Microsoft Is Set to Be Top Foe of Free Code, By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, May 2 - Microsoft is preparing a broad campaign countering the movement to give away and share software code, arguing that it potentially undermines the intellectual property of countries and companies. At the same time, the company is acknowledging that it is feeling pressure from the freely shared alternatives to its commercial software....
-------------
Isn't MS still under court order to split up, or have they managed to weasel out of it?
For the record, here is an example of what the free software movement does and how it works.
About a month ago Doug posted a note on LBO about a security exploit using natd (network address translation daemon). I don't run natd so I ignored it. About a week or so later I was looking through FreeBSD news groups for something on the print spooler and found there was already a patch for this natd exploit and that it was fixed on the current `stable tree' (most recent update of already issued sources). Lead time, one week. Cost, zero.
If I bothered to routinely rebuild the kernel, this patch would already be installed, since I usually cvsup the sources for my version about once a month.
Now consider this quote from the next paragraph of the article:
``In a speech defending Microsoft's business model, to be given on Thursday at the Stern School of Business at New York University, Craig Mundie, a senior vice president at Microsoft and one of its software strategists, will argue that the company already follows the best attributes of the open-source model by sharing the original programmer's instructions, or source code, more widely than is generally realized....''
Right. Microsoft routinely posts its sources on dozens of mirrors all over the world. With their weekly updated patches and security fixes you can just type `cvsup stable-supfile', wait for about twenty minutes and get everything in your Win/NT source code completely updated, checked, and logged. Then you can go find the source directory for your previously configured Win/NT kernel, type `make world' and get it all rebuilt and installed on the running system. You can then drop into single user mode, remount the major directory trees and then load the new kernel on a soft re-boot, without physically turning off the power of the Win/NT station. Sure, we knew that. You can even automate the CVS part of this process using the cron daemon once a week. No kidding? And, of course if you just want to fix one problem in one program, you can go to the correct source subdirectory, type `Make install <program-name>'---since Microsoft already follows the best attributes of the open-source model. But we already knew that, since, Microsoft does that, and of course more widely than generally realized...
Chuck Grimes