Microsoft's New Core OS Team Learning from Linux

sokk writes "Seems like Microsoft is paying attention to the Linux way of doing things. According to itworld.com, a new central engineering division will work on the core of Windows: "The Windows Core Operating System Division (COSD), within the company's Platforms Group, will be responsible for the core OS platform, including development, program management and testing, Microsoft said in a statement sent via e-mail.". A little further down the page analyst Rob Enderle: "They have been studying Linux extensively. Part of their study has been on how Linux has been able to maintain a high level of consistency in the kernel while groups around it maintain maximum flexibility,". "

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Release Date

[thebatlab]

"By closely controlling the OS core, Microsoft will be able to better ensure that Longhorn will arrive on time and meet its quality and security objectives, Enderle said. He expects Longhorn to come out in the fourth quarter of 2005, provided that a beta becomes available as planned in 2004."

Looks like they're still looking at a 2006 release. (Come on, fourth quarter 2005 always means 2006).

The question is, will assembling this team help them meet that goal or will the initial organization of it take away some time and delay the project more?

I can't say from experience on what the effects of forming a new style of management to a project, no matter how capable that style is, will do as a project is underway but I'd assume there would be some hassles to start things off with and get the ball rolling.

Re:Makes you wonder....

[brain159]

No No NO. Did you not read the Groklaw article yesterday or thereabouts pointing out that this scenario is not true?

The penalty for abusing GPLd code is not the compulsory re-licensing of everything. If you're in breach of the terms of the GPL license, then you're breaking copyright law. Nothing makes their proprietary code suddenly open, unless they decide to comply with the GPL rather than fight/settle/re-code.

Re:Not new

[IvyKing]

It was at one point clear (DOS/Win3.1), but then the GUI started to "own" many features (net support, and even CD-ROM access!) from 95 on - and they finally did away with the separated "core system" from ME on.

The earliest versions of Win NT kept the GUI code out of the kernel, but that was changed in later versions of NT to improve performance. Bear in mind that NT was much more of a resource hog than OS/2.

More importantly is the corporate culture - M$ has played fast and loose with programming in the past, e.g. the original IBM PC and their first software for the Mac.

IBM PC - Intel's databooks for the 8086 specifically stated that interrupts below 20H were reserved for future versions of the 8086 family - IBM and M$ then proceed to use those interrupts for the BIOS routines.

Mac - Apple had many programming guidelines that were intended to allow migration to future versions of the 68000 family (e.g. don't use the upper 8 bits of addressing for flags). When Apple came out with a 68020 version of the Mac, a lot of the M$ software was broken by the upgrade.

Re:Only a matter of time

[Theatetus]

They already do shared source for their "partners". I got to see some Windows code when I was trying (and eventually failing) to write a driver.

And don't forget that you can see the source code of Windows CE if you want to.