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Longhorn Server Scrapped
punkass writes "Microsoft announced Tuesday that plans for .Net Server, aka "Longhorn" have been scrapped and they will instead focus on the the release after that, code-named Blackcomb. NT4 came out in 96, 2k in 2000, and Longhorn was due out in 2005-06...Blackcomb seems to be a long time between releases."
Microsoft usually has extremely ambitious plans for its "next" release. These always seem to get watered down as time goes on. In fact, they only time they manage to get a release on schedule is when it is little more than a service pack, eg win98se et al.
Of course, now with the new licensing plan, I suppose we (or rather, you) should be lucky you're getting a new release at all.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
The Register pointed out: The Longhorn hype has got the the headlines required. Got the New York Times interview. Got the MS fanboys slobbering over vaporware.
Now it's time to cancel it; Move the goalposts; and release a small update called Longhorn with a price increase and an obnoxious new license. Result!
It keeps working for them, so why change it.
I think you are right. As far as i know, they only scrapped the server version, but will remain focused on the Longhorn Desktop version ( ie a new XP++ ?)
Guess that makes sense since the market has not yet adopted XP servers or in many cases eve not 2000. No point in releasing new server versions when noone has the time to migrate to the platforms.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
The release of new Microsoft operating system is about as exciting as watching CSPAN on a Fridy night. Should the course hold, and with a little luck, by 2005-2006 Microsoft will have been forced into about 3 other directions due to some real restrictions, Linux, and companies like IBM. News slated for 4 years into the future in the computer world means nothing.
Didn't all those people who signed up for the subscription did so on the premise of a new upgrade every 2 years or so? So now MS gets to take their money and no product to show for it.
Maybe not enough people signed up?
Security patches are to be reckoned with. However, the long interval between new Windows server releases means that there will be large differences inbetween versions. If there's something that the IT departments don't like, it's large differences. That means that there are more things that may go wrong. Their current business logic software may even need a complete rewrite if the changes are large enough.
So - I really have to wonder what crack Microsoft is smoking. They seem to be desperately out of tune with their users in the server market, and the Linux acceptance is proof. Professional users like backwards compatibility, and incremental changes. That is something UNIX and Linux provides.
Look at OSX, too. After their initial release, they've been spewing out evolutionary releases and bug fixes.
So, by having such large new server releases, they are raising the stakes for everyone - both themselves and the corporate users.
Oh well. I don't mind if Microsoft loses power and influence..
Stop the brainwash
The longer Microsoft has between releases, the longer Linux has to come up with great releases.
The same thing goes for Windows releases. MS isn't just going to twiddle their thumbs for the extra year.
Microsoft doesn't have to hurry on their next release because Win2k is good enough for their needs. There isn't a compelling reason for most shops to "upgrade" to XP. Actually, there are a lot of compelling reasons to DOWNGRADE a box from XP to 2000 [FYI, the license terms on bundled OEM XP Pro installations explicitly allows you to run 2000 Pro on that box]. MS can go on selling 2K and XP for 5 years, so they don't have a lot of pressure to get the .Net server out the door quickly. This longer release cycle should allow them to make it secure and reliable. Imagine a MS product that's ready for production at initial release. It would be a welcome change from their historical pattern: NT4 wasn't really ready for prime time until SP3; 2K wasn't usable until SP2.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I might agree with you, but remember the biggest complaint in the previous scheme was unecessary upgrades? MS can't seem to win, first they catch fire for too many upgrades with little value, now they are critized for not upgrading.
I bet there are a lot of sysadmins out there who would prefer to pay MS not to release "upgrades."
We still have a number of NT4 servers. Whine as might about Windows security and stability, our servers run fine. Microsoft needs to push this off so they can actually come up with a compelling reason for anyone to want to upgrade. When their licensing is set up so you pay thousands of dollars for the software and thousands more for the seats, coming up with a reason to buy should be somewhere on their priority list. If what I read is true, they're planning on building a database filesystem off of the SQL engine. That's something that might be useful, as opposed to .WHOTHEHELLCARES
XeoMage
Exactly what I was thinking.
Pay for a three year subscription, and you get all the updates during those years, free! Well, great deal... if there are any updates released during those years. Otherwise, you basically paid the same amount you would have for an upgrade version, but never got one. It's completely to Microsoft's advantage to scale back on their release cycle with the new licensing model. It used to behoove them to get version upgrades out as soon as possible, to reap the rewards of the release. Now, they are getting everyone to pay for the new versions before they are released, and there's not much pressure to roll them out.
No relation to Happy Monkey
I don't think it reduces their motivation. Actually, I think it might increase it now.
Think about it, with a guaranteed upgrade revenue stream, the pressure is off of them to release a new version every other year to keep profits up. It might actually allow them to focus on quality (yeah right) and actually put features in the OS people really want.
Of course, pigs could fly too.
--WooooHoooo--
Personally, I don't know why Microsoft would have released .NET server next year, and then followed a year later with Longhorn. It doesn't make any sense. Every shop I've ever worked in or worked with as a consultant had a general rule of never upgrading Microsoft's server platform until it had been out for at least 6 months, if not a year. By the time these guys finished doing a deployment of .NET, Longhorn would be hitting the streets. At least by pushing the schedule back to Blackcomb, they are getting to a more reasonable timeline.
Personally, I think Microsoft should maintain a 4 year release cycle on their server OS, and a 2 year cycle on the desktop OS/productivity suite. Anything shorter and you are going to outrun your customers. I mean, if you are running a big, multisite network with 2000+ users, do you really want to deploy an OS upgrade every year or two? Hell, I know of at least one large, multinational company that is still standardized on NT 4.0 Server and Windows 95 (and as far as I know, they are going to milk it as long as they can). Besides, a 4/2 cycle is pretty close to your average lease times on hardware, which simplifies deployment since you can time your OS upgrades with your hardware upgrades (at least, on the desktop).
The only thing Microsoft gets by releasing a new OS every year is a lot of people skipping versions. Maybe they finally clued in to that fact?
It does, but I'm not sure that is what's happening here. I'm certainly no big Microsoft fan, but I suspect it's more likely that there are other forces at work here.
- There are some serious changes promised in Longhorn. They may be taking longer to work some of the kinks out.
- Court approval of the settlement with DOJ may give them incentive to retool their business plan to find ways around the contraints, or achieve their goals while working within those constraints.
- EU pressure may be giving them pause to consider just what they will be releases in the next version. If I recall, the EU investigation was more concerned with the server side of things.
- Security and stability -- maybe after getting slapped around so much lately about security and stability, they are taking the time to nail down some of the problems. I think given the current security-frenzy that the United States is going through that security holes will matter much more in the next release than it has in the past.
- Linux -- it's entirely possible that Microsoft is taking the time to make roll out something that has a better chance of removing this thorn in their side.
Or, I could just be grasping at straws.GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
However, the long interval between new Windows server releases means that there will be large differences inbetween versions. If there's something that the IT departments don't like, it's large differences.
Not to mention accumulating cruft in the exsting releases.
Anyone here have to put up with NT4.0? Between option packs and service packs and patch rollups and old 4x CD-ROMs, correctly installing an NT4-based IIS server was basically an all-day affair. Not to mention numerious things that could be screwed up, leaving goatse-sized security holes. Not even MS could keep the hotfixes straight.
Then Windows 2000 comes, which is great, but requires an order of magnitude more network planning for Active Directory. Many places still haven't bothered.
The key bit is the next server release after 2003 is when MS will scrap classic LanMan/NT4-style networking. At that point many customer networks are going to break, and they might just as well switch to something cheaper (Linux). MS might have wised up and chose to push that date out as far as possible.
It's a dual-edged sword -- MS got into the server market for being simple, cheap, and partially autoconfiguring. Then big customers start demanding lots of complexity, and you end up with expensive, complex, and requiring good admins. Novell never quite survived the introduction of NDS -- it will be interesting if MS does better with AD.
Looks like the Microsoft Thought Police beat you to it - just tried that link, and ended up on the .NET homepage.
It's when they start erasing the evidence of flaws in previous versions of Windows that I'll be scared, though...
-MT.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Is it possible that MS is starting to lose control of it's own software? Maybe we are seeing the boundaries of what can be accomplished in a restrictive, closed source development environment.
Kindly name me one major innovation from the past ten years that I can take home to my Linux install that isn't a copy of a MS innovation.
OSS definitly gets better qualitity--but I have yet to see an example or hear a theory that gives OSS an innovative edge over closed-source.
Please feel free to correct me if you can.
Oh, kinda like WMP8 then. A horrible interface that takes up 200% of the screen real estate as the media that you're viewing, with built-in software to "protect the user" from copying images from one medium to another all the while promoting Microsoft-patented media formats on the net.
I can't wait!
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
The idea is for example, viewing a picture would use the same user interface as listening to a music source.
That way, when I need to figure out how to zoom in on the picture I'm viewing, I'll remember the UI from zooming in on the music... er, no...
Well, anyway, when I need to know how to pause the music I'm listening to, it will be the same as pausing the picture... no, that can't be right either...
Well, at least it will simplify the needlessly complex interface of current music players and picture viewers, which make it very hard for new users to... er...
Why was this a good idea again?
The trick is of course that even if IT depts don't like large changes/differences, accountants and PHBs don't want to shell out tons of cash each time a minor variant comes along.
This way Microsoft can more easily guarantee good sales. Instead of a portion of the users upgrading and the rest staying with 'good enough', they get everyone upgrading for something that is significantly different (and hopefully better given the development period...)
The funny thing about innovation is that it happens everywhere. Take the upcoming version of MS Office which touts two technologies that have debuted in Free Software first. The XML formats for Office are nothing more than a ripoff of OpenOffice's XML formats, and Outlook's new virtual folders are lifted directly from Evolution and it's VFolders.
There is no question that Free Software is doing a lot of mimicking of commercial products, but that is simply because Free Software hackers are building a desktop from scratch. It's pretty tricky to build a word processor that doesn't look like MS Word, or a spreadsheet that doesn't resemble Excel. Especially considering that one of the major goals of these projects is to get people to switch to the Free Software products. Part of convincing people to switch is making the transition as easy as possible.
When you get outside of the desktop, where Free Software has to copy Microsoft to even be considered, then it is clear that Free Software has done quite a bit of innovation. The reason for this is simple, with Free Software you don't have to start from scratch each time you have an idea. Instead you can add a bit on to an already existing product.
Microsoft turns good ideas into profitable ones. Profitable for Microsoft, that is... maybe not so profitable for you if you dreamed up the idea (unless you now work for Microsoft). To paraphrase Auron, "That's what Microsoft does."
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!