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"We are only doing POSIX as a checkbox, so we can get government contracts..."

Thus a few years later, MS is getting sued because of a landed US Fed Gov't contract (DoD, I believe) where the RFP called for a POSIX-based solution.

A bunch of other POSIX "experts" get together while the trial is going on and decide they can implement this thing. They form Softway Systems, producing Interix, and get acquired by MS.

MS at the time had an SFU (Services for Unix) pack that included MKS tools.

Somewhat interesting (though not surprising) is that some of the principals at Softway are former MKS employees.

The former has server backend component and is set up for distributed work, changesets, etc. The latter, which they still sell and support, is a file based (RCS) backend end with some project level wrappers around it, and no concept of changesets.

Having had experience with MKS and the idea of changesets (and being able to merge changeset across branches) this is VERY powerful. Tied with a tracking system, project management/config. management becomes greatly simplified. Regardless of how Arch does, hopefully it'll spur others to add more changeset features to their software as well.

Yeah, they work for Corel, Alias, Hummingbird, MKS, Cognos, Zero Knowledge, Blackberry, Nothern Telecom ...

MKS is (or used to be) Mortice Kern Systems, who sell a product called MKS toolkit which supplies a complete set of UNIX command line utilities (sed, awk, sh, diff etc.) for Windows. Your sh.exe has been "liberated" from a copy of that.

Tony.

I'm surprised that MS is giving this away. I imagine they are still paying a decent price to mks to license this code since WSFU is really a subset of the MKS Toolkit for windows.

I'm surprised, as MKS had released a press release saying MS had licensed MKS technology for the Services for Unix product a couple years back. The ancient MKS may be faster than modern MKS, or that tool may be crippled unintentionally in SfU.

I've always preferred MKS even though it cost $$ to Cygwin, since the MKS path and environment re-exports to non-Gnu programs launched from ksh, not just to other Cygwin scirpts.

If enough of the MKS toolkit is bundled in a free SfU, and it's reasonably up to date, I might be tempted; even at $99, SfU is cheaper than full MKS Toolkit.

Does anyone know if the free SfU includes a [] Click here to enable DRM in the license ? I don't want that.

I'm surprised, as MKS had released a press release saying MS had licensed MKS technology for the Services for Unix product a couple years back. The ancient MKS may be faster than modern MKS, or that tool may be crippled unintentionally in SfU.

I've always preferred MKS even though it cost $$ to Cygwin, since the MKS path and environment re-exports to non-Gnu programs launched from ksh, not just to other Cygwin scirpts.

If enough of the MKS toolkit is bundled in a free SfU, and it's reasonably up to date, I might be tempted; even at $99, SfU is cheaper than full MKS Toolkit.

Does anyone know if the free SfU includes a [] Click here to enable DRM in the license ? I don't want that.

You might want to look into Integrity Manager from MKS. Sure it's commercial, but our shop uses it here and it does a pretty good job. Fully workflow handling, completely customizable, etc. Good stuff all round!

You might want to look into Integrity Manager from MKS. Sure it's commercial, but our shop uses it here and it does a pretty good job. Fully workflow handling, completely customizable, etc. Good stuff all round!

Secure, stable, fast, multi-platform, good integration with issue tracking system.

Maybe this is off topic but Is there a command line interface available to windows.

Umm, the command prompt? Though the shell is actually quite different under the hood, it does run the same scripting language, the batch shells we all know and loathe.

Cygwin is a port of essentially the entire GNU toolchain to Win32. To get the stuff to run (essentially unchanged source) they have a DLL that emulates much of the underneath stuff of UNIX. You can install ash (Bourne shell compatible), bash, zsh and tcsh from the base setup, you can install pdksh if you want korn shell. ksh93 isn't a part of the standard install (it has so many pieces, many of which that replace cygwin stuff, they don't want to bother) but I hear you can compile it and run it. It's a very UNIX-y style shell (C: is mounted as /cygdrive/c, not C:) but it comes with tools to help bridge the gap (path conversioon tools, etc.).

The MKS toolkit is a UNIX-y set of tools for Windows. It has a Korn shell, and the shell interface is more Windows-like.

As far as real time stuff, remember that to Microsoft, EOL means no more sales, no more support. Anything pre-existing isn't going to explode and die, taking out your hard drive. If you think you need DOS, go get it now. Or try to look at any of the Free DOS alternatives, or DR DOS.

>I prefer Linux and Unix. Made by hackers, for hackers.

OS X was made by hackers too, but for normal human beings. Oh wait, that's Unix too! :)

>Not all computer users look like the folks in the advertisements where everyone is smiling

And they don't have to be. If you hate XP's day-glo interface, change it! Customizing OS X visually isn't as easy, afaik -- please correct me if I'm wrong. Using standard OS options (Folder Options and Display Preferences), you can make it look like Windows 95 if you so choose.

>Microsoft's disgraceful filesystem

NTFS 5 is disgraceful? How?

>and complete neglect of the command line

Cygwin. Services for Unix. MKS Toolkit. XEmacs. I believe even LaTeX is available, although I can't say how good it is since I don't use it.

Here's something random to think about: If Windows is all that bad, how come Windows NT is voted the most productive Java development environment on multiple occasions? These are Java developers, not the mom n' pop set (I know, some will say, they're just as bad :->), after all.

Like Tim O'Reilly said: ``I was recently looking over the shoulder of a very well-known perl hacker as he picked his way through the cascading Windows Start Menu to find a program he wanted to run...''

Maybe, just maybe, you should check out how `power' (couldn't think of a better word) Windows users operate without losing their minds everyday? Maybe buy a book that doesn't treat its readers like dummies?

Personally I can't stand the Cshell, if you're into Korn (the shell not the band!) you could do a lot worse than getting work to buy the MKS Toolkit, it also comes with a load of other unixalike tools

The MKS Toolkit is a complete re-write of the standard "core tools" you'd expect to see on UNIX (rather than a recompile of UNIX tools using a special compiler an library, which is essentially what cygwin is).

we just installed their stuff on the NT boxes, opened command windows, and off we went.

management could strut around the building, proudly rapping off the lines they read in "PC Week" (or whatever) about "lowered TCO", and we ended up with a system that was somewhat as reliable as true unix, we just had a frequent reboot schedule to keep the machines stable.

kind of a lose-lose situation...but hey, i was outta there at the first convenient point in time.

by the way, i don't dislike microsoft because of quality issues or the interface, i dislike all things microsoft because they have over 33% market share of a powerful industry -- their 90% market share was achieved by violating a number of state and federal laws.

i hope any settlement takes this into account, and has logic that will drop them to a more reasonable market share, as punishment for their behavior. you and i can't drive 90 on the freeway, so bust 'em down. that's part of the government's function -- enforcing the law, and preserving the common good.

You can download Mortice Kern's port of Samba to OMVS here.