[aclug-L] Linux News bits

[Dale W Hodge <dwh@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

=============================================
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||     TechWeb News
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||     Friday November 20, 1998
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||     http://www.techweb.com
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||     A CMP Service
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---  Linux Servers To Target Corporate Market ---
 Caldera joins the ranks of Linux server vendors gunning for a share of
the ripe IT market.

http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19981119S0013?ls=twb_text


=== The Scoop ===============================

Microsoft's Open Source Fears

By Brooke Shelby Biggs 

It's a good time to be a supporter of progressive technology and an
enemy of the state. Watching Bill Gates implode in his videotaped
testimony was divinely satisfying, and a hell of a lot more
entertaining than the Clinton tapes. Gates resembled no one so much as
the doddering Ronald Reagan in the Iran-Contra days. At least Reagan
combed his hair and sat up straight. 

The only thing I'd have preferred to be reading in the paper was an
in-depth analysis on a leaked Microsoft internal memo that addressed
the threat of open source software movement to Microsoft's iron grip on
the software (particularly the operating system) market. The leaked
memo was overshadowed by Gates' testimony, and may have been the more
significant of the two events. Both, however, confirmed the unsettling
strategy of Microsoft to knowingly release deeply flawed products to a
marketplace forcibly held captive, and to use a scorched-earth policy
when securing or preserving marketshare. 

Open source software is developed within a community of volunteer
programmers and beta testers and its applications and their source code
are distributed free or for a small licensing fee. Open source software
is most often designed to work on multiple platforms. 

An unnamed source leaked the document to open source maverick Eric
Raymond, who posted it on his website. Raymond is the guy who persuaded
Netscape to release its Mozilla source code. Raymond nicknamed the memo
"The Halloween Document," referring both to the date of its leak and
that open source will become the next big nightmare for Microsoft. 

The memo actually says that open source is "long-term credible," and
that proprietary standards and protocols (the core of Microsoft's
business) may, in fact, be at an "evolutionary dead-end." That suggests
a battle brewing that will be many orders of magnitude bigger than
Microsoft's little browser squabble with Apple, Sun, and Netscape. The
memo says "... [open source software] is at least as robust -- if not
more -- than commercial alternatives." 

The memo focuses specifically on Linux (and to a slightly lesser
extent, on Apache server software, and Netscape's Mozilla browser), the
open source network operating system that is gaining fast on Windows
NT. Windows NT here is clearly the less robust "commercial
alternative." (Interesting side note: The websites for the Justice
Department and the Federal Trade Commission use Apache servers,
according to NetCraft. But before you cry bias ... Microsoft's Hotmail
servers also run on Apache software, rather than Microsoft's own
proprietary IIS server software -- not much of a vote of confidence.) 

Yet, perhaps the most telling sentence in the memo -- really a strategy
white paper written by Microsoft software engineer Vinod Valloppillil
-- was the one in which the author noted that Microsoft's usual
marketing strategy known as FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) wouldn't
work in a to-the-death match against open source software. Besides
confirming suspicions that paranoia is not so much a liability as an
actual corporate strategy, the FUD comment explains a lot about the
squirmy nature of Gates' testimony. Apparently Gates still clings to
the notion that if you ignore it (or deny it or fail to remember it) it
will go away. 

Instead, in fact, the memo suggests yet another "embrace and extend"
(read: covert market grab) strategy against Linux, like the one it used
against Sun's Java: "Fold extended functionality into commodity
protocols/services and create new protocols." In other words, say you
support open systems to curry user favor and good press, and then
co-opt and tweak open apps just enough to make them closed and
proprietary systems and protocols. Push them on the market as "open
standards" (in that everyone's welcome to use them, albeit for a price)
long enough to secure a majority marketshare of duped chief information
officers, and you've locked in an installed base that's hard to shake.
Or better yet, make up new proprietary protocols and say they're open
when they're really not. 

The key here is killing competition. While Gates defensively insists on
camera that Microsoft's products and strategies are good for
competition, all of the internal memos released in the antitrust trial
and the Halloween Document prove that Microsoft believes (probably
correctly) that its success depends exclusively on limiting consumer
choice. The main obstacle, now, is convincing the DOJ that Microsoft is
actually expanding consumer choice while, behind the scenes, the
company is actually scheming to squash collaborative standards
organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force. 

Fortunately for consumers, Bill Gates is a terrible liar. His petulant
and evasive manner on the tape makes his angry "Mr. Innocent" routine
look like the flimsy front it really is. And the fact that Gates can't
be bothered to appear in court and instead testifies via videotape a la
Clinton is the best evidence yet of his nauseating hubris. 

But this time, Microsoft is up against the wall, pushed there by the
DOJ and headed there again in the rapidly approaching age of open
systems. 

I must say, I'm enjoying watching Gates and his minions sweat. I've
been in the midst of some of the struggles against Microsoft during
contracting stints at companies like Netscape and Apple, and during my
employ at HotWired. In the latter case, I watched Microsoft strong-arm
HotWired into developing content that could only be accessed with
Internet Explorer on Windows. I've seen a lot of bright and inventive
people ground under Microsoft's heel. 

But what has infuriated me more than anything is consumers' utter
resignation in the face of Microsoft's dominance. Rather than buying
Windows because the majority of commercial software runs on it, we
should be mad as hell that a company has us behaving like its puppets,
while deliberately scheming to keep us captive and pliant by sabotaging
efforts to provide us with better products, lower prices, and more
choices. 

Perhaps Gates' testimony and the Halloween Document are just the brew
to make the sleepwalking public realize Microsoft is not their friend.
But do we dare to hope that the public will embrace the open source
software movement, with its decidedly un-sexy GUIs and lack of branding
muscle? I wouldn't start celebrating just yet.

(Brooke Shelby Biggs is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet &
Society at Harvard Law School. She also writes a column for The San
Francisco Bay Guardian.)



==============================================
       Copyright 1998 CMP Media Inc.

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