The New York Times published 25 years ago a Microsoft internal memo where company executives and software development managers expressed deep concern “threat” that their interests included free software and proposed a number of strategies to combat the most popular applications such as Linux.

The memorandum drew attention to this The quality of free software could be the same or higher than that of commercial programs and described it as a potentially serious threat to Microsoft. The document was sent anonymously (from whom he never heard) to Eric Raymond, a Linux developer and a prominent figure at the time in the (loosely connected) group of software developers who collectively created and distributed free programs from operating systems. to web browsers.

The appearance of this and subsequent notes, described by Raymond as the ‘Halloween documents’ due to their publication date of November 3, 1998, has sparked speculation and debate among programmers about both the timing of the leak and its content. At the time, Microsoft was embroiled in a legal dispute with the United States Department of Justice business practices considered anti-competitive which was developed around the Windows operating system that was installed in 9 out of every 10 personal computers sold at the dawn of the new century.

Just days after the NYT publication, Microsoft executives acknowledged the document as authentic, as did other memos that were subsequently leaked.

Free Software: The Threat

In addition to acknowledging that free programs can compete with commercial software in terms of quality, the report characterized the free software movement as “a credible long-term threat” and warned that using a traditional marketing strategy known as “FUD” (short for fear, uncertainty, and doubt) would not be successful against free software developers. The document also expressed the concern of Microsoft officials that Linux was quickly becoming the dominant version of Unix for computers equipped with Intel microprocessors.

The note warned that competition issues go beyond the fact that free software is free. It was also part of the open source software, or OSS, movement, which encouraged rapid and large-scale development efforts the source code was available to anyone. and could be used, improved and redistributed.

This allowed programmers around the world to constantly write or suggest improvements, warn of bugs that need to be fixed, or fix vulnerabilities. The report states that open source software poses a threat because of its ability to mobilize thousands of programmers. “The ability of the OSS process to collect and use the collective IQ of thousands of people over the Internet It’s just amazing«the report states. “More importantly, OSS evangelism is growing with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelistic efforts seem to be growing.”.

In terms of the market, this meant that the growth of the Internet created a much more efficient medium for open programming collaboration than for the commercialization of traditional proprietary software, where Microsoft was the absolute leader with Windows and the Office suite.

and linux

A second internal Microsoft memo was also leaked that specifically referred to it the threat that Linux poses to Windows NT. While publicly calling Linux a “cancer,” Redmond executives privately called it “best-in-class Unix” and wondered aloud whether the open-source operating system’s speed could be slowed in court.

Like the first “Halloween Document,” the memo, written by product manager Vinod Valloppilli and another high-profile Microsoft employee, Josh Cohen, was obtained by Linux developer Eric Raymond and posted online. In it, Microsoft executives suggested that they could slow the development of open source systems such as Linux legal battles: “The impact of patents and copyrights in the fight against Linux remains to be explored”they wrote

Raymond’s website preserves the collection for posterity leaked Microsoft documents and related materials known collectively as “halloween documentaries«. Raymond thanked the authors of the documents “for writing such remarkable and powerful testimonials to the excellence of Linux and open source software in general”.

In perspective

25 years after the memo was published, it is difficult to declare winners and losers. On the one hand, although the “Wintel” alliance (MS and Intel), which dominated global client work with an iron hand in recent decades, has ended today, Microsoft continues to dominate the market with its proprietary softwarea Windows desktop market share of around 80% and a strong dominance of core software such as productivity and collaboration suites.

Nor has free software fared badly, and specifically its main asset, open source software, which goes far beyond the ethical or freedom issues that usually accompany it, but not necessarily because it differs in concept from the “free software” that Microsoft considers for a threat and which today it uses in depth in a large part of its development.

And like more or less, Microsoft has become a major player in the open source community. He is a major contributor to Linux and Kubernetes; develops and distributes Linux-based products; introduced Linux to Windows with WSL; promotes Ubuntu as the best Linux for the cloud and offers preferred Azure support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux; they open sourced the .NET development platform, released SQL Server for Linux, and are sponsors of organizations such as The Linux Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, and the Open Source Initiative, in addition to joining the Open Invention Network (OIN), a group dedicated to protect open source projects through the defense patent program.

How history changed… And it’s normal. Much of the software that powers the world’s largest companies protects our personal data, the information of the largest financial companies, the world’s largest computer networks, or the national security of governments. This is open source software.

Apart from the fact that Linux on the desktop does not reach the quota that its quality deserves (due to several factors that need not be commented on) The current importance of open source is absolute and of incalculable value as one of the most important movements in global technology, an innovation center that accelerates the development of entire industries and creates de facto standards with practical benefits for the developer, professional or company. And also for consumers.