[NTLUG:Discuss] Sourcing Linux

[kbrannen@gte.net]

Tom Adelstein wrote:
> 
> 
> tumelty4 at yahoo.com wrote:
> 
>> This article is very interesting. Especially the last
>> 2 sentences in the  2nd paragraph:
>>
>> http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=12808120
>>
> I don't think I have ever taken up for Bill Gates, but the quote used by 
> the journalist is so far out of context, it verges on heresy.
> 
> I promise that if "cloning" was an issue, then Microsoft has the market 
> cornered. They have connectors for everything from Banyan Vines, Novell, 
> Lotus Notes and so on. They ever had a way to use early versions of 
> Excel like Lotus 1-2-3. Word had a WordPerfect key mapping function.
> 

Interesting point.  For me, the one that caught my attention and was easily 
the stupidiest paragraph:

---
New tools could help prevent code from being illegally copied. For example, 
digital-rights-management technology might be applied to software-development 
processes, says Microsoft senior VP Eric Rudder. "There are probably some very 
interesting things for us to think about in how developers protect models, 
chunks of code, or specs," he says.
---

DRM doesn't have a hope or prayer in being effective against the problem being 
discussed (code copying).  Can you say "retype"?  Yeh I thought you could. :-)

This is merely PR to bring DRM into the discussion in the hopes of moving it 
forward.

Oh I wish for the ability to whack the announcers of stupid or impossible 
statements!

Kevin