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OSS Unix: Dividing & Conquering Itself

Posted by Hemos on from the avoiding-the-monoculture dept.

(Score.5, Interestin writes "Security guru Marcus Ranum has some interesting thoughts about how a continuing lack of consistency among Unix systems (and particularly Linux) is hurting Linux (and remaining commercial Unix vendors like Sun) and helping Microsoft. Admittedly this has been said before, but no-one else quite manages to phrase things the way Marcus can."

1 of 591 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ok, and all these Windows version hurt MS too? by SnowZero · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Your argument seems to be: Windows provides backwards compatibility, while Linux does not provide forward compatibility.

    Linux 2.2 and 2.4 applications work fine in 2.6, i.e. its backwards compatibility is fine, just like Windows. As far as forward compatibility, there are a lot more apps that depend on new Windows features than those that depend on Linux kernel features. Name an app that runs on 2.6 and won't run on 2.4. Outside of the kernel, there are indeed library issues, but these are no different from DLL issues on Windows. Linux normally lets me update those without replacing the whole damn system too.