Associated Press NewsWire wrote:
>> A Connecticut man known on the Internet as "illwill" pleaded guilty in
>> Manhattan federal court on Monday to charges relating to the theft of
>> the source code to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating software,
>> considered among the company's crown jewels.
> I believe IBM always made the source code available for its mainframe
> operating systems. Competitors could and would use it for supplemental
> utility programs. They would write links and exits to/from the
> operating system for maximum program efficiency.
When IBM did this, they were a hardware company. The OS was just something that made their hardware useful to the customer, it wasn't considered valuable on its own. And if third-party vendors made use of it to make more applications and peripherals available, it meant that IBM would sell even *more* computers. So there was little down side to making the OS available.
But Microsoft is a software company. All they have is their software, and if someone else starts selling it, those are sales that Microsoft has lost.
Barry Margolin, snipped-for-privacy@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA
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