“It is now just about exactly a year since the Halloween
Documents were first released upon an unsuspecting world. Many
things have changed; Linux 2.2 has gone from promise to memory, the
Halloween Documents’ author has quit Microsoft to go to work for a
Linux-based startup, mainstream market-research outfits like IDC
now predict a 30% server-market share for Linux in the near future,
and the first Linux IPO rocketed Red Hat Software to a
six-billion-dollar market capitalization. A few things have
remained the same; Windows is still buggy and insecure and
crash-prone, Windows 2000 still isn’t shipping, and Microsoft is
still making excuses.
“But perhaps the most dramatic development in the Halloween saga
has been a change in the axis of Microsoft spin.”