> I don't know

it is abundantly clear from the post, agree

> Bill Gates

MSFT declared open source a "cancer" and "a threat to American Values" .. later, almost the entire Internet is run fundamentally on OSS.

What motivations might MSFT have had in 1998 ? Are there clear lessons from the extremes of the past that could be applied now?

Do authors have a right to LICENSE software they write? which ones, only Linus or Daniel Stenberg ? are there others? does a LICENSE mean anything ?

##-- related

From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> To: wire-service@thyrsus.com Subject: Microsoft and the Big Lie Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 16:47:38 -0400 ...

In the last three months, Jim Allchin and Craig Mundie and Steve Ballmer ... have described it (open source code ed.) as "un-American", "a destroyer", and "a cancer". They have deliberately confused the GPL with non-infectious open-source licenses, and they have deliberately confused active combination of code with passive aggregation of data.