Mon, 03 Mar 2003

M$ Futures

I ran into a very long but pretty infomative article here about Microsoft and it's future. There are a couple of things mentioned in the piece that I had noticed but just hadn't really "connected the dots".

Microsoft claimed open source software is not safe to use because it doesn't protect users from possible patent claims. This argument has less impact since Microsoft itself has been shown to have not only left SQL Server devlopers wide open to patent claims, but to have deliberately mislead them about the risks (link).

Microsoft claimed open source software is a security risk because the source code is available. Microsoft has argued in court that exposing Windows source code would compromise national security, but they have now agreed to provide that source code to the government of Russia and China (link). Both are not only considered hostile powers by the U.S. government, but are point of origin for many viruses and cyber attacks.

Pretty damned amazing, actually. I wonder if anybody at M$ has noticed that they're contradicting themselves?

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