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RE: Open Source or Else

• To: "'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@s...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Open Source or Else
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 14:49:39 -0600

From an outsider's point of view, and as one old 
enough to remember when Microsoft was the upstart
and not taken terribly seriously, I'd say their 
culture has been changing for the better with regards 
to opening the system.  Sure, we can dig up more 
bad boy behaviors; every company has those, but 
not every company enjoys a monopoly on operating 
systems.  So we have to watch carefully and chide 
where needed, just as we have to watch Google given
their position as the dominant portal.  If either 
starts open sourcing their code, that's good behavior.
When they are upfront honest about what they 
are doing with the information they dominate, 
that's good behavior.

<irony>Someone made an interesting observation to me 
with regards to the increased surveilance technologies 
and who or how would any entity take the position
that their job is to provide "human security".  He 
said, wouldn't it be odd if after all of the bad 
things said about MS, they turn out to be the one 
entity with the power to stand up to the control 
freaks in government and take the position that is 
their duty and within their power to protect the 
average user from predations on their constitutional 
rights.</irony>

Any company that fails to keep up with the zeitgeist 
of the information ecosystems gets rousted 
by a niche player eventually.  "Heavy hangs the head 
that wears the crown" as the saying goes.

len

From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@s...]

clbullar@i... (Bullard, Claude L (Len)) writes:
>The Open Source heads will like this one.
>
>http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/02/20/outgoing.exec/index.html

Nah.  I'd much prefer a change in corporate culture to a retiree,
however honored, pointing out what lots of outsiders already think.

On the bright (and XML) side, I wonder if the Office 2003 work -
exposing so much of that previously binary proprietary information as
XML - may constitute a change in some ways.  That'll be interesting to
watch.

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