Mike --

Verrrrryyyyy INTerestinggggggg.

Cheers,

Alan

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At 8:18 PM -0000 11/3/98, wirth@almaden.ibm.com wrote:

Dan Gillmor had an interesting column in the San Jose Mercury News this morning, "Microsoft wary of open source, embedded systems", which you can find at:

http://www.mercurycenter.com/columnists/gillmor/docs/dg110398.htm

He discusses a purported internal MS whitepaper on Open Source Software (called "OSS" in the whitepaper :-) which was leaked by Eric Raymond as "The Halloween Document". You can find it, along with Eric's analysis and marginal comments (with ongoing updates, now at version 1.4) at:

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/halloween.html

Eric's comments include a reference to Squeak:

"This prediction is of a piece with the author's earlier assertion that open-source development relies critically on design precedents and is unavoidably backward-looking. It's myopic -- apparently things like Python, Beowulf, and Squeak (to name just three of hundreds of innovative projects) don't show on his radar."

Enjoy,

Mike Wirth

<usual disclaimers>