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Microsoft/Mainsoft Porting to Linux - Follow-up
Lee Gomes and I had been writing about the Mainsoft/Microsoft porting to Linux rumours. Now Mainsoft has put out a Media advisory
disavowing the Office rumour. Wininformat also has an article talking about Microsoft's denial of things, which adds another dimension to things. Paul Thurrott, the author of the Wininformant piece, askes a good question in as to why Mainsoft needs a copy of the WinNT source code if it's only porting IE.
The only way out of this dilemma is to do exactly what they are going to do: make a very poor quality port - which is full of bugs and crashes X at every opportunity. Microsoft can then argue: "Look, we Tried, we Really, Really Tried, but Linux Is Such A Poor Platform (R) that this pile of rotting dingo's kidneys is the best that even a Great Innovative Company (R) like Microsoft can do."
Any questions as to how well the Linux port of IE is going to work? Oh yes, also expect the port to mysteriously affect the stability of the core operating system - surely you'll have to be root to install it. Of course that is so obviously sabotage that even Microsoft might not do it, but legally I don't think they have any choice; IE HAS to be part of the core OS - just like they argued in court.
Anyone who doesn't think Microsoft would do such bad faith things - has never studied the history of the company; ask the people who wrote DR DOS. The difference is that instead of leaving an email evidence trail of their bad faith they will be smarter this time. Expect the port to be done by the closest thing to a thousand monkeys with typewriters that Microsoft can find. Nothing like being able to point to the incompetence of Mainsoft to protect yourself, is there Microsoft?
"Why, if we Use Plausible Lies (R) this time we'll be OK; then all the people who throw around the quote about 'never attributing to malice what stupidity can explain' will buy what we are doing. Oh, THAT'S how to be evil - why didn't we think of that before; make it look like incompetence and the morons who look no deeper than the surface won't suspect a thing."
Most Mac OS X apps call functions in the Carbon API, which is based on the old "Toolbox" API from Mac OS 1 through 9. Most Windows apps call functions in the Win32 API, a cheap knockoff of Toolbox. The difference is that Apple is opening its kernel's BSD APIs, whereas Microsoft has no public document demonstrating its VMS-like calls.
Yes, the internals of NT look like VMS. And if you move each letter in VMS one letter forward, you get WNT.
adopt a bird<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Well, the past is the past, free has turned into the norm. Their only competition on any other OS, aside from Opera and QuickTime Pro, is free as in beer software.
And remember, Netscape started it. That's how they catapolted themselves into the 80%+ marketshare they once had. And don't go into poor Opera stories:
I'm sure iPlanet could sell more product if IIS and Apache weren't free.
And CDE could sell more if not for KDE and Gnome.
Solaris wouldn't have to be $75 if not for Linux and FreeBSD.
I, for one, will NOT used web-based apps for my work. My work is MY WORK, it isn't top secret or illegal or anything else, but it is MINE. I will not do my wordprocessing, or any other work, on the web where it is (potentially) ANYONE'S work who can obtain access. It is simply about privacy and total control over my own work, and total control over what I release to other eyes or choose NOT to release.
As a matter of principal, my work is done, and ever shall be done, on MY personal computer without any potential prying eyes taking a gander before I decide (IF I decide) to publish/release the final product. I frickin' HATE web-based crap. I want MY work, MY software, MY time to be absolutely MINE. It is not a shared resource, it is not anyone else's business but my own, it belongs to me. Hence, I require a desktop-based, single client (though with web CAPABILITY) apps to do my graphics, writing, game-playing, whatever, work.
I do not want to HAVE to count on NEVER running into network outages, server crashes, etc, in order to get work done. The net is NOT so reliable that you (or anyone else) can count on it to always be able to get your work done when it relies upon the net.
There have been many times when the net has been unavailable to me at work, for a variety of reasons. Hence, that avenue of information collection is cutoff. There have been many times when the local network has gone down (maintenance, crashes) which prevents access to shared files, servers, etc. If I am relying on this crap to get my publishing work done... No. Thank. You. In EVERY case of the net being unavailable, my personal system has ALWAYS been available. I have ALWAYS been able to write up data, create graphs and graphics, read docs that I have LOCALLY downloaded. If I were relying on a web-based app to do all this, every time the net slowed down due to traffic or was otherwise unavialable, my perfectly serviceable PC/laptop would become merely a desktop heating system. I would get to twiddle my thumbs waiting for the system to come back so I could work on my documents.
There will always be a good use for client/desktop-based productivity apps (and games). The web is not reliable enough or private enough to count on it for everything; and why should one HAVE to cough up a lung to pay for access to the web, say, on an airliner or at an airport to do anything productive when you could do it perfectly fine if the app resides on your own disconnected system?
Web-based apps have a place but it isn't the end-all, be-all, universal fix.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I don't see it. Better support for DHTML? In some things maybe in others NOT.
...... Now that is
;) Seriously, though, what is this affinity to Open standards. A de-facto standard is nearly as good as an Open standard, and that is what word is. Think about this. Word is just as compatible as WordPerfect or star office. Why aren't you bitching about them. With WINElib Wordperfect Suite is just as bloated and unstable as Office (probably more so) StarOffice has a lot fewer features and is much slower. What's wrong with Office? Other Office apps (those available on Linux) don't behave at all differently from Office, so where's the beef? Nearly all office apps need patches, have incompatible file formats, changes in interface, etc. What's this vehamance against Word in particular? There are a lot of people who really NEED an Office suite, and Word is pretty much the best one around.
>>>>>
Read the articles from all the guy lamenting that Netscape killed web-standards, not IE. IE supported HTML4.0 earlier and better, it still supports XML better (not better than Gecko though) it has always supported DHTML better (in more things than not) it still has the fastest JavaVM available, etc. It is faster loading, faster to render (I've got DSL, I notice the TCP/IP problems of the BeOS TCP stack) faster to scroll, you name it. It also takes less memory and crashes less often.
I use Office. Fast is not in its vocabulary. As far as Word better its a matter of opinion. I've seen
Office implemented in all types of business. The only sure thing is that the older version does not
support the newer versions files. You need to reinvest every 18 months, download patches
constantly. In most cases, people using Word are slower than poeple who use electronic typewriters.
It's no longer a productivity tool. The prefrences/options change from version to version, which has
led to millions using word but few who know how to. The default option on Word is never to create
a backup of the current file so when the system goes haywire and a restart of the system is
required(not to mention the blue screen.......) all is lost. Frankly I'm wondering after all this time you
would think reboot/restart would be history. I won't get into excel, with its large file problems.
>>>>>>>
Difficulty of use coming from a LINUX USER? Let's see, the last change of the Word file format was in 1997. I have only downloaded one patch for Office 97 (and some helper dudes) As for your other complaints, your complaining about defaults. It takes no time to switch to creating a backup file, and only slightly longer to relearn the menus. For people who uses this for their job, the changes amount to, oh, maybe a week of relearning. My dad just switched from Wordperfect to Word at his workplace. Complained maybe for a few days, after a week or two he is as proficiant as he was with Wordperfect. Despite all this, there is stuff that Office can do that StarOffice and Corel Office simply cannot.
Lastly, it is standard. Like it or not, no suite provides the sheer compatibility of Word.
You see the way I see compatibility/standard is for example the way we connect appliances to the
electrical outlets. We do not have to worry about who made the plug and who made the outlet. The
toaster plugs into the same outlet as the fridge, as the hairdryer, as the lamp, etc
COMPATIBILITY. When I use Linux, FreeBSD, OSS, I finaly see this compatibility. When I look at
TCP/IP, SMTP, etc.. I see this compatibility. When I look a MS Office I wonder if the plug will fit in
the most recent outlet or must I upgrade once again.
One last question...why must I reboot a system? Why can't I let it run? Why is a reboot productive. If
I were Micro$oft I would be ashamed.
>>>>>>>>
Compatibility is what resulted in the cobbled together mess that is the PC
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Theer was nothing in my post that indicated I advocated web based apps...I like PC's because they are "Personal" computers.
I was just commenting on MS's strategic direction thats all, and it ain't about porting to various apps.
Steve
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Actually, a much better analogy would have been the CD players in every '98 Cadillac. They were a standard feature -- you couldn't buy a Cadillac without getting one, and their presence discouraged people from buying a different player from a manufacturer other than Delco (at the time a GM division).
An even better one is OS/2 including Web Explorer even before Windows 95 was first released. (Still has the best damn session history of any browser ever released.)
Now, the obvious conterclaim is that Cadillac didn't have a car monopoly, and neither did OS/2. Furthermore, neither GM nor IBM signed a consent decree to refrain from bundling products...
Steven E. Ehrbar
10. Clippy is pure evil
9. Much faster in linux, crashes in half the time
8. bassackwards() function in excell
7. Outlook 2000 is part of a communist plot against humanity
6. Why do you need a bloated Word 2000 when you already can use the very slim EMACS
5. Dont want blue screen of death ported to Linux
4. Forcing me to boot into Windows to use Office feels more opressing (I like to complain)
3. Powerpoint sounds like a gay porno
2. The voices comming from my windows key on my keyboard will only get louder
1. I WANT LINUX TO BE DIFFERENT FROM WINDOWS!!
my other penis is a vagina
It is my understanding that the M$ software for Mac is developed by a fairly autonomous group. Whatever the situation, they have recently released some great 'very Mac' software in IE and Outlook Express, although they did wierdly reinvent some things for OE. Sadly, IE 5 for Mac is miles ahead of Netscape/Mozilla, and iCab isn't quite there yet.
Perhaps they should port the MacOS or MacOSX version of the apps to Linux instead of the Windows versions if they are going to do that. Perhaps by releasing what might be different programs with the same name, Microsoft is bluring the distinctions that they tried to set up when they claimed that IE and Windows were inseperable.
My point is that MS can make good software, if you judge software by the expectations of the majority of the users of the targeted platform.
Well, I think that it is more that Microsoft is very good at setting expectations of people to a very low level. They deliver very flashy software, which is different than what I'd call 'good'. They've also been very successful at defining the criteria by which things are judged so that flash and feature bloat are valued above things being stable and with features that are well thought out.
What does this mean for Linux if/when Office and IE are ported? How would Office for Linux have to be different than Office for Win and Office for Mac to truly be a Linux application worth using?
I'm not the right person to ask that. I have no interest in using Office or IE in any case until Microsoft can clean up their act. I think as far as their applications, they need to spend more time making what is there work right and sensibly rather than just cramming more stuff in.
From the outside, the coolest and most admirable thing about the Linux community is Open Source and everything implied by that. I don't think MS could release a real Linux app, if this is held to be fundamental to truly be considered as a Linux app.
I would tend to agree with most of that. Microsoft will probably never really be able to be compatible with the the Open Source/Free Software world. Then again, I used to think the same thing about IBM. If Microsoft wants to play outside of their world, they need to think about reinventing themselves like IBM has, and learn to be better about being a respectable and ethical company.
IE and Windows are integrated and can't function separately.
That is why there is a Mac version of IE... And a Solaris version... Well, if you look closely at the Solaris version, they include a large chunk of Windows with it as DLLs. This is, from what I've heard fairly typical of things ported with MainSoft's MainWin toolkit. However, I don't believe that Mainsoft has a porting kit for MacOS, so that still doesn't explain the Mac version of IE...
For example, the standard explorer shell extensions for adding icons to the tray (notify icons) don't use any 'hidden' APIs
That's not what I was refering to. The SH* functions are more and more used as 'normal' win32 functions. If you don't know better and reading the MSDN, you'd understand these ARE win32 functions, which they ain't. (I made that mistake).
I wasn't refering to the 'shell' extensions like 'command prompt here' stuff when you right click in explorer. I was referring to stuff like the webpage formatting of a dir in win2k explorer. Not something you can just add.
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Ahh, but wouldn't it simply be easier to port the existing Macintosh version (aka the "sans anti-trust monopoly integration API" version) to Linux? It's a different code base, and only shares its name with the Win32 IE.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
This is exactly right - my employer uses it to port an expensive low-volume piece of software to Solaris and maybe Linux in the future. Though we use our own portability layer for other bits of software that are deployed on more than 5 or so hosts per customer...
Paul Thurrott et al need to learn to RTFW - it's obvious from Mainsoft's site that it is largely a product company, and the version number of MainWin is 3.x, so it's been around for a while, long before this rumour. In fact the Linux version of MainWin is relatively recent.
If Micrsoft were to port Office to Linux, or allow someone else to do it, they would be shooting themselves in the foot at point-blank range with a bazooka.
Office on Linux would give many more businesses the confidence to run Linux and potentially cost Microsoft most of their OS sales over time. IE on Linux on the other hand makes sense if they intend to really wipe netscape off the face of the earth. Of course it would depend on the stability of the port.
Might be a good thing if they were to follow COrel's example and use Wine, more code contributions to Wine would be a very good thing for those of use who don't have $99 floating around to throw into a copy of VMware.
Bzzzzzt..."AAAAaaaaarrrgh!!!" Thud.
Because MS doesn't want people using its software to drive people onto unix it charges a high premium. If you use Mainsoft to port your app you will have to pay a per-copy royalty that pretty much equals the price of a windows licence! As such it is generally only used to port very expensive, low volume products normally.
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Paul Thurrott, the author of the Wininformant piece, askes a good question in as to why Mainsoft needs a copy of the WinNT source code if it's only porting IE.
Firstly this IE is integrated into NT is tiring. NT doesn't need IE to run. IE needs NT to run. However, Microsoft has all the right in the world to inculde IE as an integral part of NT. (remember, windows explorer/file manager isn't integrated - but it's essential to windows). Just like car seats aren't integrated - car still runs without seats. But its an essential part of the car.
Mainsoft has licensed the source to windows NT not just for IE. The source to NT is important cause IE uses windows APIs. The fastest way to get windows apps to run on unix is to license the source for windows from microsoft. This is something Mainsoft has been doing since before linux became important.
M$ has made it clear in the past that IE is in fact part of the operating system. It must be so integral to Windows(in whatever flavor) that the entire OS needs to be ported.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
However, Microsoft has all the right in the world to inculde IE as an integral part of NT. (remember, windows explorer/file manager isn't integrated - but it's essential to windows). Just like car seats aren't integrated - car still runs without seats. But its an essential part of the car.
I've never seen a car without seats, but I have seen Windows NT running before IE was even invented.
Seemed fine to me, I guess nothing "essential" was missing after all...
-thomas
"And like that
Is porting really the answer?
Is having Microsoft applications in Linux really what will give Linux the push to rule the world?
I don't think so.
One of my favorite things about Linux is its diversity from Windows. Extremely tedious tasks in Windows take a few lines of a shell script in Linux; I can see almost all of the source code to my applications and can configure my working environment to the hilt.
So I truly wonder why there's even a desire to bring Windows applications onto Linux.
Shouldn't we be more concerned with making the native Linux applications better? It seems to me that it would be much easier to improve on something already written for the Linux platform than trying to fit an ugly square peg in a beautiful round hole.
I used to think I wanted IE for Linux. Now, after seeing M17, I want a kick-ass Mozilla. And it seems like it's almost here.
Is bringing Office to Linux really going to bring the hordes of Office users over to Linux? Or if StarOffice or its like was as intuitive to use as Office and Office users could pick it up quickly, I think they wouldn't care if they were running Windows or Linux or whatever.
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Mainsoft is not affiliated with Microsoft in any way
That depends on your definition of 'affiliated'. Mainsoft and Microsoft clearly have a fairly tight business relationship and I'm sure that includes quite a bit of contractual obligation (probably mostly obligations of Mainsoft towards Microsoft). I haven't, however seen anything that would say if Mainsoft or Microsoft had any financial stake in each other. Microsoft at least is a large, public company, so if they owned part of Mainsoft it would probably have to be a matter of public record. I don't know about the other way around, although I seriously doubt that a smaller company like Mainsoft could even own enough Microsoft common stock to be at all significant.
-Peter
Actually, it is widely known that Microsoft licenses its Windows source code to MainSoft, it was a matter of public court documents when Microsoft was sued by Bristol, which markets a competitor to Mainsoft's MainWin toolkit called Wind/U. Bristol was unhappy that Microsoft was jacking their fees to license the Windows source, as they also had a license. Bristol won the case, but was unfortunately only awarded a piddling amount in damages.
This whole story is actually the dumbest hoax I ever read here.
While I always had my own doubts about Office being ported to Linux (IE I would find more believable), I've seen a lot dumber hoaxes. Mainsoft is clearly doing porting work on something, so it is bound to be a matter of speculation as to what.
I mean, doesn't anyone ask themselves is maybe M$ has enough qualified staff to port it's applications to other platform?
A few questions regarding that...
With the high tech worker shortage, does anyone in the high tech industry have enough qualified staff to do everything they want, even those with huge budgets like Microsoft?
Then, even assuming Microsoft has a large number of qualified staff for developing on their platforms, and the Mac, does that necessarily mean that they have enough people who are also qualified to do porting work to UNIX/Linux?
And finally, even assuming that Microsoft had plenty of staff that were qualified to do that sort of work, if it is something that isn't part of Microsoft's core business, might it not make more sense to outsource that kind of work and use those staff on stuff more targeted towards the core business?
Is really sharing the source (under NDA but still) of IE, Office, and Windows with some other company the best solution they could think of to get a port of their software to Linux?
Maybe, maybe not. But I don't think it is something that they would dismiss immediately. Also, they've used Mainsoft for that sort of stuff before. Mainsoft did the porting work for 'Microsoft Visual SourceSafe for Solaris'. Microsoft used Mainsoft's MainWin product to port IE to Solaris. Since MainSoft already has a Windows source license and has experience porting Windows apps to *nix, wouldn't it make sense to farm more work like that out to them?
Please people, think.
Maybe you should do a little more research before you speak...
I wouldn't consider that a particularly good question; the question was
to which the answer is very simple: Mainsoft is not a company that is "simply porting old versions of IE and WMP to other operating systems".
Mainsoft is a company whose product is a library to implement the Win32 API atop other operating systems. The "MainWin: How It Works page on Mainsoft's Web site says
(Note that Windows NT isn't just a kernel, it's a complete OS and window system/GUI; the stuff being rehosted is presumably large amounts of userland code.)
I'm also not sure why Thurrott thought the fact that Mainsoft had access to NT source code was some Deep Dark Secret that his informant had revealed to him, as per his comment
given that there's a press release on Mainsoft's site, linked to by an item on Mainsoft's home page , that says
(I'm also not sure why he speaks of "old versions" of IE and WMP being ported; another item on Mainsoft's Web site says
which would seem to imply that the version of IE 5 that was ported to UNIX was about as far from "old" as one could imagine; no, they may not have ported IE 5.5 yet, but, at the time they ported IE 5.0, it was as new as you can get.)
Methinks Thurrott should, before he speaks further on this topic, spend an hour or so browsing the Mainsoft Web site, at least if his goal is journalistic accuracy rather than journalistic excitement (you can often write far more exciting stories if you're not constrained by such boring mundane restrictions as a requirement to have what you say correspond, to some extent, to reality).
IE is a hell of a lot better than netscape. It supports more standards, it has better support for CSS, and DHTML, it has a better JavaVM, it is more stable, it is faster, etc. Push content was a bad idea, it always has been. Admins hated the thing.
Office is a lot better than Staroffice or Wordperfect (Linux version). It is more stable, and despite the bloat, faster. Also, Office tends to have better applications. While Word is a second to Wordperfect, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint blow away Quattro, Presentations, and Paradox (okay Paradox vs. Access is debatable.) Also, Office apps tend to have better "workflow" than Staroffice (which is awefully clunky.) And you can turn of auto-spell checking. How can having auto-checking be a bad thing? You can leave it if you like it, or turn it off if you don't. Lastly, it is standard. Like it or not, no suite provides the sheer compatibility of Word.
As for web-standards, HTML won't cut it. XML might do it, but only when XML authoring tools become much more solid. However the whole thing is moot. You can talk all day long, and it won't change anything. What you need to do is make BETTER applications. What a lot of OSS people miss is this. Not that many people will switch applications just to move to a more Open, feel-good one. They will switch when BETTER applications come out. Make a great application, with tremendous workflow, great context sensitive help, awesome tools, good compatiblilty, and open standards, then people will switch. Otherwise, all the idealistic talk does didly.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Funny how all this business of porting to Solaris and HP-UX breaks out just as the Gnome foundation gets established, with Sun and HP promising to use Gnome by default. By the time Mainsoft gets finished with their ports of IE and Outlook, maybe Mozilla and Evolution will be ready ... they're looking pretty good on my box right now.
Microsoft's marketing engine vs Sun's and HP's default setups, to say nothing of the actual technologies. Should be a fun race to watch.
UNIX is, in the legal sense, a registered trademark of The Open Group.
It is also, the trademark standard nonwithstanding, a term used to refer to a large class of operating systems with a certain set of APIs; most if not all Linux distributions belong to this class of operating systems.
Mainsoft doesn't currently run on "UNIX" in the sense of "all members of that class of operating systems"; it doesn't even run on "UNIX" in the sense of "all OSes that have passed the Open Group test suite and can thus have the trademark used when referring to them" - under "IBM" they list "AIX 4.3.2" but make no mention of OS/390 (yes, OS/390 has passed the UNIX 95 test suite, as per this list of products that have passed that test suite).
However, they do have, in beta, a MainWin for Linux, as per this page, although it's past "the first quarter of 2000" and there's no sign of it having emerged from beta yet, so I don't know if the MainWin for Linux has stalled, or been killed, or what.
So, whilst it's probably not impossible for them to have ported MainWin, and thus not impossible for them to use it to port IE etc., whether it'll happen is unspecified (i.e., it has not been indicated that it will and there's no firm indication that it won't, either).
You aren't the world. What YOU do isn't indicative of what everyone does. Some people need the publishing capability of Publisher, the more rounded tools of Word, the power of Access. StarOffice doesn't offer all the features that some people need. Not to mention the fact people often need Office for the compatibilit. To those people, a port of Office means that they can stop using Windows and switch to Linux. I don't hear talk of diverting of talent, or splitting the market, or competing with existing tools whenever KDE or GNOME come up, so why should it with a port of Office?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I dislike the idea of using MS products as well, but I'm approaching this from a different direction...
Currently, Netscape is the only game in town when it comes to feature-rich browsers on Linux (sorry, Nautilus and Konqueror people; you'll get there some day, but today it's still Netscape). The problem is Netscape browsers on Linux SUCK. I mean, of all the pieces of software on a typical Linux distribution (free, open sourced, or otherwise), Netscape browsers infuriate me the most. They are crap, plain and simple. One could argue that web browsers are some of the most important software packages on any modern networked system, though. It sucks having the central app on a typical Linux system be a turd.
The problem? NO COMPETITION. Mozilla doesn't even offer the features that Netscape's browsers do. If something commercial grade came along and gave Netscape a run for its money, you'd see dramatic improvements very quickly. As it stands, Netscape/AOL can put out crap browsers for Linux and not sweat over it much because what the hell else are you going to use??
Netscape needs SERIOUS competition. The open sourced browsers are not coming along fast enough. Mozilla shows promise, but more for Gecko than for the browser itself (will we EVER get a stable version of Mozilla???). If IE will provide the competition, so be it. I'm tired of waiting for Netscape to get its ducks in line.
Oh man, I hope this guy is too young to know what a dumb terminal is.
For all the brain power that resides in Redmond under the banner of Microsoft, you'd think they would be a little smarter. Let's be realistic; does anyone really believe that porting their apps over to a different operating system can do anything other than make them money? I find it highly doubtfull that anyone not already using Linux would jump ship from Windows *just* because of an Office Suite. It's far more likely that an Office port would result in their taking market share away from whatever "free" office-type apps already exist.
And then of course comes the *other* stupidity they always engage in- denying things which are confirmed facts. Ok- so they could make it truth by cancelling the project but what point is there to that line of thought? Instead of denying this kind of thing they should be broadcasting to the world - it would be perceived as a lack of fear concerning Linux. Almost like saying "We are so confident that Windows is better that we're going to *own* the Linux Suite-space as well!"..
Win32 is the layer on top of the NT core and win9x core libs. Normally apps talk to win32, instead of all the api's beneath it (you know, the so called 'secret api's). IE uses win32 to do stuff but also ADDS stuff to win32 (namely the shell extensions, SH* functions). This means it uses layers below win32, layers build with the normally hidden api's.
If you want to port IE to another platform, you have to know what the functions do that are used by IE. The win32 functions are documented in the MSDN, but the NT / win9x core api calls aint. So you need the sourcecode.
The browser will work fine without the shell extensions, it's just the shell extensions that make it has to use the lower level api calls. And because IE is part of the Shell of NT/win9x/win2000, it's called 'part of the OS', but NT runs great without it. But if you want to use the SH* extensionfunctions in your code, you NEED IE installed. (the SH* functions create nice dirtree's for example in controls)
--
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
MSFT used Mainsoft's tools to port IE to the flavors of Unix it already runs on, e.g. Solaris. So this isn't really big news. MS has already ported IE. They've talked about porting MediaPlayer. Both are yet more examples of anticompetitive "dumping" practices.
-Peter
US Voters: The GOP has criticized Clinton, Reno, and Klein for taking on Microsoft in court. The Democratic party had iMacs and PalmPilots at their convention. Who's more likely to support real competition in the software marketplace?
The writing is on the wall folks.....Office is moving towards an Internet application and away from a desktop application. It will all be about XML and SOAP and Web Services.
The client, whether its a Mac, *nix, Windows etc...won't matter. As long as the client can talk SOAP.
Is anyone in the Linux world looking at SOAP?
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Last time I checked the emacs rpm was bigger than xfree86, thats pretty damn sad.
Hence the expression "eventually malloc()s all computer storage."
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Isn't it obvious? Microsoft's competition with Linux has forced them to take the extreme measures of porting Outlook (Express) to Linux. Of course, this was inspired by the recent UF comic. Why else would it be just a few weeks later.
Anm
Ok, so I worked for a company that was actually using Mainwin for a while. We had a suite of EDA tools for Windows that needed to be ported to Unix. I was the engineer who was in charge of doing the port of the first product. As such, I am quite familiar with the ins and outs of Mainwin, at least as of 9 months ago, and as it applies to the Solaris platform.
The deal with Mainwin is that they've essentially taken the NT source and re-written the "bottom" half -- i.e. the hardware access and low-level interfaces. Then, they compiled the entire NT kernel on top of this layer of cruft.
In order to compile anything on top of the Mainwin libraries, you are dynamically linking to a fairly substantial portion of the NT kernel. Hence, the NT code license.
With this constraint, Mainwin has two major problems:
So, in short:
In short, no big surprises.
I have used StarOffice. I have the freaking thing installed. (All 150 megs of it.) I've also messed with the 4.x version, had problems with glibc's and had to do ridiculous things like add environment variables by hand to install it. NOt only that, I had to put up with a bug in the version packaged with RedHat 5.2 where the install script was broken.
I much prefer to use Gobe Productive on BeOS, because that does most of what I need to do. However, there are quite a few things that neither suite can do, and for those things I HAVE to reboot into Windows and start up Office. Like it or not, there are just some things that one CAN'T DO WITHOUT OFFICE. Some features that Office has that nobody else has. I don't really understand what your point is? I happen to like Office better than StarOffice. Though I like WordPerfect better (the Windows version, not the icky Linux vesion) than Word, overall, I like Office better than Corel Office, and Lotus Smartsuite. Just because it's from MS it doesn't deserve to be on Linux?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
MS won't license you the sourcecode if you're going to use that sourcecode to create a competitive product to MS' own stuff. WINE is a competitive product, because it makes win9x or any other win32 compatible client OS unnecessary.
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Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
If Micrsoft were to port Office to Linux, or allow someone else to do it, they would be shooting themselves in the foot at point-blank range with a bazooka.
That's what some said about Office for Mac.
It doesn't seem to have hurt Microsoft. If anything, it made them a crapload of money off people who would probably have bought Macs anyway.
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It may be that the reason why Mainsoft has a copy of the Winnt source code is to assist them in porting Office. Sure, everbody is denying it. Maybe Microsoft has hired mainsoft only to port IE and MediaPlayer, but they might have still given them the source to NT and Office and unofficially stated "If you can get this ported, we will make it very much worth your while." After all, with the impending opening of StarOffice, Microsoft has to be feeling a crunch to get Office out cross-platform so that they can stop SUN cold.
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