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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.
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XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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)
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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?
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.
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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