The Linux Secrets Microsoft Didn't Want you to see | Nostalgia Nerd

being season appropriate it seems the right time to discuss another frightful microsoft tale one that relates very much to fiendish goings-on and that's mainly because the halloween documents as they are known are a series of confidential documents leaked from microsoft about the threats perceived from external companies and significantly open source software squarespace thank you for sponsoring this content in their entirety they are an incredibly interesting and somewhat damning insight into microsoft's thinking as they moved into the new millennium million pounds worth of fireworks then the reason they're known as the halloween documents is simply because they were mostly leaked around this spooky season across several years we begin with open source software a new development methodology written by microsoft software engineer vinod valapillo and sent in august 1998. in october this original document was leaked to the american software developer and open source advocate eric s raymond who would later coin the halloween moniker it was he who in turn would expose the document to the press who covered it with varying degrees of accuracy and completedness in early november with the new york times commenting that the memo warns that free software can meet or exceed the quality of commercial programs and describes it as a potentially serious threat to microsoft which is by and large the gist of things and microsoft even acknowledged to the new york times that the document was indeed authentic in their november the third article about it this led some to speculate that the document was leaked intentionally in line with microsoft's fud or flood practices what is fud well it stands for fear uncertainty doubt it's a methodology microsoft subscribe to to undermine products launched by competitors which posed a threat if the rival product is better in some fashion for example it's free and facts therefore cannot win the day scaremongering is instead employed to cast a shadow of doubt in consumers minds i've previously discussed how microsoft used this against dr dos and stack a disk compression to name a few this then could just be a carefully worded script designed to make the public think less of open source offerings however the fact of this document is just so raw and honest towards microsoft's outlook and actually discusses fudd and other internal strategies suggests that it is in fact an authentic leak and the reason microsoft confirmed its authenticity was likely to avoid further conflict whilst the us department of justice were pursuing an anti-trust action against them on his website catb.org eric has compiled a list of key quotes from the document which illuminate this oss open source software poses a direct short-term revenue and platform threat to microsoft particularly in service space additionally the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in oss has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long-term developer mind share threat recent case studies provide very dramatic evidence that commercial quality can be achieved exceeded by oss projects oss is long-term credible flood tactics cannot be used to combat it linux and other oss advocates are making a progressively more credible argument that oss software is at least as robust if not more than commercial alternatives linux has been deployed in mission critical commercial environments with an excellent pool of public testimonials linux can win as long as services or protocols are commodities rather than planting a seed of concern in the minds of the public this document actively praises open source software and it's very clear that microsoft had deep deep reservations about it particularly around the rival operating system linux but that last quote that's quite concerning it's also mentioned elsewhere in the document the decommodization of protocols for core software to be successful it's usually dependent on external standardized components for example you might take the dot doc file used by word open source word processors would also need to use this file format otherwise the masses would simply stick with word the only program that could read their documents microsoft were therefore talking about the possibility of making it impossible or at least difficult for other parties to make use of formats like this and even more fundamental commodities such as tcpip if they changed how windows worked with files or the outside world whilst they had the common advantage it could spell doom for competitors of course this had its own risk ironically this was partly the downfall of linux's predecessor unix as various unix vendors tried to give their versions a proprietary edge over others therefore de-commoditizing them creating features that didn't exist on other unices and therefore causing incompatibilities between systems this erased the standardization essential for interoperability the document itself was clearly penned for high level management within microsoft to consume including bill gates himself the second halloween document was leaked on the 3rd of november 1998. eric writes as perhaps a direct result of the national press coverage it's a direct follow-up to the first document but with a heavy focus on linux and an evaluation of its credibility against windows dated the 11th of august 1998 and penned again by vinod and josh cohen the document begins with a synopsis and history of linux itself before delving into more detail about its inner workings and distributions the swelling numbers on the linux user base succinctly communicates why exactly microsoft was so concerned about their business linux represents a best of breed unix that has a long-term credibility which exceeds many other competitive os's most of the primary apps that people require when they move to linux are already available for free an advanced win32 gui user would have a short learning cycle to become productive consumers love it you know this is very much a document that is selling linux to its reader rather than trying to demolish it and it seems clear that microsoft had no real strategy for dealing with this monumental threat to their operation at the time other businesses such as corel were jumping on the wagon of actually shipping their own flavor of linux as a commercial package this was not only making it more accessible to the average user who preferred buying their product from shop shelves but it was also demonstrating how powerful linux was becoming if you can sell something that's free for a commercial profit then you're doing well at one point the document states compaq and dell merely have to credibly threaten linux adoption in order to push for lower oem os pricing demonstrating the issues that linux was already creating for windows profits of course for some reading these league stories and documents this may have actually been the first time they heard of this new linux operating system and so microsoft would need to respond to the leak that response has been named the halloween document three thank you to squarespace for sponsoring this video honestly it's so quick to knock out a website using squarespace i made this one in about three minutes i think it captures the mood perfectly just imagine what you could do in just half an hour visit squarespace.com nostalgianerd to get started and get 10 of your first website or custom domain after confirming their authenticity microsoft tried to largely downplay the contents of halloween one and two however the prominent linux user hank cloping did manage to get a statement from microsoft's public relations manager in the netherlands auriglia vandenberg was quoted with the following it's routine and appropriate for microsoft to research and write about all competitors both from a business model point of view and a technical point of view it is not an official position by microsoft on linux it is a technical analysis written by an engineer in a staff capacity and designed to encourage discussion but aurelia did also try and put down the position of linux stating that it had no long-term roadmap and no way to get one no intellectual property protection means about the deep investments needed by the industry in infrastructure will gravitate to other business models and unless linux violates ip rights it will fail to deliver innovation over the long run in hindsight we can perhaps scoff at these remarks as linux has continued to move from strength to strength and offered many innovations over windows which the community will swear by it later became apparent that this was in fact an official set of statements filtered down from microsoft hq distributed to local offices the responses were listed under the windows nt server section of their website indicating that microsoft were both keen to undo any damage to prominent users whilst trying to remain as discreet about it as possible however it does back up that the original documents were indeed leaked without a plan and that microsoft were deeply deeply troubled by the notion of a free and credible operating system and rightly so halloween documents four through six are writings and responses by eric s raymond himself regarding the chatter and noise of the whole debacle but halloween 7 was presented as a microsoft internal linux strategic review at the berlin microsoft offices in september 2002. the main core of the document here is microsoft's own marketing research which heavily indicates microsoft's flood tactics were indeed failing as had been suggested they would back in halloween one microsoft's research had polled developers i.t and non-it business development managers and indicated that 77 percent were familiar with linux and 86 of those found linux favorable over windows 40 indicated that the low total cost of ownership was a strong factor although 33 said that the fact it was just an alternative to microsoft was strong enough alone off the back of this a memo from microsoft sent on the 25th of november 2002 from orlando ayala to the general managers of microsoft regional subsidiaries would become known as halloween eight halloween eight warned its recipients to expect a lot more open source software adoption announcements and requests an increased effort on marketing to try and squash the growing threat which really leads us onto halloween 10 the point at which matters really escalate here we have an email from mike andera to chris sontag now chris sontag was the vice president and general manager of sco source responsible for overseeing the development and licensing of seo's intellectual property holdings okay great that sounds fancy and important so who are seo well seo group began back in 2002 after a renaming of caldera international a company that sold an easy to use implementation of linux much like the corel package i mentioned earlier in august 2000 caldera purchased unix technology from the santa cruz operation and so on the sco were looking to present a unified profitable view of unix and linux that could satisfy high-end business requirements read into that what you will this ultimately meant that seo would enter into various legal disputes with various linux vendors and users particularly around the reported source code that was donated by ibm into linux and whether ibm had the right to do that but the key question here is where all of a sudden did they get the funding for these actions to try and thwart linux's open source majesty well on the 4th of march 2002 this leaked internal email halloween 10 detailed how microsoft had raised up to 106 million dollars to kindly help sco out in that regard or at least that's how it appears from this perspective this cash injection was via a deal with the venture capital firm bay star which to those with a cynical nature might think of as i don't know some kind of laundering or distancing process the memory reveals that microsoft will have brought in 86 million dollars for us including bay star the next deal we should be able to get from 16 to 20 million at this time sco's cash reserves were 68.5 million suggesting that seo would have been in debt if not for microsoft's intervention it seems then that microsoft had outsourced their anti-linux strategies and were desperately trying to turn something open source into something of a grey area but fortunately for us it was not to be despite their cash injections seo group would file for bankruptcy in september 2007. in 2011 unexis would purchase their software product business but the ongoing legal case between seo and ibm due to alleged violations of ibm's unix licenses would mean the shell of seo would continue to limp on on the 30th of march 2010 in the separate case of seo versus novell it was decided that nobel actually owned most of the disputed copyrights this meant the scope of the case against ibm and linux narrowed and in october 2017 was dismissed with prejudice but an appeal by seo means that this zombie of a case still lingers however linux also lingers in fact it does more than linger it surges through and so despite the best efforts of microsoft and their hired proxies it remains an even more painful thorn in their site today especially being that it currently runs on the vast majority of web servers and indeed on a high percentage of personal hardware maybe microsoft should have said treat rather than trick and let them on their way and concentrated on improvements to their own os rather than opting for that trick which perhaps did for more harm than good but hey microsoft and windows are still here as well so all's well that ends well this then is where the halloween documents and indeed this tale ends but i suggest you go and take a look at eric's site and take a look at this insightful part of microsoft's dark history in any case thanks for watching and have a horrifying evening you know because it's halloween i don't actually want you to have a bad evening okay see you later you

Channel: Nostalgia Nerd

Views: 107,543

Keywords: halloween documents, linux, open source, microsoft

Id: SXGAiTjFiMA

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020