Computer underground Digest Wed 4 Nov, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 54
Computer underground Digest Wed 4 Nov, 1998 Volume 10 : Issue 54
ISSN 1004-042X
Editor: Jim Thomas (cudigest@sun.soci.niu.edu)
News Editor: Gordon Meyer (gmeyer@sun.soci.niu.edu)
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Cu Digest Homepage: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest
CONTENTS, #10.54 (Wed, 4 Nov, 1998)
File 1--[press] XS4ALL to appear in Court
File 2--Some Snippets on Technology & Education (From Netfuture #79)
File 3--Islands in the Clickstream. Modules and Metaphors
File 4--Crypto lunacy hits the UK.
File 5--EFF Search for Executive Director
File 6--Tim O'Reilly's "Open Letter to Microsoft"
File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Apr, 1998)
CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION ApPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1998 10:44:51 +0100
From: Maurice Wessling
Subject: File 1--[press] XS4ALL to appear in Court
Press release
Amsterdam, 5 november 1998.
XS4ALL to appear in Court
XS4ALL has been summoned to appear in Court in Utrecht on 20 November 1998
in connection with its refusal to assist with an Internet tap.
The facts
In November 1997, XS4ALL refused to comply with an order of the Ministry
of Justice to tap the Internet communications of one of its users in
connection with a criminal investigation. XS4ALL takes the view that there
are insufficient legal grounds for the order. XS4ALL therefore regards the
order as an illegal method of investigation.
On 31 October 1997, a detective and a computer expert from the Forensic
Science Laboratory delivered the order to XS4ALL. The Ministry of Justice
wanted XS4ALL to tap all Internet communications to and from the user for
a month, and pass the information on to the police. This would cover
e-mail, World Wide Web, news groups, IRC and all other Internet services
used by this person. XS4ALL was to make all necessary technical provisions
itself.
The reason for refusing
XS4ALL does not wish to cooperate with invasions of privacy without an
adequate legal basis. Furthermore, XS4ALL has a commercial interest, in
that it cannot risk its users taking civil actions against it for acting
unlawfully. This could happen in the event of a provider making an
intervention like this without a foundation in law. Cooperating with the
order could set an undesirable precedent with far-reaching consequences
for the privacy of all Internet users in the Netherlands.
The legal basis for the order
The Ministry of Justice based its order on Article 125(i) of the
Netherlands Code of Criminal Procedure (Wetboek van Strafvordering). This
Article was introduced in 1993 as part of the Computer Crime Act. It gives
examining magistrates the power, during preliminary inquiries, to order
third parties to hand over data stored in computers in the interests of
reaching the truth. The history of the legislation shows that it was never
intended that this provision should be used for orders covering future
periods. The legislature is still working on provisions to fill that gap
in the arsenal of investigation methods, by analogy with the tapping of
telephone conversations (Article 125(g), Code of Criminal Procedure). The
Constitution and the European Convention for the Protection of Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms require a precise legal basis for any
invasions of fundamental rights such as privacy and the privacy of
correspondence.
Telecommunications Act
The First Chamber has very recently passed the new Telecommunications Act.
This means tapping Internet communications will become legally possible in
the near future. At a conference organized by XS4ALL and De Balie in
February 1998, it was clear that lawyers and market participants are very
critical of this new legislation. For example, the government has never
said just why large-scale tapping, including of Internet communications,
is supposed to be an effective, and cost-effective method of
investigation. A recent report commissioned by the European Parliament
shows that the European Union has collaborated with the American FBI to
plan an extensive European tapping network, without consulting national
parliaments. The new Telecommunications Act creates the necessary
conditions for such a network.
More information
The case against XS4ALL will be heard on Friday, 20 November at 11 a.m. in
de District Court, Hamburgerstraat 28, Utrecht, Netherlands.
For previous releases also see:
http://www.xs4all.nl/spotlight/tap_e.html
Press contact:
Maurice Wessling
XS4ALL Internet BV
tel. +31 20 3987654
maurice@xs4all.nl
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 14:55:47 -0500
From: Stephen Talbott
Subject: File 2--Some Snippets on Technology & Education (From Netfuture #79)
((MODERATORS' NOTE: Here are a few exerpts from NETFUTURE address
education and computers. Over the next few months, CuD will increase
commentary on computer-enhanced education, especially distance learning.
Steve Talbott's NETFUTURE is an excellent source for those
those interested in this topic)).
NETFUTURE
Technology and Human Responsibility
==========================================================================
Issue #79 A Publication of The Nature Institute October 27, 1998
==========================================================================
Editor: Stephen L. Talbott (stevet@oreilly.com)
On the Web: http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/
You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes.
==========================================================================
WHY INFORMATION IS NOT ENOUGH
Lowell Monke (lm7846s@acad.drake.edu)
Letter from Des Moines
October 27, 1998
TALES FROM A HIGH SCHOOL COMPUTER LAB
Recently, one of my students designed and managed a Web page for a project
involving the comparison of cultures from various parts of the world.
This student gathered and categorized hundreds of messages so that others
could reference all contributions easily. For several months he did just
what proponents of "Information Age Education" say we need to teach our
students to do: he organized, selected, processed and even electronically
published information that was sent to him every day. He did such a good
job and was so proud of his work that we decided he should enter the Web
page in a contest.
But the entry form completely baffled him. He spent an hour pondering and
asking me for help with the question, "What is the value of your project?"
With all of his hard work he didn't seem to have any idea how to express
why he had spent so much time developing this extensive body of
information. Finally, I gave in and told him what I thought the value of
his project was but it did little good. He soon came back, unable to
remember the exact words I had used.
This nice, hard-working young man, who can gather and process information
off the 'Net so well, has nevertheless been failed by all of us in the
educational system. His problem had nothing to do with technology or
information and couldn't be fixed by them. His problem was lack of
insight, the inability to discover meaning by finding relations between
experiences and ideas. In a truly educational environment experiences and
ideas interact to create knowledge and the insights that feed the seed of
wisdom.
This recalls T. S. Eliot's famous lament, "Where is the wisdom lost in
knowledge? Where is the knowledge lost in information?" (1963, 147).
Still, our infatuation with technology has blinded us to this
discrimination and resulted in data and information being lifted to
exalted status. The promoters of information have inflated its definition
to absurd dimensions (Machlup 1983). John Perry Barlow (1996), for
example, claims that "Information is an activity. Information is a life
form. Information is a relationship".
As information becomes a "living" entity inhabiting the electronic grid,
once-prized attributes of human life like wisdom and truth -- which
technology cannot traffic -- have become empty terms almost embarrassing
to utter. "Living in the bureaucracies of information, we don't venture a
claim to that kind of understanding" (Birkerts 1995, 74). Even in
education we no longer speak in those terms, and end up with students who
have no idea how to find meaning in the information they process. As
Theodore Roszak has pointed out, "An excess of information may actually
crowd out ideas, leaving the mind (young minds especially) distracted by
sterile, disconnected facts, lost among the shapeless heaps of data"
(1986, 88). The Internet provides us with nothing so much as an excess of
information.
How the Quest for Power Displaces Learning
----------------------------------
So why have so many embraced information as the cornucopia of education?
It is my contention that it is, in part, because they have confused and
substituted for the greater purpose of education -- the development of a
responsible, thoughtful individual able to live a fulfilling life -- its
occasional consequence, power. The real significance of the Internet for
students lies not in its educative capacities but in the power it confers.
Look carefully at the hype swirling around the 'Net as a means of
education and you will find that it is all about power, or what Perelman
(1992) calls "intellectual capital": power to access information any time
from any place; the power to "go" and communicate with anyone anywhere in
the world; the power not only to access but to publish mountains of
information. In short, the power to overcome time, distance and the
limitations of our own physical bodies. Learning in the era of the 'Net
tends to get degraded from comprehending ideas through experience and
thought into enhancing personal power through the possession of
information.
All of the attributes of power cited above may be valuable in the world of
business or politics, but in the realm of education they are deadening.
They focus attention not on developing thoughtfulness and insights but on
improving performance. In part because of the mindset encouraged by the
computer, the words of Kenneth Keniston are, if anything, even more on
target today than they were when he spoke them over a decade ago: we
measure the success of schools not by the kinds of human beings they
promote but by whatever increases in reading scores they chalk up. We
have allowed quantitative standards, so central to the adult economic
system, to become the principle yardstick for our definition of our
children's worth (Keniston, quoted in Elkind 1984, 53).
It is the pursuit of ever higher levels of performance that guides
educational policy today, not a concern for developing strong, deep
comprehension of the world. Students have to produce measurable skills at
every rung of the educational ladder. With the emphasis on performance
and the measurability of that performance, there is neither the time nor
the payoff for letting children sink those deeper, less measurable roots
of understanding from which meaningful knowledge can eventually emerge.
Rather, we search for the vendor who can sell us the machinery with the
necessary skill built into it to help the children meet decontextualized
standards of performance.
And already a disturbing trend can be observed: the more we rely on the
ever increasing capabilities of the machinery, the more time and effort we
invest in learning the technical skills necessary to get performance out
of the machine. From the moment our children enter the school system we
systematically sacrifice reflection upon ideas and experiences for the
development of skills that will "empower" them. And more and more this
empowerment is seen as coming through the computer-based accumulation and
manipulation of information.
References
----------
Birkerts, Sven. *The Gutenberg Elegies -- The Fate of Reading in the
Electronic Age*. Faber and Faber, Boston 1994.
Barlow, John. *The Economy of Ideas*, part 2.
www.nirvanet.fr/bienvenue/cybergate-fr/cibrary-fr/economy2-xfr.html. 1996.
Eliot, T.S. "Choruses from The Rock". *Collected Poems 1909-1962*. New
York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1963.
Elkind, David. *The Hurried Child -- Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon*.
Addison Wesley, Reading, MA 1981.
IBM. "IBM's Reinventing Education Partnerships," advertisement in *The
New Yorker*, p. 125, October 20 & 27, 1997.
Machlup, Fritz. "Semantic Quirks in Studies of Information" in *The Study
of Information*, eds. Fritz Machlup and Una Mansfield. Wiley, NY 1983.
Perelman, Lewis. *School's Out*. Avon Books, NY 1992.
Rheingold, Howard. *The Virtual Community*. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA
1993.
Roszak, Theodore. *The Making of a Counter Culture -- Reflections on the
Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition*. Doubleday & Co., Garden
City, NY 1969.
Weizenbaum, Joseph. *Computer Power and Human Reason -- From Judgment to
Calculation*. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York 1976.
==========================================================================
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
NETFUTURE is a newsletter and forwarding service dealing with technology
and human responsibility. It is published by The Nature Institute, 169
Route 21C, Ghent NY 12075 (tel: 518-672-0116). The list server is hosted
by the UDT Core Programme of the International Federation of Library
Associations. Postings occur roughly every couple of weeks. The editor
is Steve Talbott, author of *The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the
Machines in Our Midst*.
Copyright 1998 by The Nature Institute.
You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes. You may
also redistribute individual articles in their entirety, provided the
NETFUTURE url and this paragraph are attached.
Current and past issues of NETFUTURE are available on the Web:
http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/
http://www.ifla.org/udt/nf/ (mirror site)
http://ifla.inist.fr/VI/5/nf/ (mirror site)
To subscribe to NETFUTURE send the message, "subscribe netfuture
yourfirstname yourlastname", to listserv@infoserv.nlc-bnc.ca . No subject
line is needed. To unsubscribe, send the message, "signoff netfuture".
Send comments or material for publication to Steve Talbott
(stevet@oreilly.com).
If you have problems subscribing or unsubscribing, send mail to:
netfuture-request@infoserv.nlc-bnc.ca
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 14:59:00 -0500
From: Richard Thieme
Subject: File 3--Islands in the Clickstream. Modules and Metaphors
1998
Islands in the Clickstream:
Modules and Metaphors
As the pace of reorganization has accelerated, the modular construction of
reality has become the norm. Businesses, governments, and individuals have
shortened the horizon of planning and hold "long range planning" lightly,
knowing that the variables that will interact to create the future are too
many to be factored. In our personal lives, we identify "developmental
stages" and imagine the trajectory of our lives as a long swim from island
to island.
When the experience of our lives is congruent with our descriptions of
them, it feels like we know what we're talking about. The metaphors we have
adopted become mistaken for literal descriptions of the landscape,
protecting us from "the shocks and changes that keep us sane." Our beliefs
work as a filter until they don't.
When I look at my current assumptions about modular life, I see that many
of them derive from my interaction with the digital world. There (or here)
I experience nested levels of modular reality that mediate the unthinkable
complexity of our civilization.
"Civilization" is a name for the way we mediate energy and information.
Information is retained in storage media appropriate to the task, but all
media are dead or dying, including ourselves. Once organic media like
dinosaurs or Neanderthals are no longer viable, they disappear. The
evidence indicates that all storage devices are temporary, modular pieces
that snap together in serial time as well as horizontally in space. Long
before humans worried about killing off other species, thousands of organic
media disappeared along with their unique ways of filtering data.
Many of the tidbits of information that find their way to my desktop
computer concern genetic engineering and the splicing of humans and
computers into new symbiotic configurations.
Sheep ranchers in Australia, for example, are injecting Bioclip, a
naturally occurring protein, into sheep to cause fleeces to drop out. That
saves money on shearing. But sheep shearers have a romantic image of
themselves - as well as a union. They will fight to save the structure of
their lives and the self-image with which it is fused, but it's only a
holding action. It's more likely that they'll adapt, die, or save "Sheep
Shearing Land" as a simulated touristic environment for children to visit
like a "Living Farm."
Clearly evolution was served by a conservative stance toward
memory storage and knowledge modification. Tribes and cultures
that resisted change survived for a while. But our environment
is changing rapidly, so how do we change modules in a gradual way
while still changing them as fast as necessary to stay connected
to the changing environment? And when those environments are
themselves symbolic modules, the simulated life we call "life"
consists of a mental game, maintaining equilibrium among nested
levels of symbolic reality that exist at different levels of
complexity. Just like a computer game. Which is exactly what,
for many of us, life has become.
Life inside a simulated civilization rewards those who are
detached from their bodies until it doesn't. Until the cost of
living inside simulated images butts heads with the "givens" of
our lives - the way our bodies regulate themselves automatically,
the way life on earth has evolved to deal with this planet at
this point in time.
Because I studied literature in my formative years and then
worked as an Episcopal priest for sixteen years, I learned how
the modular symbols that make the most sense of our lives are
constitutive of our self-image both as individuals and societies.
In any religion, the "conversion process" involves the
reconstruction of reality, substituting modular images that
disclose life-giving possibilities for those that are dead-ends.
Religious communities maintain those symbols at the center of
their affirmations.
When we think those images are identical with reality, we think
we are them and they are us. That those images might change
threatens who we think we are. But the evidence is that we are
not and never have been who we think we are. All of it -
businesses, individuals, religions, societies - are always
morphing.
The symbols of our dominant religions evolved when the medium of
writing enabled human experience to be reconstructed in written
images. Now that our images are digital, that is, interactive,
modular, and fluid, our communities, our global economy, our
religions are reconstructing themselves in ways aligned not only
with those images but with how those images are generated. Our
experience is back-engineered from our interaction with our
technologies of information and communication.
Businesses see this or, to their peril, do not see it, and
disappear. The reorganization of work, the manufacture and
distribution of goods, services, and images, is driven by a
technological revolution. Because organized religions are part of
the world, they too are being reinvented. And because religions
are predicated on a particular definition of self, as that sense
of self is altered by the digital world, religious structures
will have to morph to connect with our intuitive grasp of
experience, our "common sense," which is simply what we have been
taught to perceive or believe.
Genetic engineering is a way of altering the information storage
and delivery of complex systems. So are computer networks. So
are we. We are a medium of exchange between "organic" systems and
"inorganic." But those names are already obsolete. The difference
between a pacemaker and a chip in our heads is one of degree, not
kind, and so are the distinctions we create and then believe that
describe both "body" and "soul" - another dichotomy stretched to
the breaking point. The simple truth is, we are inventing
ourselves. But maybe - from the point of view of the single
system that is the universe -we always have. It's just that "we"
are so much bigger than we knew. We thought that our "species,"
one of many modular conscious molecular clusters, was unique.
Instead, it looks as if life is singular, the universe
gregarious, and what it will all look like in a hundred years to
whoever calls themselves human is beyond our capacity to imagine.
**********************************************************************
Islands in the Clickstream is a weekly column written by
Richard Thieme exploring social and cultural dimensions
of computer technology. Comments are welcome.
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Islands in the Clickstream (c) Richard Thieme, 1998. All rights reserved.
ThiemeWorks on the Web: http://www.thiemeworks.com
ThiemeWorks P. O. Box 17737 Milwaukee WI 53217-0737 414.351.2321
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 11:04:01 +0000
From: Stefan Magdalinski
Subject: File 4--Crypto lunacy hits the UK.
Yoz, as you can see, I've submitted your mail note to CU-DIGEST.
Stefan
------
I'm sending this to all@tdv.com because not only is it important
to the company, but also to every individual in it. Your privacy
is at risk, business on the Internet is at risk, and you should
know about it.
The Department of Trade and Industry has just announced the
"Millennium Bug and Electronic Commerce" bill, which contains new
legislation and controls relating to encryption services, mainly
implementing key escrow policies as law.
The above sentence will probably look meaningless to most people
reading it, which is why nobody's shouting particularly loudly at
the moment. However, it conceals a whole load of new tactics
that will allow the government, police and intelligence services
to infringe on civil liberties in new and exciting ways.
Basically, the new laws will allow them to listen in on your
communications and go after your private data much more easily
than they could before, and you won't even know about it, because
it'll actually be an offence for them to tell you. The government
hates the thought that it can't read your email and is pressuring
business to supply only services which it can spy on.
It's all to do with encryption technology, which allows you to
encode your communications so that only the person intended to
receive them can decode them. It may sound complicated, but if
you use a mobile phone, ATM card or have ever paid for anything
through the Internet, you've probably used cryptography without
realising it. In an era where electronic communications of all
types are becoming large and vital parts of everyday life, the
potential for this bill to wreak havoc with civil liberties grows
larger by the day. You wouldn't say that the police should have
copies of the key to your front door, so why the key to your
computer?
This bill is very similar to the infamous "Clipper" bill that the
US Government tried and failed to pass a couple of years ago. The
bill was blocked after huge pressure from a public that had
worked out what was going on; however, the UK bill is being
sneaked through very quietly, and not enough people understand it
to make a fuss. Ironically, the new legislation is totally
contrary to a large chunk of Labour's pre-election manifesto,
which stated: "Attempts to control the use of encryption
technology are wrong in principle, unworkable in practice, and
damaging to the long-term economic value of the information
networks." That whole section has since been removed from the
manifesto on Labour's website, which is a pity since it's very
sensible stuff and chock-full of reasons why the new bill is
wrong.
The reason why it's relevant to TDV as a company is that
electronic commerce relies on cryptography for secure
transmission of sensitive financial data, such as credit card
details. This legislation makes the use of cryptography in this
country much more complicated and difficult, which makes it much
harder for companies like us to do business. This is why many
large technology companies such as Microsoft, Netscape and Sun
Microsystems got together with America's largest civil rights
groups to protest against Clipper. In consultation about the UK
bill, companies such as BT, Virgin, Microsoft and Demon Internet
argued against it. This is another irony: the government is
trying to use big business to enforce a law that will make
Internet businesses more difficult to operate. Also, because
encryption services licenced in other European Union countries
will not be recognised by the legislation, it'll make it harder
to do business with Europe.
This new bill is pretty much bad for everyone except the
government and intelligence services, so how can it be stopped?
Well, those pushing the bill through are depending on the issues
being too complicated for people to realise that their privacy is
under threat. They're also relying on most of Britain's
big-and-still-growing IT industry to not realise how difficult
it'll make everyday business transactions. So, shout about it.
The more people who understand the importance of this bill and
protest it, the harder it'll be for the government to pass it.
(And there's always the old standby, writing to your MP - this'll
help since most MPs don't understand the legislation either)
Some useful/relevant URLs:
Campaign Against Censorship of the Internet in Britain have good
summaries of the new bill, as well as links and commentary:
http://omnisite.liberty.org.uk/cacib/artview.php3?currentgroup=3&pid=15&type
=news
That section of the pre-election manifesto which was later removed (and
which contains great arguments against the bill):
http://www.tibus.com/encryptionuk/labour.html
A good BBC News piece about crypto regulations:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/special_report/1998/encryption/newsid_57000
/57910.stm
Foundation for Information Policy Research - an independent UK
body, chaired by Prof. Ross Anderson (UK crypto expert) and
funded by Microsoft, with lots of good info:
http://www.fipr.org/
How to contact your MP:
http://www.locata.co.uk/commons/
yoz@yoz.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 11:52:37 -0500
From: Barry Steinhardt
Subject: File 5--EFF Search for Executive Director
Dear EFF Colleagues,
I write to ask that you widely circulate the attached job
announcement for Executive Director of EFF.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my tenure at EFF, which is made up of
so many fine, dedicated people like yourself.J But, as you know,
I have regretfully concluded that my family's situation rules
out a move from New York to San Francisco and even prevents me
from travelling to the West Coast frequently enough to
effectively direct an organization based in the Bay Area.
Indeed, I find myself a full fledged member of the "sandwich
generation" withJ older parents and young children, both of whom
have developed unexpected needs in the last few months. These
unforseen developments have forced me to significantly curtail
my travel schedule and, unfortunately, even on the Electronic
Frontier, there is no substitute for human contact.
I will be returning to the ACLU as Associate Director and Chair
of the Cyberliberties Task Force by year-end. EFF and ACLU have
frequently worked together and I am pleased that the two
organizations have agreed to strengthen that bond with a number
of cooperative projects.
I expect to remain active with EFF in a new capacity and I have
accepted Lori Fena's request that I serve on the Search
Committee and work with our search firm Isaacson, Miller.
Thanks for spreading the word about the position.
An Invitation to Apply
Executive Director
Electronic Frontier Foundation
San Francisco, California
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a non-profit,
non-partisan organization founded in July, 1990 to protect and
promote the basic civil liberties of the users of on-line and
emerging technologies.J As the global community has expanded, EFF
has helped to shape the electronic frontier, setting the standard
for protection of the free exchange of ideas, one of the building
blocks of our society.J
After splitting his time between New York and San Francisco,
current Executive Director Barry Steinhardt is stepping down for
family reasons to return to his position of Associate Director of
the American Civil Liberties Union. The next Executive Director
is expected to expand EFFbs membership and global presence,
heighten elected officialsb appreciation and understanding of
Internet civil liberties, strengthen the organizationbs
infrastructure, and create strategic alliances with individuals,
corporations, and civil liberties advocates around the world.J
The ideal candidate will combine a deep and abiding commitment to
the protection of individual rights with a record of
accomplishment in the area of civil liberties and public policy
issues surrounding the Global Internet and other emerging
technologies. In addition, s/he will have demonstrated successful
experience in managing non-profit, membership organizations, and
current, active connections within the high technology community.
Inquiries, nominations and resumes may be sent in confidence to:
Laura Gassner Otting or F. Jay Hall
Isaacson, Miller
334 Boylston Street, Suite 500
Boston, MA 02116-3805
Tel: (617) 262-6500, 140 or 142; Fax: (617) 262-6509
E-mail: lotting@imsearch.com or jay@execsearches.com
www.execsearches.com
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 10:39:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Sara Winge
Subject: File 6--Tim O'Reilly's "Open Letter to Microsoft"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 4, 1998
CONTACT: Sara Winge, 707/829-0515 x285, sara@oreilly.com
http://www.oreilly.com
TIM O'REILLY SENDS AN "OPEN LETTER TO MICROSOFT"
Tim O'Reilly, President and CEO of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.,
responds to the "Halloween Document", an internal Microsoft memorandum
analyzing Open Source software and its potential impact for
Microsoft. The memo, posted on the Internet by Open Source evangelist
Eric Raymond two days ago, is at:
http://sagan.earthspace.net/~esr/halloween.html
----------------------------
An Open Letter to Microsoft
----------------------------
In the already infamous "Halloween Document", you laid out a strategy
for competing with the Open Source movement. You say:
"OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server
applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple
protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we
can deny OSS projects entry into the market."
The point that you seem to miss is that it is these simple, commoditized
protocols and a culture of building freely on the work of others that
brought us the explosion of innovation known as the Internet. And while
the Internet has opened new areas of competition for Microsoft, it has
also opened up enormous opportunities.
I'm not just talking about new information businesses like Expedia. You
have only to look at your two major breadwinners, the Windows operating
system and the Office application suite, to see the positive impact of
Open Source on your bottom line. Internet-enabling Windows and Office
has been the major source of new features that make it worthwhile for
customers to buy new systems or upgrade their applications. Lacking the
Internet, you would have had to rely on such dubious innovations as
Microsoft Bob to drive upgrade revenue. And now you want to undermine
Open Source? Try to be serious!
The collaborative, massively distributed development process behind the
Internet and Open Source projects is not your enemy. It is your
friend, the source of basic research that you can turn into your next
generation of products.
At bottom, the Open Source movement is an expression of the Western
academic tradition, innovation and discovery through the free exchange
of ideas. You rig that system at your peril. You have only to look at
the stagnation of Soviet science and industry under a centralized
autocratic system, versus the innovation that happened in our free
markets, to see what fate you have in store for yourselves if you
succeed.
Microsoft is too smart a company to sacrifice long-term vitality for
short-term advantage. Instead of trying to crush Open Source, you
should follow the lead of companies like O'Reilly, IBM and Silicon
Graphics, who are supporting various Open Source communities while
finding ways to build commercial added-value products on the open
platforms these communities provide.
-- Tim O'Reilly
President and CEO, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
ABOUT O'REILLY & ASSOCIATES
O'Reilly & Associates is recognized worldwide for its definitive books
on open source software, the Internet, UNIX, programming, and Windows
NT. From their pioneering bestseller "The Whole Internet User's Guide &
Catalog" (the book that introduced the Internet to the public) to GNN
(the first Internet portal and commercial website) to WebSite (the
first web server software for desktop PCs), O'Reilly has been at the
forefront of Internet development. Building on its expertise, O'Reilly
has also produced award-winning Internet software and innovative
web-based courses. The company's active support of open source software
extends beyond its publishing program. O'Reilly has taken the lead in
promoting and legitimizing open source software by hosting the historic
April, 1998 Open Source Summit and producing Open Source Development
Day and an annual Perl Conference.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1998 22:51:01 CST
From: CuD Moderators
Subject: File 7--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 25 Apr, 1998)
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End of Computer Underground Digest #10.54
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