Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 11 Nov 1998 03:01:47 -0800 (PST) | From | Alex Belits <> | Subject | Re: Comments on Microsoft Open Source documentA |
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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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