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RMS Asks Miguel to Explain Himself
phaze3000 writes "RMS, responding to questions from the audience at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil last week, has asked Miguel de Icaza to explain himself to the Free software community about comments made last week that Gnome should be based on .NET in the future. More details at Brazillian site Hotbits and in The Register." I find this amusing.
quote:
.NET - you use the .NET API - the classes [sic.] they have defined."
"What's important to keep in mind is that you do not actually use the Windows API in
hello, what exactly needs further explanation? its brilliant.
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
Very few DOS apps ran correctly on win95. Many win95 apps didn't run on Win98. Microsoft changed their Word format between Office 95 and Office 98 (or 2000, whatever) in a gratuitous manner which prevented old office from reading new office documents. Microsoft repeatedly changed the Win32 spec in trivial ways to introduce incompatibilities with OS/2's Win32 implementation. Visual basic programmers have face repeated forward and backward compatibility problems (some noted VB book authors even quit recommending VB because of this).
Microsoft has no qualms about pissing off their (locked-in) developer community. They've repeatedly broke compatibility in every possible way. Why anyone trusts Microsoft, I'll never know. Microsoft's history (the real history, not Bill Gate's rewritten version) should scare anyone away. I'm guessing that you're either extremely young, extrememly naive, extremely forgetful, or paid by Microsoft (the last one was a joke).
-Paul Komarek
Windows, at present, only supports a single platform. Because of this they have no cross platform instalation issues. You must be thinking of some other operating system.
.NET. The XML services are another part. The tech is separate (though plays nicely together), but all part of .NET.
Rewind the clock. The AIM alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) are cranking out faster PPC chips, the Alpha research project is bearing fruit, and Intel can't get the Pentium to move. They start playing tricks like they did at the end of the 486 era with faster processors then busses, but they can't really get the speed up.
Intel looks like a dead end.
Microsoft's NT project looks like it will divorce them from Intel. Their NTVDM, based on an old OS/2 VDM (IBM's later version was better) can emulate the entire 286 instruction set, so you can run DOS apps inside of it. They develop NT on a non-Intel architecture (rumored to be MIPS) to avoid any Intel specific shortcuts.
NT 3.51 supports the MIPS (there was a project with several companies to build a desktop PC on the MIPS line, NT was the OS, and Intel pulled tech specs for their stuff from everyone involved ).
NT 3.51 supports the PPC. They are scared of Taligent Pink, the Apple/IBM project to build two OSes on the same core system. PC Users would run OS/2, Apple users their Macs, run the same applications with the different environments.
NT 3.51 supports the Alpha. The Alpha looks like it is going to be awesome and could carry Microsoft into the server rooms. It looks like a screamer. The AlphaPC, the cheap version of the chip, looks like a great processor. NT 3.51 and the AlphaPC could turn Microsoft into a workstation player and compete in the engineering space.
Intel is still moving chips cheaply (in the $400-$1000 range) so they are involved.
Microsoft has another project, Chicago AKA Windows 4.0 AKA Windows 93, released as Windows 95. It brings the Win32 API to the lowend world. Get your apps moved to Win32 from Win16, and you can move to Windows NT (but not OS/2). Stick to Win32s and IBM can still fight on with OS/2.
At that point in history, there was no Microsoft monopoly.
What happened?
Intel gets the Pentium Pro to perform well on 32-bit operations (though the 16-bit code in Win95 made it a dog there) and announces the Pentium II, a PPro without the expensive on-chip cache. Quad-PPros do okay as workgroup servers. The MIPS PC initiative dies out (taking one of the top graphics card makers with it, who couldn't compete without Intel's PCI specs early... and Vesa Local Bus wasn't keeping up).
IBM refuses to ship PPC computers (to run Windows NT) until they have OS/2 running there. Well, the OS/2 port couldn't make it. Sure their were dozens of machines build in Boca Raton, FL, they rocked. The PPC 620 was promissed with the 486 core integrated. Wow, OS/2 on a PPC with your old DOS/Win apps running on the 486 core? Never shipped...
NT drops to just the Alpha and x86. With no support for the other ports, Microsoft lets the development tools for non-x86 lapse. Visual Studio RISC was usually at least 1 rev back.
Alpha support drops out later.
Microsoft is now stuck with x86.
Itanium/IA-64 is on the way. Microsoft needs a 64-bit system to carry them up the food chain, and the Alpha is dead.
AMD's x86-64 is on the way, and while there is no official plans for Microsoft to support it, I'm sure that they will.
Microsoft is back to pushing cross platform.
J++ didn't get them there. The CLR may.
The CLR is part of
Microsoft HATES sharing their monopoly with Intel. Intel may be the junior partner, but they are there. Microsoft needs to increase its leverage. The CLR makes Intel a junior partner... VERY junior.
They can talk to IBM about PPCs, or AMD about x86-64.
Microsoft certainly has cross-hardware issues. Because of them, they are only on 1 platform.
NT is extremely portable.
x86 assembly code is not.
Alex
Miguel has now responded. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-devel-list/20 02-February/msg00042.html
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