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: 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?
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
>Something like "Those who forget Unix are doomed to recode it".
And those who forget important quotes are condemned to reinvent them, poorly.
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.
I hope SFU has had some improvement since I last tried it a couple of years ago. Running as an NT subsystem, and owned by MS, it should just be miles better than Cygwin. However, it feels like ISC Unix in 1991, and has poor source compatibility with other Unixes and Unixlikes such as Solaris, *BSD and Linux. Cygwin was blowing it away two years ago and probably still is.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Also, this idea reeks of embrace/extend/extinguish.
Palm trees and 8
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.
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.
Um, you're a little confused on the facts there.
Around the mid eighties, Xenix was the most widely installed unix, due primarily to the cheapness of the hardware on which it ran. To say it wasn't popular just isn't true.
Also, MS never sold Xenix directly to customers, quoth Wikipedia:
"Microsoft did not sell Xenix directly to end users; instead, they licensed it to software OEMs such as Intel, Tandy, Altos and SCO, who then ported it to their own proprietary computer architectures. Microsoft Xenix originally ran on the PDP-11; the first port was for the Zilog Z8001 16-bit processor. Altos shipped a version for their Intel 8086 based computers early in 1982, Tandy Corporation shipped TRS-XENIX for their 68000-based systems in January 1983, and SCO released their port to the IBM PC in September 1983."
"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.
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.
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.
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