Microsoft Rep To Keynote Unix Conference

An anonymous reader writes "According to ZDNET Microsoft is going to be keynoting the Australian Unix and Open Systems Users Group conference. From the article: '"Don't be put off by Chris' Microsoft badge -- he is actually a long time Unix hacker," the user group said today in a statement updating users on presentations at the conference ... Green, Microsoft's local Unix Interoperability and High Performance Computing specialist, will update the conference on his company's "Unix and open source-related activities, including their efforts to provide a POSIX environment in Windows, and to integrate Windows and Unix systems."'"

Comments

I call bull hockey!

[yagu]

From the slashdot article:

will update the conference on his company's 'Unix and open source-related activities, including their efforts to provide a POSIX environment in Windows, and to integrate Windows and Unix systems.'

I call bullhockey on this. A lot of slashdotters probably aren't even old enough to remember when Microsoft first came out with NT. Their PR releases were all abuzz with their new advanced technology OS with special emphasis on their intent to have a POSIX compliant OS. At the same time they talked me into working for them (took three offers, a signing bonus, and a pretty nice stock option offer), under the ostensible work they'd have for me to provide support for their POSIX subsystem.

Once I was in the door, and within the first week I attended what was described as a "presentation on NT's POSIX subsystem", presented by the POSIX team. That team turned out to be a guy named Matt (don't know his last name).

The project manager Margaret (don't remember HER last name) got up before the presentation and said (and I can only paraphrase, I don't remember verbatim, but guarantee the accuracy of the spirit of her comments): "Before we proceed with this presentation, there's one thing I (Microsoft) want to make clear. The POSIX subsystem is a check box. We're only doing it to fulfill the requirement to have POSIX so we can get government contracts."

I was almost physically ill, what was to be MY role (my background was Unix) if their POSIX was to be a sham? (BTW, not only did they not intend to support it, they only implemented the API portion of POSIX, not the user environment and utilities.)

I called Larry Kroger who was in charge of things and desparately asked him what I was supposed to tell people who were asking POSIX support questions. He told me, "tell them we don't support it.". What if they ask about future plans for POSIX? He replied, "tell them we have no plans.".

Forgive me if have doubts about Microsoft's purity in "plans" today to do POSIX.

Oh, and for the record, anyone who doubts my accounts... the entire presentation was videotaped (1992), as were all of their internal presentations. I only assume it would still be available today but if it is, it will reflect my accounting of events.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[hkb]

Welcome to 1995. I guess you didn't hear that Microsoft bought OpenNT (later known as Interix) back in the mid-1990s and created a product called "Services For UNIX" out of it, and that this component is free, mature and gives you virtually a full UNIX-like environment. So, it's not "in the works", it's already out there. However, it will soon be included in Windows by default, which is what these marketdroids are essentially saying.

That Microsoft created the original POSIX subsystem for government compliance is NO secret at all, as it's been openly "admitted" at several official MS events throughout history. It was basically a stupid little feature thrown in to meet a stupid little government requirement thrown in by some UNIX zealots to try and keep UNIX around.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

Except now Microsoft has Softway's Interix POSIX subsystem which is a full POSIX subsystem both by API and environment. Microsoft has been offering the product for years, rolled it up into Services for Unix about three years ago and then decided to give it away for free about two years ago.

But we knew about this story. Only months ago did Microsoft mention that Services for Unix was going away. Instead it will be rolled directly into Windows.

So it's not the same old game. It's not the POSIX subsystem that MS put together for NT. This is the POSIX subsystem that Softway sold as a commercial product. 3000 API and 300 applications, including a slew GNU applications (yes, MS does have the source on their FTP site.)

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Halfbaked Plan]

Actually, as a registered owner of two copies of Softway System's Interix, and one copy of the crippled subset of it that Microsoft released after purchasing it, and further an observer of the further crippled version they now call Services for Unix, I call bullshit on you.

Microsoft bought Softway Systems to keep it a limited phenomenon, and to make sure it shrunk in power, didn't grow. They probably had Softway Systems by the balls in the first place, of course, because in order to get access to the trade secrets to integrate a powerful POSIX api with the NT kernel, they probably signed mega-NDA contracts.

I do remember that there was a period before Microsoft purchased Softway Systems when Softway was sending out appeals to the Open Source Community asking if Interix should be 'open sourced.' Not sure if that was a sham appeal or not.

But 'Services For Unix' is not _For_ Unix. It's for defending against Unix.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are ABSOLUTELY DEAD ON with your observations. We discovered Interix, and had very high hopes for using it, and even were in contact with its engineers about their product, how we liked it, how we wanted it to grow, etc. But they were living in constant fear of their lives. You are right, they had to do heavy duty NDA, and then when it came time to renew licensing Microsoft turned the screws essentially squeezing them out, then buying them. Forget growing THAT market... the last thing Microsoft wanted happening was people being able to have multiple accesses from remote Xwindows stations to ONE Windows box! I hated what Microsoft did for that!

As for Unix Services... it is the most convoluted and nightmarish suite to install. And it's (at least not yet) free... I typically run Home Edition cuz I don't think the extra $100 is worth it just to have IIS (I run apache). And you have to have PRO XP to install Unix Services. Yeah, Microsoft know exactly what they're doing.

Posting anonymously.... -yagu

Re:I call bull hockey!

[bani]

they hired him promising him one thing, then reneging.

of course, it's simply par for the course for microsoft. speaks volumes about their lack of ethics.

Re:I call bull hockey!

[Halfbaked Plan]

I posted my observations about direct before- and after-Microsoft experience with Interix. Yes, I bought 'Microsoft Interix' after the Microsoft purchase thinking it MIGHT be the same thing as Softway's Product.

It wasn't. With Softway Interix it was easy to install various services that made it trivial to install services to telnet into NT and run a command prompt, with programs like vi and other common Unix shell-based tools. The vi editor mysteriously disappeared in Microsoft Interix, becoming an awkward binary you could at considerable effort locate, download, and install. With Pre-Microsoft Interix you basically had a complete and fairly robust POSIX shell to log into on your NT box.

Stating at the end of your comment what Microsoft re-purposed Interix to be for is a distraction from what Interix was before the Microsoft acquistion. Be honest and admit Microsoft's strategy was to castrate the product.

Strange Days

[FishandChips]

Looking forward to the next Washington State Unix and Open Systems Users Group which will be keynoted by Dame Edna Everidge (mistakenly hired by Microsoft as an f/oss advocate after Eric S. Raymond turned down the job offer).

Hey, maybe they do things differently down under. Take folks as you find them. Whoever this guy is, he could well have some very interesting and useful things to say. Claiming that the guy couldn't have anything worthwhile to say because he works for Microsoft is pretty dumb as well as rude to the local Australian group.

READ THIS BEFORE MODERATING PARENT!!!

[GameMaster]

Every name listed in the parent is the name of a person from the X-Men comics.

Ororo Munroe = Storm
Erik Lehnsherr = Magneto
Henry McCoy = Beast

1407 Graymalkin Lane is the fictional address of Professor Xavier's mansion.

The parent post is a troll.

-GameMaster

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[cortana]

You can use ext2fsd to read from and write to ext2 partitions. It can handle ext3 in read-only mode.

Here you go (sort of)

[ag-gvts-inc]

http://www.fs-driver.org/
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm
http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/
http://freesourcecodes.tripod.com/ext2.htm
http://p-nand-q.com/e/reiserfs.html
http://www.wolfsheep.com/map/#RFSGUI
http://www.it.fht-esslingen.de/~zimmerma/software/ ltools.html

The above links were all gathered from http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm I've not tried any of them, but this one looks the most polished. YMMV, knock yourself out, etc.

Re:Here you go (sort of)

[mixmasterjake]

I used Ext2FS Anywhere by Paragon a while back on a dual-boot machine. The Linux partition just shows up like a regular drive in windows explorer. I paid the $29 or whatever for it. Used it that one time, then never again. They also make Mount Everything which does the same thing plus more stuff.

Re:First suggestion for Windows interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

If microsoft would actually give anyone sufficient information about NTFS to write good support for it, it would be written.

Re:David Korn

[BlueLightning]

It didn't go quite like that, but the basic story is true. Here it is, from the man himself:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/06/203020 5

Re:Mini-Question about VMWare and Windows

[csirac]

Because VMWare is way too slow.

Have you even used VMWare? Servers are headless. As long as you're not doing anything graphically intensive, VMWare performance is quite acceptable. The GUI is still quite responsive. In fact, browsing, word, etc. activities fool the user into thinking it's running native when in full-screen mode. You honestly can't tell until you go to play a movie or a game (movies still work, mostly).

In fact, using VMWare to manage servers is where VMWare excels.

He said he wanted to use it as a server under a Linux host.

And this, along with running servers under Windows hosts, is a _EXACTLY_ what a large portion of VMWare's core business is, apart from being useful for helpdesk operators. Check out their two most expensive products: "server infrastructure". And not that everyone uses GSX/ESX for "server" work either; I'm not the only one who has found VMWare Workstation edition useful in consolidating windows (and *NIX) servers onto one machine.

Even if Microsoft supported VMWare it would not get any faster due to the way it works.

MS _DOES_ support VMWare. WHQL certified drivers and everything.

If he wanted to use a virtual Windows server, something like Xen is the only choice.

Perhaps you should add a little disclaimer to your comments, something along the lines of "that's what I think, but I don't know because I've never used it, never researched it, and in fact I don't know anything about it all".

See my other post in this thread.

Re:David Korn

[10Ghz]

"Due to Korn shell being one of the more popular shells written for the UNIX Operating System, Microsoft decided to include a version of it produced by Mortice Kern Systems in a UNIX integration package for Windows NT. This version was not compatible with ksh88 (a Korn shell specification), and David Korn mentioned this during a question and answer period of a Microsoft presentation during a USENIX NT conference in Seattle in 1997. Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager who was participating in the presentation, not knowing who the commenter was, insisted that Microsoft had indeed chosen a "real" Korn shell. A polite debate ensued, with Sullivan continuing to insist that the man giving the criticisms was mistaken about the compatibility issues. Sullivan only backed down when an audience member stood up and mentioned that the man making the comments was David Korn."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Korn