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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Niels Larsen who wrote (11866)	4/20/1998 2:31:00 AM
From: Marc Newman	Respond to of 213177

Very interesting speculation! Conversely, perhaps Jobs could threaten Gates with a free release in order to get some very valuable concessions, such as a Windows/Mac convergence. Marc

To: Niels Larsen who wrote (11866)	4/20/1998 7:36:00 AM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 213177

With a free OS and source out there another market would emerge where nothing went directly to APple, no OS fees, or ROM fees, just like IBM did. This would create the potential for a market that might grow large and be parallel to the Wintels. However that might be too much freedom. MSFT got the OS only out of the IBM free market. Intel got the CPUs, what did IBM get? Bill

To: Niels Larsen who wrote (11866)	4/20/1998 12:25:00 PM
From: Randy Tidd	Respond to of 213177

> In fact, if Apple decided to give Rhapsody away with source code > (as Netscape is doing their Communicator), then it would penetrate > rather quickly across all platforms I believe. It could outdo NT > if it was source ware, and Bill would really get comb for his hair. Though this would be interesting, I don't think this will happen. Rhapsody is not just a web browser (which, for all of its hype, is not a very complex piece of software), it is an entire operating system, development environment, windowing system, etc. representing more than 10 calendar years and thousands of person-years of development effort. To give this away for free would be a grave mistake. The problem with NetScape giving their browser source code away to the public means that before long, we're going to have thousands of different version of their browser out there and there will be no quality or consistency control. Maybe this isn't a huge deal with a web browser... but imagine this with an entire operating system! It could be a nightmare. The Linux and FreeBSD folks have a pretty tight community and some very innovative ways of keeping control of their software... but such a thing could not be guaranteed with Rhapsody. Randy