Halloween Documents I and II have been joined by a third. Halloween III is a response by the PR manager of Microsoft Netherlands, Aurelia van den Berg, to the confidential Microsoft memos leaked earlier his week (CI No 3,533). Van den Berg reiterates the Microsoft party line, conceding that the leaked documents are genuine but stressing that they reflect the opinion of the engineer who wrote them, rather than Microsoft’s overall strategy to combat the open-source software movement. As Ed Muth did before her (CI No 3,531), van den Berg points to the documents as proof that the operating systems market enjoys vigorous competition. She asserts, however, that only commercial software is capable of true creativity: Unless Linux violates IP rights, it will fail to deliver innovation over the long run, she writes. Open-source advocate Eric Raymond annotates Halloween III as he did the earlier documents, but in this case his comments are longer than the original text. Will Microsoft’s nightmare – and this story – never end?
