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SubjectRe: Comments on Microsoft Open Source documentA
On Tue, 10 Nov 1998 ralf@uni-koblenz.de wrote:

> This whole thread is actually about power and abuse of such by Microsoft.
> Feel free to design better protocols and the OSS comunity will consider
> using them. Maybe Microsoft as well. On the other side anythign Microsoft
> so far took into their finger quickly got mutated into something else,
> often with extensions either undocumented or designed to give their own
> products a headstart. You see, the protocol sword has only one sharp side
> and that one is directed to our throat.
>
> When OSS efforts were started long time ago the aim was to go for a world
> that is not under the pressure of a power as Microsoft's. This has been
> achieved in form of the GPL by forcing source to be public. The downside
> is that it leaves the OSS comunity without a defence against somebody
> like Microsoft except trying to run faster than those who are out to
> catch 'it.

A large part of problem is that OSS community is concerned about quality
and consistency while Microsoft is not -- even if their products fail
miserably to implement their own protocol, become unstable, insecure or
give a headache to developers, their PR machine will cover it up. Other
companies and Open Source can't do that, but Microsoft can make products
with half-ready features, and they still will be accepted as "new
standards". However increasing quality expectations can slow down
Microsoft just like it slows down everyone else.

> This leaves a somewhat self contradictory problem to solve for the OSS
> comunity, how to get enough power to defend itself without giving anybody
> else the power over the OSS comunity. Time for the politicians and
> lawyer on this list to think about this and warm up their MUAs. I go back
> debugging a piece of free software.

Since I'm neither politician nor lawyer, it's time for me to go back to
fhttpd development -- amount of flaming I do occasionally here kinda
requires me to put my code where my mouth is.

--
Alex


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