Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. And while you're at it, ignore all that stuff about the government pushing for Microsoft to release the source code to Internet Explorer as part of the "Redmond Justice" remedy. Evidently, that info was not supposed to go public. According to The Register, after The Wall Street Journal published that scoop earlier in the day, it was "steadily downplayed towards oblivion" as Monday stretched on. And finally, according to a Reuters article, the story was pulled completely. A WSJ spokesperson is quoted as saying, "It wasn't that it was withdrawn, it shouldn't have been posted in the first place." D'oh!!

But, of course, just because it "shouldn't have been posted" doesn't mean it's not true. Most of the parties involved in the case are keeping pretty quiet about the WSJ's "mistake," which implies strongly to us that, yes, the government is going for an open source IE as part of its proposed remedy package, but that info wasn't meant to be released just yet. We figure a government intern grabbed the wrong piece of paper and hit the wrong speed-dial button on the fax machine; instead of sending in the office lunch order to the local Chick-Fil-A, he or she inadvertently spilled a slew of sensitive info to the Journal. Hey, it happens. Good help is hard to find these days.

Now, what's particularly funny about this whole open source, forced-free-license-to-the-source-code plan is that Microsoft reportedly used it as yet another opportunity to look just plain dopey. Specifically, spokesperson Mark Murray called the plan "silly" and "illogical" because-- get this-- "Microsoft already gave IE away for free." Really? Gosh, that's great news for Netscape; grab IE5's honest-to-goodness Mac interface, throw Gecko under the hood, and voilà-- Netscape 6, ready for consumption. Hey, Microsoft! This is source code. This is executable code. This is your spokesperson on drugs. Any questions? But hey, who really expects Microsoft to understand what open source is, anyway? If we had to pick one software company (post-Darwin) that wouldn't have a single clue about the concept of open source, well, our short list would definitely center heavily in the Redmond area...