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Microsoft: Confirmed purchase of Interix
Alain M. Gaudrault writes "My colleagues at Softway Systems (makers of Interix, a UNIX subsystem for NT) have dropped a major bomb on me. They're moving to Seattle (I'll miss you guys!) as part of Microsoft's buyout of the technology. See Interix for more details.For those unfamiliar with Interix, it is a UNIX95-certified platform, hence, a "real UNIX environment". Much GNU s/w has already been ported to the platform, and more is certainly to come. Microsoft wants the technology becuause it acts as an intermediate step to fully porting one's apps to Win32.
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I downloaded a demo of it quite some time ago, and it was quite impressive. It was called OpenNT then, though.
It essentially chucks MS's broken POSIX layer out and replaces it with a less broken one. It seemed to work OK, though it was kinda bare-bones. No decent shells. It felt sorta like being thrown back to SVR3 days. No symlink support either.
It represents quite a threat to MS though. After all, I have a choice of writing a Win32 app and only being able to deploy it on MS platforms, or I can write a UNIX/X app and deploy it using a porting layer like this product.
I think MS are out to kill the product then, and thereby reduce the number of cross-platform porting options by.
Theoretically, if Unix systems can be adapted to emulate Windows (WINE, Wabi, etc), then Windows can be extended to run Unix subprocesses (whether in a shell or subkernel), especially if the source code is widely available. Given Moore's Law and assuming a factor of 100% overhead, then you should be able to execute today's programs with comparable performance on cutting-edge processors in 2 years time (which should please certain chip-makers). An ascetic might disprove of the bloat but then storage is reducing in price even faster than CPUs. Given the shortage of human talent and that software development is the time consuming component, then it makes financial sense, even if you have to fork out thousands for a faster CPU.
... ummm (yeah) .... zealous and dedicated marketeers. The question to the wider IT community should be does Linux or Microsoft offer the best value solution in the long-term assuming it is possible to cross-port between the two?
Given two equivalent OS markets, if it is easier to port from one to the other than vice-versa, then over time the asymetric flow will benefit the lower cost solution (think game theory, think thermodynamics and the flow of heat from high to low regions). As this is a structural shift (ignoring any short-term pricing tactics), it will only become obvious in the long-term.
As others have noted, Microsoft is composed of some very smart people, savvy managers and
LL