry into the ISP business. MSN is still behind.
IMHO, the only thing Gates, Ballmer etc are really good at is leveraging its monopoly position on Windows, and forcing OEMS to use its version of office suite, networking, browser, ISP etc. The rest of its technology is for the most part purchased, or stolen.
Don't forget the split keyboard, wheel mouse (the only thing more addictive than pr0n), and everyone's all time favorite: A button that says Start! (Which now comes in a beautiful shade of green, btw)
Microsoft didn't invent BASIC, but they did turn it into something quite useful, with the transparent tokenizing, peek and poke, and the (in modern terms, primitive) integer typing.
I don't like M$ software for several reasons, in order: it's buggy, i's inflexible, and M$ ethics.
Several months ago, I had to use Visual Studio 6, for the first time, and within a day had found several bugs in it. Now whether these bugs were me not knowing the "proper" usage, or genuine bugs, that has been typical of my experience with M$, and leads to the second point, inflexibility.
If you don't use M$ products in the M$ way, you can't use them at all. Take windows, for instance, multiple windows. You get click to focus and raise on focus whether you want that or not. Sometimes I like to have several windows open for reading while typing into another window which is mostly hidden behind the others, and the mouse is in the small visible piece of hat window and thus my typing goes there while reading from the windows I have arranged so I can read what I need. This is not an everyday usage, but often enough that using M$ windows frustrates the heck out of me.
Lack of ethics is the third reason, but not nearly as important.
Infuriate left and right
C# and .NET are indirectly a result of Microsoft Research. Before .NET came out, C# was on their list of projects.
The stuff in their Tablet PCs is also partly based on MSR stuff.
They've also got a lot of really neat applications, source code, and usable examples on that site. I won't be suprised when more interesting technology comes out of MSR in the near future.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
please. those people need not be more creative as more honest. let those who do the work be creative (and learn from their mistakes). let the syntax people keep a clean syntax! in this way, the customer is most satisfied.
oh i see, the customers are masochists and usloth is just the right thing for that rainy afternoon away from the ethical life. a few years of foreplay and now youse fucked. please pay on your way out *ding*.
why would i, who practice my poor craft w/ love, want to be like that?
Could somebody mod this parent up? This is right on the money. If Apple had decided to call it OSX 11.0 instead of 10.3, would this whining have stopped? Jaguar was a pretty significant 'point release', if that's all it was. Arguably more than I ever got from Microsoft for a MAJOR release, since every release seems to give me MORE problems.
If there was such an animal no I wouldn't use it.
Let us assume the most unlikely.
Gnu-Windows being totally GPLed and every issue everyone has ever expressed has bern adressed with solutins that keep it good for the forseeable future.
Microsoft has one major isdue and that is backing out when someone else benifits. Not just when they don't benifit but when someone else benifits more.
They are just sneeky and don't need to break any laws to gain controll.
Swap out GPLed code over a piriod of five years leaving you with a commertal Linux clone with none of the gpled code base.
I don't actually exist.
Microsoft's BOB operating system and Clippy the Office assistant are proof that Microsoft *is* innovative. :-)
Can anyone point me to a Bob clone on SourceForge?
But, why would you use it at all, later on ("then"), that is, the stuff you don't like?
Puzzled...
Enby in Waltham
was used to induce mild nausea in some medical-research subjects. Some had no adverse reactions, but it was useful to the researchers in the instances of those who did feel ill.
From SyBase. So, once again, BZZZZZT!!!!!!
You work at microsoft, and your nick is Carnage4Life. Coincidence?
...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead
sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved
linux kernel version.
-- Linus Torvalds
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