| Sumario: | This article focuses on the industrial competition between Microsoft Corp. and RealNetworks Inc., related to the computer industry. RealNetworks released the underlying recipe, or source-code, of its RealPlayer software and will soon do the same for its other programs, giving away a big chunk of its intellectual property. Individual developers, universities and other non-profit organisations can modify the software as they please, and even redistribute it for free, so long as they also publish the source-code for their changes. The software's development community already has 2,000 members. And several hardware makers back the effort. Even Microsoft recently announced that partners can now look at-but not modify or re-use-the source-code for Passport, its controversial digital-identity service.
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