Slashdot Mirror

TOG is a software consortium of which SCO is one of many members. For a complete list of members, refer to http://www.opengroup.or g/overview/members/membership_list.htm

Even though the premise is good, there are some fundamental mistakes of fact which ought to be resolved:

Grenamier (jtruong@idirect.com) Wrote:
To me, it looks like Microsoft is creating its own distribution of Linux. For one clue, the title of the job is "Product Manager". No company has Product Managers for products they don't sell. Some of the duties include "product development for the development team" and "technical assistance for the sales force."[Emphases mine]

The position also advertises "high visibility" outside of the company. People who just watch competitors and make reports about them don't normally get much exposure (VinodV didn't get his 15 minutes on purpose). But if Microsoft is selling a "new" product, its Product Manager would be expected to flog it to the press.

So what's Microsoft up to? Scrapping NT for Linux? Of course not, they'd be throwing away all of their leverage. Trying to steal Linux technology for NT? Perhaps, but they wouldn't need to sell a product of their own for that.[emphases mine]

Yes, I agree completely. They wouldn't bother with a project unless they were planning to either make something for sale, or were planning a "grassroots" marketing effort. But they can't "Steal" something out in the open like a GPL'd package, so I don't know what you mean by that.

This is my wild speculation:

Free-sourced software is the Internet happening all over again for Microsoft...everyone in the industry is jumping on the bandwagon and stories about the success of Linux, Apache and Perl are everywhere. Microsoft missed the populization of yet another decades-old "phenomenon" and they've known it since Hallowe'en at the least.[Emphases Mine]

I really like that quote. It well describes the mentality which must be fermenting in MS upper management strategy meetings.

What did Microsoft do about the Internet? Embraced and tried to extend it. Now everything they sell has some Internet features, but they didn't manage to spread Active Server Pages everywhere, and Apache still tromps MS Internet Information Server.

I believe Microsoft will start by bundling Apache like Apple did, all "cleaned-up" with a Windows interface. Perhaps in the next Service Pack and in Windows 2000. Ballmer was saying the other day that Apache was simply better, in fact. They'll make a big deal about Microsoft supporting Open Source, and how they support innovations like that. [Emphases Mine]

This follows well.

Then Microsoft ActiveLinux 3.1 will come out (I thought that was the most probable name and no version number less than 2.2 - 3.1 is good luck for Microsoft.) They'll make it easily installable, perhaps add USB and NTFS support, and then use Active X and IE for UNIX to put a Windows interface on Linux that has some Win32 APIs, the way OS/2 had some Win32 API's with DAX.

No. I've got a couple problems with this. First, USB support is already in active development, as is NTFS support in the kernel... that point is moot. Of course they could always release a binary only driver, but like with VMware, I think they're likely to find kernel developers unwilling to maintain backward compatability to support binary only drivers. As well they should! What this means for Microsoft is that they will never control the momentum of kernel development unless they're willing to attempt a legal attack against the GPL; though that may well be in their interest.

I'd be willing to bet Microsoft keeps that interface closed. They'll argue using a creative interpretation of GPL or LGPL so that they won't have to reveal the source and perhaps any documented Win32 calls that they port over. What they do will probably be in violation of the (L)GPL, but what legal force will be able to challenge them? ESR doesn't have that kind of cash.

OK. More problems of minor ignorance. First of all, if MS were to release a proprietary Win32 widget library, this would be no different from The OpenGroup with their Motif product line, or Troll Tech with their previous QT-1.x product line. In both cases each company has (and had) every legal right to sell a proprietary binary only software package which could not only cost to develop for, but could even cost just to use in runtime licensing fees!

If these guys get to play that game, then certainly Microsoft can. The GPL only covers software which can be thought to derive from a previously GPL'd source base. For example, if I create a source tree completely by scratch the GPL has nothing to say about what kind of license I distribute under. But if I derive an offshoot from a previously GPL'd program, say my own special version of GNU ls, and I distribute this code in binary form for either free or for charge, then I must also offer to distribute source, and I can't prevent the recipient from also distributing either the binary or the source.

Harsh terms if you want to take something someone else wrote, change a line here and there (or not even that if you release under a BSD license), and then call it yours. But a Win32 emulation library, which has already been created for NT, is something wholly authored by Microsoft, and therefore completely their's to distribute under whatever license they choose. They don't even have to sell development libraries to third party developers; meaning they could, if they wanted to, completely monopolize the office software for Linux market given their current monoploy on office software and the immediate demand from the business community should they ever offer such a product. They could even use their old standard tactic of the Interface Shuffle by porting Win32 and MS Office to Linux, and then changing the Win32 layer regularly enough to prevent WINE from ever maintaining compatability.

This is what they mean by embrase and extend.

The LGPL license is another animal, designed to allow developers to offer a library of functions for other developers to include in their code without demanding that said developers using that library release their source upon releasing their software.

MS shops and ISV's won't care about that though. Those dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft groupies, PHBs and non-technical CEOs who've heard so much about Linux can try it without leaving the MS fold or the Windows interface.

And they'll be impressed. Instead of creating a bad distribution to discredit Linux, they'll create a really good one, with all the goodies and easy installation (that you can start from Windows like Caldera, probably). Microsoft users who need hand holding will use it, Windows users who want to get into Linux (but don't want to get their hands dirty) will use it, and ISVs will write to that closed interface, because Microsoft will give them tools to make an easy port that lets Windows program keep Win32 calls for the UI. Microsoft will make ActiveLinux become the path of least-resistance for users and vendors from the Windows world who want to expand into Linux but have no interest in free-source issues.

Microsoft won't do it unless they think it will significantly extend their MS Office monopoly. This is where the serious bucks are for them anyway. If MS ever begins to think Corel's Office for Linux, or StarOffice, might become a serious threat to MS Office marketshare (+15% of the market, say) then this is exactly the tactic I'd expect them to take.

If Microsoft succeeds in keeping the interface closed, and porting Office and BackOffice to their distribution, then it'll mean trouble because other distros won't look very competitive to the new users and the industry press. Microsoft could end up gathering more users than the other distributions, and then I don't know what...Microsoft was never able to get most of the web servers to run on MS-ware, so they didn't succeed there, but what if they managed to amass the biggest share of Linux users? Would it give them enough power to influence Linux's direction? [Emphases Mine]

You can't stop Microsoft from releasing their own commercial and costly Linux distribution with a proprietary Win32/MS Office kicker, they're in their legal rights to do so. This is no different from Apple releasing the core MACH and BSD components from MacOS-X under the APSL while keeping the crown jewels (Carbon and the OpenStep libraries) propritary. But like I said, the Linux core components like it's kernel and basic tools will never be under Microsoft's control unless they can pull a legal victory out of their ass which undermines the GPL. If they pull that stinker off the entire Open Source community is fucked. And it might well be in their interest to attempt this move if they ever think the dollar losses from OS/Office sales to Linux ever exceeds the potential PR disaster from such a move.

But baring such a casastrophic -- and unlikely -- outcome, we should expect that even if Microsoft released the most popular distribution of Linux, with all sorts of proprietary and expensive add ons to run commercial MS software, plenty of people will still just tinker around and maintain their own special Linux flavors. Do you really think Debian would go away? Not even if Caldera, Suse, and RedHat were flattened by the MS steamroller could they stop the Debian project without a Legal or Congressional victory (heh, maybe a bullshit Free Software Tax Act, that might make for good assault legislation against free software and is right up this congresses alley). Just like MS can't prevent end developers from creating a quality stable kernel and giving that away for free, they can't prevent a bunch of developers and end users from collecting a bunch of free software, creating a usable Linux distribution, and giving that away for free.

Just like how Microsoft can't control the kernel source tree, the Debian project is exactly why Microsoft could take over the lion's share of the Linux user market as a vector to generate revenue from a Win32 and MS Office port, yet still not control all the Linux distributions out there. I don't know about you, but I can live without MS Office for Linux. I won't be paying astronomical fees just to run bad software because Frank down the street is too stupid to convert his email to ascii. But hey, that's me.

[snip]

Even though the premise is good, there are some fundamental mistakes of fact which ought to be resolved:

Grenamier (jtruong@idirect.com) Wrote:
To me, it looks like Microsoft is creating its own distribution of Linux. For one clue, the title of the job is "Product Manager". No company has Product Managers for products they don't sell. Some of the duties include "product development for the development team" and "technical assistance for the sales force."[Emphases mine]

The position also advertises "high visibility" outside of the company. People who just watch competitors and make reports about them don't normally get much exposure (VinodV didn't get his 15 minutes on purpose). But if Microsoft is selling a "new" product, its Product Manager would be expected to flog it to the press.

So what's Microsoft up to? Scrapping NT for Linux? Of course not, they'd be throwing away all of their leverage. Trying to steal Linux technology for NT? Perhaps, but they wouldn't need to sell a product of their own for that.[emphases mine]

Yes, I agree completely. They wouldn't bother with a project unless they were planning to either make something for sale, or were planning a "grassroots" marketing effort. But they can't "Steal" something out in the open like a GPL'd package, so I don't know what you mean by that.

This is my wild speculation:

Free-sourced software is the Internet happening all over again for Microsoft...everyone in the industry is jumping on the bandwagon and stories about the success of Linux, Apache and Perl are everywhere. Microsoft missed the populization of yet another decades-old "phenomenon" and they've known it since Hallowe'en at the least.[Emphases Mine]

I really like that quote. It well describes the mentality which must be fermenting in MS upper management strategy meetings.

What did Microsoft do about the Internet? Embraced and tried to extend it. Now everything they sell has some Internet features, but they didn't manage to spread Active Server Pages everywhere, and Apache still tromps MS Internet Information Server.

I believe Microsoft will start by bundling Apache like Apple did, all "cleaned-up" with a Windows interface. Perhaps in the next Service Pack and in Windows 2000. Ballmer was saying the other day that Apache was simply better, in fact. They'll make a big deal about Microsoft supporting Open Source, and how they support innovations like that. [Emphases Mine]

This follows well.

Then Microsoft ActiveLinux 3.1 will come out (I thought that was the most probable name and no version number less than 2.2 - 3.1 is good luck for Microsoft.) They'll make it easily installable, perhaps add USB and NTFS support, and then use Active X and IE for UNIX to put a Windows interface on Linux that has some Win32 APIs, the way OS/2 had some Win32 API's with DAX.

No. I've got a couple problems with this. First, USB support is already in active development, as is NTFS support in the kernel... that point is moot. Of course they could always release a binary only driver, but like with VMware, I think they're likely to find kernel developers unwilling to maintain backward compatability to support binary only drivers. As well they should! What this means for Microsoft is that they will never control the momentum of kernel development unless they're willing to attempt a legal attack against the GPL; though that may well be in their interest.

I'd be willing to bet Microsoft keeps that interface closed. They'll argue using a creative interpretation of GPL or LGPL so that they won't have to reveal the source and perhaps any documented Win32 calls that they port over. What they do will probably be in violation of the (L)GPL, but what legal force will be able to challenge them? ESR doesn't have that kind of cash.

OK. More problems of minor ignorance. First of all, if MS were to release a proprietary Win32 widget library, this would be no different from The OpenGroup with their Motif product line, or Troll Tech with their previous QT-1.x product line. In both cases each company has (and had) every legal right to sell a proprietary binary only software package which could not only cost to develop for, but could even cost just to use in runtime licensing fees!

If these guys get to play that game, then certainly Microsoft can. The GPL only covers software which can be thought to derive from a previously GPL'd source base. For example, if I create a source tree completely by scratch the GPL has nothing to say about what kind of license I distribute under. But if I derive an offshoot from a previously GPL'd program, say my own special version of GNU ls, and I distribute this code in binary form for either free or for charge, then I must also offer to distribute source, and I can't prevent the recipient from also distributing either the binary or the source.

Harsh terms if you want to take something someone else wrote, change a line here and there (or not even that if you release under a BSD license), and then call it yours. But a Win32 emulation library, which has already been created for NT, is something wholly authored by Microsoft, and therefore completely their's to distribute under whatever license they choose. They don't even have to sell development libraries to third party developers; meaning they could, if they wanted to, completely monopolize the office software for Linux market given their current monoploy on office software and the immediate demand from the business community should they ever offer such a product. They could even use their old standard tactic of the Interface Shuffle by porting Win32 and MS Office to Linux, and then changing the Win32 layer regularly enough to prevent WINE from ever maintaining compatability.

This is what they mean by embrase and extend.

The LGPL license is another animal, designed to allow developers to offer a library of functions for other developers to include in their code without demanding that said developers using that library release their source upon releasing their software.

MS shops and ISV's won't care about that though. Those dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft groupies, PHBs and non-technical CEOs who've heard so much about Linux can try it without leaving the MS fold or the Windows interface.

And they'll be impressed. Instead of creating a bad distribution to discredit Linux, they'll create a really good one, with all the goodies and easy installation (that you can start from Windows like Caldera, probably). Microsoft users who need hand holding will use it, Windows users who want to get into Linux (but don't want to get their hands dirty) will use it, and ISVs will write to that closed interface, because Microsoft will give them tools to make an easy port that lets Windows program keep Win32 calls for the UI. Microsoft will make ActiveLinux become the path of least-resistance for users and vendors from the Windows world who want to expand into Linux but have no interest in free-source issues.

Microsoft won't do it unless they think it will significantly extend their MS Office monopoly. This is where the serious bucks are for them anyway. If MS ever begins to think Corel's Office for Linux, or StarOffice, might become a serious threat to MS Office marketshare (+15% of the market, say) then this is exactly the tactic I'd expect them to take.

If Microsoft succeeds in keeping the interface closed, and porting Office and BackOffice to their distribution, then it'll mean trouble because other distros won't look very competitive to the new users and the industry press. Microsoft could end up gathering more users than the other distributions, and then I don't know what...Microsoft was never able to get most of the web servers to run on MS-ware, so they didn't succeed there, but what if they managed to amass the biggest share of Linux users? Would it give them enough power to influence Linux's direction? [Emphases Mine]

You can't stop Microsoft from releasing their own commercial and costly Linux distribution with a proprietary Win32/MS Office kicker, they're in their legal rights to do so. This is no different from Apple releasing the core MACH and BSD components from MacOS-X under the APSL while keeping the crown jewels (Carbon and the OpenStep libraries) propritary. But like I said, the Linux core components like it's kernel and basic tools will never be under Microsoft's control unless they can pull a legal victory out of their ass which undermines the GPL. If they pull that stinker off the entire Open Source community is fucked. And it might well be in their interest to attempt this move if they ever think the dollar losses from OS/Office sales to Linux ever exceeds the potential PR disaster from such a move.

But baring such a casastrophic -- and unlikely -- outcome, we should expect that even if Microsoft released the most popular distribution of Linux, with all sorts of proprietary and expensive add ons to run commercial MS software, plenty of people will still just tinker around and maintain their own special Linux flavors. Do you really think Debian would go away? Not even if Caldera, Suse, and RedHat were flattened by the MS steamroller could they stop the Debian project without a Legal or Congressional victory (heh, maybe a bullshit Free Software Tax Act, that might make for good assault legislation against free software and is right up this congresses alley). Just like MS can't prevent end developers from creating a quality stable kernel and giving that away for free, they can't prevent a bunch of developers and end users from collecting a bunch of free software, creating a usable Linux distribution, and giving that away for free.

Just like how Microsoft can't control the kernel source tree, the Debian project is exactly why Microsoft could take over the lion's share of the Linux user market as a vector to generate revenue from a Win32 and MS Office port, yet still not control all the Linux distributions out there. I don't know about you, but I can live without MS Office for Linux. I won't be paying astronomical fees just to run bad software because Frank down the street is too stupid to convert his email to ascii. But hey, that's me.

[snip]

I'm sure there are lots of companies who would like to have their hands in MS's pockets, but I don't think anyone does.

Compaq, HP and Sun are hardly MS minions. This just looks like paranoia to me.

And don't give me that, "you can add it to xfree86" crap :) PC's running Linux or *BSD* aren't the only machines on the planet running X.

Xfree86 doesn't just run on PCs, and it doesn't just run on Linux and *bsd*. It should be possible to port it to anything Berlin can be ported to and probably more.

As far as I can see what this all means is that TOG have admitted they are not the right group to run X, so they have made a new organisation for the purpose. It might work better, it might not, but it seems like a good move. And if it fails, the magic of an Open Source license coupled with the strength of Xfree86 will help us keep going.

This is telling PHBs to avoid Linux because it might not be there tomorrow. (What can you expect from a publication whose pages end in ".htm"?) But that ignores a major point in favor of unix [*] from business's point of view: it's relatively easy to switch between competing versions.

If Linux somehow disappeared off the face of the earth overnight, it would be straighforward for any Linux-dependent business to move to *BSD or some other unix.

If (when?) NT collapses in a pile of steaming bits, NT-dependent businesses will be fucked. (But they deserve it :-)

[*] small-u unix. TOG, grab a kleenex and some aspirin, and get over it. (Amusing reading there, BTW. And look at that filename -- I'm worried now!)

Confusion over the word unix is commonplace. In this instance, the article splits unix systems into two categories: Unix and Linux, as if all unix systems besides Linux are somehow authentic or legitimate, while Linux is not.

What makes a unix system a unix system? Most of us already know the answer to this but probably have no desire to spell it out. If you know what a unix system is, inside and out, you know perfectly well that Linux is just one implementation of unix, as are Solaris, AIX, HPUX, etc.

The code base does not have to stem from the original tree to be considered a legitimate unix system, nor does it have to be proprietary. As Neal Stephenson points out, "Gnu is an acronym for Gnu's Not Unix, but this is a joke in more ways than one, because GNU most certainly IS Unix. Because of trademark concerns ("Unix" is trademarked by AT&T) they simply could not claim that it was Unix, and so, just to be extra safe, they claimed that it wasn't."

Despite the pedantic point that the trademark is now owned by someone else, he hit the nail on the head.

If I'm not mistaken, the trademark has been owned, at least, by the following: Bell Labs, AT&T, Novell, X/Open, and The Open Group. However, the ownership of the original code has passed from Bell Labs to AT&T to Novell to SCO. Again, if I'm not mistaken, the trademark and the original code base are now owned by two different entities. It is in my opinion ludicrous for anyone to assert their rights to the word unix anymore - though I would not encourage anyone to try naming their product XYZ Unix or some variation along the lines of UnixWare, I think that everyone has every right to describe their systems appropriately, including people who run Linux; and Linux is a unix system.

If you look at The Open Group's discussion of their trademarks, you'll see just how silly the whole idea of claiming ownership to the word unix really is; these measures are too late. Language has owned the word for some time now. Hardly a day goes by that I don't hear, in common speech at work, at least one of their examples violated on how they don't want you to use the word unix. Specifically, I constantly hear people refer to "the unix box," "a unix box," or "one of the unix boxes," when in fact they are talking about different types of machines and different implementations of unix.

Do not let this word game encourage people to perceive Linux as somehow less deserving of the name than its commercial counterparts. A unix, by any other name, is still a unix.