MS To Offer Windows Sans WMP, If EU So Orders

PSwim writes "Microsoft has said it will remove Media Player from Window, if ordered by the EU this week. The 'Windows-Lite' version will only be available in Europe. Best quote from the article involves its refusal to release networking documentation: '"The Commission says Linux would disappear" if Microsoft did not grant access to its documentation, Smith claimed. "But Linux is alive and well and I don't know any person at Linux or any Linux programmers who share the Commission's view."'"

Comments

The NFS/CIFS (SMB) marketing war

[rduke15]

SMB has actually been documented by MS.

From The future of CIFS by Jelmer Vernooij of the Samba team:

2.2 The NFS/CIFS marketing war

During the internet hype in the nineties, Sun and Microsoft got in a fight about which remote file system API was going to make it. Sun was promoting NFS, Microsoft was promoting SMB.

In order to get SMB supported by other vendors, Microsoft did a couple of things:

• They renamed SMB to CIFS. CIFS stands for "Common Internet File System". This name change was just for marketing purposes, there is no real technical dierence between the two
• Several proposed standards were published explaining the syntax of the protocol. They have all expired by now.

Samba even got donations from Microsoft during this period, including funding for trips to conferences and MSDN donations. Microsoft developers were encouraged to work with Samba developers to get a working implementation of a SMB server and client on Unix.

Microsoft won the war. CIFS became the standard (for LANs, at least). After this, they lost interest in having other vendors support CIFS. Rather, they tried to get everybody to use their products.

Re:ha-ha-ha

[rduke15]

I have the general notion that (A) Samba has been implemented without any documentation from MS

Wrong! See other comment in this story

Re:Shitty submission - Rebuttal

[PSwim]

William,

As the original writer of the submission you so eloquently call "shitty," I felt the need to respond a bit.

• "media player" is a generic term, "Media Player" (note the capital letters) refers to Microsoft's player. No one would care if Microsoft said they would remove _a_ media player from Windows. Thus, there's no point in wasting space to refer to Windows Media Player in full.
• "What, Microsoft will refuse to remove WMP if ordered next week?" Considering they've said, on many occasions that removal of WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER (see? redundant) is impossible, it's interesting to note that they will remove it.
• "Windows-lite" was what the article used.
  

  Europe would be the only place where "Windows-lite" -- i.e. Windows without WMP -- would be sold, Microsoft said in a briefing note for reporters.

  You did read the article, didn't you?
• Fine. I should've used Microsoft's instead of it's. But again, would it really make sense for the article to refuse to release networking documentation?
• The "at Linux" quote was included because it is relevant the state of mind of the spokesperson, Smith. It shows that he is not properly educated on what exactly this Linux thing is and a lack of understanding on his part, unfortunately, leads to a lot more people being misinformed.

I wish people would read the article and think about it before posting (flaming). Then again, I'm starting to be kind of old around here. ;)

Re:The version will contain a poison pill

[shotfeel]

Quick tip to get rid of that nagging "Upgrade to Quicktime Pro" message (works on Macs, not sure about Windows):

Set the computer's date to some time in the distant future (say 5 years ahead), start Quicktime player, get the message and respond as usual. Go back and reset the date correctly.

The "Upgrade to Quicktime Pro" prompt will disappear until that future date you used.