| David Mandl on Mon, 18 Jun 2001 19:44:11 +0200 (CEST) |
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| <nettime> Microsoft Uses Open-Source Code Despite Denying Use of Such Software |
Oh, baby... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Microsoft Uses Open-Source Code Despite Denying Use of Such Software By LEE GOMES Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Microsoft Corp., even while mounting a new campaign against open-source software, has quietly been using such free computer code in several major products, as well as on key portions of a popular Web site -- despite denying last week that it did so. [...] Microsoft acknowledged its repeated use of open-source code Friday, in response to questions about the matter. Just two days earlier, it had specifically denied the existence of any such software at Hotmail. [...] In recent statements, Microsoft executives have argued that open-source software is dangerous to companies using it, in large part because of the licensing provisions that accompany the software. Microsoft Vice President Craig Mundie, for example, said in a recent speech that all open-source software "has inherent security risks and can force intellectual property into the public domain." But Microsoft's statements Friday suggest the company has itself been taking advantage of the very technology it has insisted would bring dire consequences to others. [...] The spokesman said FreeBSD was still in use simply because the company had yet to switch the machines over to Windows. But one employee of the Redmond, Wash., company said Microsoft has deliberately kept FreeBSD in parts of Hotmail because of its technical superiority over Windows in important functions and furthermore had decided to actually increase its reliance on FreeBSD. Many of the company's Web sites went down much of a day in January, and this person said FreeBSD was judged to be better than Windows at helping to prevent a recurrence of the problem. [...] -- Dave Mandl [email protected] [email protected] http://www.wfmu.org/~davem # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]