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...........BUFFONI DI REDMOND.....................
BECCATEVI ANCHE QUESTA ANALISI, ORAMAI TUTTI NE PARLANO, PRESTO COMINCERETE A SENTIRE LE CAMPANE A MORTO PER IL DRAGASACCOCCE.Prima il "The New York Town", adesso......THE ECONOMIST...........L' ATTACCO DEL DRAGASACCOCCE DI REDMOND E' PLANETARIO.E QUALCHE PARRUCCONE HA PURE LA FACCIA DI DIRE "PERCHE' Punto Informatico" CONTINUA A PARLARNE?????????UHAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUAn open and shut caseMay 10th 2001From The Economist print edition What is behind Microsoft?s attack on open-source software? BEWARE of open-source software, those nefarious free computer programs written online by groups of volunteers. The licence that comes with most of this code could turn a company?s intellectual property into a public good. More important, it undermines the livelihood of commercial-software developers, putting a brake on innovation. This, in a nutshell, was the message that Craig Mundie, Microsoft?s chief software strategist, tried to convey on May 3rd in a headline-making speech at New York University.Open-source disciples were quick to dismiss Mr Mundie?s speech as just another example of Microsoft?s trademark strategy: spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt to undermine rivals. To Mr Mundie, research and development seem to be driven mainly by intellectual-property rights, commented Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, a popular free operating system, ?which is entirely ignoring the fact that pretty much all of modern science and technology is founded on very similar ideals to open source.?Mr Mundie?s message played cleverly to the prejudices that are still held by many corporate technology officers. Most open-source software is ?viral??the licence that comes with Linux, for instance, says all changes made to the program must be made freely available. But this does not mean that a company using Linux is forced to give away any application it writes for the operating system or, worse, its business processes. And while it is true that open-source software competes with commercial programs, open-source and similar online groups have been at least as innovative as software firms?creating, for example, most of the technology underlying the Internet.Yet Mr Mundie?s speech and the reaction of the open-sourcers have some value, because the exchange has sharpened the debate within the software industry over the relative merits of two rival approaches. One way to write software, the proprietary approach, is best epitomised by Microsoft. The firm hires the most driven programmers, pays them a lot in share options, works them hard?and then sells the product in a form that customers can use, but not change (because it comes without the ?source code?, the set of computer instructions underlying a program). The other approach is open source. Motivated by fame not fortune, volunteers collectively work on the source code for a program, which is freely available. Most of these projects are overseen by a ?benevolent dictator?, such as Mr Torvalds.Although no panacea, open-source software has several advantages over proprietary programs, besides being free. Most important, it tends to be more robust and secure, because the source code can be scrutinised by anyone, which makes it more likely that programming errors and security holes will be found. In contrast, hardly a week passes without headlines about a new security hole in a Microsoft program. The day before Mr Mundie?s speech, it was reported that a potentially serious security flaw had been found in one of Windows 2000?s server programs.Open source is not so much the ideological cause of anti-Microsoft hackers as a profound effect of the Internet, which means that it is here to stay. The emergence of free, open-source alternatives to costly proprietary software will undoubtedly hurt Microsoft?hence Mr Mundie?s speech. In a further swipe at open source, Microsoft this week launched a new range of server software that, it claimed, offers ?superior value? to Linux, by providing ?clarity of intellectual ownership? and ?predictability of the development process?. In other words, says Microsoft, proprietary software is best because there is no doubt which company owns and maintains it?and, of course, charges for it.At the same time, Microsoft is also deploying another of its favoured strategies, called ?embrace and extend?. It now grants its largest customers access to the source code of Windows 2000, on condition that they do not modify the program or reuse the code. Microsoft thus wants to harness what it considers to be the benefits of open source, such as improved debugging. Mr Mundie said this ?balanced? approach would maintain ?the intellectual property needed to support a strong software business?.To advocates of the open-source approach, this looks very much like one-way sharing. Customers can look at the source code of Windows, tell Microsoft about bugs and suggest improvements, thus saving the firm a lot of money?but they still have to pay for the next version.

Caldera "Pretoriani di Redmond"?
Ora qualcuno verrà senza dubbio a dire che la mossa è stata voluta da Microsoft!Crolla il castello di carte. Caldera si è resa conto, pure lei, che senza contollo Linux non porta ciccia. E la GPL garantisce solo una cosa: lo stato di SO fuori controllo.