On Friday 08 June 2007 13:50, Man-wai Chang wrote: > > Micro$oft expressed interest in Python. But I don't know whether it's > > a trap or bait... :) > > I said these because of Foxpro. Micro$oft bought it, improved it. But > now that Micro$oft wanan go .NET, Visual Foxpro was discontinued. > > Same thing could happen to Python, since it's not a tool invented, > designed and patented by the genes of Micro$oft. The only thing M$ designed is "obsolescence builtin". But they do have a habit of patenting things invented by others. As with most open source projects it is simply not possible for M$ to "buy" them. Sure, they may be able to "buy" or hire the main contributors to a particular project and influence which direction it takes. But if interested people don't like the direction in which M$ is taking the project they can simply fork it. IOW there is no way M$ can embrace and extinguish an open source project. This is something that M$ has to learn. In the past they were able to destroy _really_ innovative products by buying the company and squatting on its technology (ie kill off all development and let it die off). For _merely_ innovative products, M$ just stole what it needed and if its lawyers couldn't get the owners of the stolen technology to back down, they just paid the token fine that the courts usually imposed. -- Crayon -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
