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How The Web Was Almost Won

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-story-of-the-servers dept.

radiator wrote to us with the latest writing from Tim O'Reilly, currently running on Salon. Tim, as always, does a great job writing, this time dealing with the Microsoft trial, the server market, and how close we really came to an Internet ruled by Microsoft.

1 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. You missed the point by aheitner · · Score: 5

    It's irrelevant what MS stuff comes with NT. Obviously you get the good stuff if you pay the big bucks -- that's always true.

    The issue is that MS required you to effectively pay for their product in order to be able to use another product.

    In other words, they realized that NT Workstation was much too viable a server platform using 3rd party daemons, and changed the license to make sure you were paying for the MS daemons. That's way more insidious than the bullshit about including a browser in the operating system -- clearly the webserver is not part of the OS here, but if you're going to use anybody's, you've got to pay for MS's.

    I'm not sure if I consider that unethical or illegal. It doesn't really matter. No company is going to put up with that -- it's too direct an example of the Free software rationale: if you buy it from one vendor, that vendor can screw you. This has been demonstrated time and time again in the computer industry, starting with the original "renters" of mainframe technology in the 60s.

    I could not in good faith recommend a completely proprietary system (i.e. one which could not be replaced by an equivalent system provided by another vendor if necessary) today. It's too dangerous -- no company should be willing to take that risk.