Subject: Re: Big Brother is Real
From: Steve Coleman <[email-masked]>
To: Randall R Schulz <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 09:54:28 -0500

Randall R Schulz wrote:

> I think we have to work with the legal system, not try to subvert it. 
> Microsoft has a right to set the licensing terms it wants. We have a 
> right to tell them to go to hell. Currently however, and as you note, 
> the power relationship is highly skewed. It ain't easy to "just say 
> no" to Microsoft.

And in some cases you can't say "no"!

A long time ago (showing my age here - lol) when I worked for NASA, I 
first cut my teeth on Cygwin out of desperation to get my job done on a 
Wintel box. The very fact that it did not possess anything even close to 
resembling real POSIX was a constant thorn in my side on a daily basis. 
At the time I was a representative to the X/Open organization and was 
heavily involved in the system benchmarking and conformance testing to 
ensure that all equipment supplied on several large contracts adhered to 
the X/Open standards. That is until the M$ "legal suites" showed up in 
force and muscled there way in through legal threats. Can you imagine 
that? NASA, as big of a government organization as it is, being muscled 
and pushed around by Microsloths lawyers to accept Windows as an X/Open 
complient operating system? Without Cygwin Windoze would never even come 
close to being X/Open complient, and Cygwin at that point was still in 
its infant stages of development. The short story is that M$ intimidated 
NASA into creating a contract just for M$ to sell their stuff even 
though they were not compliant with any of the benchmark tests or 
feature lists required in order to compete.  If you can't compete 
technically (or just need some spare cash on hand), just threaten to sue.

Thank you team Cygwin! ;-)

(These are my own thoughts and opinions and in no way reflect my current 
or past employers positions in any way)

8*}

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