The Halloween Documents

Happy Halloween!

And it’s better late than never to greet you guys a happy halloween. Anyhow, here’s a piece of Linux trivia: in the last week of October 1998, memos were circulated in Microsoft and they talked about Linux and open source software as threats to their business. As Eric S. Raymond points out on the page on Halloween documents on his website:

The now-infamous “Halloween Document” contained references to a second memorandum specifically on Linux. Within days, copies of the second memo had been forwarded to me from two separate sources. I renamed the first annotated version “Halloween I” and set about annotating the second. While not as dramatic or sinister in its implications as its predecessor, Halloween II includes a lot of material at variance with Microsoft’s public party line on Linux.

I never really knew about this until today. In any case, start reading it and see what the perspective of Microsoft is when it comes to open source. It might give you a different perspective on how they do things. Especially the way they spread FUD.