Developers As Pawns and One-Night Stands

jcatcw writes "At the Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust case, last Friday's testimony included evidence that James Plamondon, a Microsoft technical evangelist, in a 1996 speech referred to independent software developers as 'pawns' and compared wooing them to trying to win over a one-night stand. Last week's proceedings also included testimony by Ronald Alepin, a former CTO at Fujitsu Software Corp. and currently an adviser to the law firm Morrison Foerster LLP. He said that Lotus 1-2-3 was killed, in part, by Microsoft encouraging Lotus's programmers to use the Windows API even though Microsoft's own developers found it too complicated to use." The plaintiffs have created a site that includes transcripts of testimony presented in the case.

Comments

Woo

[somersault]

Yay for Microsoft bashing.

The API thing is hilarious though, if it's true..

Re:Woo

[jellomizer]

I am guessing you havn't done much Microsoft Development. Did you ever wonder why MS Has features in their programs that you cannot program easily using Microsofts tools. When Office allows the fade in with graphics and colors menus in all their product while your API only allowed the text only popup Menus. MS Does do this. It is not about MS bashing it is about MS not giving us the tools to create modern applications.

Re:Woo

[Anonymous Coward]

What more tools than a programming language, and an API for basic operations, are really needed? Office looks the way it does, and has as many features as it does, because MS spends a significant amount of money developing it. Give any other software program the resources used to develop Office and I am sure that it would look 'modern' as well - no matter what API is used.

Re:Woo

[Blakey Rat]

That's a dumb question. Office menus look the way they do because they're written from scratch to look that way. Hundreds of applications for every OS ever made do this, that doesn't mean that there's some huge conspiracy, just that the Office team spent more time getting their menus right than you did and enough time to QA is so that people like you would be tricked into thinking it's some hidden part of the OS. How paranoid are you? Programming menus isn't some "magic operation" that can only be performed by the OS, any decent programmer can make their own pull-down menu implementation. I'm sure Photoshop and other applications of Office's size do the same.

Now asking *why* Office does this, that might be a valid question. But implying that it's some kind of conspiracy is stupid.

Hell, Apple used to provide basically a plug-in architecture for drawing menus, windows and buttons since they knew overriding the default appearance and behavior would be popular. It was a code resource in Mac OS Classic and if you had one in there, Mac OS would automatically load your code whenever it needed to handle a click on menus. (Obviously a bad idea from a security standpoint... it was disabled long ago.)

Re:Woo

[somersault]

No I've never developed a GUI with a Microsoft product. Okay, I was forced to use Visual Basic at one point in Uni, and I've written DLLs for Counter-Strike and LabVIEW in Visual C++, but they didn't have GUI components.. but anyway, your point is maybe that the Microsoft Office developers went around the Windows API to create more fancy menus? I don't even notice if an application has funny fade in menus, I switch off all that crap as soon as I can in the interests of getting to what I want *quickly*..

Re:Woo

[codepunk]

It is not really a conspiracy but a well known fact that they do not publish large portions of
their api's. This fact has been brought up in court numerous times. Just recently they tried to hold
back the security api until it became public they where doing so. If it was just a conspiracy they would not be having to produce a actual published api for the EU.

When you develop software for windows you are coding on a platform owned by your direct competitor. The fact that they hold back stuff for internal use should really be no surprise.

Re:Woo

[CockMonster]

Rubbish, check out owner-drawn menus in the MSDN documentation. THere's nothing to prevent you from doing kind of thing yourself. I've done it.

Re:Woo

[rune420]

I don't know about the fading, but it's relatively simple to use a bitmap as a menu item using the Windows API. It's covered by Petzold in the Programming Windows book.

Re:Woo

[clodney]

Citations please?

I've never seen confirmation that MS apps make any significant use of non-documented OS APIs. The Office group writes much of their own code to be sure, but most of the big players do that.

It is easy enough to use a dependency checker and find all the symbols that a program imports from a DLL. If you cross reference the imports with the documentation in MSDN, it is easy to spot something that is not documented. Given all the axes to grind out there, I can't believe someone hasn't done this already, and I dont recall reading about all the incriminating evidence that was found.

A more plausible claim, and one much harder to prove or disprove, is that the Office team has access to Windows source code, so that rather than creating something from scratch they can just grab a copy of the menuing code and create their own version.

Re:Woo

[cnettel]

And that's exactly how you will notice that they do it their own way, you can turn off animations in Windows, Office will still do it. Office 97 would always "roll" down menus, even when used on Windows 2000, where the default setting was "fade-in" with "nice" alpha effects.

Re:Woo

[drsmithy]

It is not really a conspiracy but a well known fact that they do not publish large portions of their api's.

You are wrong.

This fact has been brought up in court numerous times.

Cite some examples.

Just recently they tried to hold back the security api until it became public they where doing so.

This is not correct.

If it was just a conspiracy they would not be having to produce a actual published api for the EU.

The EU has asked for documentation of protocols, not APIs.

Re:Woo

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...MS Has features in their programs that you cannot program ... MS not giving us the
> tools to create modern applications.

Which is the very reason that Microsoft should have been broken up. When they won't even eat their own food, they should be slapped down hard for it.

Re:Woo

[MobyDisk]

Looking at your resume, you haven't done much Windows API work, and in 1996 you hadn't done any. So let me correct a common misconception about Windows API programming:

There is no reason that someone else could not make controls that fade in with graphics and color menus. No secret Windows APIs are or were required to do this, even at that time. Windows has always allowed applications to draw whatever they want in their windows, and that includes transparency and fading. The win32s extensions for Windows 3.11 even offered support for non-rectangular windows. Even easier, Microsoft licensed their Office controls to applications developers who wanted to do it. There are no special undocumented API calls required to do this stuff.

Re:Woo

[plover]

Even Microsoft documented at least one! Here's a comment in the Win2K source code that got leaked onto the net a few years ago:

private\mvdm\wow32\wcntl32.c: // These undocumented messages are used by Excel 5.0

(I found that on kuro5hin).

While I agree with you that the current Office developers are simply good and talented coders and aren't simply leeching off of some undocumented API for their spiffy graphics, it's long been alleged that Microsoft has used undocumented APIs for Office. While I can't find the cite, I believe this was a key part of the anti-trust lawsuit.

You can see "documentation" for many of them on the Sysinternals site. One thing I'd warn against is actually using these calls in production code. Undocumented means unsupported -- MS could decide tomorrow to yank these in their next XP hotfix, and your code would be left hanging high'n'dry. Not that they're likely to do it, but what if one of these had a worm come along exploiting it? The quick and obvious fix would be to simply remove it.

Re:Woo

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Office is written using WTL rather than MFC, which has been available to developers for a long time. The fact here is that they promoted the relatively more dumbed down MFC to developers. I think they promote these tools to developers because they see developers as being largely dumb. MS want as many people as possible writing code for Windows so they promote the "easy-to-use" product over the advanced product.

Having spent the last 6 years writing Windows software, I have to say that most of my peers are not much better at programming than script kiddies. So, its probably a good thing that MS promotes these dumb tools.

Re:Woo

[Mad Merlin]

Even if an API is documented, MSDN is frequently wrong. Just try asking a Wine developer.

Re:Woo

[fencehouse]

Have you looked at WPF (.NET 3.0) yet? Fading in graphics and colors is trivial in it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#.NET_F ramework_3.0

Re:Woo

[bcat24]

What idiot modded you flamebait? You're 100% right. If you want the stock Windows look, don't do anything. If you want the Office look, you have to write some code (or download it of the net) to get it.

Re:Woo

[DoofusOfDeath]

When you develop software for windows you are coding on a platform owned by your direct competitor.

Great sound-bite. Thanks!

Re:Woo

[codepunk]

No, you are wrong

Ok Windows fan boy, chew on this a little bit..

In its Findings of Fact, the District Court found that Microsoft had repeatedly withheld such information from ISVs, or used its disclosure as an incentive for 'friendlier' behavior, in an effort to preserve the applications barrier to entry (Findings, 84, 90, 91).

The rest I am not going to bother addressing, go back to playing with your rental operating system.

Re:Woo

[symbolic]

As development goes, it's this kind of a lame way to do things? Wouldn't you *want* a standard UI across all applications? Or is Microsoft just so entrenched that it really can't be bothered with issues like this?

Re:Woo

[WhiteWolf666]

Is this site a lie?

http://undocumented.ntinternals.net/

Re:Woo

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

I always found that really retarded. You would think Microsoft would want everything looking consistent(and not like the clusterfuck that is GTK/QT/other widgets in X desktops). Instead they make office not even use your windows theme, or even simple preferences. Why do any apps do this, let alone such a popular one by microsoft? It's bad enough seeing IM clients think they need there own skinning engine, but a word processor? Come on.

Re:Woo

[I'm Don Giovanni]

When you develop software for windows you are coding on a platform owned by your direct competitor.

Great sound-bite. Thanks!

And this differs from Mac, how?

Re:Woo

[jacekm]

I don't think they have to publish anything. It is their code and they can do whatever they want with it. Microsoft never claimed to be an Open Source software manufactiurer, nor it is realying on Open Source for it's business model. In the extreme case they don't need to publish any API at all. That of course would kill Windows as we know it so they are forced to find the right balance how much they have to publish and how much they don't. Your argument is nonsensical because if they so called "rely on hidden features" they are the ones who wrote them anyway. They did not steal that code from anybody else. Their competition should stop crying like a bunch of small babies and should write their own "hidden features" instead of trying to steal them from Microsoft through the court system. I havn't seen any published API by the Adobe to expose how exactly Photoshop has it's interface so different from the regular Windows API. Is that a crime too ? JAM

Re:Woo

[vtcodger]

***I've never seen confirmation that MS apps make any significant use of non-documented OS APIs.***

Or go prowl around the WINE web site www.winehq.org. You'll find lots of complaints about missing, lousy, and inaccurate documentation from Microsoft. e.g. from the WINE FAQ "That said, the documentation is often bad, nonexistent, and even misleading where it exists, so a fair amount of reverse engineering has been necessary, particularly in the shell (Explorer) interface."

And, if I recall correctly, complaints that many API features have no known use or usage -- which would make resolving ambiguities in the documentation no small job. But secret APIs? No I've never seen any indication that the folks who are trying to make an Open Source clone of the Windows API think that Microsoft is deliberately hiding parts of the API.

The evidence suggests that the problem with the MS APIs is marginal competence in documenting and implementing them, not malice. i.e. The crummy documentation is most likely as much of a problem for MS as it is for WINE.

Re:Woo

[Foolhardy]

Even Microsoft documented at least one! Here's a comment in the Win2K source code that got leaked onto the net a few years ago:

private\mvdm\wow32\wcntl32.c: // These undocumented messages are used by Excel 5.0

Wow32 is Windows on Win32, i.e. the Win16 API. Excel 5.0 was released in 1993. Microsoft wasn't an OS monopoly in 1993. Your one example is 14 years old-- too old.

You can see "documentation" for many of them on the Sysinternals site.

For one thing, that site is from ntinternals.net by Tomasz Nowak, unrelated to Sysinternals by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, which was recently bought by Microsoft.

The functions on that site are indeed largely undocumented (many of the functions are officially documented as part of the DDK, but only for use in kernel mode). The functions are considered private to the OS. No one is accusing Office or other Microsoft non-OS products from using those functions. They are only used to implement the Win32 API and some system services. I, too wish that they would document those since they are considerably cleaner and more stable interfaces than the Win32 equivalents, but please don't confuse private parts of the OS with special functions for MS applications.

Not that they're likely to do it, but what if one of these had a worm come along exploiting it? The quick and obvious fix would be to simply remove it.

It'd be very infeasible for them to remove any of those functions; they're used heavily inside the OS to get things done. Never has a working function in the native API been removed or seriously changed. It'd be like removing the mmap() syscall from the Linux kernel in response to the mmap() vuln they had a while ago.

Re:Woo

[sgt_doom]

This is news??? This is pretty old stuff and anyone who isn't aware of this "news" needs some massive catching up to do....

Re:Woo

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, a lot of us don't particularly like the taste of bill gates, and don't appreciate something we don't like attempted to be shoved at us against our will. Judging from your handle you don't have the same qualms.

Re:Woo

[drsmithy]

Is this site a lie?

No.

However, you need to read about the architecture of NT to understand why it's irrelevant.

Re:Woo

[ScrewMaster]

UpdateLayeredWindow and TransparentBlit (and a ton of other very-well-documented graphics API calls) have been in there since Win2K, at least. I use them all the time to generate fades and other effects. It's not hard.

But ... that's now. And I'm sure Microsoft still hides a lot of stuff.

Re:Woo

[codepunk]

Ok again here you go....a little citation for you, this from the court they heard the evidence and the verdict is in the document for all to read.

In its Findings of Fact, the District Court found that Microsoft had repeatedly withheld such API information from ISVs, or used its disclosure as an incentive for 'friendlier' behavior, in an effort to preserve the applications barrier to entry (Findings, 84, 90, 91).

Re:Woo

[segin]

Fine, tell me how to unmute the Master and Wave mixers, and set their volumes to max all in one C routine.

Here's my code (parts of it are stolen from tutorials):
void SetVolToMax(void)
{
HWAVEOUT hWaveOut; // Handle to sound card output
WAVEFORMATEX WaveFormat; // The sound format
HMIXER hMixer;
MIXERLINE MixerLine;
MIXERCONTROL mxc;
MIXERLINECONTROLS mxlc;
LONG lVal;

double x;
int i, Done, ret;

MixerLine.cbStruct = sizeof(MIXERLINE);
MixerLine.dwComponentType = MIXERLINE_COMPONENTTYPE_DST_SPEAKERS;
mixerOpen(&hMixer,0,0,0,0);
mixerGetLineInfo(hMixer,&MixerLine,MIXER_OBJECTF_M IXER |
MIXER_GETLINEINFOF_COMPONENTTYPE);

mxlc.cbStruct = sizeof(MIXERLINECONTROLS);
mxlc.dwLineID = MixerLine.dwLineID;
mxlc.dwControlType = MIXERCONTROL_CONTROLTYPE_MUTE;
mxlc.cControls = 1;
mxlc.cbmxctrl = sizeof(MIXERCONTROL);
mxlc.pamxctrl =
mixerGetLineControls(hMixer,&mxlc,MIXER_OBJECTF_HM IXER | MIXER_GETLINECONTROLSF_ONEBYTYPE);
MIXERCONTROLDETAILS_BOOLEAN mxcdMute;
MIXERCONTROLDETAILS mxcd;
mxcd.cbStruct = sizeof(MIXERCONTROLDETAILS);
mxcd.dwControlID = mxc.dwControlID;
mxcd.cChannels = 1;
mxcd.cMultipleItems = 0;
mxcd.cbDetails = sizeof(MIXERCONTROLDETAILS_BOOLEAN);
mxcd.paDetails =

mixerGetControlDetails(hMixer,&mxcd,MIXER_OBJECTF_ HMIXER | MIXER_GETCONTROLDETAILSF_VALUE);

printf("lVal = %d, %#x\n",lVal,lVal);
mxcdMute.fValue = lVal | 0xa000;
printf("lVal = %d, %#x\n",mxcdMute.fValue,mxcdMute.fValue);

mxcd.cbDetails = sizeof(MIXERCONTROLDETAILS_BOOLEAN);
mxcd.paDetails =
mixerSetControlDetails(hMixer,&mxcd,MIXER_OBJECTF_ HMIXER |
MIXER_SETCONTROLDETAILSF_VALUE);
mixerClose(hMixer); // ** Initialize the sound format we will request from sound card **
WaveFormat.wFormatTag = WAVE_FORMAT_PCM; // Uncompressed sound format
WaveFormat.nChannels = 1; // 1=Mono 2=Stereo
WaveFormat.wBitsPerSample = 8; // Bits per sample per channel
WaveFormat.nSamplesPerSec = 11025; // Sample Per Second
WaveFormat.nBlockAlign = WaveFormat.nChannels * WaveFormat.wBitsPerSample / 8;
WaveFormat.nAvgBytesPerSec = WaveFormat.nSamplesPerSec * WaveFormat.nBlockAlign;
WaveFormat.cbSize = 0; // **

Developers, developers, developers

[Oddscurity]

Witness for yourself the l33t powers of Microsoft's wooing. Not exactly worrying, is it?

Re:Developers, developers, developers

[Fred_A]

No wonder they're getting Pwned...

Re:Developers, developers, developers

[ScrewMaster]

I had always thought that Steve Ballmer bears a substantial resemblance to a younger Peter Boyle in need of some serious anti-psychotic medication. That video confirms it.

And I'll be throwing chairs

[ettlz]

in paroxysms of passion. "One-night stands! One-night stands! One-night stands! One-night stands!"

Re:And I'll be throwing chairs

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a "one-night stand"? Is that when you stay up all night playing Doom?

Re:And I'll be throwing chairs

[ettlz]

You either (a) are being disingenuous; (b) are well self-controlled; or (c) frequent this place enough to have a username by now.

Re:And I'll be throwing chairs

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Ron @ Novell should be well over his one night stand with Steve by now.

Re:And I'll be throwing chairs

[itwerx]

Well Ron @ Novell should be well over his one night stand with Steve by now.

Eww...

      That would take therapy, and antibiotics.

Interesting stuff...

[a_karbon_devel_005]

The agreement even states that Apple will encourage its employees to use Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh for all Apple-sponsored events and will not promote another browser to its employees. I had no idea Apple had agreements like this.

Re:Interesting stuff...

[ZivZoolander]

I dont know if you remember, but at one point microsoft owned a substantial share of apples stock, there are a lot of left over agremments from that time. Apple has since able to buy back the stock. Even though there is a big seperation between the users of the two platforms, you will not evade the fact that apples board of directors will allways play to microsofts needs for two big reasons. first, If apple should fall on hard times agian, they now the only place they can go for help. second, they are symbiotic companies, they need each other for survival. (though i think microsoft forgets this and treats apple like its bitch(which will be its achilles heel)

Re:Interesting stuff...

[a_karbon_devel_005]

Actually, according to the transcript, the reason for the agreement to promote IE was not "symbiotic" or even stock-driven. Microsoft basically threatened to stop making Office for Mac unless Mac agreed to promote IE over Netscape.

Re:Interesting stuff...

[drsmithy]

I dont know if you remember, but at one point microsoft owned a substantial share of apples stock [...]

No, they didn't.

Re:Interesting stuff...

[GeckoX]

Close...but what mattered to Apple was not no more MS Office, it was 'Hey, we'll save your company, but there are some caveats'.

Using IE was one of those caveats.

Re:Interesting stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at the time, Internet Explorer was the best browser with all the features for Mac.

iCab was in some of its earlier preview releases, Netscape Communicator 4 required a certain amount of skill to keep from crashing... That's pretty much all the other browsers available at the time.

Of course, as Woz said, IE also made the rest of the system mysteriously less stable.

Re:Interesting stuff...

[ZivZoolander]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/july-dec 97/apple_8-6a.html this artical only references one of many deals made that year. I remeber the SEC going over every penny making sure that all the transactions were legal. Microsoft also did a coulple other things in good faith that year becasue it was in deep poo poo, and around the time microsoft monopoly ruling. and wanted it to look like apple was a viable competitor, which at the time apples market share was a joke, as was its balance sheet. (no offense to you mac people, PLEASE REALIZE THIS IS NOLOGER THE CASE, just stating facts to the best of my recolection) Im actually impressed that i remembered this 10 years later, wow.

Re:Interesting stuff...

[drsmithy]

[...] this artical only references one of many deals made that year.

Microsoft certainly owned _some_ Apple stock, but they came nowhere near "a substantial share".

I remeber the SEC going over every penny making sure that all the transactions were legal. Microsoft also did a coulple other things in good faith that year becasue it was in deep poo poo, and around the time microsoft monopoly ruling. and wanted it to look like apple was a viable competitor, [...]

In the context of the anti-trust case, Microsoft and Apple were not competitors - so it wouldn't have mattered a whit how well (or badly) they were doing.

[...] which at the time apples market share was a joke, as was its balance sheet. (no offense to you mac people, PLEASE REALIZE THIS IS NOLOGER THE CASE, just stating facts to the best of my recolection) Im actually impressed that i remembered this 10 years later, wow.

At the time of Microsoft's $150 million investment (in non-voting stock), Apple had over a billion dollars *in cash* available. The suggestions that Microsoft "bailed Apple out" are ridiculous on their face - it was widely considered to be an unofficial payoff for Apple to drop their ongoing legal matters against Microsoft (ironic that Apple's subsequently soaring stock price probably made Microsoft quite a bit of money).

It's just the name of the game

[MikeRT]

Were Java developers any better off until the recent open sourcing of Java? Not really. Neither were most independent developers. When you do that work, you are tying part of your future to another company's good will. That's all there is to it.

Re:It's just the name of the game

[biz0r]

Correct and thats one of the big reasons OSS is so appealing and works well...it removes that 'tie in'.

Re:It's just the name of the game

[MaggieL]

Were Java developers any better off until the recent open sourcing of Java? Not really. Neither were most independent developers. When you do that work, you are tying part of your future to another company's good will....

Some companies' good will was somewhat more credible than a "one-night stand" even before Java was open-sourced.

Re:It's just the name of the game

[Alex P Keaton in da]

With all the legal issues involved with hiring and firing employees, I think we will see employment contracts move closer to sports contracts (for more senior level employees) and you will see year or two or five contracts for employees that other companies can buy out if they want to....

Re:It's just the name of the game

[Anonymous Coward]

"Were Java developers any better off until the recent open sourcing of
    Java?"

Well yes, in a Word. For one thing Java has never really been controlled by a single vendor and the JCP, for all its faults, has worked pretty well for around 10 years now.For another the source for much of Java has always been visible and available and clearly specified. And finally whilst Microsoft deliberately keeps parts of the Windows API hidden from developers to give it an edge, the same has never been true of Java.

Re:It's just the name of the game

[Dragonslicer]

It doesn't remove the tie-in, since these things can change just as easily in an open source program as they can in a closed source program. The difference (which of course is still a benefit of open source) is that the change is transparent, so you have a chance, though probably a very small one, of fighting against that change. And in the worst case, you can undo the change on your copy of the source code and recompile.

tagged as Duh!

[jellomizer]

Well I am shock and surprised . Have you noticed that Microsoft products tend to have features that you can't easily program yourself. Say back in the late 1990s where Office had icons next to the menu options and Microsofts Own development tools didn't allow you to do so. Or crappy grid controls or page controls (in which Microsoft FoxPro had much superior ones that didn't appear until .net) MS Developers tools force use to stay 10 years behind the times.

Re:tagged as Duh!

[tfinniga]

While some of your complaints are valid, like there not being easy-to-find hooks in the UI that are used by Microsoft products, others are specious. Specifically, complaining about the grid controls in MFC not being as good as the ones in, say, FoxPro.

FoxPro was initially developed in a cross-platform manner, by a different company. Also, the team inside Microsoft that eventually took it over was separate from the MFC team. There's really no reason why you should expect that all of their custom controls should be made available as part of a library. It's not like they wrote to some hidden high-quality grid control in the MFC that wasn't exposed to non-Microsoft developers - they just built a better grid control using the same interface that was exposed to everyone, the same way you'd have to if you wanted the same functionality. I've seen some code for the grid control of another MS product, and it is pretty much straight to Win32 drawing calls, event handling, etc. It looked like it was very painful to get right.

Of course, I'm personally of the opinion that MFC is total crap, but then again I've been spoiled by well-designed libraries like Qt.

Re:tagged as Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

icons next to menus? they were not operating system menus, they are a custom implementation. Grid controls in foxpro etc were custom implementation for the particular product and probably not easily reusable.

its probably only when other projects in the organisation start saying "hey thats cool, can we use that" that everything starts to get made more generic and eventually gets released to the public.

Re:tagged as Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Office had icons in its menus? What kind of example is that? It's as if you're trying to plant stupid arguments in otherwise valid commentary thread and that way make the whole thread seem ridiculous. That was now second "office had icons in menus" argument I see here.

Re:tagged as Duh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear tool, if you don't like Microsoft development tools then migrate to another tool-chain!

Re:tagged as Duh!

[jonwil]

Can anyone show any proof that microsoft applications are using API calls inside core windows DLLs that microsoft hasnt documented?
There ARE APIs in the core windows DLLs that are undocumented. But those are for use by other parts of windows and are not used by MS application products (I havent seen any use by microsoft products)

What's The Big Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see those remarks as being any worse than what RMS or anybody on slashdot says about Microsoft.

It's funny to see how much whining you people do when you get dissed. Talk about thin skinned.

Re:What's The Big Deal

[a_karbon_devel_005]

ISV's are, in essence, Microsoft's customers. RMS is not a customer of Microsoft. That's the difference, really.

This is Microsoft employees saying their customers, the ones they're supposed to be developing good API's and such for, are pawns and they should never be catered to.

Re:What's The Big Deal

[Aim Here]

Erm, the point isn't that he heaped abuse on independent developers. The point is that it helps to show the mindset of Microsoft when it was alleged to have actively attacked and drove said developers out of business, which is the unlawful activity Microsoft is accused of, in an actual court case.

Similarly, if someone's accused of a racist attack, then the prosecution can bring a character witness to show that he made a number of racist statements.

It's a different situation with someone verbally attacking Microsoft. We're not in the dock for committing crimes against Microsoft.

See?

Re:What's The Big Deal

[SnarfQuest]

This is Microsoft employees saying their customers, the ones they're supposed to be developing good API's and such for, are pawns and they should never be catered to.

Umm, those aren't Microsoft's customers, those are their competetors.

If you find a profitable software niche, Microsoft will notice and try to take over that business. If they can't take drive you out, they will do whatever they can to make it unprofitable for you.

Look at their past efforts: Compilers, Word processing, spreadsheets, web browsers, virus protection, console games, etc. If someone else has the affront to make any real money on any form of software, Microsoft will do whatever is necessary to destroy them, no matter what the cost to them is, or how long it takes.

I'm always amazed that companies still make "deals" with Microsoft, as they almost always get screwed. I predict that Novel's deal goes south within a year. Microsoft should already have a plan in the works, probably set up long before the ink was dry on the original agreement. So long Novel, sorry to see you go.

Re:What's The Big Deal

[try_anything]

Umm, those aren't Microsoft's customers, those are their competetors.

I understand your confusion. It's a sick truth that people don't face up to easily, like Jake Gittes in Chinatown:

Evelyn Mulwray She's my daughter.

Jake Gittes slaps Evelyn Mulwray.

Jake Gittes I said I want the truth.

Evelyn Mulwray She's my sister. (Another slap) She's my daughter. (Another slap) My sister, my daughter.

Two more slaps.

Jake Gittes I said I want the truth!

Re:What's The Big Deal

[PetManimal]

This former MS evangalist actually apologized, kinda. It's here

Pawns?

[sproketboy]

More like peons.

Stupid-ass Question

[Blakey Rat]

If you're writing an app for Windows, what is the alternative to using the Windows API? How could Microsoft develop Windows applications without using the Windows API? Was Lotus seriously considering developing Lotus 1-2-3 in Java? (Although that might explain the trainwreck called Lotus Notes.)

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Eivind]

I dunno. But one alternative is to use the API of some toolkit, and let the toolkit deal with the specifics of any one platform.

For example, you could program your app using the API provided by QT, and have QT deal with the rest. This would give you the added benefit that your application would work cross-platform.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[sqlrob]

There the Windows API that's published, and then functions that no one other than Microsoft (and reverse engineers) know about. That's what they're talking about.

The original example from Win 3.1 that's always talked about is a certain timer function. The function that would provide timers to programmers could fail with insufficient resources, and you had to code around that. MS had an API, not in the documentation, used in Office, that would return a timer no matter what. They never had to code the error condition, where everyone else did.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[tfbastard]

I found that wording a bit strange too. I'm not sure about the timeline, but MFC was released/unleashed in '92.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Blakey Rat]

Uh, ok. That doesn't sound like that much of a burden on developers, if that's the most important undocumented function in the Windows API. Really, the most amazing part is that Microsoft in the late 80s/early 90s could code a function *guaranteed* to return a timer no matter what else was happening in the computer... what did it do when there was no memory? Just randomly remove another program from RAM?

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed his point, and got caught by the simple, common example.

Microsoft actually had two layers of API. There was an internal API used by other Microsoft employees, and the public API advertised and documented for other devleopers to use.

There were several articles in Dr. Dobb's Journal detailing diferences between the APIs, written by people who were trying to tear under the hood in ways Microsoft STILL describes as criminal.

Some of the public API structures did nothing but rearrange the arguments, call a delay timer, and then call the internal API. Seriously.

The material described in these articles was part of the first big push about Microsoft abusing it's monopoly position. After all, people were builidng proof that Micorsoft was specifically making it impossible for anyone to write applications that could finction as cleanly, quickly, smoothly as Microsoft's own, or that could even be as small as Microsoft's own. They used the natural OS monopoly to make it impossible to compete fairly in the application market for that OS.

I wonder why Microsoft calls the efforts to uncover the API differences criminal?

And for those who want to call this blatant Microsoft bashing, go check Dr. Dobb's Journals from the early Windows 3.1 era for yourself. I don't have to make this up. The facts do more bashing than anything I could make up.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[joshsnow]

How could Microsoft develop Windows applications without using the Windows API?

Well, AFAIK, Microsofts own apps do use the windows API, but the published Windows API (available and recommended for use by third party devs) is only a subset of all that's available.

People are crying foul because some of the hidden stuff is quicker/easier to use/more reliable than the published stuff thereby giving MS an advantage when developing its own apps over a 3rd party doing the same (1-2-3 vs Excel for instance) AND making it much more difficult to produce an API call conversion layer (like WINE) on a non-windows platform which will acurately and completely run MS windows apps.

The only reason I can think of as to why they wouldn't publish the full API is that the hidden parts are unstable and subject to frequent change - which can't be true when they're using those hidden features in major business applications.

(Although that might explain the trainwreck called Lotus Notes.)
No it wouldn't.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[CastrTroy]

Reverse engineers? Are those like the reverse vampires who only go out in the day?

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[sqlrob]

That's far from the most important. There's undocumented IPC that's faster than others, functions for getting system information and more. There's several books on this, this is the gold standard for one set of the APIs. Note that this book *alone* covers several hundred calls, and it's not complete.

And Office (as of at least 2003, don't know about 2007) uses undocumented functions. Compare the import tables of the executable and DLLs to the libraries provided with the SDK and the export tables of the system DLLs. I don't know what these functions do, but they're linked in.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Blakey Rat]

I really don't see how it even matters. It's Microsoft's OS, they can do what they want with it. It's not like there's some kind of ANSI standard for Windows applications that they were violating or anything. Even more so since they weren't a monopoly at the time... it's not Microsoft's fault that Apple, GeOS, and Amiga all failed to catch on.

Hell, considering the stance of other computers makers at the time, you should feel lucky Microsoft let you write applications at all. A lot of them either didn't allow third party developers at all, or charged outrageous fees if you even wanted to start making a program for their system.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Constantine XVI]

Qt, Gtk+, Swing, Tk, wxWidgets, VCL, etc.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Blakey Rat]

Add to the end of my question ... at the time Lotus 1-2-3 was still relevant. We're looking at maybe 1995 at the latest. How many of those toolkits existed then?

And of course, all of those *do* use the Windows API anyway, so it still doesn't really answer my question. The only way I know of to code a Windows app without using the Windows API is using Java.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[SAN1701]

By that time there was already Delphi, which wraps most Windows API in a beautiful, well organized OO library called the VCL, and generates single-file executables (no DLL Hell) with C-like speed.

I use Delphi since then, already did dozens of small and medium apps with it, and, altough sometimes necessary, it's pretty rare to use direct Windows API calls. AFAIK, one of today's most famous application made with Delphi is the Win32 client for Skype, but many shareware and corporate apps uses it too.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see how it even matters. It's Microsoft's OS, they can do what they want with it.

No, they can't - not while they are monopolists. That's they way the anti trust laws work.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Children, Lotus 1-2-3 pre-dates Java considerably. Heh, I guess a lot of you neophytes don't even know what Lotus 1-2-3 actually is and Java is the oldest programming language you know of. Somebody need a stupid-ass diaper change?

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[coredog64]

Uh, that book documents NT kernal internals. It's not public and it's not guaranteed to be the same from release to release.
Any function call that starts with a 'Zw' is "don't fucking touch it unless you really know what you're doing."

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[coredog64]

The only way I know of to code a Windows app without using the Windows API is using Java. You may not be using the Windows API directly, but it's not like Sun could do everything they do without it.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[vdboor]

If you're writing an app for Windows, what is the alternative to using the Windows API? How could Microsoft develop Windows applications without using the Windows API? Well consider reading about Windows NT, Secret APIs and the Consequences (Google Cache). There is a private hidden API under the Win32 API calls. For example, NtCreateProcess is the internal function used by the CreateProcess function. The Win32 API only exposes a small subset of the available API functions in Windows. From the article:

(..) when Microsoft released Internet Information Server (IIS), it significantly outperformed Netscape Server on the NT Platform. Microsoft insisted that its developers had not had any additional acceess to information than had Netscape developers. Yet after careful review, Netscape developers were able to utilize previously undisclosed information about NT in their own products. Future releases of Netscape Server were competitive with IIS in subsequent testing. If you write programs using a documented API, the programs run slower. The second quote illustrates that Microsoft uses the hidden APIs to make their applications the best in any particular market:

Microsoft can write application code that can run optimally on an operating system, has advance knowledge about future releases, knows which programming method to choose over another, and can tweak the OS code prior to final relase to advantage3 its own applications. If you perform the costly task of reverse-engineering the hidden APIs in order to compete with Microsoft, they change those hidden APIs to favor their products.

If the product becomes popular or makes money, Microsoft can make a faster competing product using the real system calls, or they can change the real NT system calls out from under your product at the next release of NT. In either case, Microsoft can cause their competing product to inherit your market.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see how it even matters. It's Microsoft's OS, they can do what they want with it. Since they control 95%+ of the desktop market, it does matter. All APIs and should be completely open. All document formats should be completely open. And royalty free.

IMHO, it should be a law to require specs to be open for any app/os/format that has more than 33% of a market.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[shadowmas]

java uses windows api's as well it has to since that is the only way to interact with the I/O devices.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[darkmeridian]

The Microsoft software team probably used internal hooks or direct calls to memory that other programmers did not know about. I think he means other teams were encouraged to use documented Windows APIs instead of software hacks. There was a good reason Microsoft should have been broken up into an application and an OS group.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[cnettel]

And up until Office dropped Win9x support, it's quite obvious that they didn't rely too much on the internal NT API...

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[wrook]

Even if you don't have another API to use, you always have the option of rolling your own. Even now Windows developers have to make these choices. Do we stick with the unbelievably stupid grid controls and look like a "Windows App", or do we make our own? The problem with making your own is that Microsoft keeps threatening to change the look and feel of everything meaning that you either play catch up with them, or use their API. Personally, I'd rather play catchup. But edicts tend to be handed down from management telling you that you *must* use the Windows API (because they've been scared by Microsoft). .Net is a huge improvement in the situation. But you've got to wonder... Office is Microsoft's flagship product and I *still* have to jump through hoops to make my app look and work like that. I think this is a challenge that Mac programmers, for instance, don't have to deal with as much.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[wift]

Insightful my ass, just because he ends all his sentences in question marks? 123 was pretty much dead in the water before java was even out. And Lotus Notes isn't done in Java nor is it a train wreck.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[sqlrob]

I've had to use these before, and they're reasonably static (at least the ones I've used) from NT 4.0 ->2K3, haven't tried Vista, since I don't work at that job anymore. There's some changes to some structures you have to adjust for (new fields in the middle(???)), but other than that, they've been quite useable.

I wasn't implying these were used in Office, but there's certainly functions in the other system DLLs that are (imported by ordinal, exported by ordinal only, not in the public .libs)

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Anonymous Coward]

> I really don't see how it even matters.

In a legal sense, you are probably right (though IANAL, so YMMV). It just points out that any developer that gets on the Microsoft bandwagon is asking to be shafted sooner or later, as just about all companies that have ever entered into a "partnership" with Microsoft have found out to their detriment. Why people still try to do business with them is a mystery to me.

> Hell, considering the stance of other computers makers at the time, you should feel lucky Microsoft let you write applications at all. A lot of them
> either didn't allow third party developers at all, or charged outrageous fees if you even wanted to start making a program for their
> system.

Name a single computer manufacturer in the Windows 3.X era that didn't allow third party developers - and no, consoles do not count.
Name a single computer manufacturer in the Windows 3.X era that charged you a fee to write applications for their platform - again,
consoles do not count. Yes, most computer manufacturers that made their own development tools charged for those tools (just like
Microsoft did and still does), some of them where rather more expensive than Microsoft's tools, but in no case where you forced to use
the manufacturers toolset.

For added credit, name a single computer manufacturer in the Windows 3.X era that maintained APIs for application development (as
opposed to internal kernel development) that they did not disclose to all developers on the same terms. Apple, which is well known for the
supreme arrogance with which it treated (and still treats) third party developers certainly did none of this.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be the White House Press secretary. I haven't seen a better straw man tear-down in any other place.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[ConceptJunkie]

Even more so since they weren't a monopoly at the time

By what standard? Did any of the competitors you mention ever have more than a single-digit marketshare? By the time Windows 3 was out was their any chance it would ever happen? And to top it off, it was impossible to compete with Microsoft on their platform, which was running on around 90% of desktops at the time. That's a monopoly in my book.

What I always thought was ironic was that _this_ was how Microsoft cemented their monopoly, and the whole "bundling the browser" was just a bunch of sour grapes by Netscape who's software became even more bloated than Microsoft's (if that's even imaginable). That monopoly suit was 10 years too late and a lame case to begin with. Also, the reason MS could strongarm OEM's was _because_ they were a monopoly, not how they became one.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[arivanov]

10 years ago there was a rumour going the rounds that in the run up to the release of OS2 4.0 IBM did a Windows reverse engineering effort outside the US which found something like more 10000 undocumented API calls in Windows 95 which were essential for the full implementation of an emulation environment. There was no way they could ship without exposing themselves to a serious legal liability (as you note, MSFT regards some of these activities as criminal). As a result they abandoned the emulation effort and shipped with the old OS2 Warp emulation platform for Win 3.1x for which they had to pay licensing to MSFT. This ultimately made OS2 economically unviable (each copy was paying silly money to MSFT).

No idea if the rumour was true or not, but looking at the efforts required to get Wine to a working state it does not seem to be terribly off the mark.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Surye]

just about all companies that have ever entered into a "partnership" with Microsoft have found out to their detriment. Why people still try to do business with them is a mystery to me.

Probably the same reasons regular people still work with bookies and the mob. They see the potential offerings, and think the consequences won't happen to them.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Jesus_666]

If you're writing an app for Windows, what is the alternative to using the Windows API?

Use wxWidgets, QT, GTK or a different GUI toolkit.


How could Microsoft develop Windows applications without using the Windows API?

The same way, but they buy it and call it "Visual name.NET 2007 Professional Edition".

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Anonymous Coward]

what is the alternative to using the Windows API? [...] Was Lotus seriously considering developing Lotus 1-2-3 in Java?

Let's be carefull not to confuse "Windows API" with "Microsoft's Windows API".

In the early 90's I used Borland's OWL, a very nice "non-Microsoft" Windows API.

It took years for MFC to catch up. One of the reasons it did is how MFC creators had easy access to "undocumented" features of Windows that others API did not know at time of release, so they played catch up for several features.

That is what people are not happy about.

But IMHO the main reason MFC prevailed was the "Microsoft Look" due to 90% of developpers using MFC, my Borland products where all described as weird looking "How come it does has the standard Windows Look".

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Phil06]

No, they sank all their efforts into making 123 for OS/2. That is why Excel ate their lunch.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[dryeo]

I also have heard the rumours about IBM writing a WIN32 compatibility layer though I don't remember the 10000 undocumented APIs.
I do know that MS broke winos2 by moving various DLLs up into high memory with the release of WIN32s 1.30. At the time OS/2 only had 512 MB per process memory and needed to rewrite most of OS/2 to use high memory. Even today there are quite a few OS/2 APIs that can't be used from high memory (OS/2 now can support 3 GBs per process)
Also by the time V4 was released IBM outright owned their win3.1 fork and did no longer have to pay royalties to MS which is the reason that V4 only came in the blue box version with included winos2.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[dryeo]

Also it was hard to roll your own before the operating system (Chicago) was released. Remember Office 95 was on the market pretty well instantly and everyone else had to play catch up.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[I'm Don Giovanni]

I don't know about Lotus, but I remember about WordPerfect.
When Windows 3.0 came out, WordPerfect thougt it would be a flop. But they did see that people were attracted to a GUI. So WordPerfect decided to remain a purely DOS app, but roll their own GUI in DOS "graphic mode". I can't remember if they shipped it. I saw screen shots, and the app was not attractive to the eye (compared to Windows apps).
Maybe Lotus was considering shipping their own DOS app with their own homebrewed DOS GUI.

What really killed Lotus was that they were late on jumping on the Windows 3.x bandwagon, and their first Windows version of Lotus 123 (when it finally shipped) sucked. Go back and read the reviews, and you'll see that everyone ripped it. Which was sad, because Lotus already had an OS/2 1.x version, and the OS/2 api wasn't all that different from the Windows api (then again, maybe the OS/2 version sucked as well, but nobody cared because everyone used the DOS version (so the OS/2 version didn't get widely reviewed).

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[infofc]

When we (Navision now part of MSBS) developed a client server platform similar to MS Access back in '93 we had to drop using native windows handling for individual controls as it was too slow. Instead we had to use a single app windows structure and code the control drawing ourselves. The comment about the delay is quite interesting. I remember a lot of the API archeology going on, but never needed to use the undocumented calls as our solution to the problem worked fine. I suppose the have tried to do something similar with the newer APIs ?

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[I'm Don Giovanni]

You refer to these as "10000 undocumented API calls". What you really mean, is that these were 10000 internal functions that would be required to implement the emulation layer. There's a difference between public API and internal functions. Internal functions are not meant for public use. When making a library, you have internal functions to handle the nitty-gritty stuff and provide a public API. This is programming 101, for crying out loud.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[SnarfQuest]

Some of the public API structures did nothing but rearrange the arguments, call a delay timer, and then call the internal API. Seriously.

Is this one of the reasons why many programs run faster under wine than under windows?

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[TeknoHog]

Your analogy blows.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Omnifarious]

Generally a public API is the only thing that's called externally, and so it doesn't matter how you implement the 10000+ internal functions or if you even have them at all. But, of course, Microsoft's applications do use these 'internal' calle directly, meaning that they're really part of the undocumented public API.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[ScrewMaster]

I wonder why Microsoft calls the efforts to uncover the API differences criminal?

I think you mean "efforts to uncover the criminal API."

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[SupplyMission]

So does your mom.

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[Anonymous Coward]

That article is a bit ridiculous - the NT native API is indeed analagous to kernel syscalls in Linux, but the Win32 layer is analagous to GLibC - it's what sits between well-behaved applications and the kernel. There's nothing especially sinister about that. What *is* annoying is that many Win32 DLLs contain useful undocumented calls, especially SHELL32. Fortunately the Wine source provides an excellent reference to them :-)

Re:Stupid-ass Question

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"But, of course, Microsoft's applications do use these 'internal' calle directly, meaning that they're really part of the undocumented public API."

No, Microsoft's apps don't use "internal calls directly". Stop spreading idiocy.
I'm not saying it never happened. Supposedly it happened in the pre-Win3.x days (when MS had no monopoly on anything, so who cared? MacPaint and MacWrite used Mac internal functions directly as well back in those days).

Any x held shares?

[ananthap]

Any cross held shares between Apple and Microsoft? End

Undocumented APIs

[Oddscurity]

Ultimately this will/has hurt Windows, as those programs targetting the undocumented APIs -where some MS apps get their features from- will require that hidden API to remain relatively static. And when problems are found in this undocumented API, either you leave the problem in place and work around it (and thereby leave the existing software using it potentially vulnerable), or you have to push an update for all those programs.

Maybe this is part of the reason why Linux's kernel has no fixed ABI?

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Lord_Slepnir]

yeah, and as a kernel developer, I get sick of having to re-write parts of my modules every 2-3 maintainence releases (For example, how the way to do parameters was changed). And don't get me started on EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL (Bite me, Stallman). Maybe a stable (and available to us that don't work in GPL hippie-ville) API is needed, at least within the same minor release. I'm fine with having to change thing when I upgrade from 2.4.28 to 2.6.6, but not from 2.6.8 to 2.6.10.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[oliverthered]

The reason the linux kernel has no fixed ABI is because having a fixed ABIT would make it easy for people to develop closed source drivers.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[jonwil]

Actually, most of the nice microsoft stuff (such as e.g. the look and feel in Visual Studio 2005 or in office 2007) is done as seperate code in special dlls (mso.dll in the case of various version of microsoft office for example).

The way to be sure would be to take every executable file (.exe, .dll etc) included with a given visual studio version, look at the dlls it loads and functions it imports and identify if it imports a funtion from an os dll that isnt documented anywhere on MSDN.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cortana]

You should get your modules included in the Linux kernel itself.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically you're claiming they waste time fiddling with the ABI *just* to make life hard for those who want to write closed source drivers? ... What's that funny smell? Isn't it FUD?

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Oddscurity]

Cue depends.exe to do just that, indeed. Some relatively well-known examples of using undocumented APIs are by Sysinternals, who were recently acquired by Microsoft:

Fundelete accomplishes this through the use of an undocumented API, ObOpenObjectByPointer
...
The final step Fundelete performs is to convert the binary representation of the SID into a textual representation. Another undocumented API, RtlConvertSidToUnicodeString, performs this.
...
Tokenmon relies on several undocumented SRM functions to obtain a logon ID from a thread's primary and impersonation tokens, and GetSecurityUserInfo, an undocumented function exported by the KSecDD (Kernel Security-support driver) that retrieves a logon session user's name, domain name, and logon server given a logon ID. Another interesting implementation detail is that several of the native API functions that Tokenmon hooks are not exported by ntoskrnl.exe for use by drivers. Thus, the Tokenmon GUI must reach into NTDLL.DLL, extract their system call numbers, and pass them to the driver.

This courtesy of the people who unearthed the Sony Rootkit, which goes to show it takes someone with knowledge of deeply intertwingled cruft to find it?

But more importantly: if ISVs behave in this way with limited knowledge of undocumented functions, how do you think Microsoft uses them?

Re:Undocumented APIs

[oliverthered]

Seeing as every other major os seems to work perfectly well with a stable ABI and given the benifits of a stable ABI (you can write binary drivers, you don't have to keep updating the driver code for every minor change in the OS etc...) you would be stupid to produce an OS without a stable ABI unless you were trying to stop one of the benifits of having a stable ABI. I would say that the huge benifit of binary drivers (wouldn't you like a linux with good hardware support?) is seen as a thorn in the side os OSS given that the goals of OSS is to have software open and not in a close binary format.

BTW, they don't 'wast time' changin the ABI (even though the changing ABI give little benifit) there just failing to do configuration management on it.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[oliverthered]

someone would still have to write parts of the modules every time the ABI. That's not one of the benifits of having the modules included in the Linux kernel.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[dhasenan]

Most of the important work for the kernel is open source or research code. There's no incentive to provide a stable ABI, since either someone will compile the whole kernel along with the module in question, or they will rely on someone else to do that for them. And closed source modules have workarounds, so it's even less of an issue.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cduffy]

Remember, he's not in "GPL hippie-land" -- so inclusion upstream isn't an option.

That said, I think the whole GPL-only symbols thing is stupid, myself -- it means that Free-but-non-GPL projects like OpenAFS get hamstrung.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[oliverthered]

what's the workaround for closed source drivers? provide an open source wrapper that gets out of date very quickly?

Re:Undocumented APIs

[vertinox]

Maybe a stable (and available to us that don't work in GPL hippie-ville) API is needed

BSD?

Re:Undocumented APIs

[dwheeler]

There's a standard way to eliminate the rewrite: get the module into the kernel, where others will help maintain it. The kernel _HAS_ a stable API - it's the interface to userland. The kernel also has a standard way for drivers to interface with other drivers - it's submitting source code. In other words, there _IS_ a standard internal API for kernel modules; it's called "C".

Clearly, you want to have a proprietary driver. Thus, you want to do something that the developers have ACTIVELY and CLEARLY stated that they are working against, and give no quarter for. You obviously don't like that, and that's your right. But you didn't write their code, nor pay for it, so they are not responsible for your desires... and that is their right.

This is very different from the Windows situation. Microsoft has kept some APIs quiet, and even the very existance of some APIs. In contrast, this Linux kernel policy has been clear for over a decade. You may not like it, but you have no right to complain; this policy was certainly there before you decided to write a line of code. As long as an organization makes clear what the rules are, then you try to work against them at your peril.

Yes, a stable internal API of the kernel would be a possibility. Windows, for example, has one. But most Windows crashes are from BAD DRIVERS; the drivers cannot be fixed, and the Windows interface can't be fixed either. That's not good evidence that this would be a GOOD thing for users. The reliability of Linux is actually pretty good evidence that their process actually works better for end-users.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[richlv]

then you are not a kernel developer, are you ? if you were one, you probably would be glad that there is no fixed abi/api.
this would be similar like calling every application developer that runs on windows a "windows developer".
if you were a kernel developer, your driver would be in kernel, and it would be updated for most changes, at least so i've heard.

as for what benefits not-fixed abi/api gives...
i think http://lwn.net/Articles/159313/ has it quite well put (also see comments).

rephrasing what i can remember now (that article probably contains even more) in regards to benefits - but i'll list benefits from a user viewpoint, not a kernel dev viewpoint, where benefits are quite obvious.

- faster, a lot faster fixes than for closed-source drivers;
- fixes at all. a lot of vendors just don't fix some problems;
- no need to toss out hardware because vendor has decided to stop supporting it (which happens pretty fast in most cases);
- faster driver availability for new kernel versions (no need to wait for nvidia, for example, to release new version);
- availability of new functionality (like power management and probably a bunch of other things);
- i suppose also changes that improve security, stability & performance are easier to make.
- driver availability on other architectures (maybe less important for average user, but there were some problematic drivers on amd64 - and i suppose, having usb hw work on some more exotic hw would significantly ease the quest to build home complected low-heat and silent media computer, for example)
- much better support (vendors tend to be less interested how their product works than most kernel driver devs) and bigger chances to diagnose the problem - solving problems with proprietary kernel modules is no fun...

and a bigger flexibility and better maintainability of kernel drivers gives kernel developers more time to work on other issues, which in turn give users a lot of indirect benefits :)

so, is your inconvenience (as a proprietary kernel module developer) less important than real kernel developers' and users' (read - _my_ ;) ) inconvenience ? sorry, but i think it is.
proprietary hardware drivers are bad for users in longer term than "now", so if some aspect that is convenient for kernel developers also works as a motivator to get drivers in kernel - well, that is another one good thing.
it's not like hw developers will run screaming in joy to write closed drivers if abi/api is made stable. those who are interested, write either closed or opensource drivers anyway, for others a decision like that is more political than technical (actually, providing one or two interested developers with reference hw and documentation would in most cases turn out much better drivers for much less money spent ;) )

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cortana]

Yes but 'someone' is usually not the maintainer of the driver; rather, it's the person who wants to make the change that causes the rest of the code to need to be updated.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cortana]

Well, the kernel hackers' position is quite clear on such matters. If the code is not compatible with the license of the kernel (and hence suitable for inclusion in the kernel itself) then it can rot, they don't care about it.

I don't see what the problem with OpenAFS is. Either it's GPL-compatible, in which case it can be included, or it's not, in which case it can rot.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Constantine XVI]

I remember hearing a long while back that MS would make the MSO2k7 toolkit available for free (beer), under one condition: you cannot use it to make a competing product to MSO.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Eli Gottlieb]

Take a look at EDI.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Lord_Slepnir]

I'm also responding to this guy as well. The piece of hardware I'm writing the kernel module for is a proprietary card running on a VME bus (there isn't a VME driver included with the Linux kernel as far as I know). The military, as well as my employer, tends to get uppity about just 'giving away' our source code. In addition, I'd be surprised if more than 1000 of the cards I write for have ever been produced, and they're all used in a specific piece of military hardware that is unavailable to anyone that's not a military with about $100 million.

It's their right to change the API whenever they want to, as it is Microsoft's. I've written drivers for windows as well, and the kernel API for windows is much better than the linux one. It rarely changes, except between major releases of the operating system and small security updates.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Rich0]

Well, you get what you pay for. The linux devs didn't charge you a cent for your OS, and haven't designed it to support your intended use. You aren't contributing anything back to the community, so the community doesn't really owe you anything. The linux kernel was designed to intentionally make what you're doing difficult - mainly to encourage your boss to get sick and tired of spending so much time on code updates and donate the code back. Your boss obviously hasn't spent quite enough money yet, perhaps one day they will... :)

If you want somebody who will let you have it your way, try buying an embedded OS, another unix, or maybe windows. But it won't be free-as-in-beer.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[jelle]

You get a whole kernel for free and complain that it changes because it is continously being improved?

Just make your modules as free as the kernel and get them included with the kernel, then you won't have to make the changes, the kernel devs will do it for you.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[jelle]

"I would say that the huge benifit of binary drivers (wouldn't you like a linux with good hardware support?)"

Good? For Linux, the drivers without source are usually the crappy ones that make things crash.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[oliverthered]

I've found quite a few ones with source (even in the kernel source) that make things crash.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[MobyDisk]

I've struggled to understand this issue ever since I first bought an ATI or nVidia card and said "ooh, I want to play games under Linux!" So I'm following this discussion, and I'm now trying to figure out what you would do in this situation. You work using a custom piece of hardware, and you need to write a custom driver to talk to it.

Now you listed 2 possibilities so far:
1) Submit the driver to the kernel maintainers
2) Buy another OS

1) I assume that the kernel maintainers won't accept maintenance work for this driver. It would be silly for them to volunteer to maintain everyone else's proprietary software. :-)
2) Buying another OS. Is that really what you advocate? It kinda takes away Linux's reputation as a hobbyists tool if you are suggesting that people not use it if they need a custom driver.

It seems like there is a 3rd solution that solves everyone's problems:
3) Make a stable kernel API for drivers

Kernel maintainers won't need to maintain drivers at all. Third parties can work with custom harware more easily. And commercial closed-source drivers will be easier to maintain. It seems to me this option benefits everyone - even people you hate. Is this an example of cutting off one's nose to spite their face? Don't do something that benefits me, because it might benefit my enemy?

Re:Undocumented APIs

[jelle]

"I've found quite a few ones with source (even in the kernel source) that make things crash."

Hmm, you must be much "luckier" than most people ;-)... But what's keeping you from reporting/fixing it?

And how should I go about fixing the binary ATI driver that makes my laptop crash on suspend/resume (the workarounds found with google don't work)?

Re:Undocumented APIs

[ElBeano]

Yeah, which is why I was deeply pissed when MS bought them. The kind of information they uncovered was incredibly valuable. Their independence from the beast made it more likely to continue. Now that they are owned, who will give us the scoop?

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just FUD since any decent kernel developer understands that 2.6 is UNSTABLE AND UNDER ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT. If you wanted the linux kernel for stable use and fr people who are too lazy to read then you would be developing for 2.4.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[jonwil]

They arent actually making any code available, just a license (presumably it says "as long as you follow the rules, we wont sue you")

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Rich0]

1) I assume that the kernel maintainers won't accept maintenance work for this driver. It would be silly for them to volunteer to maintain everyone else's proprietary software. :-)

But it wouldn't be proprietary if you gave it to them...

2) Buying another OS. Is that really what you advocate? It kinda takes away Linux's reputation as a hobbyists tool if you are suggesting that people not use it if they need a custom driver.

Well, there isn't much point if they're going to keep it to themselves. How many hobbyists need to hang onto the code, and wouldn't donate it back to the kernel team?

And commercial closed-source drivers will be easier to maintain. It seems to me this option benefits everyone - even people you hate. Is this an example of cutting off one's nose to spite their face?

But only the closed-source vendors would be able to maintain it. Suppose I have a TNT2 card - do you think that Nvidia is going to release a driver for it when linux 2.8 comes out?

The idea is to get rid of the closed-source easy-out - which should result in more code being opened. Sure, some code just won't get used at all, but that puts vendors who refuse to open their code at a disadvantage, at least among linux users. And why should Nvidia profit by selling cards to linux users when they don't release their code? The drivers wouldn't work without the kernel, and the kernel was made GPL to force redistributers to release their sources. Now, the kernel won't go GPLv3 anytime soon, but other software will, and future GPL versions will only tighten some of the closed-source loopholes that currently exist.

It has worked pretty well so far. And if somebody wants to make their own middle-layer they can, just don't expect the kernel team to help you out.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember hearing a long while back that MS would make the MSO2k7 toolkit available for free (beer), under one condition: you cannot use it to make a competing product to MSO. Jensen Harris's blog on this.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[edwdig]

Yes, and that someone most likely does not have the device your driver is for, making it pure luck whether they do the fix properly or not. Your odds of the change being done properly are much better if your hardware is popular, but still not guaranteed.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cortana]

It's hardly pure luck. If they are trusted enough to be refactoring large portions of code, they will know what they are doing. But just because your driver has been accepted into the Linux kernel does not mean that your job is over. You do have to keep testing and fixing bugs, or the driver will (rightfully) be marked as abandoned and removed from the kernel once it does more harm than good.

If a hardware manufacturer realises this and thinks "bugger that I can't be arsed" then I don't want to have anything to do with their hardware. :)

Re:Undocumented APIs

[edwdig]

- faster, a lot faster fixes than for closed-source drivers;

The biggest cause for this is testing. Most companies will not release an updated driver until it has gone through quality assurance testing. Open source developers do not have dedicated QA teams. Yes, companies like RedHat do, but that's for their own releases, not for the mainstream ones.

Sure, some companies don't put any priority on bug fixing. But most hobbiest programmers prefer to focus their time on new featues rather than fixing obscure bugs. That's an issue with the people, not the process.

- fixes at all. a lot of vendors just don't fix some problems;

And most open source projects get abandoned. Look around at SourceForge some time. Don't say the code is available, fix it yourself. On a large code base, that's just not a realistic option.

- no need to toss out hardware because vendor has decided to stop supporting it (which happens pretty fast in most cases);

That's much less of an issue if the driver API is stable.

- faster driver availability for new kernel versions (no need to wait for nvidia, for example, to release new version);

That's only an issue because the driver API isn't stable. If there was a stable binary interface, you wouldn't need a new driver from nvidia every time the kernel changed.

- availability of new functionality (like power management and probably a bunch of other things);

Valid point.

- i suppose also changes that improve security, stability & performance are easier to make.

Yes, incompatible changes are much easier to make. But it's only necessary because of the current development model. Kernel developers aren't concerned about getting things right the first time because there is very little penalty to changing things later. Moving towards a stable API implies doing much more planning early on. It's quite likely that this would lead to less work being done overall, as problems are cheaper to fix the earlier they are found.

- driver availability on other architectures (maybe less important for average user, but there were some problematic drivers on amd64 - and i suppose, having usb hw work on some more exotic hw would significantly ease the quest to build home complected low-heat and silent media computer, for example)

This is the biggest reason to care about open source drivers, assuming that you don't care about the politics.

- much better support (vendors tend to be less interested how their product works than most kernel driver devs) and bigger chances to diagnose the problem - solving problems with proprietary kernel modules is no fun...

This is only true due to the small percentage of computer users using Linux. The current Linux userbase also tends to be rather tech savy, making support easier. If Linux was to start becoming mainstream, the support picture would be completely different.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] there _IS_ a standard internal API for kernel modules; it's called "C".

You apparently have no clue what API means.

Clearly, you want to have a proprietary driver.

No, I want a driver I do not need to constantly maintain. With or without the "help". And I fully agree that the developers are working against this.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cduffy]

Well, not everyone agrees that the non-GPL-compatible-free-software-can-rot attitude is very productive. In the case of OpenAFS, for instance, its GPL incompatibility is because (quoting the FSF) "it requires certain patent licenses be given that the GPL does not require. (We don't think those patent license requirements are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are incompatible with the GNU GPL)". Letting software rot (in this case) because its license protects freedoms more effectively than the GPL does is counterproductive from a software freedom standpoint, and not exactly representative of the pragmatism Linus is well-known for either.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[edwdig]

That's the theory, but things never work out that way in practice. I've been bitten several times by these issues. If you assign a person to refactor large amounts of code they don't have the means to test (honestly, who has every network card the kernel supports?), they will make mistakes.

Don't just think entire drivers - think drivers that support several similar but not quite identical devices. Those are the ones that really suffer from the constant changes. The less popular models end up getting lost in the shuffle.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

You may benefit from: http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.ht ml
  And look at this quote: "This just is not true at all. We have a whole sub-architecture that only has 2 users in the world out there. We have drivers that I know have only one user, as there was only one piece of hardware ever made for it. It just isn't true, we will take drivers for anything into our tree, as we really want it."
  So it all comes down to security through obscurity (which in your case would actually seem to make sense) and greedy managers (shoot 'em, shoot 'em quick!)

Re:Undocumented APIs

[aevans]

and featureful? Threads (even linux threads), SMP, Java, X, and all sorts of drivers

Re:Undocumented APIs

[aevans]

And how should I go about fixing the binary ATI driver that makes my laptop crash on suspend/resume (the workarounds found with google don't work)?

Convince the Kernel developers to plan and stick with a stable ABI so that drivers can be developed and fixed instead of wasting resources trying to "maintain" them against a moving target.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[jelle]

"Convince the Kernel developers to plan and stick with a stable ABI so that drivers can be developed and fixed instead of wasting resources trying to "maintain" them against a moving target."

If a changing 'ABI' were the reason it's broken, then there would be a kernel version that is guaranteed to not have the problem, now wouldn't it?

Linux kernel modules don't have a ABI because kernel modules are not an 'A' (application) and the interface to the open source kernel is in source code format not binary format for a very specific and well understood reason...

All 'Stable Kernel ABI' arguments that I heard sound as much bogus as the 'Microkernels are better' arguments.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[richlv]

- faster, a lot faster fixes than for closed-source drivers;

The biggest cause for this is testing. Most companies will not release an updated driver until it has gone through quality assurance testing. Open source developers do not have dedicated QA teams. Yes, companies like RedHat do, but that's for their own releases, not for the mainstream ones.

Sure, some companies don't put any priority on bug fixing. But most hobbiest programmers prefer to focus their time on new featues rather than fixing obscure bugs. That's an issue with the people, not the process.

indeed, in most cases it's us, users who do the testing :)
still, it's not that company testing is that much better. i think we have all seen crap pathes and changes.
i would prefer an attempt at a fix that i would have to test myself (maybe because the developer does not have access to the same hardware) instead of waiting several months or more for some supposedly tested fix (which might be untested on my exact hw/sw combination anyway).

- fixes at all. a lot of vendors just don't fix some problems;

And most open source projects get abandoned. Look around at SourceForge some time. Don't say the code is available, fix it yourself. On a large code base, that's just not a realistic option.

hey, we're talking about linux (the kernel), few things in there really get abandoned, especially in regards to hardware support.
hardware vendors drop their support for older products at least at the same rate as projects die on sf (just pulled that one out, but seeing no acpi fixes for a bios that is one year old...)

no need to toss out hardware because vendor has decided to stop supporting it (which happens pretty fast in most cases);

That's much less of an issue if the driver API is stable.

it has been suggested that, if developed, api is kept for some 3 years. i am using latest kernels on a hardware much older than 3 years. besides, 3 years is a long period for development (especially in such a fast moving place as kernel development), but it is a short period for api compatibility. both shortening ang enlarging it are not acceptable solutions, so wouldn't in the long run benefits from stable api be smaller than drawbacks ?

- faster driver availability for new kernel versions (no need to wait for nvidia, for example, to release new version);

That's only an issue because the driver API isn't stable. If there was a stable binary interface, you wouldn't need a new driver from nvidia every time the kernel changed.

but i would need one if i wanted to use latest kernel with older hardware. how long would nvidia or any other hw vendor commit to supporting older hardware ? 3 years ? 5 ? more ?
i have an nvidia adapter in one of those boxes. it has at least 6 years, and it still works ok.

- i suppose also changes that improve security, stability & performance are easier to make.

Yes, incompatible changes are much easier to make. But it's only necessary because of the current development model. Kernel developers aren't concerned about getting things right the first time because there is very little penalty to changing things later. Moving towards a stable API implies doing much more planning early on. It's quite likely that this would lead to less work being done overall, as problems are cheaper to fix the earlier they are found.

this would require getting it right for the next, let's say, at least 3 or more years (i suppose for proprietary driver developers to be satisfied it would have to be more like 5 years). and that would include all the possible functionality and hw paradigm changes. power management isn't exactly great right now. with a stable api it would probably be nonexistant...

- much better support (vendors tend to be less interested how

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not like it, but you have no right to complain

This is the single dumbest statement ever. Not just in this context either - it's almost universally dumb. Everyone has the right to complain.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[oliverthered]

If you had a micro kernel a crash in one driver wouldn't take down the whole system.

If there was a stable ABI then there would be more drivers for linux (I'm willing not to suspend/resume if it means my hardware actually does something) because driver developers wouldn't have to try and hit a moving target and one of the major problems with Linux on the desktop would become less of a problem so linux adoption should go up.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cortana]

If the authors of the Linux kernel really cared that much about software under this license then they would add an exception to the license that they use, or upgrade to version 3 of the GPL (which I believe will have an optional excemption built in).

But that's impossible, I hear you say, because Linus does not require copyright assignment along with the patches he accepts! In that case, IBM should have released OpenAFS under a compatible license in the first place.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[oliverthered]

If a hardware manufacturer realises this and thinks "bugger that I can't be arsed" then I don't want to have anything to do with their hardware. :)

But if there was a stable ABI then.....

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cortana]

... then the kernel would be encumbered by all the drawbacks of maintaining it. See http://lxr.linux.no/source/Documentation/stable_ap i_nonsense.txt for details.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[oliverthered]

Were I work we manage to keep stable interfaces and only change the interfaces at infrequent major release phases, as do many thousands of other companies and all other OSs out there, because they follow best practice. It's not hard, it does take some dicipline and in the end you get a better, more though out product for your time and money.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[jelle]

Sigh... Go ahead make a microkernel OS with a binary interface to drivers.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[cduffy]

Yes, IBM should have done this, or the kernel developers should have done that. When elephants battle, it is the grass that suffers.

As a user, I don't care whether it is the kernel developers or IBM who yields over their licensing concerns. I care that I can't use OpenAFS against new kernels.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[dosquatch]

But it wouldn't be proprietary if you gave it to them...

I think you're missing an important part "custom hardware" mentioned by the previous post. Say I've built a custom device, for whatever reason, and I write a driver to make it do its widgety little things. I have no desire to mass produce my widget, there is no market for my widget even if I did want to go into production... but it serves whatever special need.

I'm going to submit my driver... why? What are the chances, really, that this driver will be accepted for inclusion in the tree to run a device that nobody but me will ever even see, much less use?

The answer you're looking for is "none - no chance whatsoever". And for good reason.

So again I echo the sentiment - what is so evil about a stable API? It doesn't have to be the preferred method. It doesn't even have to be efficient. It just has to be there.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[fucksl4shd0t]

Thank you, Captain Obvious. That's what all licenses say. :)

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Xabraxas]

The answer you're looking for is "none - no chance whatsoever". And for good reason.

What is that good reason? It's not apparent from your post and in fact your assumption that a driver for a rare piece of hardware wouldn't be included is false. It's been done before and kernel maintainers have no problems with including drivers as long as they are free (GPL), regardless of the device's popularity.

Re:Undocumented APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to submit my driver... why? What are the chances, really, that this driver will be accepted for inclusion in the tree to run a device that nobody but me will ever even see, much less use?

The answer you're looking for is "none - no chance whatsoever". And for good reason.

Bad choice of FUD. Based on the history of similarly obscure drivers being accepted the chances are good.

The reason they're accepted is because it's valuable for the Kernel Devs to know the full range of hooks & interfaces that Linux is likely ever to need.

No, they don't give a damn about our sooper confudentiul hardware - but the hopes that similar hooks might benefit some other driver for some useful hardware in the future is more than enough to justify inclusion.

If you want a reference for this philosophy, one of the major kernel devs Greg KH explained more in his presentation at a linux conference keynote.

We want more drivers, no matter how "obscure", because it allows us to see patterns in the code, and realize how we could do things better. If we see a few drivers doing the same thing, we usually take that common code and move it into a shared piece of code, making the individual drivers smaller, and usually fixing things up nicer. We also have merged entire drivers together because they do almost the same thing. An example of this is a USB data acquisition driver that we have in the kernel. There are loads of different USB data acquisition devices out in the world, and one German company send me a driver a while ago to support their devices. It turns out that I was working on a separate driver for a different company that did much the same thing. So, we worked together and merged the two together, and we now have a smaller kernel. That one driver turned out to work for a few other company's devices too, so they simply had to add their device id to the driver and never had to write any new code to get full Linux support. The original German company is happy as their devices are fully supported, which is what their customers wanted, and all of the other companies are very happy, as they really didn't have to do any extra work at all. Everyone wins.

So before you go around making totally bogus assumptions of what you think the Linux development model might be based on some Microsoft sales material; you might want to do some research first.

IE in transcript

[walshy007]

am I the only one who finds an almost phoenix wright :ace attorney like humour in the IE discussion transcript with all of the "OBJECTION!"'s that occurred.

qoute

MR. HOLLEY: Your Honor, I move to

                      13 strike that answer as violating prior orders of

                      14 this Court.

                      15 THE COURT: Sustained. Stricken.

                      16 Jury will disregard.

                      17 Q. Mr. Alepin, from a less variety point

                      18 of view, and I'm just talking about

                      19 technological, how has there been less variety?

response then...

                25 MR. HOLLEY: Your Honor, same motion

                                                                                                                        7016

                        1 to strike the testimony for the same reason.

                        2 THE COURT: Overruled. I'll allow it

                        3 as answered. It's different.

  Q. In relation solely to the

                        5 technological effect, sir, how has there been

                        6 less innovation?

                        7 MR. HOLLEY: Objection, Your Honor.

                        8 THE COURT: Overruled.

                        9 You may answer.

and so on...

Re: Removes it???

[rowama]

OSS doesn't remove tie-in, it adds more. Rather than being tied to a single company, OSS may be tied to more than one company and/or a large population of independent developers. So OSS removes the single point dependency.

wow

[jrwr00]

It's Microsoft, Anything to win there way into the market is what they are going to do... Done Deal

News flash - sky still blue!

[withears]

Is it really news that contractors are considered nothing more than replaceable parts? Whenever we've staffed programs with contractors, it's always been understood (by my company and the contractors) that they are essentially mercenaries and not really part of our company and culture. (If they WANTED to be part of our (or any) company and culture, they wouldn't be contractors, right?) When things (i.e., money) get tight, who's the first to go? The contractors, of course. No surprises to anyone. We're not going to lay off our valuable employees. This seems like a ridiculous article/lawsuit.

Re:News flash - sky still blue!

[AutopsyReport]

I would disagree. Contractors can play a very distinct role: to fill a void (in skills) at a company. If this isn't the case, then they are contracted to fill a void in manpower. Most of the time, however, a contractor is brought on board to lend their expertise to a project.

Many organizations work with contractors because it's easier to hire and release a contractor than it is to hire and release a full-time employee with positional power. With contracting, there's typically a trial period during which the organization has made no guarantee of your employment with them. So the contractor benefits from higher wages, and the organization benefits from one less salary commitment.

Re:News flash - sky still blue!

[OneSmartFellow]

You are simply deluding yourself, to your employers delight, that you as a permanent employee, have any more job security, or value to the company, than a contract programmer.

I have survived several RIFs in some large banks as a contractor, while FTEs I sat and worked with were let go.

Contracting is a much more honest relationship between employer and employee. I don't work, they don't pay. They don't owe me anything, I don't expect anything from them. I don't put up with the corporate bullshit, they don't expect me to. When I work overtime, I get paid. I don't 'request' time off, I inform that I won't be in. I don't have to fit in to any corporate team bonding excercise, although on the occasions I do attend, which usually involve lots of beer, I am heartily welcome.

And I take home about 50% more than similarly employed FTEs in the workforce.

Re:News flash - sky still blue!

[ulmanms]

Independent developers != contractors. Contractors get paid by you, while the folks that MSFT's talking about are just writing software for windows, like Lotus.

Re:News flash - sky still blue!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all "contractors" are paid more. It is not an uncommon practice to use and abuse "contractors" pretty much the same as many companies mistreat "temps". They are hired under those names to avoid making them an "employee" with the accompanying insurance, retirement and FICA taxes amongst other things. Lots of factories go to great effort in scheduling their production run with minor differences in definitions of them so they can terminate temps before or even at the same time they are bringing more in. Microsoft did this with projects and some of their "contractors" worked exclusively for them for years without the benefits of being an "employee". Google around, there are some prior court cases relating to this including prior lawsuits and the Feds taking exception to the Microsoft definition of "contractor" as under Federal law many of them should have been given the status of employee with all the accompanying benefits. None of this is really what the linked case is about though, it is one of the state anti-trust suits and they are just giving evidence relating to Microsoft's using its monopolistic position to gain an unfair advantage and yes that can include mistreatment of the paid help.

*some of this response is to the parent and some to the grandparent poster

Re:News flash - sky still blue!

[mutterc]

easier to hire and release a contractor

I've never understood this. I'm a U.S. programmer in a company who has more engineers in its India office than here. As a result, I live like the sword of Damocles is hanging over my head all the time. (It's pretty liberating, as this means termination is no threat. "Yes, I know we have a no-moonlighting policy. If I give it up, that means I can keep my job for what? One more day?")

Everyplace I've ever worked has an application you sign stating you accept at-will employment. And then a handbook that does the same. Typically there are more mentions of employment-at-will than of not murdering your colleagues :-)

I know companies want to protect themselves from wrongful-termination lawsuits. Maybe it just takes the perception that there are a lot of such suits for companies to avoid firings. I have trouble seeing how an employee could win such a suit, with the above legal language above their signatures (and, often enough, an agreement to use binding arbitration, for even more business-friendliness), unless something blatantly illegal happened, like discrimination against a protected group or sexual harassment.

Re:News flash - sky still blue!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your tone suggests you have some problem with contractors. I am guessing at some
point you resented that some contractor was earning more money than you.

"Is it really news that contractors are considered nothing more than replaceable parts?"

Likening people to "parts", replaceable no less, is an attempt at dehumanizing them.

"..not really part of our company and culture"

They are part of your company. You are paying them precious $$$. They are working next to
you, eating lunch next to you, working on the same code base.....

You know, when I hire contractors for my house repairs I always make sure I am friendly
and offer up some gesture of good will - (how about a soft drink, Can I buy you guys lunch today?, Here's
a six pack) It is amazing just how motivating these small things can be to people and results in a much
improved quality of work.

Re:News flash - sky still blue!

[PCM2]

I know companies want to protect themselves from wrongful-termination lawsuits. Maybe it just takes the perception that there are a lot of such suits for companies to avoid firings.

There are lots of such lawsuits. Where I live (California), at-will employment is the law ... but it's not the only law. There are all kinds of other laws that govern who can and cannot be fired. You can be doing great, hitting all your numbers, bringing in big business for the company, and the company can still fire you if it feels like ... technically. But if you turn around and make the case that you were actually fired because:

• your work was better than that of a "favorite" employee
• you requested (and were granted) paid leave for Jewish holidays
• you resisted the sexual advances of your supervisor
• you were pregnant
• you are gay/straight/bi/transgender
• you blew the whistle on corporate wrongdoings

...etc ... then even if your allegations are not true it could cause all kinds of grief to the company, grief that most companies want to avoid. Better to keep you on and let your coworkers suffer (if you really are a pain in the ass) than to make you a pain in the ass at the corporate level.

And this is relivant because ______

[Lord_Slepnir]

Alright, I'm not a lawyer. I don't even play one on slashdot. But can someone please tell me how one Microsoft rep referring to developers as a cheap date is in any way shape or form relevant in an anti-trust case.

Also, does anyone else get an image of the robot preacher from Futurerama when they hear the words "Tech Evangelist"?

Re:And this is relivant because ______

[geekoid]

I's a sensational quote pulled for media. That reference alone means nothing. It needs to be taken into context wtha larger and mure complex case.

I am begining to think that slashdot is trolled with the most stupid quotes in order to gain support for the other side of cases.

pssssst...'Futurama'.

Re: Removes it???

[baadger]

So if working with Microsoft is a one night stand, isn't doing Open Source like doing 500 guy gangbang?

Never give a sucker an even break

[Colin Smith]

"You can't cheat an honest man; never give a sucker an even break, or smarten up a chump." - W.C. Fields.

Really, there's a remarkable number of sheeple out there.

ok...

[jimstapleton]

[...] James Plamondon, a Microsoft technical evangelist, in a 1996 speech referred to independent software developers as 'pawns' [...]

There's nothing wrong with this statement:

1) More than one chess match has been won with proper use of pawns. More than one independant dev has made a product really work.
2) Short of the one you start with, the only way to get the most powerful piece on the board is... A PAWN. Some of the best developers come from the independant pool...
3) And yes, a lot of independant devs are nothing to write home about... Like many team devs.

Re:ok...

[geekoid]

Except the term 'Pawns' Refers to somethingnyou use and through away. Calling someone a pawn is considered derogatory.

1) Chess matches are often won by sacrificing pawns. I, for one, have no desired to be sacrificed for someone elses aggenda.

2) do you relizes that what you are saying boils down to "WHen a pawn does occasionally succeed, it is sacrificed as a matter of course for somoen of a high 'class'?" Having been on a team that created a piece of software that saved a financial institution 100 Million a year, and then watched VPs who weren't even on the project for 90% of it get 7 figure bonuses, while the team got a football* I have had enough of being a pawn.

* The theme was Baseball.

3) like so many upper managements. WHat's your point? You seem to be saying that if someone is not the top codong guru they deserve to be thrown away. Guess what? Even the people who aren't the top star have a place in development. Show me a top star coder who likes to do maintenance, QA and write dcumentation, and I'll show you someone you just made up.

Re:ok...

[jimstapleton]

do you look at things in the worst possible light because you enjoy making nasty comments to people, or just because you are horribly pessimistic.

I was trying to turn a nasty comment into something pleasant and more motivational to independant developers rather than the "you are scum of the earth" type comment the person I quoted said.

Finally, yes, I do know of such a person, who is a "top star" coder, does maintenance, QA and documentation, but so what? You won't believe it and I'm certainly not giving out credentials of someone on a semi annonymous forum full of trolls, especially to someone who already has showing himself to be exceptionally negative.

One-night stand?

[AutopsyReport]

I have high standards, you insensitive clod!

You must be a daemon in the sack.
You must be agile.
No time for debugging your problems.
I will not use a trojan horse.
Time slicing with others is not okay.
Don't ever call my thing a widget.

The memories ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run". =)

Re:The memories ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run". =)

Urban myth.

Youtube link

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm in Brazil, you insensitive clod!

Re:Youtube link

[Anonymous Coward]

Is video.google blocked too?

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=developers

Re:Youtube link

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but after seeing the video, I wish it was.

ARTICLE MIRROR

[Anonymous Coward]

Iowa antitrust case: Microsoft exec called software developers 'pawns'
Eric Lai

January 08, 2007 (Computerworld) A Microsoft Corp. technical evangelist referred to independent software developers writing for Windows and the company's other software platforms as "pawns" and compared wooing them to convincing someone to have a one-night stand, according to testimony presented Friday against Microsoft in an ongoing antitrust case in Iowa.

"If you've ever tried to play chess with only the pieces in the back row, you've experienced losing, OK, because you've got to have those pawns," James Plamondon said in a Jan. 16, 1996, speech to members of Microsoft's developer relations group. His comments were part of a transcript presented as evidence in the Comes vs. Microsoft Inc. class-action lawsuit in Iowa.

"They're essential," he said about software developer pawns, according to a transcript of his remarks. "So you can't win without them, and you have to take good care of them. You can't let them feel like they're pawns in the struggle."

In the speech, entitled "Power evangelism and relationship evangelism," Plamondon continued: "I mean, all through this presentation previously, I talked about how you're using the pawns and you're going to screw them if they don't do what you want, and dah-dah-dah. You can't let them feel like that. If they feel like that, you've lost from the beginning.... So you can't let them feel like pawns, no matter how much they really are."

Plamondon a technical evangelist for eight years at Microsoft, did not return an e-mailed request for comment.

The excerpt was presented during testimony by Ronald Alepin, an expert for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who allege that Microsoft charged higher prices to Iowa consumers as a result of illegal monopolistic behavior. The suit seeks $330 million in damages.

In other comments about developers, Plamondon equated working with them to taking someone out on a first date. "It's like you're going out with a girl; forgive me, it goes the other way also. You're going out with a girl, what you really want to do is have a deep, close and intimate relationship, at least for one night. And, you know, you just can't let her feel like that, because if you do, it ain't going to happen, right. So you have to talk long term and white picket fence and all these other wonderful things, or else you're never going to get what you're really looking for."

The plaintiffs have created a Web site that includes transcripts of testimony presented in the case.

Other evidence presented last week included an internal Microsoft memo from Oct. 18, 1991, entitled "Excel brainstorm group." Brad Silverberg, then-head of Windows development, wrote "I'd be glad to help tilt Lotus into the death spiral. I could do it Friday afternoon, but not Saturday. I could do it pretty much any time the following week."

Lotus Development Corp.'s 1-2-3 was the dominant spreadsheet program on Microsoft's DOS operating system in the 1980s, but it lost ground to Excel on the Windows operating system.

Alepin, a former chief technology officer at Fujitsu Software Corp. and currently a San Francisco-based adviser for high-tech law firm, Morrison Foerster LLP, testified that 1-2-3's eventual demise was caused in part by Microsoft encouraging Lotus' programmers to use Windows application programming interfaces (API). Microsoft Excel's own developers had already decided those same APIs "were not worthwhile using because they were complicated," he said. "They used large amounts of memory. They were slower than other ways of doing it."

Alternative APIs, Alepin testified, "were not provided to Lotus and to other companies like Samna [maker of Ami, a GUI-based word processor later bought by Lotus, that was released a year before Word for Windows 1.0]."

The Comes vs. Microsoft trial, which began in early December, is expected to last up to six months. It, along with a lawsuit file

and thus they all got...

[larpon]

pawn3d

Re:Non-news. Just another MS bashfest

[Chicken04GTO]

he only cares about revenue, since the beginning slashdot has sucked, and he hasn't cared. Jon Katz anyone?

Sidebar on contractors

[davecb]

In many large companies, even well-managed ones, the demands of the stock analysts force the companies to lay off employees, while retaining contractors.

And yes, this is a terrible idea, but itis involuntary (;-))

Been there, done that, as employee, contractor and employee-became-contractor-three-days-later

--dave

Re:And this is relivant because Anti-competitive.

[Vellmont]

Probbably because tricking developers into using the Windows API, (which Microsoft knew to be problematic) is a part of Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviour. Anti-competitive behaviour isn't illegal unless you're a monopoly like Microsoft is. The article references Microsoft encouraging Lotus to use the Windows API, and claims that contributed to the decline of Lotus 1-2-3.

Ironic MS Ad

[mysqlrocks]

Anybody else get the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 ad on this Slashdot article (screen shot below)?

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h165/bradley1976 /slashdot_ms.jpg

Re:Ironic MS Ad

[Anonymous Coward]

No

Re:Ironic MS Ad

[fuzzylollipop]

nope apparently adblock works quiet well :-)

Re:Ironic MS Ad

[mwanaheri]

I have the HP-ad here, advertising the integration of OpenSource with Linux. Not bad either.

Re:Ironic MS Ad

[sharkey]

I got a full-screen Dell ad instead of the linked article.

Re: Removes it???

[Anonymous Coward]

/me Struggles to block out mental image

I think it'd be better for everyone if you keep your homo-erotic fantasies to yourself from now on, okay?

ABTE

[NullProg]

"applications barrier to entry". Dvorak wrote about this last year. He thinks Microsoft should spend thier cash before they loose it.

Read more about it here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2070989,00.as p

Enjoy,

Lotus Notes DOA anyway

[HW_Hack]

He said that Lotus 1-2-3 was killed, in part, by Microsoft encouraging Lotus's programmers to use the Windows API even though Microsoft's own developers found it too complicated to use." I recall Lotus Notes ........ and let me say that the only thing that killed Lotus Notes was Lotus Notes itself. I believe I've found one thing that you can't blame Microsoft for .......

Re:Lotus Notes DOA anyway

[Mad Merlin]

Lotus 1-2-3 != Lotus Notes. Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program, and was at one point the dominant spreadsheet program.

Re:Lotus Notes DOA anyway

[HW_Hack]

No way dude ------- Lotus 1-2-3 was a "killer App" -- an early spreadsheet --- something useful.

Lotus Notes was an early attempt at collaboration / groupware ---- unintuitive and poorly integrated - it was DOA - I know I was forced to try and use it ... we held a party when management sh!t-canned it

Re: Removes it???

[Cheapy]

Only if there are no girls involved.

"One night stand" metaphor is very apt

[david.emery]

Of course, the whole point of a one-night-stand is to get fucked.

        dave

Re:Woo [Mod parent up]

[functor0]

A more plausible claim, and one much harder to prove or disprove, is that the Office team has access to Windows source code, so that rather than creating something from scratch they can just grab a copy of the menuing code and create their own version. I always assumed this was true. Why would they not?

Re: Removes it???

[Sinbios]

We're talking about Linux geeks, here :P

Microsoft "one night stand"

[Anonymous Coward]

In this analogy, what are the microsoft products/apis? STD's?

Re: Removes it???

[Anonymous Coward]

One night stand with Micro-Soft. How enticing!

better or worse...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it have been better or worse if he called developers Queens instead of Pawns?

Re:better or worse...?

[ArsenneLupin]

Would it have been better or worse if he called developers Queens instead of Pawns? Well, it doesn't really matter. When your pawn makes it to the other side of the board, you may exchange it for a queen.

Unbelieveable

[t'mbert]

None of these API's just fell out of the sky and landed in Microsoft's lap; they were built tediously and at great expense. And let's not forget that these are not the types of functions that are really making Microsoft top dog. Microsoft is top dog due to social and business factors, not API's and technical ones.

Funny that there are endless discussions about the poor technical quality of Microsoft's products, and at the same time rants that Microsoft is gaining an unfair advantage via technical means. Either the technology is good or it's not. If this case is valid, then we must also acknowledge that Microsoft's technology is king too.

Re:Unbelieveable

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok then. I'm surprised you find this unbelievable. Why? If you can't see all the "tricks available to you because of hidden API's, your software is far more liable to suck than Microsoft's. That's the point of hiding API's, to increase the likelihood of a competitor's software sucking, and if you're evil, causing it to mysteriously break.

That being said, knowing all the "tricks" doesn't automagically make the applications you write any good. So, it is entirely possible/likely/proven by experience that some Microsoft software sucks, regardless of their advantage by having access to all the "tricks".

Comprendez vous?

Re:Unbelieveable

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is top dog due to social and business factors, not API's and technical ones.

And which transcript from the DOJ anti-trust file did you read this from? They were found guilty of all sorts of un-fair practices.

Its bad enough being a blind Microsoft fanboi. But your a stupid Microsoft fanboi.

Re:Unbelieveable

[Anonymous Coward]

okay, it is obvious. you and logic just don't get along.

we get it.

move along now...

Consultancies

[fabu10u$]

I read the headline and thought they were talking about the management at consultancies...?

Re:Consultancies

[Anonymous Coward]

con-slut-ants

Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Go get your gangbang on, you Linus weenie!!! LOL

In The Morning

[blueZhift]

But isn't the real question, "Will Microsoft respect me in the morning?"

In seriousness, I think most ISVs know the pitfalls of working with Microsoft. At the end of the day, you've still gotta sell your stuff and so far at least, Microsoft platforms have proven to be a good place to sell stuff. I think I like the wooing analogy better than a ticks on the dog alternative!

Re:Woo [Mod parent up]

[Anonymous Coward]

A more plausible claim, and one much harder to prove or disprove, is that the Office team has access to Windows source code, so that rather than creating something from scratch they can just grab a copy of the menuing code and create their own version.

I always assumed this was true. Why would they not?

Because the Windows UI code is a horror-show of backwards-compatibility cruft. You're looking for a needle of useful functionality in a shitstack. Much easier to create your own needle.

from ballmer.c

[Jesus_666]

[...]
try {
while (true) {
audience << "Developers! ";
}
}
catch (...) {
throw (new Chair());
}
[...]

By the way, /. really needs <pre> support in user comments. <ecode> just doesn't cut it. (Alternatively, make the latter use the former or come up with another way to preserve indentation.)

Re: Removes it???

[Jesus_666]

Somehow I think "It's the gay bukkake of software engineering!" is not a slogan that will win over many folks for Open Source development...

Developers Beware!

[LittleGuy]

This is a warning to be passed along to all developers.

This crime appears to be occurring in large cities and apparently is well known to the police community. Here's what's happened so far in Redmond.

Software developer goes to a seminar and meets meets a fairly attractive young woman and they hit it off.

Next thing he knows, he wakes up in a strange cubicle, with his hard drive in a tub full of ice. Written in lipstick on the mirror is a note: "use Windows APIs, or you will die".

He calls tech support on the phone he sees sitting on a small table, next to the tub. He tells the operator his story; she already knows where he's going with this and in fact has already called for technicians to reformat his hard drive.

She tells him to very carefully reach around and feel if there is a small network cable protruding from the back of the workstation. He does and tells her he can feel the small cable.

The operator tells him to remain calm, stay in the cubicle and not to move, the technicians are on their way. Apparently this is another crime of code harvesting....

Sooooo Evil!

[Brandybuck]

He said that Lotus 1-2-3 was killed, in part, by Microsoft encouraging Lotus's programmers to use the Windows API

OMG! That is soooo Evil!

EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just build a GPL module that re-exports that symbol using plain "EXPORT_SYMBOL". Nothing dictates that a GPL module has to use EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL to export symbols. The GPL fanatics may not like it, but tough. (Seems like some of them only support freedom for software when it's used the way they want - see GPLv3...)

I had to do that with some symbols once - and it was indeed called the "bmrms" module. :-)

Re:EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL a problem?

[Rich0]

The main issue is with linking GPL and non-GPL code. It is leagal to do so, but it is illegal to redistribute the result code under any license other than the GPL. Loading a kernel module involves linking it with the kernel.

Others have pointed out the reason for this far better than I could in a few sentences.

Re:And this is relevant because...

[Livius]

An important subject to be sure, but this is essentially just "Embrace, extend and extinguish" with a more colourful metaphor.

issue regarding the website

[Anonymous Coward]

3 THE COURT: Okay. You had some issue regarding the website?

5 MS. NELLES: .. the Court issued an order, and the order laid out the procedures for how documents were going to be -- that the Court would establish a website .. Ms. Conlin has raised that he Plaintiffs propose to do their own website.

21 And I understand this is in part because the Court has determined that the Court administration is not able to prepare a site.

24 THE COURT: Not able or really not willing, I guess. ..

1 MS. NELLES: .. it was reported to me that the Court raised yesterday the idea of the parties getting together or hiring a third-party vendor to get that site up for the Court. ..

10 Let me just address what some of the concerns I have are .. this evidence may be presented without some kind of monitoring of procedures by the Court ..

MS. NELLES: We discussed, I think, last October, and maybe since then a little bit about the procedures that were used in Minnesota ..

19 Now, here we have what I think is going to be a second level of evidence that may be at issue, or at least I think Ms. Conlin or the Plaintiffs are contemplating posting on this website .. ..

20 MS. CONLIN: Well, I want to remind the Court that you have already ruled on this issue, Your Honor. You have ruled on this issue. This is another attempt by Microsoft to revisit issues that the Court has clearly explicitly and without question ruled on. You have said that once the exhibits are in the record, they are public, and that, in fact, they would be posted on the Court's website. That's the nature of the order. But we have, of course, learned that there will not be a court website. And, you know, when we talked about this before the break and again yesterday, I said to the Court what I believed to be the law of Iowa, governed also by the Constitution of Iowa, which is that once something is a matter of public record, that it means what it means. Public is public. ..

17 MS. NELLES: .. And since the website was never up and running, we never quite got to procedures. .. we are moving into a different place now because we are not only talking about procedures for a court website, we're talking about a website that apparently Microsoft's going to have absolutely no say in the development of and cannot in any way comment or monitor the accuracy of the information or how the information is being provided. ..

18 However, I think if we are getting to the point where the Plaintiffs are going .. post what is probably going to be thousands and thousands of exhibits .. I don't know whether they want to post ours. I sort of doubt it, but what about these third parties? Don't they have a right to know? I think we at least have to have --

THE COURT: Third parties? Which?

MS. NELLES: IBM, Apple.

THE COURT: They are not a party to this action.

7 MS. NELLES: I'm sorry. You're right. I misspoke. They are not third parties at all. They are nonparties.

10 THE COURT: That's correct. ..

23 MS. CONLIN: First of all, this is, in fact, revisiting an issue that the Court has already ruled on .. This is just another way for Microsoft to approach that effort to conceal. If they wanted the Court to establish procedures under paragraph 21, what are we doing six weeks into the trial with that sort of thing? ..

9 MS. CONLIN: .. I think what Microsoft is raising and it so often does, a straw person, a straw person that they can knock down. This is a red herring. ..

11 This is basically asking that we simply stop the trial for a couple of months while we mess around with this.

Office rolls its own UI, has done so for years

[I'm Don Giovanni]

The Office team rolls its own UI widgets, and have done so for years. You refer to Office having icons next to the menu options; well the Office team did that on its own. They haven't used the OS-provided menus since at least Office 97 (their menus are simply toolbars, which is why they can be moved, detached, docked to any border, etc; they are just like any other of Office's toolbars). At the time Office 97 was made, the neither the system nor MS devtools provided toolbars (of the kind that Office uses). It's called "programming"; if neither the system nor the dev tools provide the widgets that you want, you program the widgets on your own!! *gasp*

The Office team did nothing that any other dev wouldn't be able to do.
Are you really telling me that other devs are unable to roll their own UI unless the widgets are provided for them by the OS or the dev tools? Come on, now.

Re: Removes it???

[Cheapy]

The way I see it is that it's one big circjerk where everyone agrees profusely that why yes, Open Source *CAN* cure cancer.

Closed Linux drivers are distributed all over

[Anonymous Coward]

And drivers are kernel modules.

Using a GPL "Bite me, RMS" module to re-export GPL symbols with "EXPORT_SYMBOL" instead of "EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL" is perfectly legal. GPLv2 doesn't say "You can't use EXPORT_SYMBOL in GPL kernel modules, you must use EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL." And IIRC Linus himself has stated that GPLv2 will remain the kernel license.

So "EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL" is completely useless. It doesn't prevent closed-source drivers from accessing GPL symbols, because those proprietary drivers can access those symbols using another module that is GPL. And that second module is trivial. Who cares if it's GPL'd and distributed? It doesn't do anything other than export symbols that everyone who can understand source code already knows is there anyway.

VME-bus driver

[Oddscurity]

Just a thought... but if you were to write a VME bus driver and submit it for inclusion into the mainline kernel, wouldn't that solve your problem by virtue of being able to communicate with the stable API that driver exposes? That is if the VME bus is at all comparable to USB.

Kroah on obscure drivers not being accepted:

This just is not true at all. We have a whole sub-architecture that only has 2 users in the world out there. We have drivers that I know have only one user, as there was only one piece of hardware ever made for it. It just isn't true, we will take drivers for anything into our tree, as we really want it. We want more drivers, no matter how "obscure", because it allows us to see patterns in the code, and realize how we could do things better. If we see a few drivers doing the same thing, we usually take that common code and move it into a shared piece of code, making the individual drivers smaller, and usually fixing things up nicer.

Possibly your situation is more of a legal problem than it is a technical one. If such a VME acquisition driver is technically feasible, as well as preferable to hacking against a moving target, that is.

Long ago in Amiga land

[Anonymous Coward]

At one point before Commodore went Bust, some of the more Pro-Amiga Developers agreed to help Commodore with one of their last releases of the OS, I read in one of the Amiga magazines (Understand that Commodore payed MS to program Amigados and workbench/desktop) that one of the PHD pro amiga developers discovered some hidden loops in the code for Amiga OS, which was posix compliant btw, anyway there were these hidden loops, that the only reason this guy could find for their existance was to slow down the OS. It was light years faster then MS DOS and all that, so I got a 40% boost in speed by one minor upgrade, but he said it has been there for years. So you guys all talk about this stuff like its new, MS has been doing this stuff since Day 1.

Makes it sound like Lotus devs were incompetent

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Last week's proceedings also included testimony by Ronald Alepin, a former CTO at Fujitsu Software Corp. and currently an adviser to the law firm Morrison Foerster LLP. He said that Lotus 1-2-3 was killed, in part, by Microsoft encouraging Lotus's programmers to use the Windows API even though Microsoft's own developers found it too complicated to use.

This is absurd.
First, what does it have to do with antitrust? Microsoft had no monopoly when the above allegedly took place.
Second, is this guy really saying that Lotus' devs were so incompetent that they couldn't decide for themselves what API to use? They just did whatever Microsoft told them to do? This means nothing in a court, since neither the judge nor the jury (if their is one) have the first clue about software development. But slashdotters, even hating MS as they do, should be knowledgable enough about software development to be above promoting this malarky.

What "killed" Lotus (Lotus 1-2-3 still exists, BTW), was that Lotus, thinking that Windows 3.0 would be a flop like the previous iterations, was slow to begin development of a Windows version of their app, and when they finally did, it sucked (look up the reviews). End of story.

The actual recollections of someone that was there

[Measure Twice]

I happen to have been working for Microsoft at the time of the release of windows 3.0. Lotus chose to develop a version of 1-2-3 for OS/2, but for the release of Windows 3.0, they only did Notes. Now Notes was a pretty cool product, but they chose to work on the OS/2 version of 123 instead of the Windows version. They may have been swayed by IBM, but the hallway talk was that Steve Ballmer would have done anything to do a windows version, despite the fact that Microsoft had a competing product. Around that time, someone published a book named 'Undocumented Windows Calls' or something like that. I was a tester for one of the windows applications, and we were given a new task at that time: Find and report as bugs any uses of undocumented API calls. That pass turned up only one or two in the our application's code, and the developer who'd put it in had to drop what he was doing and fix them immediately. The SDK writer's purpose of documenting some API calls and leaving others out was to create a way for new versions of the operating system to be backward compatible without being forced to support the entire api exactly. (I know this, because the author of the SDK explained it to me) Those policies may have changed, but the marketing sea-change between 123 and Excel really started with the release of windows 3. The version of Excel already on the shelves worked with the new OS, and the new OS gave it a platform to really shine from. The reason it worked with 3.0 was because they used the Documented API for win386 exclusively. It's the use of the undocumented API's that is the main source of the 'Blue screen of death' that has been attributed to Windows instability. Not all cases certainly, but the undocumented calls can change from release to release. It got so bad that with windows 98 they had to release 'compatibility mode' api's so that the illegal calls in old programs could be mapped to the new functionality... For the record, I left Microsoft in 2000, and have been less than impressed with the company since before that, but we used to do good work once upon a time...

Only if both parties wanted to get f*cked

[Anonymous Coward]

The moral(?) of the illustration was how to f*ck the other party over for one night while leading her to believe it was a long term relationship.

can you recall this ..

[rs232]

"Notes was a pretty cool product, but they chose to work on the OS/2 version of 123 instead of the Windows version"

Do you have any citation that Lotus only choose to develop for OS/2 and what timeframe are we talking here..

"4 He goes on to say, on the other hand, we are in a real struggle versus Notes. What's Notes?"

"8 I have decided that we should not publish these extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes -- that is Lotus Notes -- WordPerfect to achieve,and which will give Office a real advantage"

"It's the use of the undocumented API's that is the main source of the 'Blue screen of death' that has been attributed to Windows instability"

So Notes failed because it ran on OS/2 and used undocumented API calls. The reason they have to use undocumented API's is that MS keeps hiding them and using them only in its own applications.

was: The actual recollections of someone that was there

Re: Removes it???

[Carewolf]

No developer for OSS, is like doing 500 hot chicks. So much needs to be done, and you can possible cover it all, but you are having great fun trying.

One night stand with Microsoft?

[mmmmbeer]

Sounds like a perfect way to get a virus.

MOD PARENT UP

[Omnifarious]

The best response to a sidestepping Microsoft apologist I've seen in quite awhile.

You don't get it

[paniq]

You forget that you can expect modern tools only from a modern company. Duh.

The Planmodon Quote

[twitter]

starts on page 6806

It's like you're going out with a girl; forgive me, blank, it goes the other way also. You're going out with a girl, what you really want to do is have a deep, close and intimate relationship, at least for one night. And, you know, you just can't let her feel like that, because if you do, it ain't going to happen, right. So you have to talk long term and white picket fence and all these other wonderful things, or else you're never going to get what you're really looking for. So you can't let them feel like pawns, no matter how much they really are.

I can only imagine the kind of respect they have for their customers because I quit using their software around 1999. It was bad enough then and now you know why.

Re:The Planmodon Quote

[jb.hl.com]

Hi there twitter, I was wondering if you'd take the time to reply to this post. Or would it make you look too much of a tool to admit that you were wrong, especially in light of you saying that you quit using MS software around 1999, which effectively proves my first point in that comment?

Re:The Planmodon Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

twitter, please read this carefully. Following this advice will make Slashdot a better place for everyone, including yourself.

• As a representative of the Linux community, participate in mailing list and newsgroup discussions in a professional manner. Refrain from name-calling and use of vulgar language. Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer. Your words will either enhance or degrade the image the reader has of the Linux community.
• Avoid hyperbole and unsubstantiated claims at all costs. It's unprofessional and will result in unproductive discussions.
• A thoughtful, well-reasoned response to a posting will not only provide insight for your readers, but will also increase their respect for your knowledge and abilities.
• Always remember that if you insult or are disrespectful to someone, their negative experience may be shared with many others. If you do offend someone, please try to make amends.
• Focus on what Linux has to offer. There is no need to bash the competition. Linux is a good, solid product that stands on its own.
• Respect the use of other operating systems. While Linux is a wonderful platform, it does not meet everyone's needs.
• Refer to another product by its proper name. There's nothing to be gained by attempting to ridicule a company or its products by using "creative spelling". If we expect respect for Linux, we must respect other products.
• Give credit where credit is due. Linux is just the kernel. Without the efforts of people involved with the GNU project , MIT, Berkeley and others too numerous to mention, the Linux kernel would not be very useful to most people.
• Don't insist that Linux is the only answer for a particular application. Just as the Linux community cherishes the freedom that Linux provides them, Linux only solutions would deprive others of their freedom.
• There will be cases where Linux is not the answer. Be the first to recognize this and offer another solution.

From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy

Re:The Planmodon Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

AC here, not twitter BTW... You ever see that Family Guy episode where some insane individual follows Peter around calling him a phony? Remember the dialogue... "Hey everybody, this man's a phony", "You're a big fat phony", etc. Don't you see yourself in that character? I do.

Listen, if you don't like twitter's comments, mark him as a foe or perhaps write a journal. But these childish shaming attempts you and the other ACs are engaging in is tiresome and makes you look like you're holding a grudge. In fact, it makes twitter's comments even more valid and reasonable. His arguments must be right if it engenders so much hatred and ad-hominem attacks against him. Talking about ad-hominem, wasn't it you who made fun of his wife's appearance? You should really be ashamed of yourself.

Re:The Planmodon Quote

[jb.hl.com]

I see where you're coming from, but I'd prefer to call twitter out on the amount of toxic FUD he posts on Slashdot...and then comes the humour element of having someone accusing just about everyone of being Microsoft astroturfers for pointing out what a pile of shit he's talking, like a crazy old man thinking the Jews are out to get him or something. I get a laugh out of it basically, that's all.

And yes, it was me who made fun of his wife's appearances, and tbh I'm not very pleased with myself for it. That was low.

Long way to the top if you want code for all...

[syousef]

If you think it's easy doing one night stands, try coding with this API man! It's a long way to the top when you want to code for all.

Re: Removes it???

[TekJannsen]

Best of all, it's free!

How it all started...

[zIRtrON]

Back in the day, the MS founders had to win at all costs because they had small penises. from then on, that's how it's gone....they've probably also held onto the monopoly cos they were premature ejaculators.

Respect

Re: Removes it???

[SlowEmotionReplay]

Yes, but they're all doing it for love - not money.

Duh! Surprise!

[Master of Transhuman]

Like we didn't know...

People who deal with Microsoft aren't "pawns".

They're suckers.

Bill Gates and company - and the shills who support them - are assholes. It's that simple.

And they're on the way out.

As Jack Nicholson said in a recent movie, "Act accordingly."

Re: Removes it???

[biz0r]

By removing tie in to a single entity, you are effectively removing that single tie in. So yes, I believe my original statement still holds value. Using and coding with OSS removes that single entity (big company, in this case) tie in.

Re: Removes it???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, 500 bearded unwashed chicks.

Re: Removes it???

[rowama]

I'll buy that.

I kind of regret my previous post anyway, after the seeing the filth that followed it.

Yeah, I'm a prude and proud of it.

Re:And this is relivant because Anti-competitive.

[ScrewMaster]

I don't know about that ... that kind of anticompetitive behavior can still be illegal, regardless of your monopoly status, if you are misrepresenting your products or otherwise committing acts of fraud.

VME

[r00t]

I've seen about 3 Linux VME drivers.

VME is like the ARM architecture. People hack together shitty drivers for their embedded project, maybe toss the driver out in public, and then move on. Drivers don't get maintained because the product is shipped, and the drivers are hacks anyway. If you're like all the others, your VME driver is a piece of crap full of undocumented system-specific numbers.

Probably you're using the Tundra Universe chip as a PCI-to-VME bridge. This popular chip violates the PCI specification horribly. The VME mapping windows are not exposed via BARs in the PCI config space. They just exist, invisibly, like landmines in your address space. There are also deadlock problems related to IRQs.

VME is a bit like ISA, in that you often can't really see that it is there. It's not plug-and-play at all. It is thus rather normal to drive VME without doing so explicitly. There are in fact a number of Linux drivers that do this for various older 680x0 boards. Eeeew, but that's about what to expect from a non-PnP bus.

Haven't you heard of CompactPCI yet? It's about the same form factor as 6U VME, but it provides a modern PnP bus. It also provides more electrical current to the boards. VME is way obsolete. (and if CompactPCI itself isn't enough for you, add RapidIO over the extra pins -- backplanes with RapidIO crossbars are available)

Re:Woo [Mod parent up]

[functor0]

It doesn't have to UI code, which is besides the point.

Re: Removes it???

[dodobh]

Opem Source isn't a gang-bang, it's an orgy.

Plamondon on Pawns

[J_Plamondon]

Gentlepersons, In any industry influenced by strong network effects, only one platform can become the de facto industry standard (by definition). The winning platform will thrive, while all others will be marginalized. This is as inevitable as supply and demand -- it is not a "policy" of firms or of individuals. As an evangelist, your job is to establish your platforms as de facto industry standards by managing and exploiting network effects. Generally speaking, the most efficient evangelism strategy is to focus your limited evangelism resources on those firms or individuals who (a) have the most to gain by being among the first to back the eventual winner of the platform battle, (b) can adopt your platform at the least cost, and (c) have the most influence over the platform choices made by others. You encourage these "key industry influencers" to take actions that publicly demonstrate their belief that your platform will eventually become the new standard. These public actions provide later adopters with the "social proof" and "expert opinion" they need to justify take similar action -- that is, to "jump on your bandwagon." Every person who jumps on your bandwagon increases its momentum, causing it to move even farther ahead of your competition. This attracts even more people to jump on your bandwagon, even if they have to jump off of a competitor's bandwagon to do so. Once the majority recognize your platform as the industry's de facto standard, everyone on your bandwagon wins. Clearly, the early decisions of these key industry influencers are critical to your success. Therefore, describing key industry influencers as "pawns" is both offensive and inaccurate. It mis-characterizes the mutually-supportive relationship that must exist between a platform vendor and its platforms' early adopters, such as that which Microsoft and independent software developers created in the 1990's. I regret having used the "pawns" metaphor; I apologise for any misplaced ill-will it may have caused towards Microsoft; and I won't use it in future. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand is at work in Microsoft's relationships with independent developers, just as it is throughout capitalism. As he wrote in The Wealth of Nations, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest." Respectfully, James Plamondon P.S.: And anyone who wants to date my 17-year-old daughter better not have the mistaken attitude towards dating that I expressed ten years ago. ;-)