May I correct you a bit? ;) > it's a big surprise to me that people don't know these facts. > Actually, I believe that this activity is less than 1% of the UNIX > activity of Microsoft.
Wrong. As much as I know, this is a fully native version of MSIE, not something like a "wine" + MSIE for the various systems (Linux not included) > If you take all the UNIX activities of MS and refer to it as to a > company, then Microsoft is the biggest UNIX software company. Sorry, I disagree with you. > Microsoft maintains dozens of UNIX projects, and is involved in many > others. Less then half a dozen (FP extension, MSIE ports, ceased-media player for Solaris, Interix [they bought them, but the same group maintains it], and SFU (services for unix, which is going to be replaces with a Interix 3.0) > Many of the projects are Open Source, like parts of the .NET (they have > sample implementations for FreeBSD, for example). Wrong. Corel does that. Not Microsoft. > Many others are free (like beer). For example, there was a multimedia > tool (I think NetMeeting or NetShow) for various UNIX platforms. Netshow, renamed to Windows Media player. Last version was 6.3 for Solaris. consider it dead now and if you really want to use something like this - use MPlayer or Xine - both available for Linux, Irix (I think), and Solaris, as well as Linux PPC and Mac OS X. > There are free plug-ins for UNIX tools (for example, the FP server > extensions). Right. > There are UNIX/Linux drivers for various Microsoft hardware products, > such as mouses, keyboards, etc. NONE of them was done or maintained by Microsoft. Fact is MS doing some stuff to make it hard for reverse engineering (read the EULA). > As you probably know, NT and 2000 are Micro-Kernel OS'es, and all of > the functionality is implemented as a SubSystem. So Microsoft developed > a full-functional UNIX system, that instead of running under a machine, > it runs as an NT SubSystem. It's called "Softway", and can be run > simultaneously with NT/2000 (like running Linux under VMware under NT, > but contrary to Linux under VMware, Softway runs natively). It was/is Unix based but I wouldn't trust a straight build on NT/2000 from Solaris or Linux - see: http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:0B5xG6rupXQC:www.usenix.org/events/usenix-win2000/invitedtalks/lucovsky.ppt&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 > Visual Source Safe was ported to UNIX. Yup. Thanks to the guys at Lod (MainSoft). > There are many other tools that were ported to UNIX. >From MS? show me. I'm not talking about the old Xenix stuff. > Microsoft is also involved with MainSoft, and some of MS products are > working under UNIX without a real porting, but just by putting them, > almost as-is, under the layer of MainSoft. MainWin. A really bloated system. If you're thinking to make your app to run under Linux or Solaris x86 - either hack wine or pay codeweavers to do the job. If I recall correctly - it will be cheaper then using MainWin (and their intimidation tactics - e.g. patents patents patents - ha!). > Some of the historical biggest UNIX software companies were founded by > Microsoft (like SCO, the only owner of the official source-code of UNIX > which was recently acquired by Caldera). No, Microsoft had shares in SCO. They didn't own SCO. You may look at the SEC filing again. MS did have their own crappy version of Unix - called Xenix. > This list was quickly written from my memory, but I'm sure that there > are zillion other UNIX projects of Microsoft. And if you thought that > "egg.microsoft.com" is the only UNIX/Linux in Microsoft, then you don't > know anything ("you" != Noam, but a typical reader of this message). They do have lots Linux and Unix machines, but most of them are to check the competing products and projects, as well as some maintanence of their current stuff. Of course (unlike MS Israel) - if you work at Redmond and you think you'll work better with Linux to write your stuff then Windows - no one will prevent you from using it. > > but I think I'm going to try this at work. > > You must know the enemy to fight it! > > If you really want to "fight the enemy", it is a bad idea to take an > application which is less than 1% of their UNIX activity, and try to > know Microsoft better out of this application. > I think it will be wiser to just learn more about their UNIX activity. > Even without trying anything, it will take you weeks to learn it. Most of their political activity these days are to stop Linux. Look at slashdot regarding the story of OpenGL 2.0 and MS I.P's (which came from a trully stupid move from SGI U.S.A - they seems to be expert regarding shooting themselves in the food - reminds me of "Mifleget Haavoda"). Thanks, Hetz ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
