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Microsoft Acquires Winternals and Sysinternals

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the internals-are-eternal dept.

SJasperson writes "In a move that will be good for Redmond but may have consequences for the rest of us, Microsoft has acquired Winternals and Sysinternals. This gives them well-known developers Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell as well as dozens of well-loved and much-praised utilities, both commercial and freeware. Though Mark says on his blog that the Sysinternals site will remain 'for the time being,' this would be a good time to download the latest version of essential Windows tools like Process Explorer before they can go mysteriously missing or be locked up behind the wall of Windows Genuine Advantage."

3 of 471 comments (clear)

  1. People who don't buy Win* because they use ReactOS by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You're complaining that Microsoft expects you to use a purchased version of Windows?

    It's not the "purchased version" part that I'm worried about but the "of Windows" part. I'm complaining that I can't use the utilities with Wine (an independent implementation of Win32 spec, commonly used with *BSD and *Linux) or with ReactOS (an operating system consisting of Wine on top of a reimplementation of the NT kernel).

  2. Looking for Windows kernel experts... by rickkas7 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does anyone else find it a little funny that Microsoft bought out Winternals to get Mark Russinovich? According to a Microsoft employee, "Mark is one of the top five or 10 people in the world when it comes to Windows internals." I'd believe that, but isn't it just a little funny that Microsoft had to go to a 3rd party company to find an expert in the internals of Windows?

  3. Re:I never understood... by Jimmy+King · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem, as has been said thousands of times on slashdot and elsewhere, is that these measures don't stop piracy. They do, on the other hand, sometimes cause problems for legitimate users. On top of that, WGA is little more than spyware and treats me like a criminal checking everyday to make sure that my copy of windows is valid. If it was valid yesterday, why would it not be today? Add to the mix that when I purchased my copies (plural.) of XP, this WGA was not part of the software or even something that the public had been told would be in the future.

    Also, much of the complaint this time around, at least in regards to this, is not just that WGA sucks. It's that very good, useful, high quality software which has previously been available to anyone will likely be made available only to people who install useless DRM from MS. While MS may have the right to do whatever they want with the software now that they've purchased the company, it doesn't mean people have to be happy about it.