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I have a question about open vs. closed source. While I agree that it
is good to have open source, especially to increase people's trust in
the program, is it really a good things for companies developing
software products? Using Microsoft as a example, why should they make
Windows open source? I think their hope is that their bugs would
found by MS developers before they can be exploited by hackers, which
I do not think is too unreasonable given the resources that MS has at
its fingertips. Also, does this open them up more to software piracy,
especially since software and copyright law is still not a very clear
subject?
-- Kavita Baball, October 15, 1999
This is a great question, and there is a lot of active discussion on the net about this. You ought to repost this to the joint forum, so we can get the Harvard folks in on the discussion.
-- Hal Abelson, October 15, 1999