Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Trying To Appeal to the Unix Crowd?
DigDuality writes "With the news that Windows 2008 (recently discussed on Slashdot) will have GUI-less installs and be fully scriptable, that they've opened up their communication protocols for non-commercial usage and are providing a patent covenant (Redhat Responds), and now finally an interesting rumor floating around that Microsoft will be taking on GNU directly. Has Microsoft totally switched gears in how it is approaching the Unix and FOSS sector for direct competition? According to an anonymous email leaked from a Microsoft employee, it seems Microsoft will be developing a framework that will be completely GNU compatible. Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, said on Friday (23 February) that they are aiming to restore a Unix-like environment to its former proprietary glory, at the same time proving that Microsoft is committed to interoperability. Ballmer emphasized that Microsoft's new strategy is to provide users with a complete package, and this includes users who like Unix environments. According to the supposedly leaked email, UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU, is set to be released late 2009."
A rumour that sounds about as trustworthy as an e-mail from Nigeria.
A business tries to appeal to its market. The market changed. MS will change too. Its just long to shift gears of such a behemoth.
> UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU
Wait is it april's fool's already?
microsoft is way to, what's the word, oh yeah, proud to let their os be subject to community modification.
In Soviet Halo, the game kills you (socially anyway)
Microsoft: Bringing new meaning to "Gnu's not unix"
Didya hear that there's this operating system that gives you the best of windows and linux? It's called linux!
There is already a book out on UNG. How do publishers knock this stuff out so quickly?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The water will seek its own level. I've written a high-level overview of what could happen if tech workers leveraged Free Software to "Embrace and Extend" the tech industry down to the employment level. Unless Microsoft (and many, many others) go the Free Software route, then this plan does not include them.
More
And what is the difference between this and Windows Services for Unix? Sounds like rebranding to me.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
And I think this is fair enough to be applied to any company, not just Microsoft.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Next thing you're gonna say is that a black man and a white woman are both viable contenders for the U.S. presidency in 2008....oh, wait...
My blog
What's that line?
:)
Something like "Those who forget Unix are doomed to recode it". So the last big OS vendor is finally coming around. Good.
As for involving GNU as part of their plans, of course it's a trap
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
In future they will be able to say "they must have copied our code" SCO wise.
it looks like a fish, it smells like a fish, what is it ? :)
they are aiming to restore a Unix-like environment to its former propriety glory
The most glorious thing that I can remember about proprietary unix was the awesome pizza box cases. I seriously have no idea why the PC "tower" caught on instead of that.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Windows 2008 (recently discussed on Slashdot) will have GUI-less installs and be fully scriptable, that they've opened up their communication protocols for non-commercial usage
Sounds like DOS 3.1 to me! Will it run KDE or Gnome?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
This would move developers away from Microsoft's proprietary APIs and functionalities, aka their lock-in. The end result would be developers writing 'GNU' type code and expecting it to run on either Vista or any 'Unix' environment. Suddenly Vista has to compete on its own merits and can't depend on "killer applications" to pull people in.
Although I think this a good thing, and Apple thinks this a good thing, and Linux thinks this is a good thing I'll be a bit surprised if somebody at Microsoft has convinced enough leads that they now think it is a good thing.
If ever there were an appropriate story for the itsatrap tag, this is it.
then why wouldn't Microsoft give it a whirl? If it makes money, great. If it doesn't, then sue the pants off of anyone who extended or modified their stuff. It doesn't seem too irrational to try to make money the free software way, and worst comes to worst, they can make money spreading FUD and litigation!
I've begged for YEARS to the non-existent God for Microsoft to get a clue and make their operating system Unix-like (if not completely replace their kernel with a Unix kernel). It would literally be the perfect operating system: Unix compatibility and mainstream Application compatibility. It would ROCK SO HARD.
Unfortunately, I just can't see it happening. It would be far too smart for Microsoft. --weeps--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I had heard about this several years ago (2005?). My understanding was that Blackcomb was supposed to be built on a different paradigm that previous MS Windows, with a more Unix-like architecture. I heard that they were developing their own shell, and separating the GUI as a separate piece. As I understood it, they were going to try to make windows more modular, and give admins some better shell tools. ... not that I'll ever use it.
I don't have a link handy, but I remember reading this on the Microsoft website, probably in their development section or something.
First, build a language or system that runs existing programs.
Then change the compilers so they use MS-only, intel-only features by default
Then add attractive features at the source level.
Pretty soon, you can port *to* the new platform, but can't port away from it.
--dave
[PS: If you're already in that situation and want to port, send me private email]
davecb@spamcop.net
In the late 1970s and early 1980s MicroSoft sold a version of PC-UNIX called Xenix (they didnt write it). Until the mid-1990s PCs were too-weak to effectively run UNIX, so it was not a popular product. In the early 1980s MicroSoft decided to concentrate on MS-DOS and other products, so it sold Xenix to a company which eventually became SCO.
they are referring to? I don't see anything in there about GNU or UGN or UNIX. All it is, is a tele-press-conference about interoperability.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Of course, this sounds too good to be true. What will be used to compile said programs? When they say "little" modification, what is being implied? Will the GPL linking be forbidden in some way when you compile it on Vista?
and has for a very long time.
Who sold Ballmer the good BC buds?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
A rooted filesystem would help, too, along with a reasonable "fork", but at some point you just have a crappy, Microsoft version of Unix. Why bother?
Do you have ESP?
A long time ago in a sector far far away, the Imperial Microsoft Death Star
set its sights on UNIX application vendors. The Death Star weapon was a
big success. See the Bristol vs Microsoft history. So, is there really
enough ignorance in the market to let them do it again?
http://www.google.com/search?q=bristol+vs+Microsoft
"The Truth Is Out There," just look for all the evidence.
"Trust No One," at Microsoft.
"I Want to Believe" but they are still out to destroy Linux.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
So, we can legally rebrand every BSD codebase as MS products? No kidding...!
Now they are going to assimilate the GNU!
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
Well yeah, you know: GNU could now officially stand for "GNU's not UNG", too.
Your mother.
Wait, is this supposed to be a joke?
If 3's a crowd.
I called it a mighty Sperm Whale, she called it Finding Nemo.
"Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
Is, I worry, an attempt to divide OSS from it's commercial funding. The RedHat's and Sun's, etc that put dollars into OSS which the users in turn benefit from.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
They'll do with Windows Server Core what they did with that home server garbage. You can't upgrade, migrate or otherwise get out of it. A quick and dirty search for an eula for Windows Server Core came up empty. Please, post one!
As is always the case with Microsoft, the first few features are free. It's the rest they'll screw you on.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The article about microsoft taking on GNU sounds like microsoft is going to duplicate cygwin. Is this the great breakthrough? The only surprise is that they plan on doing this internally.
No, your faith in gravity is far for blind. It's actually the opposite.
You know gravity is here, you feel it, you see it's effect every day.
"Blind faith" does not mean you can't optically see the subject.
factor 966971: 966971
In this day of racks of headless servers, blades, virtual machines, the desktop metaphor that Microsoft has owned for so long is not as relevant as it once was. An increasing amount of their revenue is now coming from the backend that doesn't give a hoot about 3d transparency on a display.
Let's see, the target audience could be :
* people who hate M$'s guts all ready
* Windows users who want to see what the fuss is all about
* Manager who read this and think "my tech people like Unix, I can buy this and they will be happy".
Would anyone reading this want to touch it with a 10' pole? Anyone curious enough to find out what 'faster and easier' features they've added?
This is gonna be a dog, a distorted bizarro unix.
It's a constipated duck that swallowed a fish
By definition, it's not blind faith if there's evidence and a consistent model to support your predictions. Lots of observations indicating that things tend to stay on the ground, plus a model consistent with these observations that predicts things will continue to tend towards staying on the ground, leads to rational faith that one isn't going to just float away without a tether.
Blind faith is when your model goes beyond the minimum necessary to explain the observations, such that you are selecting an unnecessarily complex (i.e. over-constrained) model out of a range of possibilities.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
That reminds me of Michael Jackson. Born a black man, will die a white woman.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
Considering how routinely Microsoft drops support for something they offer, telling their users to switch over to their newest latest, greatest and best, who would actually rely on this thing for the long haul? This isn't even a "Microsoft is evil" post; I'm just not sure who would believe they could depend on Microsoft to continue support this over a long period of time.
Heaven help us if thats true.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
That's there's someone working in Microsoft who's geeky and dorky enough to come up with this recursive acronym makes me wonder if there's hope yet for the company.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Actually according to the definition of faith in the Bible that's exactly what it is...
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
-Heb. 11: 1
By that definition (which I'd say is a reliable source for the religious definition of faith), the EFFECTS of gravity are the evidence of an unseen force.
You can't see gravity; you can only see its effects.
Q.E.D.
MS will implement this GNUish wrapper in the same way they implemnented POSIX and STL under windows.... very badly.
Then their marketing dept. will use it to demonstrate how crap GNU is compared to native windows functionality to the executive managers of large traditionally MS-only IT depts looking to migrate to Linux.
The sad reality is that most managers will believe the MS droids that they're looking at a truly representative GNU environment so will agree GNU is bad, without ever having seen a real GNU environment.
Now that Microsoft has released all the documentation, won't it be easier for them to sue commercial open-source projects? Is there a legal difference between reverse-engineering protocols to make a clean-room implementation and using the documentation provided by Microsoft, but that comes with a license?
I dunno, seems plausible enough to me. I was always of fan of the idea of extracting the NT kernel and doing a GNU distribution on top of it. (Something which is theoretically possible even without Microsoft's help, though rather difficult.) Microsoft would never have been happy about it because it would further erode their lock-in.
I imagine this could be achieved using ReactOS, which is a project to create a GNU GPL licensed NT-like/binary call compatible kernel. I am not suggesting whether doing so is good or bad, but rather simply pointing out the possibility may already exist to do this without requiring the involvement of or help from Microsoft.
Let's hope that SCOX are still around when this gets released so they can sue Microsoft for stealing their IP.
Microsoft already knows it.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Has Microsoft totally switched gears in how it is approaching the Unix and FOSS sector for direct competition?
In the absence of a massive turn over in management, this is MS changing gears and competing with FOSS the same way they competed with Netscape. The same way they competed in the SCO fiasco, file formats, DRM, and all the other ways MS "competes" in the IT world. The kind of competition that just earned them a $1.3 billion dollar fine from the EU.
A leopard can't change its spots and MSFT can't change their character with the same people calling the shots. If they really want to change direction a re-establish trust then that change has start and spring from the top.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
They're opening up to "non-commercial use".
This isn't "Microsoft's answer to Open Source", it's "Microsoft's answer to shareware".
Releasing these documents is meaningless to the open source community so long as they require money for "commercial use". It's not meaningless, but it's not the open source community that will benefit.
Funny. We always fight the last war. The VMWare and other products make this approach irrelevant. Why would anybody want to run x86 Unix/Linux code under a fake OS "framework," when they can just boot it in a VM? If what they're saying is that I can download & run x86 Linux-compiled binaries that will interoperate with Windows at the X11 and OS Kernel level, then yee-hah, more power to them, but they're expending an awful lot of effort for virtually zero payback. Mabye it's a stop-loss strategy: prevent further erosion of the Windows desktop. If anything, this goes to show (me) that MS still doesn't "get" "open." The idea that's driving Linux to the desktop isn't the superiority of its "tools." Tools in both environments are competitive. It's the idea that you don't have to pay a licensing tax to use the software. Putting an "honest" UNIX personality under-the-covers of Vista makes it look an AWFUL LOT MORE like OS/X, rather than a Linux "killer." Yee-hah. A war on two fronts!
So, UNG stands for "UNG's not GNU" and GNU stands for "GNU's not unix".
Unwinding the definitions, one gets "UNG is not GNU is not Unix".
I just thank god that GNU is not UNG.
Exactly what I heard from people in the know like the Samba project. This is a big FU to the OSS community and anyone who wants better interoperability with Microsoft's products. For pete's sake, split the freaking company into pieces already. The individuals companies would be thrilled to not have MS's entertainment divisions dragging them all over the place.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
gnu is going to have to release GNW: gnu's not windows, that way MS can follow by releasing MSNW: MicroSoft's not Windows
:-)
/dev.... and yes ive googled around for this i speculate id have better luck on a desktop.
keeping the holy war joke from another poster, they will obv include emacs and vii... but they are clearly going to have to introduce their own entry into that holy war too so that it can be a complete trio.
On a more serious note does this mean that the previously scrapped "longhorn power console update" dealie that got the axe is going to finally get put back in?
as a linux user and fan who's ditched windows; i hate to say it but I think that is a very wise move on their part. there are many times in the workplace where as much as I prefer linux, windows on the whole would provide me w/ an easier solution if not for the lack of a decent command line interface. Yes i could install cygwin, but there is ugliness to it and i have yet to see a good ultra easy way to launch the term. that and when i installed cygwin's X component (and registered it into my env so that it would work) it broke my windows emacs install. and vm's just arent the same thing for this purpose. What are the problems that it can resolve that I'm having in linux?
work machine is a laptop
1. display switching (take with a grain of salt because I'm running under compizfusion w/xgl which presents a problem for this issue)
i have a widescreen panel attatched to the laptop that i use for display expansion. problem is that if x/xgl is started when im not connected to the display, even when i plug it in i cant change my resolution live (using xrandr/resapplet) to the 'right' resolution. i could go from 1400x1050 to 2800x1050 instead of 3360x1050 (which sadly is not 3050 as it should be for a 1400x1050 + a 1680x1050). when i have started docked and was at the higher resolution i seem to have to switch from compiz to metacity to do the res change and then restart compiz (not restart x) to go back up to full res if i have to undock ( i seem to be able to safely reduce the res down from 3360->1400). if i dont its a lop sided coin toss and more times than not it crashes X and i end up having to reboot. also i have yet to get the vga out to work to connect to a projector if i dont boot connected to it... again these issues are probably because of xgl more than anything else.. (this is on a thinkpad t60p with firegl mv5250... if you have a fix i'd love the hear it
2. mice
so i bought a wireless usb mouse to plugin to the laptop; problem is its moving "way too fast" on the screen.. if i lower the speed it doesnt affect that mouse only, it seems to slow down both the touchpad/stick as well; which becomes a problem when i undock. lately the speed change doesnt seem to do anything.. the other problem ive run into is getting all of the buttons recognized; i've got everything working except for the horizontal tilt on the tilt wheel. dunno why, but it isn't even getting reported down to xev. dunno why, i think it has to do with the the synaptics touchpad/stick and the wireless mouse (logitech vxrevo) all getting dumped onto the same 'device' from
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
If it makes sense for Microsoft commercially then bully for them, but for anyone wanting to develop for Windows (or Linux+Windows) using free software there's already plently of choices:
...)
MinGW -- minimal GNU toolchain for Windows (incl g++/gcc)
Qt (not just GUI, but also threads, networking,
Cygwin -- Linux API DLL for porting Linux apps to Windows (I prefer to just use cross-platform libraries)
Cygwin/X -- X windows libs, server, utilities for Windows (presumably can be used with GTK, although I havn't tried it)
pthreads_win32
Boost.Theads - portable threads library (if pthreads, or QThread doesn't fit your needs)
Using MinGW and Qt it's easy to develop apps that can just be recompiled across Linus/Solaris/Windows/Mac.
What's currently missing is a strong cross-platform multimedia toolkit, but that will be changing with KDE's Phonon framework which will be supported by Qt 4.4. Phonon will support Linux, Windows and Mac via (respectively) GStreamer, DirectShow and Quicktime backends.
I'm not sure if GNOME has any equivalent in the works, or to what degree Phonon is tied to Qt. Having alternate desktops and even GUI libraries is not a bad thing, but it'd be helpful if Linux could standardize on core stuff like multimedia support rather than having competing camps there too.
My whole point of investing my time into Linux is because FOSS is a cultural phenomon that is completely new. Nobody, at least, not a single entity, owns Linux, and for that reason, it belongs to everyone. If you make some sort of a contribution to it, free of charge, it is almost like making a contribution directly to humanity.
I can't possibly see how Microsoft could pull off a similar thing.
No amount of being nice or slick marketing posters could make me think that writing for free on platform with a track record of sickening self interest could even remotely equate to the grand social experiment that is Linux.
But that's really not the worst of it. If anything, the slick marketing posters that come with Windows are a part of the problem. To a large extent, I view the drive for Linux as a push for a newer set of ethics for consulting firms.
We need to at some examine the relationship consulting firms have with large concerns like Microsoft. I always though that in the ideal case, a consultant was somewhat akin to a doctor, supposedly free of any sort of taint from any particular vendor's solution. But that's not what we have today. We have consulting firms that are "Junior, Gold", and more with Microsoft. It's an unholy alliance, where, consultants invest in MCSD's and other certifications, pay through the nose to get a product logo'd as compatible. In exchange, Microsoft gives those companies preferred listings and free development tools and operating systems. So basically, Microsoft is using artificial prices for copying to induce consultants to support their platform for free, and those consultants, in turn, are going to always be biased towards push their clients to Microsoft products. Indeed, higher levels of Microsoft partnership require sales of Microsoft products to achieve Gold or some other channel status.
If doctors did that, they would be barred from practice, and I think this comingling of a vendor with a solution provider is flat out wrong. In other lines of business, if you were paid by a vendor to advocate a particular product, selling everything from nuts and bolts to window frames, you would wind up in jail. But this practice of "partnering" is mysteriously ok in IT.
Adopting Linux removes this disgust. Because the software is free, there's no incentive to copy it, and ultimately, the customer is going to wind up with a solution that is genuinely more right sized for their needs. With Microsoft, you'll always have consultants pushing Biztalk and Enterprise this or Enterprise that, because, well, they are getting paid to do it.
The bottom line is this. If Microsoft genuinely wants to promote an open source environment, then yes, it has to make open source software, but it also has to work to promote the idea of a consultant as an independent advocate for his or her clients. We are not some salesman on the cheap motivated by free licensing for products similar to what Linux gives you for free.
This is my sig.
I don't understand why MSFT has treated the "command line crowd" with such a crappy product for the last 20 years.
They clearly did not want people to use the dos window: thus it's pretty much the same as in 1985 and lacks bash' niceties.
Only recently have they added auto-complete.
They clearly should have added an easier-to-use command line and made windows less of pain to administer from the command line.
First, Microsoft would never call it "UNG". Second, Ballmer would not talk about a "UNIX-like environment". Microsoft doesn't need a UNIX-like offering. Ballmer might order Microsoft to develop an easy migration path from Linux servers to Windows servers, but the Linux desktop share is too small to matter.
Why the hell would you want to do that? The kernel is not interesting, and doesn't give you the vast majority of compatibility features, you need the various libraries, GUI, everything else. If you think magically excel will work without MS libraries and will run under X, you are deluded.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
A GUI-less Windows.. Isn't that called DOS?? Or have I missed something..
A landfill on a toxic waste dumpsite.
Really, if they did it, they'd get the disadvantages of both, and the advantages of neither.
And, as a Unix programmer myself, I'll say it right out: No way in *%$&# would I find that an desirable programming environment.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I keep being led around to buy a copy of Office even though don't WANT a fuckin' copy of fuckin' Office.
All I fuckin' well want is a fuckin' copy of fuckin' Excel.
And they keep asking all these fuckin' questions.
ALL I WANT IS A FUCKIN' COPY OF EXCELL.
I DON'T WANT A FUCKIN' INQUISITION!
THE CLIENT CAN GO AND FUCK HIMSELF.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Microsoft would have to do a complete make-over on BSD the way Apple did with OSX. It's not that they couldn't do it, it's that they wouldn't. It would upset all of their development users to no end. There are so many developers making their products and living based on the Windows API that to move to something GNU "compatible" would simply be catastrophic in so many ways that I'd prefer not to put brain power into imagining the details. It would be ugly though... very ugly.
And in the end, it's not only that the Windows platform isn't and will never be efficient and reliable, it's that people who aren't using Microsoft as their basis for development or operations aren't doing so because they haven't heard or or tried Microsoft's stuff, it's because they have! Microsoft's reputation remains fresh in the minds of those who have rejected them.
To pull this off would require a lot. The first thing they would need to do is assure their developers that all the work, the time and resources devoted to Microsoft's platforms will not be wasted. To keep those developers would be no easy task. A large portion of them are 'worshipers' but many more are simply very invested in the current API and only take changes in small increments.
So such a move would take a long time -- even more than 5 years, possibly more than 10 -- to accomplish and even then, people are already burned on Microsoft's name, brand, style and attitude that it would take a long time to 'heal.' But 10 years is a long time to heal those memories, but why should the industry wait 10 years for what it has available to it now just so it could get something from a company that has a general strangle-hold on the IT market? People will figure it out eventually.
And since so much of today's business mentality is short-term anyway what with having to give in to short-term investors' demands or fear being sued, any planning more than 2 or 3 years out is just unimaginable.
Can they do it? Should they do it? Yes and yes! I have been saying it all along that if Microsoft wants to restore its former glory, it will have to dump the Windows API and either create a new, more stable and secure basis or adopt BSD and tweak it the way Apple did and hen create a WindowsAPI compatibility layer that actually works. Apple did it with their "Classic" mode (it's not perfect, but it worked well enough for many, and from what I hear Vista is a 'resounding success' even with its declining level of backward compatibility). Microsoft can do it too.
But will they? Not while present management is currently in control of things. If Microsoft wants another shot at being fresh, new and what's hip the way they were quite a few years ago, they'll have to dump their 80's-mentality leadership and fast! Only then will spurned anti-Microsoft people give a second look at Microsoft now or in the future.
Tell ya what Microsoft, I've got a deal for you. You unbundle your products; sell your OS, windowing system, window manager, and applications separately (or give them away, without restrictions on their use, if one or more components are considered not commercially viable alone). And don't use any non-published features, rapidly changing software interfaces under your control, or other anti-competitive advantages to glue them together. The price of the bundle (if you do sell a complete kit) should be within maybe 20% of the sum of the unbundled prices (a reasonable package discount is OK, but anything more than 10% starts to sound like bundling to me). You do that, then we'll talk.
A big part of *nix's advantage is that it is componentized. You can use the best tool for your particular needs. I don't want to be tied to a particular window manager when I choose a kernel. And if I don't like or need your windowing system, I don't want to pay for it. The nice thing about that approach is that each product has to stand on its own merit. It leads to this cornerstone of free market economics thing called "competition."
Oh - and stop calling your entire software stack an "OS". You're confusing the end users.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Then get a job working with Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, etc. These still exist, you know.
While on the subject, I'm sure many people have told RMS to fsck off. Then again, thanks to his "stupid dogma" I've always been able to count on some excellent tools (such as bash, apache, perl...), which are nearly always much better than the vendor-supplied equivalent. The latter tend to be somewhat quirky and/or limited.
Oh yes, I've always been paid real money.
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
Its MSX you fools. Bill finally woke up and is after Apple/UNIX. Bill is going to take advantage of the BSD licensing terms and roll out a MS Windows WM. Can't you see??? The rumors are just a way to fake out the market. Bill Gates will copy Apple ther take over the world.
"MS ZENIX The Return"
-The End is Near!!!
I live in Seattle and the last three months I have been receiving a lot of calls from head hunters staffing for MS looking for people with a strong Unix background. When I first received the job descriptions, my guess was that they were working on something that would allow you to manage Linux/Unix systems from a Windows machine. Reflecting back on the job description, it could have been something like this.
...)
/usr directory tree, etc.
I didn't accept the offers, but here is some free advice:
- Get rid of single letter drive names (you know, the eighties called,
- The directory separator is '/', As Seen On Unix and URLs.
- Reorganize the file system more like Unix/Linux, and maybe rename 'Program Files' to 'Applications', have a
- Ship every copy of the OS with an X server.
- And I still need a compliant shell and C compiler to support the holy invocation './configure && make && sudo make install'.
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
-Heb. 11: 1
By that definition (which I'd say is a reliable source for the religious definition of faith), the EFFECTS of gravity are the evidence of an unseen force.
You can't see gravity; you can only see its effects.
Q.E.D. By that definition (even acceding to the silliness of using the Bible instead of the Dictionary to define a term, not to mention you switching from "blind faith" to merely "faith"), "faith is the substance of things hoped for". Faith (trust) in gravity has nothing to do with whether or not it's "hoped for", and thus is different from "blind faith" (or even just "faith", as defined by that specific Bible quote).
Q.E.D.
You should've held onto this one for another month or so - it wasn't due to be published until 4/1.
#DeleteChrome
unless the GUI-less scriptable version of Server 2008 is offered as a free download with the source code released. I believe that when I get hit in the face with a snowball thrown by Bill Gates on July 4th in Miami.
They just spell it Windows Services for UNIX. It includes GCC and many other GNU utilities, no reason to reverse engineer them when you can already redistribute them for free.
/..
The UNG name is way to cure at too many levels for Microsoft, but congratulation to the author of the fake leak for making it
All they need to do is throw in some hookers! And blackjack! In fact, forget obout the OS.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Woah, woah, RMS is a worthless commie, but he's not a lazy worthless commie.
He did write the Emacs Operating System, after all.
IMO, that gets negative points, but it's certainly quite a bit far from nothing, you'll have to concede.
And you still have plenty of Unix options that don't involve free software. You just have to buy actual Unix.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It would seem a smart move for MS to go the way apple did w/ OSX. Tailor a unix kernel the way they want it and then dress it up to have the olde familiar windows look. Desktop users wouldn't know the difference and admins and power users would rejoice. There would be a bit of grumbling initially since so many admins would have to go out and learn something new, plus get new certs, &c., but ms can make changes of that size and people just put up with it. The only reason I can think of them not doing it, is out of fear that admins who normally only learn useless windows crap would now have 'some' inherent understanding of competing operating systems and 'some' actually useful cross-platform skills instead of just being exclusively invested in ms stuff. Do they still talk about posix in school?
They're officially closing the doors? I guess global warming won't be an issue anymore. Hell just froze over.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
And the gaming packages will be Direct UNG's Not GNU?
"able to count on some excellent tools" and from one of the parent posts "Microsoft would never have been happy about it because it would further erode their lock-in."
... like some excellent tools. That way, you get some good and free applications, sitting on top of your proprietary OS. Plus maybe even help remove, some of the reasons some corporate (non-technical) bosses of companies would think their staff would want Linux. "Why both, its got the same apps on Vista?".
also from the article link http://www.royalidea.com/site/?q=node/12 we get this section...
"The aim of UNG is to write complete GNU-like tools and frameworks that will be completely compatible with existing GNU software and standards. These tools will run natively on Vista. This means that software written for the GNU environment will be able to compile and run on Vista with little or no modifications. Major software currently running on GNU/Linux will be able to run natively on Vista."
Microsoft's strategy revolves around the idea of lock in. Looking at this from the point of view of lock in, it then sounds like Microsoft is trying to find a way to get GNU code over onto Vista. If you can't beat them, then assimilate anything useful they have
While Microsoft controls the OS, they hold the foundations upon which all their competitors try to build a living. They are not going to give that up, but any company switching to Linux is a problem for them. So this is another chess move to try to reduce corporate customers moving towards Linux. Loosing corporate customers is what Microsoft really fears. Big customers moving away from Windows sends out a message to other big customers to act in a similar way. Microsoft wants to prevent this slide, especially as more cheaper embedded systems are very likely in the near future and a lot of them are likely to be using Linux.
e.g. News such as 10 billion ARM CPU sales isn't going to help Microsoft as much as its going to help grow Linux support, as a lot of ARM CPUs are using embedded Linux. Add to this the number of other CPUs using embedded forms of Linux, then industry support for Linux is growing faster than just on desktop machines. Microsoft needs to move to either block or reduce this, to help maintain their OS lock-in.
e.g. http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2207797/arm-hits-billion-processor
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
...they step on an age old land mine in a very bad way.
...
ANNOUNCING NEW MICROSOFT VeMACS! Thats right! We combined VI and Emacs!
And I heard a sound as if millions of geeks world wide cried out in unison.
"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
What's the value of information that you don't know?
1) Faith is a religious term, and merits a religious definition - not one provided by a secular source, such as the dictionary.
2) "Blind Faith" is a subset of "Faith".
3) Faith is "Substance of things hoped for" or "Evidence of things not seen"
4) Thus we can safely say Faith is "Evidence of things not seen"
5) Since "Blind Faith" is a subset of "Faith", then "Blind Faith" also has the property of being "Evidence of things not seen"
Q.E.D.
You focused on "substance of things hoped for" and ignored the more pertinent "evidence of things not seen".
Apache doesn't have a copylefted license. Its just like you people, I bet you almost posted GNU-Apache didn't you? Why don't you lay off taking credit for other peoples work, thats the whole point, work has value, and you guys just never get that part.
Note that Satan is not part of pagan believe, budism, hindusm or the old roman or greek belive - to name a few. He only appeals to monothesis religions as only monothesis religions need an anti-god.
Martin
You don't really gain anything with the NT kernel. The problem is developers. They want to learn technologies that don't lock them down to one vendor or a "licensed" solution. Because of that chosen career paths follow toolkits that are portable. Java, python,ruby, mysql, apache, etc.. . Automation and installation of these type of tools are best handled through the GNU or GNU like products.
Even though the developer doesn't have the purchasing power, they do influence. If someone says, I need you to implement XYZ for my business. If the developer says, I need 3 linux boxes, it's done (because it's cheaper too). The purchaser has no power. MS needs to get rid of this factor. Non-techy people who do the buying would feel much more comfortable with windows machines. They need to empower the purchaser to say, look, I'll buy what I want, since you can develop on either.
Personally, I think it's still a failed strategy. If they see the writing on the wall, they should just port windows GUI part to linux or BSD and move on.
-Nuke the moon
lol... thats funny. this is a good way to start a day.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
I agree but I feel that in the long run it's going to totally destroy their lock-in. Let's say your a developer out to make some new software. Since *nix code can now run on Windows, OS X, Linux and Unix with a doable effort you might as well aim for that. Given a few years most software will be multi-platform and the idea of anything else will seem silly.
Apparently someone informed Ballmer that Stallman has ninja training (or is at the very least, able to defeat them... maybe he's a pirate?), so Ballmer decided to learn jujitsu...
That's why we have to focus on freedom as RMS teaches. If the only reason we use GNU is for the technology or nerdiness, at some point someone working against the community will release a product which will encompass the various technical advantages of it, and at that point many of those who use GNU merely for the technology will find themselves enslaved to proprietary software again. We should use GNU because we want to be free, not only for its superior technology. By focusing on freedom, we make sure that no one will ever be able to attack our community.
Folk here tend to forget that MS' greatest asset is the millions of third-party developers producing software for Windows. GNU compatibility can only expand that community; more than a few are likely to be attracted by the prospect of tapping into the vast Windows market. MS has nothing to lose.
Of course, if anyone does anything really good that's useful to more than a handful of people, MS is likely to try to buy them out. But not to worry; FOSS developers abhor the idea of being independently wealthy.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
The orginal AT ran at 6Mhz and then was upgraded to 8Mhz soon after it was found that you could just put in a new crystal and get 8Mhz. Your way faster PC was only two to four Mhz faster. Gee that isn't even enough difference to spit at...
Just something like 25 to 50 percent.
The good old day.
I remember swaping out my 8088 for a Nec V20.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Note though that the GPL is specifically designed to prevent Embrace&Extend. They cannot take, say, gcc, and develop propietary closed-source extensions on top.Their only way of applying lock-in is by using propietary formats and protocols - which require apps to be written from scratch. So, nothing new on the assimilation front.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
As part of the contract to sell Xenix to SCO Micorsoft had to agree NOT to sell a cometing Unix like operating system as logn as Xenix/SCOUnix was around. So until SCO 's unix (Xenix/SCOUnix) is dead MS cannot compete in the Unix market or SCO could sue Microsoft for Breach of Contract - And you know SCO - they love to sue!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Or does he just the necessary things to comply with european law, to no get sued again with 800 million Dollars and to cover it up as new,progressive ways of microsoft?
I did not find this entirely surprising. Microsoft's new e-mail platform, Exchange 2007, has made all its management operations available in its "Power Shell". It has it's own scripting language and some useful variations on pipes and the ability to incorporate CSV file columns into a script without a whole lot of extra work. It is more like UNIX, but really, I see it as something that they should have done a long time ago, when it would have saved me a lot of C++ programming.
1)turn your mac into a PC
2)turn your PC into unix
3)???
4)profit!!
here, wikiquote.
you had me at #!
...that GNU stands for Generally No User interface? Come on, own up, who was it?
And say you're a company maintaining existing cross-platform software. Why pay the costs of maintaining Windows and Unix versions; just drop support for the Windows version, and let UNG pick up the slack. But once a few companies start doing that, the negative marketing consequences (not a real technical issue, just the *appearance* of loss of Windows support) will probably cause Microsoft to scuttle the whole idea and screw over everyone who had banked on it.
A better strategic approach would be the inverse - a Windows-compatible subsystem that runs on *nix. Then companies could drop support for their *nix versions, and let this subsystem pick up the cross-platform slack. This gives superior marketing optics - the major packages only appear to run on Windows. In reality, of course, it would mean that everything runs on *nix, but marketing trumps reality, so it would be a pyrrhic victory for the *nixers.
n/t
you had me at #!
This means when developers ask themselves what platform to target, POSIX will be the only option that is well supported on Windows, Mac & *nix.
Which means many more people will target it.
Which means it will be easier for users to swap out the POSIX implementation.
Which means many users will choose the cheapest, stablest one with the best hardware support.
Which is Linux.
Have gnu, will travel.
When I can install VMware, and then run a full Linux system to get real work done.
Deleted
...asking what you're going to give him in return for ripping off his plan that brought Apple back into technical leadership. :)
you had me at #!
Man I didn't realize it was spring already. Time to grab the climbing gear.
I know this fancy new API has only been out for 3 or 4 decades, but I guess I'm a bit of a bleeding-edge early-adopter, so I've already written some code that uses fork(). Usually with a pipe.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Not hardly. Not to me anyway.
While it's nice that they've made it possible to do a GUI-less installation and there's some sort of scripting available, merely stripping the GUI off of Windows will not necessarily make a Windows box look and feel like a UNIX system. Unless Microsoft includes a fully-featured shell with an OS that can actually support multiple simultaneous users, I'll be taking a pass. Somehow, I suspect that any Windows without a GUI is going to feel much, much more like MS-DOS than UNIX. What's that old phrase? Oh yeah: Been there, done that.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
work has value
So who's going to pay me for the six hours I spent today moving rocks from one side of the beach to the other? A lot of effort went into that!
MS knows that there is no point in trying to appeal to the Unix crowd. Nobody is running Unix/Linux today because they are waiting for MS to release a sufficiently Unixy system.
What this could do however, is keep some Windows shops from bringing in Unix boxes. The scenario could go like this: A Windows shop hires a Unix/Linux person to build some sort of system they need. This person makes a case for bringing in a couple of Linux boxes. Rather than giving in to this, the Windows shop can set up some Windows servers with this crap and get away with it because it's close enough to Linux
...asking what you're going to give him in return for ripping off his plan that brought Apple back into technical leadership.There are posts from people who are clearly technical saying "What the hell? Ship MacOS 10 already. This junk doesn't work at all!"
Apple is a company which can actually warn its _own_ core system parts to keep up with times. Like:
27.02.2008 13:33:07 com.apple.launchctl.System[2] Notice launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd:
It is a polite warning for now, in a year or so, it will say very harsh things and later, it will say "I am not loading it".
Can MS do such things? As long as they can't do, they will have these issues. Dark tactics like pushing NBC to show Olympics site to SilverLight having people etc. will keep them in business though.
MS should buy Xenix back from SCO.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This is the best option, port the GUI (vista gui sounds pretty portable actually) to SCO unix (ms can buy it), run old apps in a virtual machine. Done and done.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
Isn't this the server side of the Linux Desktop conundrum. How do you get people to switch when what they have is okay?
Lock-in doesn't require closed source. Look at what Apple does with GCC, they extend the compiler willy-nilly (fully open-source, all of it), and now every Mac ships with a custom GCC that understands lots of additional options, changes the meaning of others, doesn't support some standard options, and produces completely incompatible binaries...
Sure you can apply the Apple patches to mainline GCC, and get the same thing, but that doesn't change the fact the this is lock-in: Mac developers have different expectations about GCC's operation than do linux users.
http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com
I can think of a few people who worked on Formula 1 teams who would be happy to have an odd but iconic little auto to play around with in the shop. :-D
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
This is just a customized GCC. Lock-in means you cannot get out by any means except expensive reverse-engineering (not required here, since Apple's GCC code is fully available). Also, no patents apply (otherwise the GPL could not be used), so there is no IP blocker either. It is by all means just a customized version of some opensource software. ARM does this all the time, for example.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
But I don't think .NET is working out the way they thought it would. It's basically a portable windows implementation that supposedly should run anywhere. In practice, they forgot the "anywhere" part of the equation. In some ways, it's a pity as .NET is quite nifty in later versions.
No matter how much GNU you sprinkle on a turd it's still a turd.
Heh. Hilarious exchange between the two of you. I didn't respond to his troll 'cause I assumed he wasn't worth my time. I was right.
Yeah, basically his whole argument is pointless and lacks logic. Of course gravity can be seen -- indeed, as you point out, it has been seen. Newton didn't have 'faith' in gravity. He saw that things that went up also came down. Newton proved gravity is real. Einstein didn't have 'faith' in gravity -- he proved it fit in with his theory of general relativity. Gravity is essentially a scientifically proven fact that requires no faith on the part of anyone who's had a high school physics course.
Blind faith requires that you simply accept what someone else has told you as you truth -- either through writing or through speech. The fact fundamentalist Christian whackos can't get around is that they believe what they believe because someone else told them it was true.
My blog
Stallman's ideas do form a system of economics, just like money. Our current money based economics, attempts to optimize the allocation of scarce resources. If there is greater demand than supply, money is a proxy medium that restricts demand and attempts to optimize the distribution of the supply (ie who gets what).
Turn the question around, if we can find a way to increase the supply to meet and exceed demand, then wealth is maximized by increasing supply and decreasing costs to the point it stimulates extra demand. This is the economics of abundance.
The market economy should always work to maximize real wealth, and in the case of software, instead of trying to create an artificial scarcity, target the natural scarcities that arise from it.
Which is more valuable diamonds or air, which would you prefer to live without.
Win32 does not have a way to fork a process, but NT does. Passing a NULL image handle to NtCreateProcess() is similar to calling fork(), cloning the memory space as a new process. The NT kernel supports a lot of system calls that are not exposed through Win32, and it's a shame. The NT API is much more elegant and self-consistent than the Win32 wrapper, yet it's the officially undocumented one.
NT is almost a superset of the features of Linux. There are only a few concepts that don't exist in NT, like signals.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Just junk food for thought...
After all, it was the same strategy which the commercial Unix vendors started to try out on their customers beginning back in the 1980s, and which continues to this day. The idea was that each variant is recognizably Unix, but with lots of cool proprietary features that your applications should really use to advantage.
In some sense, this arrangement creates a healthy competitive ecosystem. Bear with me here. You have a common framework which benefits everyone, and then you're free to add value on top of that in a modular way. That much is cool. For example, Sun develops NFS on top of the Unix filesystem model, and other platform vendors turn around and develop their own, more or less interoperable, implementations. More interoperable is better, since anything that encourages the entire space to grow will give every participating vendor a small piece of a growing pie. Modularity and interoperability are preserved, which frees users to choose the best solution for their needs. Technology progresses, and everyone wins.
So what's wrong with this picture? Well, it invites a tragedy of the commons. It's fine to develop technologies which genuinely compete for market share based on merit. In the physical world, we see that all the time, for example innovations in motor sports eventually finding their way into production vehicles. The trouble comes when some greedy vendor gets the bright idea to use a proprietary extension as a means to sabotage the competition instead of competing on merit.
Extensions which deliberately break interoperability cause damage to the growing digital commons. The exact tipping point arises when there is little or no real value in innovation, while there is a correspondingly significant loss of compatibility. To the relatively minor degree that the commercial Unix vendors engaged in this practice, they visibly slowed the growth of the entire market segment. By not collaborating more openly, each fought to preserve its own piece of a pie that was no longer growing.
Despite the ensuing damage to the commons, why is it that Microsoft gets away with its much more radical embrace-and-extend strategy? I'd argue that this is the result only in cases where by doing so it can overwhelm the competition. While it's true that there is not much real innovation, and the pie is therefore not growing nearly as fast as it would under conditions of healthy competition, Microsoft gets essentially all of it. At that point, growth due to adoption gives way to growth of the base population.
But this situation does not so clearly obtain where free software is concerned. The GPL sees to that. Even if an open source application is ported to Windows, there is nothing to stop it being ported back to some other platform. Yes, in principle it could become so heavily integrated with Windows that portability becomes an issue, but this is exactly what hurt commercial Unix vendors in the long run. Given a choice between two similar applications, one which is locked into a proprietary platform, and one which ports easily between multiple platforms, which of the two is most strategically versatile? Which is more capable of being adapted to a broad variety of new capabilities as they become available on diverse platforms?
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Microsoft thinks they can build a fully-compatible clone of the GNU tool chain in just a year with small side developer team? This is obviously a fake rumor, especially considering there is SFU, Cygwin, OpenLina, and CoLinux stuff that tries brings most GNU stuff over to Windows already.
Regards, Vincent
When I see an annoucement from Microsoft saying they LOST a customer to a competitor because they gpled code, and they admit they have no choice but to grin and bear it, and hope the customer will change their mind... Then I will believe they are serious about NOT hassling GNU.
Anything less just leaves them too many options, including legal and anticompetitive pressures.
This stands to demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that the reason most of us use OpenSource is the process not the product. I really look forward to Bash rewritten by MS 'MASH' - I confidently predict a more bug infested product will never see the light of day. In fact, that is the point - the bug infested 'MASH' will not see the light of day, while bash code is open for all to see.
"Free as in roaming the jungle wild and uncontrollable" - yay that the kind of software we all need ???
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Now may be a good time to remind everyone that not all Christians are blind christian wackos.
Group-think clubs exist in all sorts of guises.
Faith, though, helps all kinds of people see, live by and act on that which they could not know, and is to many people very useful in that respect; and also naturally closely tied to hope.
I have faith that by acting I will get what I hope for, and therefore I act.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
If they actually use "UNG's Not GNU" as a slogan, Stallman could sue them for trademark infringement ...
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
Cut the man some slack. He is the reason why Unix is still relevant today.
http://outcampaign.org/