[HN Gopher] When Linux Spooked Microsoft: Remembering 1998's Lea...
___________________________________________________________________
When Linux Spooked Microsoft: Remembering 1998's Leaked 'Halloween
Documents'
Author : thunderbong
Score : 194 points
Date : 2023-11-08 07:23 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (linux.slashdot.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (linux.slashdot.org)
| panki27 wrote:
| Think how far we've come, today Microsoft is handing out its own
| Linux kernels.
| INTPenis wrote:
| They had to. They wanted to get into cloud and their own OS was
| optimized for desktops.
| rmrfchik wrote:
| "Optimized" what a strange choosing of word.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Haha I felt the same way after I hit reply. I guess
| "focused on desktop" would be more apt. Either way it's not
| at all suitable for cloud native stuff.
| rmrfchik wrote:
| Microsoft neither focus their OS on desktop nor user.
| They focus on selling users tool spies on users. Almost
| any progress on Windows is microsoft centric.
|
| Even their main weapon (API) now is holstered.
| pjmlp wrote:
| You mean the Windows kernel that powers Azure, used to run
| those GNU/Linux instances?
|
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-
| platform-b...
| throw555chip wrote:
| Ah, that explains the poorer performance when comparing to
| AWS or GCP, now it makes sense, thanks!
| jve wrote:
| I'm sometimes wondering whether Microsoft wants to tank their
| Windows Server or what? A great OS overall, but speaking as a
| service provider - the licensing makes so much effort on
| provider part to even offer a VM with Microsoft OS. Only
| recently (due to EU pressure?) provided License mobility where
| customer himself is responsible for software licences and can
| BYOL.
|
| Otherwise it was on service provider to collect whatever
| software the customer is using and charge for it. And if you
| don't, prepare for a hefty fine. Windows of course provides SIL
| infrastructure to do just that, but all that implies server has
| to be configured in some way.
|
| And then the price for the licence ofcourse...
|
| I really like Windows Server OS, but the effort it puts on part
| of service provider - no wonders everyone wants and offers to
| deploy Linux.
| smcl wrote:
| I suspect that those working on Windows are a different
| department entirely from those who handle Azure stuff. So
| while they're maybe _encouraged_ to use Windows, they tend to
| favour what works best for them - which in many cases is
| Linux.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Azure is powered by Windows,
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-os-
| platform-b...
| klaas- wrote:
| And that windows is backed by Linux if performance is
| key: https://cfp.all-systems-go.io/media/all-systems-
| go-2023/subm...
| pjmlp wrote:
| > PCIe card running Linux hardened OS....
|
| That is not a server OS.
|
| And I would assert it is Linux based instead of another
| firmware RTOS, because of licensing and yeah, if you want
| to be pedantic Windows was never designed to fit into the
| firmware of a network card.
| smcl wrote:
| I meant that Linux is basically a first-class citizen
| across Azure. I don't know what powers _all_ of Azure,
| and I 'd be surprised if it was Windows across the board.
| Probably a combination of both, really, I imagine they're
| quite pragmatic about these things as long as the money
| keeps rolling in.
| sprash wrote:
| The current involvement of Microsoft with "Linux" is nothing
| more than good old EEE. Exactly as described in the Halloween
| Documents.
| Pixie_Dust wrote:
| 'to understand how to compete against OSS [open source
| software], we must target a process rather than a company'
|
| https://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/site/chapters/10.16997/b.
| ..
| pjmlp wrote:
| Hardly possible when Red-Hat, Oracle, Google, SuSE, IBM, are
| doing similar approaches to GNU/Linux.
| gumballindie wrote:
| The scary thing about that is that folks actually use them and
| think they are good.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| "folks" are serfs in this system
| gumballindie wrote:
| They can just install Linux and be free. It's not that
| difficult.
| trelane wrote:
| Which is why it's good that's it's GPL. Compare to, e.g.
| Chrome.
| smooc wrote:
| Remember the Slashdot Effect? I'm not sure if it lives up to its
| expectations this time ;-)
| drpossum wrote:
| Remember Slashdot?
| Aardwolf wrote:
| I miss tags such as "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" and
| "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense", there have been articles on HN
| where these tags could have applied as well
| robgibbons wrote:
| Score: 5, Insightful
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Honestly I still think Slashdot's way of flavoring
| up/down votes is better than anything else I've seen.
| Zak wrote:
| I think requiring a reason/explanation probably
| discourages voting simply based on agreement and
| disagreement and improves the signal a numeric score
| provides. I find that missing from Reddit-alikes now.
|
| +1 insightful
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| > The memo warns that the quality of free software can meet or
| exceed that of commercial programs and describes it as a
| potentially serious threat to Microsoft.
|
| Every industry seems to have gone through a similar cycles where
| the free has been a threat to the commercial products.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Every industry seems to have gone through a similar cycles
| where the free has been a threat to the commercial products.
|
| I'm very doubtfull of that. How would a free car manufacturer
| work? Which free watch offering threatened the commercial
| industry? When did free construction threaten commercial
| offerings?
| dijit wrote:
| Cars are a good example because "free" car manufacture is
| what caused the downfall of Detroit in the US and Coventry in
| the UK. Suddenly there was an influx of these cheaper cars,
| and at least in the US there were measures introduced to
| decrease the viability of imported cars.
|
| Free construction has a similar fate, which is why planning
| permission is more difficult than it has ever been.
| qubex wrote:
| How are cars that one has to pay for 'free'?
| dijit wrote:
| Libre vs Gratis.
|
| That FOSS software is given gratis is a happy byproduct
| of it being libre and having zero cost to copy.
|
| "open source" cola for example is not free to
| manufacture, so it has some cost associated, though you
| could make it yourself if you had the means.[0]
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_cola
| qubex wrote:
| I didn't even know that existed, and have never tried it,
| and wouldn't know where to begin looking for it.
| Meanwhile Coca-Cola...
| krisoft wrote:
| Cheaper cars are not free. They are not even "free".
|
| > Free construction has a similar fate, which is why
| planning permission is more difficult than it has ever
| been.
|
| This is new to me. Planning permissions are difficult
| because the rulling class makes their money from owning
| property, and thus they prefer to keep the housing supply
| thight, and their wallets thick. They would do this even if
| the cost of construction would have increased. (Which it
| often did.)
| vidarh wrote:
| Plenty of places where large developers sit on and let
| planning permissions expire and apply again because it's
| better return on investment to hoard land and first build
| and sell finished properties when an investor wants to
| exit. I live in London, and there are buildings approved
| with an aggregate of many thousands of flats immediately
| surrounding my local station alone where nothing has
| happened for years, because why would they, when delaying
| the actual construction means they effectively get extra
| leverage on their investment.
|
| As long as house prices rise fairly consistently, if you
| can raise additional capital chances are good it will give
| you better return to keep accumulating more land than use
| the capital to finance construction on land you already
| own.
|
| I'd really like to see heavy taxation on underutilized land
| (insufficient to only go after unused land because then
| they'll just plonk down something cheap and low-density and
| rent it out until the time is right for something bigger.
| Zak wrote:
| Japanese companies were making objectively better cars than
| the US and UK from the 1970s until pretty recently. I'm not
| sure how much sharing of designs between companies had to
| do with that; they were using better quality materials and
| manufacturing as well as iterating faster.
| qubex wrote:
| > _Every industry seems to have gone through a similar cycle
| where the free has been a threat to the commercial products._
|
| This is hilariously out of touch. Software is one of the very
| few industries where marginal costs of production are
| essentially zero. Almost everything else besides oft-derided
| 'content' requires the expenditure of variable costs
| (materials, energy, labour) to produce. It's well-known that in
| the limit of a perfect competition environment (think scissors,
| white t-shirts, socks, pencils, plate glass, _& cetera_ ) sales
| price is driven down towards the marginal cost (variable costs)
| of the most efficient producer, eliminating profit.
|
| Very few other categories of things have seen their sales
| prices be driven towards actual zero. In fact I'm hard-pressed
| to think of any.
| akdor1154 wrote:
| > In fact I'm hard-pressed to think of any.
|
| Maybe music and video entertainment as a counter example?
|
| Agree with everything you said though.
| qubex wrote:
| Those were the "much derided 'content'" I mentioned.
| sparrowInHand wrote:
| Thats the whole china buisness model? No IP costs, subsidize
| production to market dominance, repeat. Which again the VCs
| copy by subsidizing that take-over money with shareholder
| money
|
| Free is a temporary attack vector, but with open source its a
| permanent attack vector.
| qubex wrote:
| What you're described is just the logic behind patents
| eventually expiring.
| sparrowInHand wrote:
| So open source for VC take-over endavours functions like
| a tax. Eventually the money for bribery/free_stuff runs
| out, the old buisness patterns return, open source
| reconquers the niche. Nature is healing..
| qubex wrote:
| Uhm... I suppose you're misinformed or undetectably
| trying to be funny.
| herbst wrote:
| They just changed the Strategie.
|
| If you install LLM stuff or the relatively stable atom clone
| vscode. You are seeing dependencies that are also maintained by
| Microsoft.
|
| No issue so far, except when you run a bleeding edge system and
| realize that all required M$ libs are outdated and either you
| downgrade or can't use that tool that has that single M$ made
| python dependency that won't build on a modern system...
|
| More often than not the dependency issue was already reported
| months ago on their issue tracker, many people put their thumbs
| up and someone already wrote a patch. No active maintainer to
| comment, merge and release tho. This is exactly how we don't want
| our libs managed.
|
| You can run linux on Windows but still can't install a dual boot
| system with Linux first. IMO that says it all
| Ennea wrote:
| Regarding your last point: I've (finally!) switched from
| Windows to Linux last year. I have, however, decided to set up
| a dual boot system, and have installed Linux first. Worked just
| fine.
| yuumei wrote:
| Deleted
| porbelm wrote:
| Just remember to install Linux AFTER Windows, or unplug
| your Linux drive when installing Windows, because MS does
| not play nice with including other OSes in their
| bootloader; you're gonna have to mess with your UEFI boot
| order or add the Windows boot to GRUB after the fact.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I don't see why people on modern machines need or bother
| with GRUB when EFISTUB exists. The UEFI boot manager
| should be all you need.
| capableweb wrote:
| I think parents point still stand. Windows overwrites any
| boot related stuff to use it's own. You need to either
| install X after Windows, or disconnect the proper boot
| drive when installing Windows, otherwise your system will
| just boot Windows directly.
| vetinari wrote:
| What does it overwrite, exactly?
|
| Each operating system has its files in their respective
| directories on ESP, and each operating system registers
| its own boot entries pointing to bootloader in these
| directories. With UEFI, there's nothing to overwrite,
| except setting the default entry.
|
| That's not an issue, since you can both easily boot non-
| default entries and change, what the default entry is.
| porbelm wrote:
| No it doesn't REMOVE the Linux's UEFI partition or files
| on the drive, but it sets itself to #1 in your UEFI boot
| list. And since their installer does not add other OSes
| to the Windows bootloader automatically, you have to
| either change your UEFI settings or your Windows BOOT.INI
| (for Windows MBR setups)
| vetinari wrote:
| > No it doesn't REMOVE the Linux's UEFI partition or
| files on the drive, but it sets itself to #1 in your UEFI
| boot list
|
| So it does what is expected from any boot loader.
| Installing grub does the same.
|
| > And since their installer does not add other OSes to
| the Windows bootloader automatically
|
| Which is fine; you should not chainload windows from grub
| either. Use ntldr for booting windows.
|
| > you have to either change your UEFI settings
|
| Exactly, you can change the default boot entry in your
| UEFI settings.
|
| Or after POST, press a button on your keyboard for one-
| off boot change.
|
| ---
|
| So what was the complain, again? Some people not using
| UEFI boot manager in a way it is supposed to be used?
| LoganDark wrote:
| All Windows does it set itself first in the boot order
| whenever you start it. What happened to pressing F9
| during POST to open the boot menu? Is that too advanced
| for people that are dual-booting different operating
| systems?
| porbelm wrote:
| If you don't know about it and are about to try this for
| the first time, it can be a "wtf" moment, yes :) But
| that's how you learn isn't it
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| I agree that it should be enough. On my setup using the
| UEFI boot manager is much more annoying than it should
| be, though.
|
| I have configured password protection for my UEFI
| settings (so that a potential attacker could not easily
| disable Secure Boot, for example) and GIGABYTE's UEFI
| implementation requires that password for the boot
| manager as well. In other words, when booting using this
| setup, I need up to three passwords: 1. UEFI password, 2.
| Disk encryption password, 3. User password.
|
| Hence I use systemd-boot to set BootNext and reboot into
| the Windows boot loader.
|
| Another reason for having a bootloader is that you may
| have more entries than the built-in manager can handle,
| for example if you can boot into automatic snapshots.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| ReFind Does wonders compared against grub
| babypuncher wrote:
| Because GRUB still ships with the vast majority of Linux
| distros, and not every UEFI implementation is good about
| asking which image you want to load every time you boot.
| tomaytotomato wrote:
| > You can run linux on Windows but still can't install a dual
| boot system with Linux first. IMO that says it all
|
| Long time Kubuntu user dual-booting with GRUB, never
| experienced this.
|
| I have UEFI enabled and both OS's on separate physical drives.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I'm 99% sure you've installed Windows first, and then Linux
| afterwards, which is what the parent comment said: _" dual
| boot system with Linux first"_.
|
| If not, _please_ share the instructions on how you installed
| Linux first, and Windows second, because I 'd really like to
| know.
| yett wrote:
| This is what worked on my laptop with one drive: I
| installed Fedora. Before rebooting I used GParted to resize
| the disk creating space for a Windows partition. After that
| I rebooted and installed Windows on the new empty
| partition. Done.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Interesting, thanks!
|
| One question - did you shrink partition from the front,
| or from the back of the disk?
|
| Usually Windows has to be in front of the Linux, so if
| it's from the back, I'd really have to try that!
| Zak wrote:
| With MBR (master boot record) partitioning, Windows had
| to be on a _primary_ partition, and it was only possible
| to have four of them. Linux could be installed to a
| primary or _extended_ partition, of which there could be
| more.
|
| As far as I know the order never actually mattered as
| long as Windows could have a primary partition. The newer
| GPT system doesn't have such a distinction or low limits
| (Windows is limited to 128 partitions per disk; I think
| Linux can handle more).
| vetinari wrote:
| With UEFI, it is easy; each operating system has it's own
| bootloader in its own directory in ESP, and the UEFI itself
| contains boot manager, so you can boot whatever you want.
| It just doesn't show menu by default like grub does, you
| have to press a key to show the menu. That's about the
| difference.
| babypuncher wrote:
| You probably knew to go into your UEFI settings and put GRUB
| back at the top of the boot order.
| adezxc wrote:
| I have both GRUB and Windows Boot Loader available on my PC,
| installed Linux first, GRUB even auto-detected the Windows
| partition without any additional setup
| dTal wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense. If you installed Linux first,
| there would be no Windows partition for GRUB to autodetect
| when it was set up. And GRUB doesn't probe for operating
| systems automatically on boot, only when you run "update-
| grub" from inside a running Linux OS, so it wouldn't
| magically fix itself once you did install Windows. And
| besides, the fact that we are talking about GRUB
| autodetecting things, not Windows Boot Loader, only proves
| the parent's point.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| A kernel update reruns grub config which then adds windows
| to grub
| vmfunction wrote:
| MS only warmed up to Linux/Open Source, cause they were getting
| obliterated by Google on search and Apple with smart phones. If
| they don't do anything to warm up to the open source developers
| community, they would be obsolete.
|
| Personally I still don't trust any open source or close source
| products from MS or any corporation. There is ALWAYS some
| strings attached. However, good thing about open sourcing
| software, is that you can always find alternative version that
| is compiled by the community or CE edition.
|
| e.g: Use VSCodium instead of VSCode. Use ungoogled-chromium
| instead of Chrome. Use WebKit instead of Safari
| wg0 wrote:
| I can only trace it to Satya Nadal. I think he shaped modern
| Microsoft post Steve Balmer.
|
| Microsoft got much more diversified since than it seems.
| wooptoo wrote:
| Just look how often the vscode extensions break for the open-
| source variants of the IDE. I basically have to sit down
| every few months and rejig my settings.json file to match the
| latest syntax used by the IDE.
|
| Microsoft hasn't changed its character, only how it presents
| itself.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Your annual reminder that globally, it is Android that
| dominates the phone market, not iOS. I know that isn't the
| case in the USA, but that's not the global marketplace.
|
| MS lost (or rather, made essentially zero head way in)
| everything except desktop computers.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| And thanks to the Steam Deck and the damage that is doing
| to the last bastion of Window supremacy in gaming, they may
| not have that much longer either.
|
| I mean, would you rather have an OS that turns your
| computer into a personal space invasion device that helps a
| multi-trillion dollar megalith monetize your every breath
| while consuming a huge portion of the performance of your
| $1,000 personal computer, or would you rather have a
| lightweight customizable OS that only does what you tell it
| to do, doesn't cost you anything, and can do almost
| everything that the other guy can do just as well for free
| with no tracking?
| jampekka wrote:
| Sadly a lot of people "rather" have the former. Of course
| MS does everything in their power that these people don't
| know better or don't have the option to select the
| latter.
|
| MS has always been about forcing subpar tech with shady
| tactics, and they are very good at it.
| adventured wrote:
| > MS lost (or rather, made essentially zero head way in)
| everything except desktop computers.
|
| Microsoft's booming business numbers would like to have a
| discussion.
|
| $26 billion in quarterly operating income, about to
| overtake Apple in profit, and practically none of their
| growth over the past decade has come from desktop
| computers.
|
| They have an extremely lucrative business across cloud
| everything these days and it has very little to do with
| Windows on the desktop.
|
| Over the past decade that Windows desktop has largely been
| stagnant as a business, their total sales have gone from
| $78 billion to $218 billion. Operating income was stuck for
| 6-7 years in the ~$14-$22 billion range (the later Ballmer
| stagnation years), until after 2015. They'll cross $100+
| billion in operating income over the next four quarters.
| All of that leap has happened from 2016 to now and
| basically none of it has to do with consumer Windows.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > Microsoft's booming business numbers would like to have
| a discussion.
|
| My gut feeling is Microsoft is making money by moving old
| Active Directory servers into their own cloud offering,
| Azure. Their revenue is booming because they make more
| money from hosting a server than selling a Windows /
| MSSQL / Exchange licence that runs on someone elses
| hardware. To give them their due, they do it well,
| facilitating a smooth transition that allows you to move
| one machine at a time into the cloud, while the patient
| is still going about their normal business.
|
| That's all well and good, but it doesn't mean the
| proportion of people / businesses out there running
| Microsoft software is growing. Maybe it's dropping? I
| don't know. But if it is dropping, it's going to come to
| an ugly end in a few decades time.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Nitpicking on dual boot. I just went ahead and got myself a
| system76 laptop. All Linux, no whiff of msft on it. Works
| awesome.
|
| You don't need a dual boot. You don't need windows today. In a
| sense that's what the Halloween papers predicted. I don't have
| a single windows device. Apple for phones and work laptop,
| system76 for home laptop.
| herbst wrote:
| I haven't used windows or even came in contact with it for a
| long while :)
|
| IMO the dual boot example just shows how little they actually
| care and always cared.
|
| However my whole family is on linux only and on the rare
| occasion where they need to run some weird software they
| prefer dual boot to VM, because easier or because old
| machine.
| MaintenanceMode wrote:
| This was a funny era. A few years later (early 2000s), I somehow
| got sent to the Microsoft developer conference because I was the
| closest, geographically. There were so many sessions focused on
| open source and inter working with Linux. It was shocking that
| Microsoft had so quickly embraced this world.
|
| Then in the closing keynote, Gates spoke passionately about how
| Microsoft would eradicate Linux and crush open source. It was
| hilarious how out of touch the left hand was from the right hand.
|
| I also made a bit of a splash because I came to the conference
| with a MacBook. A journalist even wanted to interview me because
| it was so unusual. I declined.
|
| The best part of the conference was the passes to company store,
| buying a lot of shwag for dirt cheap and a bunch of OS licenses,
| which they practically gave away in the store (to run in
| Parallels of course) lol.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "I came to the conference with a MacBook"_
|
| Nitpicking, but it would have been either a PowerBook or an
| iBook if this was early 2000s. MacBooks were introduced in
| 2006.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _It was shocking that Microsoft had so quickly embraced this
| world._
|
| Well, "Embrace" _is_ the first step.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| They're working on Extend.
| bratsche wrote:
| > I also made a bit of a splash because I came to the
| conference with a MacBook
|
| That reminds me of going to a .NET meetup kind of thing at the
| Microsoft office in Dallas once many years ago, and I came in
| my Mono t-shirt and my Thinkpad with GNOME and Mono stickers on
| it. Joseph Hill spots me and comes over to introduce himself.
| His first words were, "You look like a man on a mission!" :)
|
| Joseph was so cool. There was some guy at Microsoft who was
| hosting the event, and he was kind of a dick. He kept trying to
| make jokes about Mono, but most of the people at the event
| didn't have any idea what Mono was so the only people who knew
| what he was talking about were me and Joseph.
| tjansen wrote:
| The scariest thing is that this happened a quarter of a century
| ago. Wow, I feel old! It was such a big deal back then, when
| everybody questioned Linux' viability.
| itomato wrote:
| Oh yes, and the pressure it imposed on Linux use in industry.
|
| IBM would not own Red Hat today if not for this memo. The fear
| and uncertainty that rippled the industry, right up through
| vendor selection made it harder, riskier and more frustrating
| to choose and make use of Linux than it should have been. Take
| notes.
| fragmede wrote:
| IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019, and this memo is from 1998, so
| I'm skeptical it was this memo that caused that particular
| acquisition.
| bitwize wrote:
| IBM had had a "Linux/open source friendly" strategy since
| the early 2000s. Remember that ad with the Eminem-looking
| kid they named "Linux", and they were like "he's learning"?
| That's how they came to acquire Red Hat, by leaning into
| the "we're totally besties with open source" narrative.
| bitwize wrote:
| The advertisement in question:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ozaFbqg00
| squarefoot wrote:
| I was among a group of enthusiasts in a local Linux User
| Group who were contacted by IBM in about 1997 or 98 to give
| some talks in their local HQ; the experience was quite
| satisfying, they were genuinely interested. According to some
| of them, word was that Lou Gerstner, then IBM CEO, had been
| told by one of his closest advisors something along "if we
| don't take Linux seriously we're going to make our biggest
| mistake in history", and that started it all.
| drpossum wrote:
| Wow, slashdot still exists.
| api wrote:
| This was before commercial software companies realized that they
| had a moat against open source: making software easy to use is
| often profoundly more difficult than just making software and
| requires tons of precisely the kind of work developers hate.
| Since they hate it, they must be paid to do it. No economic
| model, no good UX, no widespread adoption.
|
| Open source today is basically a bone yard for building
| commercial apps and SaaS, and a hobby shop for advanced technical
| users who can DIY.
| dark-star wrote:
| The time that MS was spooked by Linux may be over, but what's
| still ongoing is the way that Microsoft still spooks Linux, to
| this day.
|
| Just read the comments on any Linux news site about systemd. I
| promise it will be hilarious. "Microsoft trying to take over
| Linux", "Pottering is a secret MS agent to undermine Linux",
| "Microsoft infesting Linux with BSODs", ... it goes on and on and
| on
|
| Honestly, even if Microsoft had tried, it couldn't have done a
| better job at enraging the Linux folks than systemd did :-D
| gavinhoward wrote:
| But then...Poettering went to work for Microsoft, so...maybe
| they were right?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I won't lie, if I had taken as much flack as Peottering did
| from the community[1], I'd take a job with MS just to troll
| them.
|
| 1: I'm personally not a fan of Pulse Audio, but I'm pretty
| sure it wasn't his decision to enable it in Ubuntu by default
| when it was still pretty broken, and holy shit I had like 12
| backups of my working asoundrc at the time because
| configuring ALSA was such a pain, so PA was not in any sense
| gratuitous; it solved real problems.
| gavinhoward wrote:
| Not disagreeing with you.
|
| Just want to add that even if he just took the job to troll
| with us, it still shows that his principles were never far
| from theirs anyway, even if he was genuine at first.
| harshaw wrote:
| Completely random comment. I was in a meeting probably about 20
| years ago in the 2000s. I forget with what company. Anyone, one
| of the folks introduced himself as Vinod. I looked at his last
| name. Valloppillil. I was like "Oh hey - are you the halloween
| documents guy?". He was completely spooked - looked like a cat
| had walked over his grave. Seemed like something in his past he
| wanted to forget. But I thought it was pretty awesome - like
| having a minor celebrity to talk to when I was a fairly junior
| engineer. Not quite as awesome as having my copy of Applied
| Cryptography autographed by Bruce Schnier, but still kinda cool.
|
| Anyway - if you are still out there working in Tech Vinod - hope
| everything is going well.
| ipython wrote:
| For what it's worth I looked him up on LinkedIn. One of his
| bullets for his time at Microsoft reads:
|
| > Author of "Halloween documents" - analyzing Linux & Open
| Source software ;-)
|
| Sounds like he's "embraced" his infamy after all these years :)
| javier_e06 wrote:
| I is so apropos that the article links to Slashdot which has the
| exact same portal for the last 20 years :).
|
| I was in the University of Texas back then CS dept (1996). We had
| some presentations from Red Hat and Microsoft. Microsoft pitch
| was that Linux was like a doggie under the Christmas Tree. Fun
| present that will pee all over the place.
|
| What would Microsoft be then?
|
| A life-sized stuffed toy dog?
| kstrauser wrote:
| At that time, that was a decent analogy. Linux was great fun
| but it also liked to bite your hand and chew your shoes.
|
| And then it grew up into a smart, eager adult.
| n6h6 wrote:
| Anyone know why the fuck the comments on the linked site are
| talking about Kyle Rittenhouse? Did I miss something?
| neilv wrote:
| I can mention a few things that were publicly obvious:
|
| * The Halloween Documents didn't seem to be a fluke of behavior,
| but a bit of leaked evidence of an established executive culture
| of ruthlessness, paired with forward-looking strategic thinking
| (or "long cons"). This leaked bit of internal thinking is also
| consistent with the public history of brazen behavior, like
| backstabbing partners.
|
| * Does anyone think that apparent corporate culture changed
| dramatically due to the brief fuss over the leaked Halloween
| Documents? Or would we normally assume that they kept devising
| and executing on other underhanded tactics? And have never been
| given a reason to change that culture?
|
| * Plot twist: Early on in Linux popularity rise, MS's public
| behavior looked like they wanted to point to Linux and some kinds
| of open source as competition. And then, later, MS publicly
| appeared to be promoting some open source, to claim that some new
| MS proprietary moves (which some MS customer shops were concerned
| about, having been bitten before) weren't as proprietary lock-in
| as they'd otherwise look. So, multiple times, it publicly
| appeared that MS was doing a delicate dance of promoting open
| source. (More recent moves that might be related seem less clear,
| or haven't played out yet.)
|
| * Everyone heard about FUD and EEE, as well as using legal
| proceedings to sabotage threats, but it would be reasonable to
| assume that any company that practiced these might also have
| additional tactics in their toolbox.
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