Microsoft Continues Anti-OSS Strategy

MacDaffy writes "Microsoft's General Manager of Platform Strategy, Michael Taylor, continues Microsoft's press blitz against Open Source in general and Linux in particular in a CNET Interview. He says of Linux: 'You can build it, design it, and it will work great. The trouble begins when you want to add things to it...(due to) the brittle nature of the platform, when you do that, other things break.'"

Comments

Oh yeah, people didn't understand buffer overflows

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The original internet worm exploited a buffer overflow in the finger daemon. So for a Microsoft spokesman to stand up and say that this wasn't understood 10 years ago.

I mean c'mon. That was in 1988; by computing standards that was prehistoric. Everything Microsoft wrote should have been looked at for that bug ever since. They didn't. Microsoft didn't even bother to look at security issues much at all until a few years ago. Unix was ahead of that curve by 5-10 years.

INDEMNIFICATION???

[Laura_DilDio]

First, companies need to have some level of indemnification and protection from the technology deployed.

This guy is spreading SCO-FUD. If you use FOSS technologies, you might open yourself up to being sued by some IP holder.

However, it turns out that Microsoft doesn't offer much more than FOSS when it comes to backing their product. The following is from the WinXP EULA:

16. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES. The Limited Warranty that appears above is the only express warranty made to you and is provided in lieu of any other express warranties or similar obligations (if any) created by any advertising, documentation, packaging, or other communications. Except for the Limited Warranty and to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Microsoft and its suppliers provide the Software and support services (if any) AS IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, and hereby disclaim all other warranties and conditions, whether express, implied or statutory, including, but not limited to, any (if any) implied warranties, duties or conditions of merchantability, of fitness for a particular purpose, of reliability or availability, of accuracy or completeness of responses, of results, of workmanlike effort, of lack of viruses, and of lack of negligence, all with regard to the Software, and the provision of or failure to provide support or other services, information, software, and related content through the Software or otherwise arising out of the use of the Software. ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, QUIET POSSESSION, CORRESPONDENCE TO DESCRIPTION OR NON-INFRINGEMENT WITH REGARD TO THE SOFTWARE.

WTF does the NON-INFRINGEMENT statement refer to?

To quote Tonto...

[schon]

"What you mean 'WE', Kemosabe?"

There's really nothing innovative today that Linux does that we can't do.

If by "we" he means Microsoft, then the response is "well duh" (after all, they *do* have the source code.)

But the obvious response is "then why don't you?"

I use Linux machines as routers for a local school district. A couple of weeks ago, the HD in one of them died - and nobody noticed (well, I noticed when the nightly backup didn't happen.) This machine was doing packet filtering, traffic shaping, and policy routing (iproute2 rocks! :o) And when the HD died, the machine kept on ticking. This isn't the first time I'd experienced it, so I recommended to them that they not panic and deal with it during the regular maintenance period (on the weekend.) It kept happily running until I powered it off to replace the drive. I've no doubt that it would have continued to run until the power ran out (which would have been a long time, as it was on a big honking UPS.)

Let's see Windows do traffic shaping.
Let's see Windows do policy routing.
Then let's see it keep running when you rip out the hard drive.

Re:This is true...

[ccady]

For those of you who don't get it -- zoom in to the max.

Re:Joel on software

[someone300]

"no one has a real true standard to enforce anywhere."

"A standard way of doing things are key to appeal to a large audience."

Freedesktop standards
Gnome HIG
KDE Guidelines
If I use either KDE or Gnome, I very rarely use applications that don't match the environment. My desktop of choice is Gnome, and I've found it much more consistent than the windows GUI.

Windows User Experience

Office (XP anyway) is really inconsistent. I normally use Microsoft Word, in which every new document opens in a seperate window. However in Excel, the new documents actually open in a new window inside the main excel window, but they create another application button on the taskbar, giving the illusion that it's opened in a seperate window.

Sometimes I've had 1 document open that I've not edited, and 1 that I have edited. I'm used to Office bugging me to save documents even when I've not edited them, so when I hit the big "X" button on the window, and it asks to save, I just click "no" because being a human, I don't read messages that I expect to say something, stupid I know. I lose my work.
I'm not the only person this has happened to either...

I know I'll probably get modded troll or something...