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Halloween Documents FAQ
Theorie :
Halloween :
Opensource.org : FAQ : Übersicht
04-Nov-2001/09-Jan-07
Übersicht
French Translation *offsite
Since the first Halloween Document was released on 1 Nov 1998, I have
received an astonishing flood of email questions about them. Dealing
with these has made getting any other work done difficult, so here is a
list of the most common ones with answers.
Are these for real?
Yes. Microsoft has
acknowledged the authenticity of these documents.
How did you acquire them?
They came to me by email from three different sources. Like any good
investigative reporter, I'm not going to reveal who those sources were.
However, I will say that none of the author/contributor/reviewers
listed in Halloween I and
Halloween II were among them.
What was your motive for publishing these?
For close on twenty years I have watched Microsoft peddle inferior
technology with slick marketing, destroy competitors with dirty tricks,
and buy its way out of trouble. Like most people in the know, I grumbled
about it to colleagues. I expressed my resistance to the Borg of Redmond
by refusing to use Microsoft products, and by helping develop
alternative open-source software. But in the end, if software consumers
remained oblivious, what could be done?
I never stopped hoping that some day the truth would come out. So,
when a chance came for me, personally, to blow the whistle on Microsoft
using its own words – to show the world what lurks behind the smiling
facade – I jumped at it.
Some have accused me of hating success, of envying Bill Gates, even
of "software socialism." Well, a net-worth of fifty-eight billion
dollars doesn't equal success in my terms, not when it was
bought with crappy engineering and unethical business practices. I'd
rather be me, thank you. And, far from being any kind of socialist, I'm
a hard-core libertarian; I'm opposed to antitrust law on pro-free-market
principle, and have publicly stated that I will not cooperate with the
DOJ lawsuit.
I want to see Microsoft broken on the wheel not by government fiat
but by enlightened consumer choice. That is why I published
these documents.
If you care, you can read an
angry rant on my personal site that goes into more detail. Don't if
you're easily offended, and don't mistake it for a statement of OSI.
Would you please make un-annotated versions available?
No. As it is, my defense against a copyright-violation suit by
Microsoft would have to make rather creative use of the exemptions in
copyright case law relating to journalism, satire and commentary. I fear
that making un-annotated copies available would place me at significant
legal risk.
Could the leaks have been a ploy by Microsoft?
Some people have speculated that these documents were deliberately
leaked in order to strengthen Microsoft's defense in the ongoing
antitrust action; by playing up the Linux threat (the theory goes) they
establish that Microsoft has real competition and not a monopoly. Others
posit some murky plan to divert the energy of the open-source community
into fulminating about Microsoft and away from improving Linux.
I don't believe either theory. These documents are way too dangerous
to Microsoft to have been leaked deliberately. The material about
"de-commoditizing protocols & services" and "deny[ing] OSS products into
the market" could constitute evidence of practices which violate the
Sherman Act. There is just no way that any lawyer working for
Microsoft would ever let language like that be leaked,
especially not while the DOJ is actively pursuing an antitrust case!
Furthermore, one of my sources is a man personally known to me who
assured me he had been sitting on his copy of Halloween II for months
not knowing who to give it to until Halloween I came out.
Finally, Microsoft appears not to have had a story put together until
hours after the Halloween I release. I have an account of this from the
first reporter to brace Microsoft on the matter. When first contacted,
the author of the memoranda "refused to confirm or deny" and directed
the reporter to his boss, Ed Muth. Ed Muth, when contacted, refused to
talk about it and hung up on the reporter. Only after two calls to
Microsoft's P.R. firm was that reporter able to get a statement.
More than one journalist has described Microsoft's initial reaction
to me as "utter panic ... comical to watch."
Do these documents represent Microsoft company policy?
Microsoft says not; it dismisses Halloween I and II as low-level
engineering studies.
Yes, "Halloween I" was written by a staff engineer – with
contributions, endorsements, and reviews by two Program Managers, the
Senior Vice President in charge of NT development, and two members of
the eight-person Executive Committee (Microsoft's Politburo, answering
only to Bill Gates). The only way this group could be any more
"official" is if BillG himself had been in it.
Given the participants and the content, the lack of an "official"
stamp seems more like a device for preserving plausible deniability than
anything else.
Ironically, if we take Microsoft at its word, the memos are far
more damning – because that would imply a milieu in which FUD and
monopolistic dirty tricks are not merely the province of a few top
executives, but a pervasive part of the culture clear down to the level
of staff engineers.
Quelle:
www.opensource.org/halloween/faq.php; Zugriff: 07-Nov-2002;
Permission to reproduce is given under the terms of the
Open Software License.
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