Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Uncertain About WinFS for XP
Ant writes "As a follow-up to WinFS to be available in WinXP story from a few days ago, BetaNews reports that Microsoft (MS) stopped short of confirming reports that it plans to back-port its next-generation WinFS file system architecture to Windows XP. MS tells BetaNews it is only evaluating the move while also acknowledging WinFS is still years off. "We are currently evaluating making the WinFS storage subsystem available on this platform and will make the decision based on what is best for customers." a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews."
The term 'vaporware' comes to mind...
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
Its in consumer's best interests to force them to upgrade lest they be left behind and forgotten.
Douglas P. Price
They realized it's not cost effective. Nobody is going to spend extra money getting xp with winfs. They'd have to give it away free, and they probably realized it would cost them a pretty penny in developer time to get the thing to work, especially games.
"Piter, too, is dead."
By saying that they're not sure, they are safely leaving the escape route unblocked, in case they fall behind schedule again or whatnot.
Microsoft has been working on this for ten years. It is never going to happen. This was supposed to have been in 'Cairo' and has been a listed feature in every development OS since then. It is never going to release.
.technomancer
What if they include a converter, sorta like they did with Windows 98 and FAT32?
All it would do is make locating files easier, at least that's pretty much how they were shopping it around. You could do that without adding another layer to the HDD by simply having an element of the OS scan in the background efficiently.
Conversely, though, I wonder if the reason they're starting to back off of WinFS now is because including it would mean that all of those obscure file locations where companies like to hide setup files would be that much easier and faster for people to locate. I've lost count of the number of times I've needed to hunt through hidden folders to find some stupid file to edit or delete. And the search taking 30+ minutes didn't help.
Maybe instead of working on WinFS, they should focus on coming up with an alternative to the registry.
That never stopped them before!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Steve?
If I was in microsoft, I would think that backporting a filesystem wrapper over NTFS is probably a bad idea.
It's hard enough to design this WinFS, much less change all the OS components to be compatible with this filesystem. I also think the learning curve/'WTF is this' factor is too great to drop onto Windows XP users. Let it ride on Longhorn, but make sure you give a really full explanation on how to use this meta-data FS well.
I certainly don't find a need for a DB-based FS, but I know that it helps. Will it help enough people enough to make it worth implementing?
WinFS runs on top of NTFS. Get your information straight.
That article contains a wonderful example of the difference between Microsoft and the OSS movement. Microsoft is developing a new filesystem that (one would hope) is vastly more advanced than the one they currently use. Yet they're hedging about making it available for older systems, because they have yet to decide what is "best for customers".
Now, if they were really interested in what's best for customers, you'd think they'd let the customer decide on a case-by-case basis. They could just release the filesystem for older systems via an extensive patch and see what the customers decide to do. Instead, Microsoft is going to determine what is best for all their customers.
The OSS folks would just release (and have released) new filesystems and let the bits fall where they may.
Central planning versus individual choices. Remind you of any 20th-century struggles?
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
WinFS runs on top of NTFS anyway, so you probably wouldn't need to format.
And if I could get the database features to find and catalogue all my documents, pictures, music etc. then I would consider it worth it. Finding things even when organised can be a real pain after a period of time.
redundant score here I come!
It has been said a zillion times and I'll say it again because some still ignore the difference between these levels of abstractions.
Look at WinFF on wiki as they say what many have said in the previous slashdot article:
The system is loosely based on a combination of the next version of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, codenamed Yukon, and an underlying NTFS filesystem
Not actually, no. But I'll walk you through it. :)
"Vaporware" is sarcasm. Microsoft has quite a marked history of big claims and late deliveries.
No surprises here, really
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
From the posting, my emphasis:
...and please order those Microsoft WinVoting units, I don't want to do any thinking come the begining of November anymore.
"We are currently evaluating making the WinFS storage subsystem available on this platform and [We, at Microsoft] will make the decision based on what is best for customers." a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews.
Thank you...
Get your Unix fortune now!
A Public Relations representitive from Microsoft was found dead today, apparently tossed from the third floor window at Microsoft Headquarters. According to bystanders, the words "see if this teaches you to leak our stuff!" were shouted after the person was thrown out the window. News at eleven.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
MS release schedule == plan to maximize share value
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
>>what is best for customers... any time i hear a microsoft spoksmen say that, i laugh my ass off jordan
I heard recently that you might be after a 'white whale'. As it so happens I have a few harpoons from my last job at HP, I would be happy to sell them to you on the cheap.
Drop me a line if your interested.
Carly Fiorina
While MS is all on about how much better they are or going to be, the fact of the matter is that you'll get there, where YOU want to go, sooner by going more direct and without incompatable file formats, DRM type of constraints, etc..
How often does a company use a cracked version of some sofware package that they actually purchased, so to avoid the problems of the additional protection complexity?
WinFS also adds the ability for any program to use a supported format through the WinFS API, as the API uses meta data to describe the format to the program, as XML does. This allows the application that created the file to be used through WinFS to access the data, sort of like making applications into libraries. It is similar to piping in Linux, as the program produces intelligable information that another program can make use of.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
Database FS's make things easier to search for... but that can be a bad thing too.
If someone found an exploit to run queries on that database, then you can surely find passwords, addresses, vital documents, etc. in a snap!
At least when you obfuscate your folders, you make it harder for both you and intruders to find your info.
If you want a better way to find your files now, just use Google's free desktop search tool, or do a better job of keeping your files organized. I prefer the latter.
I've seen many comparisons between Tiger's Spotlight, and MS's WinFS in features... and heard from people I know that have Tiger betas running as full time desktops who say the spotlight problems & updates seem to be where the most work is going into Tiger at the moment.
Does anyone know just what the differences are in concepts here? Is Spotlight going to offer much the same functionality from the point of view of a user? Is it really even the 'killer app' it's supposed to be?
I'm curious as I've heard so much mentioned about it these last few years (10 now with Windows).
Bill: Is it ready yet?
Henchman #1: No, not ye--
Bill: HURRY IT UP DAMN YOU!
Henchman #1 and #2: Yes sir.
Bill: Damnit how long does it take to download the Tiger beta!?
*Bill scowls while looking over Apple's website*
Bill: We must hurry, it will take us surely a year to figure out how to create WinFS.
Isn't Longhorn (with WinFS) supposed to ship next year or so? With WinFS still years off, does it means that Longhorn (and WinFS) is still in vaporware status?
There are >limitless< posibilites for why microsoft would want to try out a new file system, not that I know them all. Most of the time when I read slashdot comments people leave little bits of ideas and information in their comments, kinda like everyones working in paralel out of ram (actually sometimes comments are so off the wall it sounds like they're working out of just the cache) trying to figure something out, but when theres these slashdot posts that have anything to do with microsoft everyone only sees one picture, one view, only one *real* motivation for microsoft to be doing this, lock out linux, duh, totally obvious, _everyone post this fact_
Yes, it could be true, but thats not the point, point is that nobodys is being the devils advocate here and looking for another side.
You guys are using the collective intelligence of slashdot to merely diss something instead of even thinking about it!
If Microsoft back-ports WinFS to 64-bit XP, it could hurt or help them. In one way, it could get more people to go for 64-bit systems. Those same people could make an easy transition to Longhorn because they would already have 64-bit systems.
But in another way, if they go to XP64, they might not have as much of an incentive to go to Longhorn. There would already be one 64-bit OS with WinFS. People might feel that Longhorn is unnecessary.
With all the delays for Longhorn, I wonder if Microsoft fans don't feel like Apple fans during the late 90's, eternally waiting for Copland. During the wait for Copland, Microsoft was basically ahead of Apple, since it already had a true preemptively multitasking OS and Apple fans had to put up with cooperative multitasking and frequent crashes. Now, while Apple is poised to ship OS 10.4 Tiger with Spotlight (aka all the functionality of WinFS) and CoreImage (aka all the functionality of Avalon) before July, Microsoft faces delay after delay. Of course, Microsoft OSes are frequently late (who can forget the many delays of Windows 95?), but though the release came fast and furious for 98, ME, 2000, and XP, Microsoft has been stagnating since then. Even a simple service pack has turned into a huge production for MS to produce and ship.
I think all of these signs point to MS's code base being too big and unwieldy. I don't think anyone doubts that IE is too bloated to fix. Just compare the time between the release of 5 and the release 6 to the time between the release of 6 and now. If Microsoft could implement full CSS selector support and non-broken PNG display, I'm sure they would have by now, but IE is just too tangled to fix quickly anymore.
So, if MS is wandering in a Copland-esque desert, what's to be done? As unbelievable as a suggestion as it may seem, maybe they should take the OS X route and just buy a competitor and cut their loses. Starting over from (not quite) scratch will give Windows a shot in the arm. WINE has already proven that backwards compatibility with Windows applications doesn't have to be dependent on using their existing OS code. They should just buy out Be (a good choice since they already have a metadata filesystem) or someone else with a Unix-like underpinning, and rewrite Windows the right way. It will take another 3 or 4 years, but at this rate, they're going to need that much time anyway. Spinning their wheels on Longhorn won't get MS anywhere. If MS wants to innovate (and that's a reasonable question), it's time to take a chance, kill Copland, and try something new.
Nethack?
liquidwar?
matrem?
dpkg? apt?
rpm?
grub? lilo?
aptitude? synaptic?
imagemagick?
Xaos?
m4?
evolver?
nmap? nessus?
Python? Ruby? (I won't count Perl; it's based on awk.)
* Any number of biology and astronomy tools, of which I've got seven or eight.
ALSA?
Ogg? FLAC?
TeX?
3ddesktop?
apache?
lynx? (No, I wouldn't say it's an immitation of IE, Netscape, or even Mosaic.)
And that's just the stuff I've got installed on my computer. I don't feel like going through thousands of Debian packages just to drive home a point further.
What about programs that were developed independantly? I've often had an idea, started coding for it, and then discovered it had already been done. (Heck, some of them had even already been patented.) Who's to say that some of the OSS programs out there that have commercial counterparts weren't thought of independantly?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I suppose that there is the usual chaos at Microsoft in the marketing department where a makreting person says something that is meant as the usual Microsoft vapourware in order to gather customer interest but where it is so obviously out of sync with actual developments that someone else has to clarify things a few days later.
.Net by default, Avalon, Indigo, WinFS) to be used by a critical mass of developers and users or else it could very possibly fail as badly as MS Passport did.
I presume that marketing also realised that too much talk about Longhorn features being backported to XP could significantly harm sales of Longhorn when it eventually does come out as people will obviously then simply use those features in XP instead of upgrading, thereby making the usual Windows version chaos (some 15% of all Windows users are still using Win98) even worse and pulling down MS' revenues.
On the other hand, MS knows that it needs to have some way to get the new stuff (XAML,
Damned if they do and damned if they don't. Strangely, I feel no pity with them whatsoever, as it was their own predatory monopoly practices, where they would kill their foes with beneath the belt tactics in order to get that very last 3% of users that they didn't already have, i.e. they were never prepared to sacrifice anything in order to have a cleaner and more unified user base.
"...will make the decision based on what is best for customers."
That's why I love 'em. Always thinking of what's best for their customers.
Insert witty sig here.
The grandparent was implying there were few, if any, Open Source software packages that weren't basically immitations of commercial software.
And you didn't even begin to address the bulk of the list. Guess that's what one should expect from an AC.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Speaking of unlikely partners, I think I would rather Reiser4 be available for Windows.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
You might want to take a look at Apple then, they hired the guy who designed the BeOS filesystem to work on Spotlight. It's a pervasive search interface that indexes everything on your drive(s). The demo video is pretty impressive.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
A Microsoft spokesperson also proudly announced that WinFS would be the underlying filesystem for Infinium Labs Phantom Gaming Console. "It's a great opportunity", he stated. "With the optimizations we've added to WinFS, Duke Nukem Forever will absolutely scream on the Phantom."
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Inst predates not only tools released by companies called Slackware or Red Hat, it predates the companies themselves. By a decade or more. It's been around since God was a boy, and it's still the standard by which these things are judged. I think Sun had one too, but I forget the name. The command-line program was called "pkgadd" or something like that.
And boot-loader programs like Lilo merely simulate firmware boot prompts that, again, have been around since God was a boy. The standard three-phase boot process -- firmware, a stand-alone bootstrap program, the kernel -- is not new. It's just that the PC world never had proper firmware, so the interactive and diagnostic aspects had to be shoved one step up the chain to the bootstrap program.
The disadvantages are legion. You can't do basic things like control power to the system's components from Lilo. You can't even enable or disable CPUs or memory, because Lilo runs in the CPUs and main memory. It's an incredibly poor substitute for a real firmware command monitor, really.
Based on what is best for customers, my butt.
They will make the decision based on what's best for Microsoft. I don't think the customer has mattered to Microsoft much since about Windows 95. In fact, 10 years later, I'd argue that customer welfare is near the bottom of their priority list.
Offhand, I can't think of a single move they've made in the last 10 years that really and truly had customers in mind. Being in a monopoly position, their mindset has shifted away from 'what services can we offer in exchange for money' to 'how many feathers can we pluck from the goose with the minimum amount of squawking'.
They've always been nasty, hardball competitors, but at one time they shipped some pretty kickass software, too. Word for Windows was particularly good. Even that horrible flop, Bob, was at least well-intended. But now that they are in a position of real power... if you'll notice, they never, ever ship anything that's really disruptive of or threatening to their main monopoly.
Most likely, their internal studies will be focused around how much money they can make and how much customer lock-in they can manage. Will giving it away free give them enough power to be worth losing the cash from selling it? Should they sell it at a low price, to generate some cash but get it into fairly widespread circulation? Should they sell it at a high price to corporations, to gather lots of cash but gain little leverage over filesystem standards? Should they bundle it only into Longhorn to help 'encourage' upgrades? You can rest assured, thoughts like "Is this technology something that every Microsoft customer should be able to use?" will never even occur to them.
Whatever their actual thought process ends up being, actual customer welfare will not enter into it.
First, WinFS winds up not being a new file system, but a system on top of the NTFS file system. (Or, at least, that's their current statement on what it is)
/. regarding MS beating all sides of the horse until it is pulp? What exactly are you looking for? Someone to say that WinFS is going to be great? It isn't, and everyone here knows that MS is wholly incapable of delivering something like WinFS is claimed to be. It'd be like arguing that you could go back in time and buy Manhattan for a few beads + 1.
Second, WinFS is stated to be a DB like layer of the file system, improving search and visual representation by offering multiple views. You'd think they would have done this with email clients first, yet they cannot even make this happen in an intuitive way. I seriously doubt that WinFS will happen anytime soon. Earlier, I'd made the statement that WinFS would indefinitely delay Longhorn, which apparently I was correct in, as WinFS was pulled from Longhorn.
I laughed when they stated it would be released for XP in castrated form - no network connectivity, hell, MS can't even show a "network neighborhood" in a reasonable amount of time for a small network (only about 1000 nodes, takes more than a minute easily, long enough for me to forget to time it or try it again).
In any case, Longhorn will wind up being mostly eye candy that will lead to a slew of new problems (MS "innovates" new bugs like no one else;)
As for Devil's Advocate, isn't anything on
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"and will make the decision based on what is best for customers"
Uh, don't the customers get to decide what is best for themselves any more?
(Hour later: Okay, it's up now) Cindy: Why is my computer so slow and the disk light on all the time? Programmer: It's indexing every file. Which requires unzipping every zip file and cab archive and calling upon special document translators to extract the text therefrom. It all goes into a big hash table in RAM or VM more likely. Cindy: Why is it really slow for about a day after I install this other app? Programmer: Well, it had to index all the installed files, including all the help files that are already indexed by the help file system. But don't worry, you can set a checkbox for "low priority indexing". Cindy: So this gloabl index of everything may be hours of days out of date? Programmer: Wellllll, yep. Cindy: Hmm, maybe it's not quite ready for the average Joe yet?