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Microsoft Nederland heeft op
5 november de volgende aanvullende informatie verstrekt betreffende
het Halloween memorandum. Deze reactie was de eerste formele reactie
van Microsoft op de Halloween memoranda, hoewel eerder de authenticiteit
van de memo's al was bevestigd.
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Update: Eric Raymond heeft inmiddels weer
gereageerd op dit memo. Lees zijn
commentaren (engelstalig) hier.
Update: En tenslotte de
definitieve
reactie van Microsoft Amerika. In grote lijnen overeenkomend met wat door
Microsoft Benelux al als 'preview' bekend wat gemaakt. Zou er nog
een reactie van Eric Raymond volgen?
Update: Eric Raymond is nu zelfs in het
hol van de leeuw geweest. Lees het eerste verslag van
zijn bezoek aan Microsoft.
Microsoft's initial reaction on the 'halloween memorandum'
On the memo:
It appears to be a document written within Microsoft in August, with some
annotation by others.
It is routine and appropriate for Microsoft - and we would assume all other
vendors - to research, write about, and assess all competitors ... both from
a business model point of view and from a technical point of view.
It is not an "official position" by Microsoft on Linux. It is a technical
analysis written by an engineer in a staff capacity, and designed to
encourage discussion.
On Linux:
Sometimes Linux competes with Windows NT. This is hardly news. But it is not
NT vs Linux.
Dramatically demonstrates the wildly different business models of the OS
marketplace and the vigorous competition at every level (technical,
alliances, applications, channels and business model) that characterize the
industry.
In addition, however, Linux is an alternative to/competitor for other
versions of UNIX, especially RISC UNIX - in fact this may be the more
powerful affect in the marketplace.
Has an utterly different business, support, and investment model from the
comprehensive, integrated Microsoft model for Windows NT, which has
attracted millions of developers and tens of thousands of applications.
Linux is a philosophy as much as technical phenomena. On the positive, and
Microsoft is interested in better understanding and finding ways to
accommodate this dynamic, it provides for extensive peer review, and for a
lot of independent parallel work on a variety of features. The negatives are
stark, however:
- no long term roadmap ... and no way to get one;
- individuals are a non-scalable factor in the development at various control
points;
- no intellectual property protection means that the deep investments
needed by the industry in infrastructure will gravitate to other
business models.
Unless Linux violates IP rights, it will fail to deliver innovation over the
long run.
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