Halloween documents
series of confidential Microsoft memoranda on potential strategies
The Halloween documents comprise a series of confidential Microsoft memoranda on potential strategies relating to free software, open-source software, and to Linux in particular, and a series of media responses to these memoranda. Both the leaked documents and the responses were published by open-source software advocate Eric S. Raymond in 1998.
The documents are associated with Halloween because many of them were originally leaked close to October 31 in different years.
Overview
The first Halloween document, requested by senior vice-president Jim Allchin for the attention of senior vice-president Paul Maritz and written by Microsoft program manager Vinod Valloppillil, was leaked to Eric Raymond in October 1998, who immediately published an annotated version on his web site. The document contained references to a second memorandum specifically dealing with Linux, and that document, authored by Vinod Valloppillil and Josh Cohen at Microsoft, was also obtained, annotated and published by Raymond. Microsoft later acknowledged the documents' authenticity. Marked "Microsoft confidential", the documents identified open-source software, and in particular the Linux operating system, as a major threat to Microsoft's domination of the software industry, and suggested tactics Microsoft could use to disrupt the progress of open-source software.
These documents acknowledged that free software products such as Linux were technologically competitive with some of Microsoft's products, and set out a strategy to combat them. These views contradicted Microsoft's public pronouncements on the subject.
Since the publication of the two original documents, other Microsoft memoranda on related topics have also been leaked and published.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Halloween documents” is series of confidential Microsoft memoranda on potential strategies. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Halloween, documents and series, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “series of confidential Microsoft memoranda on potential strategies” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q932629. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1998.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Halloween documents” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.