Manny wrote:
Long before Microsoft learned the "importance of sharing code," it
learned that to beat any competitor, it should "embrace and extend"
that competitor's technology. Want to take over the Internet? Embrace
Web browsing technology with a free browser, Internet Explorer, that's
incorporated into the operating system, and extend it with proprietary
"enhancements" that make other browsers look bad. It worked.
No it didn't work...
Tell that to Netscape. M$ managed to make Netscape LOOK bad even though IE
was not really needed to access most websites. But the strategy worked.
Killing Netscape was the means. The real end, however, was to be able to use
their monopoly position on the desktop (which they succeeded in achieving)
for profit. That didn't happen. All that happened was that Windows users
did not have to spend extra money to buy Netscape Navigator or additional
time to install it. Microsoft wasn't really able to create a choke-point
with or profit from IE, so from my point of view, the strategy didn't really
work for them.
Web developers who've worked with the Netscape 4.x will also testify as
to the fact that it started becoming inferior to IE around that time.
By the time IE 5.0 came, Netscape 4.5 was far less standards compliant
and a real pain to design pages for (though we strove to).
If Microsoft's open-sourced code is of high quality, its purpose general
enough, and its *license sufficiently liberal*, then it wouldn't be
derailing the spirit of open source, it would be helping it.
I think M$ code may not be any of the above, especially your last one.
I wouldn't be so quick to make a blanket generalization. To judge from the
quality of its recent OS releases, the code coming out of Redmond has been
steadily improving (we have Linux to thank for that!). Of course, barring
a handful of exceptions, MS code is still closed (to the public) and non-free.
MS is making some very smart counterattacks (and this time, in an ethical
manner - badmouthing the GPL apparently didn't accomplish anything, heh)
against open source in order to protect its business, and fighting back by
claiming MS code is inherently inferior makes for a losing strategy that won't
net any converts.
Not that I view the world in terms of Linux vs. MS (I think both have their
place) anymore, but for those who feel it has to be a zero-sum game...
--
reply-to: a n d y @ n e t f x p h . c o m
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