Posted on 01/14/2003 6:49:14 PM PST by RCW2001
HELEN JUNG, AP Business Writer
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
©2003 Associated Press
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/01/14/financial2108EST0385.DTL
(01-14) 18:08 PST SEATTLE (AP) --
Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it will make its prized source code for its Windows operating system available to several governments and governmental agencies, as it tries to stem defections to competitors' software.
The software company has already signed agreements with the Russian government and NATO to allow them to review for free the underlying programming instructions that Microsoft has long guarded as secret intellectual property.
The decision will let governments evaluate for themselves the security of the Windows platform, Microsoft said. It also will give them the technical data they need to develop their own secure applications to work atop Windows.
The announcement comes as government agencies in Japan, France, Germany, China and the United States are looking into or adopting competitors' software, including open-source Linux-based systems. Unlike Microsoft's proprietary software, the underlying code for open-source code software can be downloaded free, improved and redistributed.
"It's a brilliant maneuver," said Michael Gartenberg, research director for Jupiter Research. "It gives them a huge (public relations) win, gives them a response back to the open-source folks and also provides the impetus that many of the government organizations have been looking for to continue doing business with them."
The "Government Security Program" is similar to Microsoft's "shared-source" program, introduced in 2001, in which it makes some of its source code available on a limited basis to clients and technology partners.
Microsoft has a list of more than 60 countries and organizations with which it would consider signing agreements, including China, France and the United States, said Salah Dandan, the program's worldwide manager. The Redmond, Wash.-based company said it is confident governments will respect Microsoft's intellectual property and isn't worried about piracy or other infringements, he said.
"The basic business decision that we decided to make here is that Microsoft is willing to trust governments and willing to partner closely with them," Dandan said. "We are fully aware of the risks, but cognizant that this program will help strengthen relationships with governments around the world."
The program covers Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows CE and Windows Server 2003, due for release in April.
©2003 Associated Press
Respond to this post. I totally agree with this. MS is now going to be scrutinized, ridiculed, MS arrogance can't hide it's dirty little secret anymore.
This is just sowing the seeds of greater control over the "beneficiaries".
The shared-source programs applicable to commercial and government organizations forbid modification of the code; thus, you cannot actually use your access to solve your problems. Because you are not allowed to build, experiment with, or deploy modified versions, your "read-only" access cannot help you field fixes to Microsoft's bugs any more quickly...
Shared source licenses include a requirement that the licensor agree to treat Microsoft's code as confidential proprietary data. It follows that any developer, once he has seen shared source code, can be enjoined under trade-secrecy law from any activity that Microsoft considers to be competitive with its code.
Shared source, therefore, behaves like a virus that infects developers' brains. Once you let it into your organization, you must keep careful track of which developers have been contaminated, avoid deploying them to any projects which might compete with a Microsoft product, and even erect "Chinese walls" between projects so that no knowledge from shared source can leak into projects with competitive implications. Failing to implement any of those precautions could result in your organization's being sued for ruinous compensatory damages by Microsoft's armies of lawyers.
If you are not convinced of Microsoft's altruism, kindness, and beneficience, consider the possibility that the viral, poison-pill side-effects of shared source are actually the main point of the program - a device to make as many independent developers as possible vulnerable to intellectual-property blackmail and reduce competitive pressure against Microsoft's monopoly.
Could this be the hook that Microsoft uses to arrest government support for Open Source projects?
I agree generally, but China was one of the countries mentioned as possibly being allowed to review the "secret sauce".
I wouldn't trust those ba$tards with anything. There will be a CD with the MS code out within a week of China getting a peek.
.NET is no answer to Linux. .NET is an answer to Sun's Java. Unless you count open source J2*E implementations, Linux does not have anything directly comparable to .NET. Python and the Apache middleware is coming along nicely, but, right now, Linux and .NET are moving in separate planes.
Microsoft's problem with Linux has to do with the fundamentals of open source. If YOU were a foreign government, would you trust Microsoft not to talk about vulns to the NSA before fixes are released? This is a lot more basic than a distributed object/servlet/JIT/VM/middleware/UI-framework system. So, while .NET is pretty neat, it isn't an answer to "Why should I trust you?"
Palladium might be an answer to that, but, for the same reasons any governments that take secrecy seriously prefer to compile their own security-audited Linux kernels, I doubt they would look too kindly on a system that enables outside authorities to hide software on your system, run it at will, and forbid you from examining it. In that sense, Palladium is a step backward: it is "trust" only for people who trust other people more than they trust themsleves. I don't see why any sane person would want Big Brother Inside, but for a foreign government it amounts to inviting the NSA to listen in.
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