Microsoft to 'Support and Usurp' Unix

qedramania writes "Computerworld has a report on the latest Windows server release and their Unix strategy." From the article: "R2 is built on the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and is geared towards specific workloads such as storage management, branch office server management, as well as identity and access management. It also provides a subsystem which supports Posix applications."

Comments

The Borg Queen ... er ... King?

[eldavojohn]

To manage the applications, R2 will provide shells - a command language interpreter - to run Unix scripts and Telnet clients. On the tools front, Visual Studio will provide a debugger for Posix applications. These developments will make it easier for users to migrate Unix applications to Windows, said Lowe.

That, in conjunction with enabled NFS & Unix Network Information System support, looks to me more like assimilation than usurpation. I think it's obvious that we're going to see Microsoft try to migrate Unix server applications to their server platform while at the same time trying to pluck the best parts of Unix (hopefully security!) for their own OS. Let's not kid ourselves, both sides could learn a lesson from the other in a wide variety of areas.

I guess Slashdot's picture of Gates as a Borg is applicable more now than ever ... but, in my personal opinion, I kind of see this as a good thing.

Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King?

[babbling]

It really depends on what they're up to. Their past efforts have shown that they're not too interested in being compatible with Linux/Unix, so this is suspicious.

One reason they might be doing this is to counter free software. Currently, projects like Samba have been making good progress toward connecting Unix and Windows computers. Samba is free software. By Microsoft closing the connectivity gap themselves, they can close it with closed-source, proprietary software. This means that they can control connectivity. If they so choose, they would then be able to break it off completely at any time.

So, this might just be a grab for power.

Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King?

[IntlHarvester]

If anything, I'm suprised it took them this long to take "UNIX" seriously.

One of the biggest thing that's been going on in enterprise computing is the widescale dumping of UNIX/RISC in favor of Linux on cheap x86 boxes. Microsoft has almost entirely missed out on this movement. If they can make Windows into a half-decent *nix, there's certain a big growth opportunity for them.

And while the usual crowd is suspicous of MS's motives, I'm sure there's some developers out there excited about Microsoft embracing* a non-proprietary "industry standard" API. It's a big step for them. No longer would you need special Windows ports of software like Apache and Postgres --- in theory, you could just "make install".

* word used with caution

Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King?

[Bloater]

I think Microsoft is *very* interested in being compatible with Linux. If Windows can become the very best choice for heterogenous networks, then it becomes an easy decision for *any* users and *any* network. The default question when making a buying decision will be "What compatibility bug prevents us using Windows here?". If there isn't one, they'll buy Windows.

Part of the reason for enterprises to choose Linux so far has been "It works in nearly any point in our network, so we can always just install Linux servers". Since purchase price is not a big issue for business users, the only downside to Windows would be client access licenses. If they got rid of those and bumped up the initial purchase price of Windows server systems, Linux would be hurt very, very badly.

Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King?

[gutnor]

They don't like being compatible with Linux/Unix when we are talking about Windows to Unix.
However they are not stupid, they must make sure people can migrate to windows nicely with the less trouble as possible and AFTER lock them in proprietary technologies.

They want to kill Open source ? Sure but I don't think this release in their new killing machine, just a part of their global strategy. In fact, the posix subsystem has been around for a while and is beter know as Interix or Windows Service for Unix. This is already quite powerful, but having it more tighly integrated is really a big plus. There are still lots of border problems occuring. Running 100% unix app. is easy, but when starting to have windows starting to call/pipe themself between subsystems you start to get into troubles. This new release will polish windows/unix cohabitation for example using Visual Studio for debugging or calling Windows API from the unix subsystem.

Now, is that evil Microsoft trying to lock the world ? I think that when a company goes the way of using the Unix Subsystem, they already made the choice of migrating to Windows with everything implied. The new release ease a little bit the pain of the developer and give more flexibility to project manager ( like more option to stage the work ), so for me it is a good thing: those 2 are the workers in the migration, not the decision maker or the one getting the free 1st class trip at Redmond, so a little help is always welcome.

BTW, in our case, thanks to Interix/Cygwin we can sell our Unix application to Windows only customer. That sometimes works the other way around.

Re:The Borg Queen ... er ... King?

[ILikeRed]

To manage the applications, R2 will provide shells - a command language interpreter - to run Unix scripts and Telnet clients.

So typical of Microsoft - it's 2006, and to compete with Linux they start offering Telnet clients rather than something actually useful and secure like ssh. I can picture the sales calls and interviews right now, "well, they insisted they wanted Linux compatibility, it's not our fault that Linux telnet is so insecure, if only you had done your implementations the Windows way."

If you cant beat them...

[tsa]

If you can't beat them, join them!

Yawn.

[Vengeance]

Will they get more than an '80% POSIX complaint' OS out of this effort?

And does anyone who uses a real UNIX actually care?

Anyone else see the contradiction?

[pandrijeczko]

At a recent media briefing in Singapore, David Lowe, senior product manager, Windows Server, Microsoft, cited interoperability with Unix as one of the key features of Windows Server 2003 R2.

So how come Jeremy Allinson and the other SAMBA guys have such a problem getting technical details out of Microsoft about the inner workings of SMB for their product that allows "Windows interoperability with Unix"???

Re:Anyone else see the contradiction?

[Azarael]

By interoperable they mean that Windows software will be able to make use of Unix software without having to give anything back in return. Otherwise known as a 'One way street'.

Re:Anyone else see the contradiction?

[lkcl]

the POSIX subsystem, like all microsoft "announced products", reappeared coincidentally at around the same time that opennt.com, which provided a full third party POSIX subsystem, disappeared.

anyone may, if you have sufficient information on how the NT kernel works or are prepared to reverse-engineer it (like the ReactOS guys are doing), write their own subsystem. there are THREE types THAT I KNOW OF: OS/2, Win32 and POSIX. okay, maybe there are four now - win64.

having a POSIX subsystem sit on top of the NT kernel, which is a microkernel based on the Mach microkernel, is NOT the same as having fast and direct access to the NT kernel functions.

and the reason why the samba guys have such difficulty getting information is because there either ISN'T any (it's all in the code) or there's too much!

the only reason why the CIFS documentation effort was initiated by microsoft is because the original people who worked on it (having embraced-and-sensibly-extended the IBM Lanman SMB spec and also the X-Open SMB spec), having retired with their stock options up to millions, left no clues as to how this HORRIBLY complex code worked.

it was therefore ESSENTIAL that they get it documented.

the first time they released cifsbrow.txt, in 1997, because i'd just spent five months network-reverse-engineering the network neighbourhood and WINS server code, i spent a WEEK throwing email messages at them, explaining various inconsistencies, helping them improve the documentation they'd created. it takes TWO YEARS to correctly implement the network neighbourhood. it's a FULL peer-to-peer registration and management system, very robust, very complex, _extremely_ good, and people have xxxx-all idea of quite how useful it is ("oh, it's netbios - switch that xxxx off")

after the first CIFS conference, andrew, jeremy and i hung around for an extra day: i got to meet the guy responsible for the network neighbourhood, and spent a good couple of hours drumming into him the things that had been forgotten since the email flurry - there's nothing like meeting someone face-to-face to explain stuff, as you well know.

so.

i'd say that the reason proper documentation doesn't "exist" is partially deliberate, and partially it's your average development/management incompetence.

l.

Come on with the links...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do article submitters assume us UNIX guys know all the latest buzzwords and upstart companies in computing? For the uninitiated, Microsoft are a software publisher who sell a toy operating system called Windows.

How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many programs were developed for UNIX (or Linux, or ...)? For example, Apache? Now runs on Windows. Postgresql? Now runs on Windows. There is a LARGE amount of formerly UNIX-only software, much of which is open source, that can now run on Windows. Microsoft is no dummy. They too, just like SCO, can leverage this software.

Open Source is a double edged sword -- it gives you a fantastic advantage, but at the same time, your competitors are free to use your software, your IP, your efforts. One hopes that the benefits outweigh the advantages to your competition.

The real strengths of Open Source are leveraging development and testing all over the world (lower product costs, time to market, code reuse, etc.), much lower marketing and sales costs (Internet distribution), and better quality (many eyes make all bugs shallow).

Re:How much was for UNIX and now runs on MS?

[CastrTroy]

The problem is, is that a lot of the unix software although ported to windows, doesn't run as well on windows. (i think) Apache starts a new process for each request by calling fork(). This works good in Unix where it doesn't take a whole lot of resources ( under a million cycles) to start a new process. However, just starting a process on windows takes 5 million cycles. Meaning unless the implementation of apache on windows, or windows itself is changed, then running apache on windows will always be inferior. I imagine the same problem exists on many other servers that have been ported to windows. It's nice for people to experiment with these tools without switching their OS, but really they should be switching the OS if they want the best experience possible.

Re:Oh, great...

[jb.hl.com]

Microsoft has had a POSIX subsystem for ages. It's called Windows Services for UNIX, and it works quite nicely. It's not a new thing.

NT has always had POSIX support

[gonar]

and it has always sUxx0rd. incomplete, poorly implemented, not really POSIX.

are they saying that they are doing it right now, or just pretending what is old is new?

Windows Server 2003 and the GNU Project

[NZheretic]

Windows Server 2003 R2's Unix interop feature is derived from Microsoft's Services For Unix (SFU) which pulled a lot of source code from OpenBSD compiled by and packaged with GNU GCC.

For a full history of NT, Interix and SFU, see Should that not be GNU/Microsoft SFU?

Many Microsoft users will be running a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it.