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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?
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
If ever there were an appropriate story for the itsatrap tag, this is it.
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.
IIRC, it's "Those who fail to understand Unix are doomed to reinvent it, poorly" Can't recall the source ATM
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
>Something like "Those who forget Unix are doomed to recode it".
And those who forget important quotes are condemned to reinvent them, poorly.
and has for a very long time.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
since UNG is for non-commercial use only that mean business wont be able to use it... just jane & joe sixpack on his home PC...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
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.
Heaven help us if thats true.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
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.
Then its not Free Software.
Both Free Software and Open Source advocates agree that if you can't use the software for whatever you want, including a for-profit business, then its not Free/Open Source.
So Microsoft is up to its old tricks, trying to kill Free software since they can't Embrace and Extend (and Extinguish) it. The only difference is that now it's trying to make a faux-Free clone to kill it with.
Fizz
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.
My god, the Unix kernel isn't the be all end all of OSes. What is with this attitude that Unix was the best?
To paraphrase a quote, "Unix is the worst operating system, except for all the others."
There's a reason that Unix dominates so many different areas, from the smallest embedded systems to the largest supercomputers: it's very, very flexible, and gets out of your way. It doesn't straight-arm you into "my way or the highway" like most operating systems.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
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).
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'.
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?!
"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.
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
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.
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.
...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.
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.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
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
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