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."

Wow

[Renegade Lisp (315687)]

A rumour that sounds about as trustworthy as an e-mail from Nigeria.

Re:Wow

[ZeroFactorial (1025676)]

Does Balmer actually understand the holy war he's getting the company into?

This is like Satan trying to appeal to Christians.

*nix users have already eaten the apple and realized they were duped.
If the Nigerian princes are right, I'd say it's time to sell your Microsoft stock.

Re:Wow

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

This is like Satan trying to appeal to Christians.

Is that really that great of a description? I mean, Satan is depicted as putting money, power, wealth, women, and other temptations in front of Christians to tempt them from their path. He's also depicted as regularly succeeding.

I think the analogy you're looking for is something more along the lines of selling sno-cones to Eskimos.

Re:Wow

[BotnetZombie (1174935)]

We use car analogies around here. This is like a car-dealer trying to sell Trabants [wikipedia.org] to a Formula 1 team.

Re:Wow

[Bill_the_Engineer (772575)]

More like Yellow sno cones, being sold as lemon-aide.

Eskimo: Hey! This doesn't smell right!

Microsoft: Trust us, it's an improved lemon flavor.

Re:Wow

[evil_neanderthal (1024405)]

[0] Unix
[1] GNU: Gnu's Not Unix
[2] UNG: Ung's Not Gnu
[3] UNU: Unu's Not Ung
[4] UNU: Unu's Not Unu
[...]
[n+0] UNU: Ununix's Not Unu
[n+1] UNU: Ugnu's gnot Ununix
[n+2] UNU: Unugnu's tong Ugnu
[n+3] UNU: Gnugnuung's gnongt Unugnu
[n+4] UNU: Ungnungnungnu[...]

Re:Wow

[by Anonymous Coward]

[n+5] Ubuntu: ???

Re:Wow

[clang_jangle (975789)]

Where the heck have you been? We've come a long way since those days -- now we have classic poop, diet poop, cherry poop, new poop, and of course salty lemonade!

Re:Wow

[SL Baur (19540)]

Proprietary emacsen have died on the vine. The Gosling split (which was really the driving force behind RMS inventing the GPL) - Unipress Emacs never did well. When DEC tried to reinvent Emacs with EDIT/TPU they did a passable job (it was a fantastic editing environment for VMS), but it was so tied to the system that it could never make itself free.

I am certainly not wedded to the command line in and of itself (though zsh is a tool I cannot live without), but I wouldn't be tempted even if they duplicate the Unix open architecture of interchangeable parts. I'm a Linux developer and user because I got extremely pissed off by having my system (the AT&T PC7300 aka the Unix PC) end-of-lifed on me and I never want that to happen again. Never. Those of you who love Microsoft Windows XP, take note. Maybe instead of complaining to Microsoft, you should join up with the ReactOS guys and keep the environment you love so much.

It worked for us ...

Re:Wow

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

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.

Of course, these days Microsoft's lock-in is slipping away fast. More and more programs are showing up on the Mac, the web is going standards-compliant, and Java has ensured that Windows no longer locks customers in on the server side.

The way I see it, Microsoft is fighting. Which is step 3 of 4 in Ghandi's formula for success: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Re:Wow

[Andrzej Sawicki (921100)]

If anything it's a step on the way from Embrace to Extend. Later to be followed by Extingiush. I wonder, though, if the target isn't a tad too big this time. We'll see, I guess.

Re:Wow

[mikael (484)]

Microsoft did try this before when they first brought out Windows NT. They provided a very minimal shell environment along with some unix emulation commands (make, ls, df, du, vi) as well as being able to get OpenGL drivers ported over. The idea was to provide these commands to get the applications ported over, and then to silently withdraw the suppport once the applications were ported.

There are still emulation libraries by Cygwin [cygwin.com] and MKS [mkssoftware.com]

Shell scripts are Microsofts weakness. Microsoft held off from including Monad [blogspot.com] into Vista for security fears. This was in a previous Slashdot discussion [slashdot.org]

Re:I think its great news!

[MindKata (957167)]

"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."

also from the article link http://www.royalidea.com/site/?q=node/12 [royalidea.com] 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 ... 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?".

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 [vnunet.com]

Re:I think its great news!

[ardor (673957)]

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.

Re:I think its great news!

[BlueStraggler (765543)]

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.

Re:Wow

[Nimey (114278)]

What'd be the benefit of the NT kernel instead of Linux or *BSD? Surely the kernel doesn't directly host Win32 or .NET APIs, since so much of them has to do with the GUI.

Re:Wow

[EvanED (569694)]

[Whew, long post. If your reaction is 'TL;DR' I don't feel bad.]

The NT kernel... is an interesting beast. There are a lot of things I really like about the architecture it presents. In many ways it has a lot of things that are more modern and better-designed than Unix-descendents (including Linux). At the same time MS seems to have made it more complicated than it "needs" to be, in part to satisfy backwards compatibility and in part because they just seemed to make some decisions I don't agree with.

Some of the good points:

1. Security. Yes, security. This is often brought up as a Windows problem, but that is largely because of policy decisions such as running as admin. (There are also a number of bugs caused by just plain bad coding that lead to buffer overflows. The biggest problem here in some sense is some of the abilities such as sending messages to other processes, which are probably too ingrained to pull out without some very clever modifications.) The security manager in NT provides a lot of very fine-grained control. Related, you don't need explicit file system support and a separate mechanism to do more than RWX on files. (ACLs are absolutely vital in some environments, and things like an "append only" or "create files but no delete" are useful for some applications.) In Unix, sometimes you use chmod, sometimes you use fsacl or whatever it is; the framework isn't unified.

2. Flexibility, in some sense. MS (in theory) can change the system calls that the NT kernel accepts on a whim. This is because all programs are dynamically linked to the Windows subsystem DLLs. These DLLs translate Windows API calls into whatever actual system calls they need. (One API call may generate zero, one, or more syscalls.) It's only the rare, "misbehaving" program that uses the syscall interface directly, and MS doesn't mind breaking them too much. (There are some mostly-legitimate reasons why you need to do this.) By contrast, statically linking code is a bigger tradition in Unix. (Then again, so is having source, so you can recompile if you change your syscall interface.) The idea of having various subsystems that provide different API views is pretty neat, though it's not a fundamental idea. (It's hard to say how it differs from just dynamically linking against just some shared lib.)

3. Not really a good advantage, but interesting and one of the rare examples of where Windows is actually simpler is in the read/write interface. In Unix, my impression is that if you are writing a driver, you "have" to implement to entry points for each: synchronous and asynchronous read, and synchronous and asynchronous write. In Windows, you only implement the asynchronous interface. If a synchronous request is issued, it is handled at a higher level and translated to an async call. (Upside: simpler driver code. Downside: inability to implement just the synchronous version.)

4. It's actually possible to use extended attributes on Windows, though admittedly only because of a huge hack introduced for a related but not-quite-the-same reason. (In Unix, opening a file with an extended attribute in Vi or Emacs, modifying it, and saving it is enough to kill the extended attributes. This makes them next to useless, when I at least can imagine a TON of very useful and neat things you could do with them if you could use them reliably.)

5. The registry gets a lot of hate, but I think a modified version could be better. There are a lot of very nice things it provides over config files. (Transactional access, fine-grained access controls (often nice for a corporate environment, at least in some sense),

6. Diversity. Yes, diversity. People often talk about the "Windows monoculture" on /. and other places. And yes, this is a big problem. But there is another kind of diversity, which is that Windows is the only major OS that isn't Unixy. Solaris is Unix. BSD is Unix. Linux is Unixy. It's only when you start talking about either research OSes (Mach, L4, Singularity) and old Oses (OS/2, BeOS

Re:Wow

[The One and Only (691315)]

The way I see it, Microsoft is fighting. Which is step 3 of 4 in Ghandi's formula for success: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

What Gandhi left out is that, nine times out of ten, the fourth step is "then you're never heard from again".

Re:Wow

[incripshin (580256)]

I think Cygwin's full of too many hacks to be a good starting point. For instance, Windows programs have no ability to fork, and yet cygwin has a fork() implementation. Personally, I don't want GNU compatibility but POSIX compatibility. There are POSIX makefiles and there are GNU makefiles. The difference is that POSIX makefiles run everywhere, while GNU makefiles don't. Just the same, I try never use GNU-specific language features in gcc (I use -std=c89 or -std=c99 with -pedantic). GNU hinders interoperability, themselves. It would be good if a Microsoft-developed make (there is nmake, but I don't know how it works at all) had a POSIX mode and a GNU+POSIX mode, in the same way that GCC allows by use of -std=XXX -pedantic flags to disable GNU extensions.

Also, Microsoft's library model is positively nutty. Static libraries are stored as a big .lib file, while shared libraries are stored as a small .lib file together with a .dll file. Unix has .a and .so files, respectively. Inter-operable makefiles need simpler compilation systems than having three kinds of library files.

NT and forking

[Myria (562655)]

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.

Re:Wow

[nxtw (866177)]

MS also has existing software available for making Windows UNIX compatible, "UNIX Services for Windows", if memory serves. It's not a long distance from that to GNU compatibility.

With Cygwin already around, and UNIX being open and readily able to be integrated into Windows, it would be a smart way to envelop potential UNIX users. Personally I'd like a Microsoft supported Cygwin, which isn't as buggy and doesn't feel as detached from Windows.

As of Windows 2003 R2 and later, it's now called Subsystem for UNIX-Based Applications.

SFU/SUA applications are not Win32 applications; they operate on the POSIX layer. The apps are still Windows PE formatted binaries. Libraries are also PE and do not have a .dll extension.

The Unix environment is more Unix-like than Cygwin. Executables have no file extension; their names are all lowercase and appear that way in the Task Manager. SUA is aware of NT ACLs and permissions and appears to work with ACLs. It's possible to suspend and kill processes like any unix system.

SUA borrows a lot of stuff from BSD and includes some GNU code. Much of the userland is based on BSD; the SUA FTP application supports HTTP downloads as well, like NetBSD's IIRC. SUA applications can be compiled with the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler or the included gcc (version 3.3). SUA provides a /proc filesystem.

The userland is not as "complete" as a GNU system; commands like top and killall are missing, but ps and kill are functional.

Ports of some GNU software are available here [interix.com].

I haven't found much of a need for SFU/SUA, mainly because I typically have some sort of Linux system accessible and because PowerShell makes it possible to do many of the same things. But it doesn't feel too different than any other Unix

Here's the output of a few commands on my Windows Vista box:

bash-3.00$ uname -a
Interix bobspc 6.0 10.0.6000.0 x86 Intel_x86_Family6_Model15_Stepping10
bash-3.00$ gcc -v
Reading specs from /opt/gcc.3.3/lib/gcc-lib/i586-pc-interix3/3.3/specs
Configured with: : (reconfigured) : (reconfigured) /dev/fs/D/gnu2.intel/egcs.s
ource//configure --verbose --prefix=/opt/gcc.3.3 --disable-shared --with-stabs -
-enable-nls --with-local-prefix=/opt/gcc.3.3 --with-gnu-as --with-gnu-ld --enabl
e-targets=i586-pc-interix3 --enable-threads=posix
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3
bash-3.00$ pwd
/dev/fs/C/Users/bob

Re:Wow

[jayhawk88 (160512)]

Perhaps, but there's no denying that products like Server 2008 and Powershell definitely have a very *nix flavor to them and are at least partially meant to appeal to the Linux crowd. I'm sure MS would love to make the MySQL/MSSQL or IIS/Apache decision a little more difficult for a lot of admins out there.

Re:Wow

[diegocgteleline.es (653730)]

I don't agree. Microsoft IS trying to make Windows the best FOSS platform. The goal is not to be nice to FOSS, but to try to damage Linux. It's not me who says it, but Mary Jo Foley [zdnet.com] (who got it from a Microsoft), one of the most journalists experts in microsoft, if not the best. Quote:

"Microsoft is looking at open-source software (OSS) as just another flavor of independent software vendors (ISV) software. Microsoft's goal is to convince OSS vendors to port their software to Windows. But Microsoft doesn't want OSS software to just sit on top of Windows; the company wants this software to be tied into the Windows ecosystem by integrating with Active Directory, Microsoft Office, Expression designer tools, System Center systems-management wares and SQL Server database.

In cases where customers and software vendors want/need Linux to still be part of the picture for some reason, Microsoft will suggest they use Hyper-V, its forthcoming virtualization hypervisor, to run Linux and Linux-dependent applications.

Microsoft's OSS strategy makes a lot of sense for Microsoft. It's another way for Microsoft to try to make Linux obsolete, and not look as obviously ruthless doing so. And for OSS vendors who are selling a lot of their software on Windows -- Ramji repeated a couple of times that more than 50 percent of JBoss' business these days is from software running on Windows -- Microsoft's OSS push isn't a bad deal, either.

Re:Wow

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Long story short: "Embrace, extend, extinguish"

Re:Wow

[MightyMartian (840721)]

When I can recompile the Windows kernel to my liking, then we'll talk about how Windows will be a better FOSS platform.

Re:Wow

[// (81289)]

...and I remember when some "microsoft partners" were told (very hush hush) that a GUI-less version of windows2000 would be released.

We're still waiting.

It's not like a Unix system, where a GUI is built on top of a CLI. Windows is GUI by design from the start. It's a whole different kettle of meat.

MS is a business

[Shados (741919)]

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.

Re:MS is a business

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

it would mean that Microsoft is pretty much scrapping it's entire codebase for Windows and replacing it with a Unix or Unix-like architecture.

Says who? The NT kernel was designed to be able to project different "personalities", much in the same way that Mac OS X does. The POSIX system necessary has been available in Windows for just shy of forever [wikipedia.org] in an effort to win government contracts and companies that require POSIX as a checkbox on their requisition forms.

Of course, their support hasn't been very good, but that has more to do with an unwillingness on Microsoft's part rather than any real technical reason. Typically Microsoft implements sub-standard support, then claims that their support is top notch. A few examples of this are the David Korn debacle:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/06/2030205 [slashdot.org]

Just as bad was the Kerberos debacle where Microsoft extended Kerberos for Windows [schneier.com] such that Unix machines could subscribe to a Windows domain, but a Windows machine could not subscribe to a Unix domain. I called a rep on it in one of their presentations on Win2K, and he assured me that I was mistaken.

Re:MS is a business

[MightyMartian (840721)]

Windows NT has had a POSIX layer since the beginning. At any point Microsoft could have extended this and ported over GNU tools if they had wanted. The whole thing smells of bullshit, and Powershell is not bash. It may have its advantages, but you sure can't bring over a library of thousands of shell scripts.

Cygwin is a solution, but of course, that has nothing to do with Microsoft.

Re:MS is a business

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Unfortunately, POSIX allows a large number of functions to return ENOTIMPLEMENTED, instead of actually working. The original POSIX subsystem did this everywhere it was permitted. It also couldn't be used in conjunction with the Win32 subsystem, so you could only use it for command-line apps. Cygwin filled the gap a bit by providing an implementation of the POSIX APIs that wrapped Win32 calls. More recently, Services For UNIX have provided an updated POSIX subsystem and userland that is more-or-less useable.

Re:MS is a business

[jc42 (318812)]

That POSIX layer isn't. It's POSIX only in name, ...

Actually, the proper term is WEIRDNIX.

For those not familiar with the term, WEIRDNIX was the POSIX crew's term for a hypothetical implementation that was technically compliant with all the POSIX standard, but implemented everything in the worst possible way. The idea was to find bugs in the POSIX standard that would allow implementers to claim compliance while violating the intent of the standard.

Mostly, people just sent in specs for a component that followed the standard but would in some way sabotage software that expected the obvious behavior. When NT came out, there were a number of discussions of its POSIX implementation, and a lot of people explained it by saying that Microsoft had done a full implementation of WEIRDNIX. Hardly anyone's POSIX software would run sanely on NT, and that was a simple, elegant explanation of why.

Is there any reason to expect things to be different this time around?

Microsoft: UNG's not GNU

[FlameWise (84536)]

> UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU

Wait is it april's fool's already?

Re:Microsoft: UNG's not GNU

[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

In related news, Microsoft announced today that it has hired Richard M. Stallman and Linus Torvalds, who will be working together as partners on their new UNG project. Torvalds and Stallman hugged following a speech given by Steve Ballmer, and promised to put their differences in the past.

Re:Microsoft: UNG's not GNU

[AJWM (19027)]

Of course, that would be Microsoft UNG, or MUNG [wikipedia.org].

Figures.

Obligatory Jokes

[SendBot (29932)]

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!

book about UNG

[stoolpigeon (454276)]

There is already a book out on UNG [oreillymaker.com]. How do publishers knock this stuff out so quickly?

Windows Services for Unix

[TheRealMindChild (743925)]

And what is the difference between this and Windows Services for Unix [microsoft.com]? Sounds like rebranding to me.

Re:Windows Services for Unix

[Alioth (221270)]

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.

itsatrap

[BoberFett (127537)]

If ever there were an appropriate story for the itsatrap tag, this is it.

Embrace, Extend and Extinguish

[davecb (6526)]

his is exactly what MS tried to do with Java, and did do with C#.

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]

non-commercial uses

[FooAtWFU (699187)]

opened up their communication protocols for non-commercial usage

Get back to me when it's for general-purpose uses.

They have to by law

[esocid (946821)]

This is just a conference to make it look like this interoperability was all their idea. From this quote:

This covenant will use the exact same terms created in October for the protocols covered by the CFI decision. This means that open source developers will be able to use the documentation to develop implementations of these protocols without paying for a patent license. Companies that subsequently engage in commercial distribution of these protocol implementations will be able to obtain a patent license from Microsoft, as will enterprises that obtain these implementations from a distributor that does not have such a patent license. So that's how we're addressing the intellectual property rights

you can see that all they are doing is simply complying with the CFI's [weil.com] decision about how the

Commission found that Microsoft had abused its monopoly in the market for client PC operating systems by (i) refusing to supply its competitors in the market for work group server operating systems with "interoperability information," i.e., documentation allowing server products of Microsoft's competitors to freely interoperate with the Windows environment, and (ii) tying the Windows client PC operating system and Windows Media Player.

Who's the target?

[Phantom of the Opera (1867)]

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 [wikipedia.org] unix.

They're NOT opening up to "open source"

[argent (18001)]

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.

It's the channel partnering, stupid.

[tjstork (137384)]

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.

I don't buy it and it wouldn't work anyway

[erroneus (253617)]

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.

Re:Makes some sense

[genik76 (1193359)]

>Something like "Those who forget Unix are doomed to recode it".

And those who forget important quotes are condemned to reinvent them, poorly.

Re:Race to the bottom

[FudRucker (866063)]

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...

Re:this has to be fake

[betterunixthanunix (980855)]

Competing with GNU does not mean that they are releasing open source software. What it means is that they would be release tools that are compatible with GNU, so that companies that are running GNU right now would have an easy time switching to Microsoft. It should be interesting to see Microsoft pull this off without violating the GPL.

Also, this idea reeks of embrace/extend/extinguish.

Re:MSFT used to be a UNIX vendor

[by Anonymous Coward]

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."