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To: Charles Hughes who wrote (23210)	4/8/1999 11:36:00 AM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

It's just a one-liner in a larger article, but I ran across this little tidbit: Separately, in another potentially big step, Microsoft said that it's "seriously considering" publishing the source programming code for the core of its NT software, which would make the code available to outside programmers. fool.com Plus, yesterday in Dow Jones, there was the following: Dow Jones News Service Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Wednesday, April 7, 1999 Microsoft's Ballmer -3: No Evidence Of PC Growth Slowdown Ballmer also touched on a topic of great interest to Microsoft partners, software developers and competitors: the open-source movement, embodied by Linux and now being embraced by major competitors such as Novell Inc. (NOVL), Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM). These companies and others have invested in Red Hat Software Inc., a company that packages and sells its own version of the free-Linux operating system. The growing popularity of Linux proves that "we are in a very competitive environment," Ballmer said. He acknowledged that it isn't just the cost factor that appeals to Linux users. "There is a level of flexibility, or comfort, that people have when they have the source code, just in case," Ballmer said. "We are of course thinking with great interest about that, talking about it with our customers, and when we figure out what that means for us, we'll let you know." Are these two articles talking about the same source (Ballmer's speech), or did something else come out on this issue? I believe, perhaps more out of wishful thinking than anything else, that this is for real and not just MSFT FUD. But time will tell.