Open Letter/Challenge to Darth Gates

From: --= Ö§âmâ ßíñ Këñ0ßí =-- (abuse_at_anarchy.gov)
Date: 10/26/03 

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 01:24:53 GMT

There is no escape,the Empire and all its servants are doomed...

Messrs William Gates Jnr & Steven Ballmer
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond
Washington, USA

Dear Sirs

I see you have been active again in making interesting and to some degree
highly amusing statements about Free/Libre Open Source Software and the
many and varied people who make up its community.

I in particular would like to thank Mr. Steven Ballmer for your
entertaining exposee of Linux's deepest, darkest secret - that it can
seriously worry the senior executive of a convicted predatory monopoly,
without that ever having been the intention of its principal software
designer and initial developer.

I would also like to thank you for humming and hawing around the question
of the release of source code to people who can use it, in the light of
the new MVP source code entitlement program. Well, are they deserving
members of the Windows development team or not?

In relation to your comments, Steve Ballmer, on Linux's "road map", I
will refrain from expounding on Linus Torvalds' comment on the cover of
one of Bill Gates' books, showing him standing in the middle of an empty
road. It's not nice to make jokes like that, is it, Your Billness? Road
kill is no joke, even if some enterprising chef has written a book about
it.

No, I have something else on my mind, something much more worthy.

I would like to challenge you to a software coding bake-out, a bet to see
which methodology works, and which doesn't. You have made some progress
with your NT source tree, anyone can see that - Windows 2k3 is a more
serious product than Windows XP, and definitely a more realistic - and
much more massive - product than Windows 95. Congratulations.

You have also declared that Windows 95, Windows NT 3.x and NT 4.x are
discontinued, end-of-line, unsupported products. And Windows 98 is
shortly going to be in the same category, having already been
discontinued. And Microsoft is attempting to roll the Win9x features into
the NT line. XP is the nearest you have come to success. In the process,
Windows users have enjoyed an interesting remote use of RPC and other
features that might otherwise bug you. And in the process you have put
back Longhorn's release date.

My challenge is this - release the entire range of discontinued, end-of-
line and unsupported Operating Systems mentioned above (Win9x, NT 3.x and
Win4.x) and their related utilities and Productivity Applications, as
Open Source under the BSD/MIT license, since you have stated at sundry
times and in diverse manners that that license is one you can live with.
You are of course expected to sanitise the source trees - we don't want
trouble with absurd IP cases.

Release the sanitised source trees, minus any bits and pieces of third-
party encumbered code Microsoft may have in the Win9x and NT 3.x and 4.x
source trees, to the ftp servers at the MIT, ibiblio, the U of Calif. at
Berkeley, and the U of Cambridge, UK, with prominent notices stating that
they are released under the terms of the BSD/MIT licenses placed in
slashdot.org, newsforge.com, computerworld.com, news.com.com,
www.theinquirer.net and www.theregister.co.uk and other industry news
outlets.

My bet is that in the time it takes Microsoft to come up with a half-way
decent Windows product, the Open Source development process starting from
an earlier, identical initial source tree without constraints will
produce one better. The length of time is going to be the same.

On one side you have the multi-billion dollar transnational corporation,
on the other you have an amorphous world-wide community. One has a head
start, but the code bases for this challenge are the same.

The only catch - Microsoft is not allowed to use the source code produced
by the open source effort until after it has rolled out Longhorn - thus
preserving the independence of the challengers, who will not have access
to the Longhorn source tree. After the challenge has finished and the
bets have been tallied up, then it is a totally different story, because
the BSD/MIT license doesn't prohibit incorporation within a closed-source
code base, only the denial of attribution. But should Microsoft use the
independent effort's code during such a challenge, it would be an
admission that the Free/Libre Open Source community is right, and must be
met with an appropriate forfeit - the sanitising and opening of the
Longhorn source tree.

I propose in the interim that the challenge in the interim be named
something other than Windows or Office - precisely what will have to be
decided upon later.

So, there you have it. Are either of you betting men, able to face a
challenge?

Yours Sincerely
Wesley Parish 

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