This link has been bookmarked by 10 people . It was first bookmarked on 01 Dec 2008, by Matt Kramer.
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12 Jan 09
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20 Dec 08
BOK ™Keith Curtis has just written a book about the future of software. That in itself isn’t unique. More unusual is that Mr. Curtis, an 11-year veteran of Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, believes deeply that open source is the future of softw
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06 Dec 08
Olivier Le Deuff“The difference between free, and non-free or proprietary software, is similar to the divide between science and alchemy. Before science, there was alchemy, where people guarded their ideas because they wanted to corner the market on the mechanisms used to convert lead into gold.”
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04 Dec 08
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02 Dec 08
Jimmy Baikovicius“The key to faster technological progress is making software free,” he writes. “The difference between free, and non-free or proprietary software, is similar to the divide between science and alchemy. Before science, there was alchemy, where people guarde
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01 Dec 08
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Matt KramerA Microsoft Veteran Embraces Open Source
By John Markoff
Keith Curtis has just written a book about the future of software.
That in itself isn’t unique. More unusual is that Mr. Curtis, an 11-year veteran of Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, believes deeply that open source is the future of software.
Microsoft, of course, has long been the archenemy of the open source community, which is built on the notion of freely sharing intellectual property for the good of the community. I.B.M. and Sun Microsystems have embraced the open source cause, as have other technology giants. Even Apple’s OS X operating system is at its core open source — an Apple executive has said that more than 50 percent of the lines of code in OS X come from the open source Berkeley Software Distribution and related projects.
In contrast, Microsoft has made only grudging accommodations to the open source movement, offering some of its source code to programmers who use its technology while valiantly arguing that for-pay software is less expensive than free software when you consider the bigger picture.
Mr. Curtis, who joined Microsoft in 1993 and left in 2004, begs to differ. And while he says he holds no grudge against his former employer, in the long run, the company “is toast.”
His book, “After the Software Wars,” was published last month by Lulu.com, a Web-based publishing service that makes it possible for Mr. Curtis to give the first 1,000 readers the option of downloading a free version of the book (590 people have already taken advantage of the offer) or purchasing a paperback version for $19.97 (so far he has sold 11 copies, five of which were purchased by his mom).
He takes a programmer’s approach in “Software Wars,” attempting to systematically build a case that software can help pave the way for a 21st-century renaissance in many fields ranging from artificial intelligence (cars that drive themselves) to the human journey into space (space elevators).
For Mr. Curtis, the strength of open source software, and wh
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