Posted by : bpburnwal on Sep 25, 2003 - 09:18 PM Microsoft

NEW YORK (AP) - It's not often that Bill Gates is associated with the free Linux computer operating system, Netscape's Web browser or royalty-free software, but on Wednesday he embraced all three.
Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., sat through a computer demonstration running on Linux - a competitor to Microsoft's Windows - and the Netscape browser, a rival product that all but disappeared because of giveaways of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

Gates attended a technical briefing at a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where Microsoft and software rival IBM Corp. touted so-called Web services, software aimed at streamlining Internet transactions.

Gates and IBM executive vice president Steve Mills said their companies' three-year collaboration had developed tools that will let computers conduct secure transactions whether they run Microsoft's Windows platform or others, such as IBM's WebSphere or the open-source Linux system that is given away.

``We're being as inclusive as we can,'' Gates said of Microsoft's role in the cross-platform project. ``This is a fabric for someone to do e-commerce that's independent of the operating systems that are out there.''

Mills said the companies had decided to cooperate even though the new standards also benefit rival companies and software.

``Standards are always a give-to-get bargain,'' he said.

The two executives said they would turn their developments over to Internet standards bodies.

Gates said the Redmond, Wash.-based company's work toward Web services standards would be ``royalty free.'' That remark led to questions from the audience, which wanted to make sure Gates hadn't misstated the deviation from the company's royalty-based software sales model.

``I can't believe I said that,'' Gates joked.

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