MICROSOFT EXECS WORRY ABOUT FREE SOFTWARE MOVEMENT An internal Microsoft memo written by one of that company's software engineers indicates that Microsoft is concerned with developing strategies for competing against free programs that have been gaining popularity with software developers, such as the operating system Linux. The memorandum warns that the usual Microsoft marketing strategy known as FUD (an acronym for fear, uncertainty, and doubt) won't work against developers of free software, who are part of the O.S.S. (open-source software) movement that makes source code readily available to anyone for improvement and testing. The memo (http://www.opensource.org/halloween.html) says: "The ability of the O.S.S. process to collect and harness the collective I.Q. of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. More importantly, O.S.S. evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale." (New York Times 3 Nov 98)