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

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

Re:Wow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Long story short: "Embrace, extend, extinguish"

Re:Wow

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

MS is a business

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

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

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.

Microsoft: UNG's not GNU

> UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU

Wait is it april's fool's already?

Re:Microsoft: UNG's not GNU

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.

Obligatory Jokes

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

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

itsatrap

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

Embrace, Extend and Extinguish

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]

They have to by law

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?

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"

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.

Re:Makes some sense

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

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

Re:Windows Services for 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.

Re:this has to be fake

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.