Halloween Documents

The Halloween documents ( "Halloween Documents" ) are the outside of Microsoft common name for a number of confidential letter to potential strategies against the development of open source software and in particular GNU / Linux. The first Halloween document, commissioned by Microsoft's Vice President James Allchin for his fellow board members Paul Maritz in order, was written by Microsoft developers Vinod Valloppillil. The memorandum came about Eric S. Raymond on November 1, 1998 ( one day after Halloween) to the public, as this published an annotated version of the paper on its website. The paper contained references to a second document, which dealt specifically with the operating system GNU / Linux. This second document, also written by Vinod Valloppillil ( composed by Josh Cohen ), also fell into the hands of Raymond, who published it immediately. Microsoft confirmed the authenticity of the documents now.

The confidential documents ("Microsoft confidential" ) marked documents identify open source software (OSS ) and in particular GNU / Linux as a major threat to Microsoft's dominance in the software industry. The document includes considerations such as the open source movement has to stop.

The documents certifying the products in the fields of open source and free software is a technological equality to some Microsoft products and deal with the question of how their distribution can be fought. For Microsoft, the publication of the documents was an awkward affair, as they are in contrast to the public statements of the company on this issue.

Since the publication of the first two documents further memoranda have been surfaced on a similar theme from Microsoft and published. Taken together, these documents testify that Microsoft's open- source community keeps sharp eye and looks at the development of free software as a threat to their survival in the software industry.

Quotes from the Halloween documents:

• " Case Studies from the Internet have recently shown in a very dramatic way [ ... ] may be that the quality of commercial products achieved by open source products, and ( partially ) even exceeded. "
• "Open - source software is an ongoing trend [ ... ] FUD (, smear campaigns ') tactics can not be used against them. "
• "As long as services / protocols are regarded as interchangeable goods, Linux can win. "
• " Microsoft should make its protocols and applications so that they are not interchangeable considered. '"

The latter strategy is often as a strategy of " accepting, Erweiterns and extinction ": means (English " Embrace, Extend and Extinguish ").

The documents

It is important to note that only a portion of the documents referred to as " Halloween Documents", which actually reached the public, internal documents from Microsoft (in particular the documents Nos. I, II, VII, VIII and X). Another ( Document III ) is a public opinion which other letters are responses from Eric S. Raymond on numerous columns, newspaper articles and other work.