Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Withdraws Linux NTFS Threats
An Anonymous Coward writes: "http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/this-week/0084.html
has a post by one of the developers working on NTFS utilities for Linux, stating that Microsoft has dropped legal threats against them and apologized. Therefore, development of these NTFS utilities will continue." Our previous story was here.
I think that guy that cracked Slashdot is still posting articles.
I think that this, in addition to recent outburst of repeated posts, is a clear indication that the editors of /. have had a *long* week and are getting delirious.
Got Rhinos?
ooops...i answered my own question...linux threatens MS all the time with the amount of people that are now using linux..MS hates losing marketshare..
:) I am not used to hearing microsoft bashing at churhc. =)
offtopic note: my pastor mentioned Bill Gates in his sermon today...he was talking about what a lot of people do on sundays other than going to church and he managed to slip in "sharpening predatory monopolistic business practices" this was right after he made a comment about bill gates being a loser.
The anti-salmon
"Microsoft has threatened us with litigation due to our support of Linux NTFS development, and we have dissolved our NTFS licensing agreements with Microsoft...," Merkley wrote in one of his e-mails. Merkey said he has no idea how it happened, but their e-mails first were posted on an Internet weekly Linux newsletter and reposted Tuesday on Slashdot.org. " Hmm... Possibly because email is not the secure communications medium that everyone thinks it is. I would consider a cordless phone safer than email for confidential communications - at least its broadcast does not go over a quarter mile or so.
I just think it's funny that emails are often times a culprit for the media to strike. Lord knows Microsoft has sent a few emails that they did not want to get out to the public... All it takes is one person and the forward button...
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Well this makes sense for MS, because it allows NTFS to live on, no matter how big linux gets. Really these people are writing something that MS should be writing. Its going to make an MS product easier to use in a mixed environment.
:)
MS just realized it a way to get free innovation.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Anyone who looks at what is happening in the computer industy soon begins to realize that people and companies are aligning themselves for the "holy" wars that are about to come.
There are two side in the war the Unix and the Microsoft site. Even Apple with OS X has moved to the Unix side. Just look. IBM, Dell, Corel, and Others who have been shafted by MS are moving over and preparing for battle. This article is another sign with many others that Microsoft is losing the battle. Just look how they've push up their prices. Could this be because they are suspecting that they will not be making as much in the future?
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In a world with out fences,
who needs gates?
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There was a story on the Register about Merkey having some special knowledge of either NDS or some other Netware component from his days as Novell and that Mickeysoft was real eager to get at them.
I can't remember if the insinuation was interoperability with NDS or discovered the magic solution to some distributed database problem (which is what NDS is).
What I find curious is that any NDS info Merkey has seems to date from NW4.11, which is rather out of date. I can't imagine that Merkey could deliver abstract information about a directory relative to MS' ADS that would necessarily improve it, although I can see where the info might enable MS to better interoperate with it.
They don't need to litigate it, just outrun it.
The truth shall set you free!
In a big corporation, such as Microsoft, IBM, etc..., the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing sometimes. Things can get skewed out of proportion and bad managers make stupid decisions. Don't make a bigger deal than it is... instead, praise Microsoft when they do something right. Send them emails saying you are glad they are making the correct decisions. Lord knows they get enough flak when they make the wrong ones. If you really want to see things change, TELL the companies when they are pleasing you, not just when they screw up!
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Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I think it's a good idea that MS is finally settling to work more with Linux. I have a network system comprised of both Linux (dealing with underground network servers) and Windows (dealing with workstations). When they work together, they are an unbeatable solution. I think if we make Linux and Windows work together, we may actually get benefits from both worlds. And hey, why limit ourselves to only 1 option when we can use several at the same time?
Check out http://www.textosterone.com ! It'll help you find the cheapest textbooks and other books all over the interne
With the outcome of the anti-trust case still uncertain, the last thing that Microsoft needs is bad publicity. If they were to actually sue someone for trying to improve Linux's NTFS compatibility, it would be nothing but bad publicity. It would also reinforce the government's case against them in the public eye.
I like to think that the NTFS developers knew this and simply told Microsoft where to stick it. That's certainly what I would have done. Microsoft, seeing that attempts at intimidation had backfired, knew there was nothing they could really do that wouldn't cost them more than it was worth in the long run. So they backed down and "apologized" before the situation turned into a PR disaster.
One of the most effective tools anyone can use against a company like Microsoft is a good publicist. Someone who knows how to attract the attention of the media and therefore the public is every bit as frightening to a corporation like Microsoft as its lawyers are to everyone else.
Microsoft may or may not lose their legal appeal. However they've already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Win or lose in court, business as usual is over for them.
Lee Reynolds
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Company A decides to make it easier to port things back and forth between Windows NT and Linux. Company B (Microsoft) originally decides they don't want these tools. They'd rather make the tools themselves, but won't because it would ruin marketshare at the time.
Then Company B decides to be crafty. Sure, other people can make the tools. Symantec makes a defragmenter. Adaptec makes a CD-burner driver. Company A makes some tools to get into Linux and WinNT cross-compatibility easier.
Company B buys Symantec's defragmenter and makes it a critical part of the system. They license the CD-burner driver for a rock-bottom price to use in their new Media Player to burn music easier. They buy Company A's tools to force them out of the market, or they just buy Company A entirely.
I like Microsoft products. I like Windows 2000. I think it's a good example of bucking the trend of bad programming plaguing the entire industry. However, I don't like Microsoft's business practices, and this seems like a devil in disguise.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
For the microsoft developer
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Jeff Merkey was the NetWare chief architect for a number of years. It's probably safe to say that he knows more about NetWare than anyone working outside of Novell.
Merkey now runs a independant company and is under contract from Microsoft to write a number of NetWare migration tools, including a NWFS driver for W2K and perhaps an NDS migration tool. His logic is that there are millions of old NetWare boxes out there running 3.x and 4.x that will never be upgraded, and that anyone with the proper migration tools can get a big chunk of the file+print market, often in large corporations.
(Novell recently announced EOL for NW 3.x and 4.x in a last ditch effort to get shops to NW5. Many aren't going to budge though, because they really don't want to support a specialized OS like NetWare and are planning on moving to something else. NW4.11 compatibility is still very relevant, and the differences in NW5 are probably not that great anyway.)
The irony is that he's using the MS funding for NWFS for Windows to also develop NWFS for Linux. Microsoft didn't seem to have a problem with that. The problem came when he started working on the Linux NTFS driver. Since he has NDAed access to the NT source, Microsoft rightfully worried that he was going to "go over" and break his NDA and start working on Linux. (What actually happened is that he announced work on a NetWare clone called MANOS. Now, who really wants that?)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Merkey said Norman described the fracas as "an apparent miscommunication. Andshe also said 'please don't post those e-mails.' "
This suggests that if "those e-mails" had not been posted, MS would not be backing off. The internet hasn't changed the state of intellectual property (as some might think) where companies are now trying to take away the rights of every independent hacker or developer. They always have. It's just that every piddling lawsuit that large corporations file, every cease-and-desist, every vague threatening letter from their law firms, is now posted far and wide. These things have always been going on, but we never heard about them. Microsoft knows that if every time they threaten anyone, it will be all over the net, they will look even worse than they do now (and maybe they realize more now than before how bad that can be for them).
So keep posting them! If their lawyer tells you not to, it ain't 'cause it's in YOUR best interest.
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
"It all kind of got out of proportion," Merkey said of the threats. He spoke about them only after some of his private e-mail was intercepted and posted on the Internet.
I don't think the linux-kernel mailing list is exactly "private e-mail". I wouldn't expect Pat to know what a mailing list is, but come on here. It seems as if Pat didn't even bother digging up the post that started it all. I wonder if Pat even asked Merkey about how the incident flared up.
sheesh, basic story research...
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Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
(Hint: the last option, although it looks like the usual obligatory nonsense choice, isn't actually nonsensical :-P)
Poll Mastah
How about: 3- run windows primarily, but would like to learn enough about linux to feel comfortable abandoning windows?
Or is that category just not good enough for you?
Yes, you don't reboot an office server. But if you have just a couple of machines in your home, you can set one up as a server/router for the rest and feel free to take it down whenever you want.
Everything I've heard about the Windows 2000 filesharing protocol says that it's proprietary and breaks Samba. So much for networking.
I personally use NT as a very nice X-terminal for my *nix boxes. The window manager actually works with my mouse's funky features, and it frees me up from having to configure the fsck out of the Linux window managers. (I'll probably end up switching anyhow. One more flavor of *nix can't hurt.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
When I was growing up, the kids a few blocks away had this really fun thing they would do to newbies to their block.
They'd take you over to meet "Bud", a really friendly dog. Bud was in on it, too.
They'd say "Look at Bud! He's a friendly irish setter. Go pet him.
Bud sat near the porch, tail wagging, with this friendly, eager look on his face.
Of course, as soon as you got close, he would suddenly growl and leap at you, chasing you down the hill til his chain ran out, biting and snarling the whole way.
The kids would roar with laughter. During my introduction, my pants were torn a bit, but no broken skin, forutnately!
Anyway, welcome to Microsoft "Bud".
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Yeah, yeah. Lots of "OhmyGAWD, they apologised", "They feel the heat", etc., etc. posts. No one seems to notice that this opens the door for YAISMTMTFS (Yet Another Industrial Strength Multi Tasking Multi Threaded File System) for ALL operating systems. NTFS, especially V5, (fragmentation aside) is fast, stable, hard to corrupt and reasonably secure. IMHO, it's one of the few really good things to come out of Redmond - period.
/. who have an inordinate amount of Karma. ;o)
Perhaps the Redmond boys _have_ finally seen the light. After all, they employ geeks. Geeks who are exposed to other geeks, who have not been assimilated. They are, I'm sure like you and I - interested in all the latest cool stuff, including Open Source, open standards and new and fresh ideas. This stuff can't be filtered out by any firewall I know of. (Except MS Proxy, maybe, but that's because it tends to filter THE WHOLE FSCKING NET! GA....oops, sorry, lost meself for a sec. Back to Karma Whoring...)
One's IQ does not necessarily drop 40 points once you walk into the M$ campus, does it? Is it posssible that they do some sort of black magic ceremony that instantly turns you from a moral person into one of Bill's evil minions? I think not. I think that we are indeed affecting the Microsoft mind set - for the better. This wonderful movement called Open Source has spread to the Campus, and started to change things for the better. How could it not? Yes, Hugh is alive and well in the collective. Bet on it.
Besides, there are (or were, anyway) a few M$ employees here on
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I don't think so. Check this message on LKML:
There was a historical referrence, in the beginning, that implies that I was accussing Microsoft of using Linux code. The reality was that I offered to help them with the solution I was working on because of the huge mess that the great taskfile debate brought out. People were pointing out that because I was exposing how to abuse it in the kernel and that a policy of preventing harmfal combinations was not acceptable. Since this information could/would/did spill over to the script kiddies, I thought it was the better part of valor (sp) to inform an aquaintance at Microsoft of the potential problem that they could see.
This piece of responsiveness was forced by the position being too obviously wrong. Judging from all of the MicroTurd responses around here, I'd say that there are lots of MS programers with nothing better to do than read Slashdot.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Code commentary is like sex.
If it's good, it's VERY good.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Okay, it would've been nice if they had given them some specs to NTFS 5. But it's widely known that in the corporate paradigm, you never guide your foe's knife to your own heart. Still, it would've been a nice olive branch gesture on Gates' part.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
A contribute to a monopoly.
B contribute to a free code.
Oh yeah, you need to eat. Seek and you will find.
Free software will not solve all of our problems, but it will eliminate the problems of comercial software. Microsoft is evil.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I will ask him why he is such a vindictive asshole and tell him to play nice with the other kids. Seriously.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.