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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ToySoldier who wrote (12017)	11/3/1998 4:21:00 PM
From: Robert E. Lee, Jr.	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 74651

The Halloween Document Does anyone here have any comments or thoughts on 'The Halloween Document'? tuxedo.org It is a Microsoft Confidential document written by a MSFT employee regarding the potential threat to their Operating System monopoly posed by Linux and the Open Source Software (OSS) methodology. This document somehow got leaked to the OSS group who has posted it at the above URL, along with some analysis and rebuttals by a member of that group. Some interesting quotes from the original MSFT document: * OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft, particularly in server space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat. * Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence ... that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects. * ...to understand how to compete against OSS, we must target a process rather than a company. * OSS is long-term credible ... FUD tactics can not be used to combat it. * Linux and other OSS advocates are making a progressively more credible argument that OSS software is at least as robust -- if not more -- than commercial alternatives. The Internet provides an ideal, high-visibility showcase for the OSS world. * Linux has been deployed in mission critical, commercial environments with an excellent pool of public testimonials. ... Linux outperforms many other UNIXes ... Linux is on track to eventually own the x86 UNIX market ... * Linux can win as long as services / protocols are commodities. * OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market. * The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. More importantly, OSS evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale. Sounds to me like MSFT is seriously worried that they may soon be losing their current monopoly, and is preparing to pull out all of the stops to try to discredit the OSS's work. I have to agree with the OSS's evaluation that the 8th bullet above, regarding MSFT's plan to 'de-commoditize protocols and services', is rather sinister, and reminiscent of their strategy to make Java a MSFT-unique feature. Could Linux be the thing that will bring MSFT back down to earth as just another software developer, as opposed to the powerhouse it is today? Thoughts? 'The General', Robert E. Lee, Jr.

To: ToySoldier who wrote (12017)	11/5/1998 2:06:00 PM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

>"NDS is working. We have 40 million users of the directory. There are approximately zero [Microsoft] Active Directory users. We have majority market share of NetWare against NT. Our unit sales are growing, as are NT Server's. NT is good in some things. We are good in others. It's called competition. But customers make choices based on what they can purchase today. If you wait for products to arrive, you may be waiting a long time." Has the justice dept seen this? Sounds like NOVL believes that it still dominates the NOS market and has a great future.