Lee Gomes, the reporter who wrote the friendly (and curiously
MSNBC-edited) piece last week about “Microsoft’s Uphill Battle
Against Linux” is back this week with an amplification on
Microsoft’s use of open source software:
“Microsoft Corp., even while mounting a new campaign
against open-source software, has quietly been using such free
computer code in several major products, as well as on key portions
of a popular Web site — despite denying last week that it did so.Software connected with the FreeBSD open-source operating system
is used in several places deep inside several versions of
Microsoft’s Windows software, such as in the “TCP/IP” section that
arranges all connections to the Internet. The company also uses
FreeBSD on numerous “server” computers that manage major functions
at its Hotmail free e-mail service, whose registered users exceed
100 million and make it one of the Web’s busiest sites.Microsoft acknowledged its repeated use of open-source code
Friday, in response to questions about the matter. Just two days
earlier, it had specifically denied the existence of any such
software at Hotmail.”