| Sumario: | In a speech given on May 3, 2001, at New York University, Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief software strategist, argued that open-source software—free computer programs written online by groups of volunteers—undermines the livelihood of commercial-software developers, curtailing innovation. However, besides being free, open-source software has the advantage over proprietary programs of being more robust and secure. This is because the source code can be examined by anyone, thereby making it more likely that programming errors and security problems will be found. Furthermore, the motivation for Mundie's speech was probably the fact that the emergence of free open-source alternatives will cost Microsoft dearly.
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