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Microsoft would like to buy Linux

S

Stanislaw Flatto

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hasipups said:
Must be a poor day in MS, missing brains, Linux IS free but limited for
non-commercial redistribution,that's why they don't know how to handle
it. Look what they done to the bought Unix (NT in their own lingo).

Stanislaw
Whom Windows95 converted to Linux, bless you MS.
 
D

DJ Delorie

Jan 1, 1970
0
Stanislaw Flatto said:
Linux IS free but limited for non-commercial redistribution,

Linux may be distributed both commercially and non-commercially. Red
Hat, for example, has many commercial Linux offerings.

Perhaps you meant "limited to non-PROPRIETARY distribution"? That's a
completely different word, you know, with a completely different
meaning.

Even so, you can certainly distribute proprietary applications on
Linux. Look at Oracle for Linux, for example.
 
S

Stanislaw Flatto

Jan 1, 1970
0
DJ said:
Linux may be distributed both commercially and non-commercially. Red
Hat, for example, has many commercial Linux offerings.

Perhaps you meant "limited to non-PROPRIETARY distribution"? That's a
completely different word, you know, with a completely different
meaning.

Even so, you can certainly distribute proprietary applications on
Linux. Look at Oracle for Linux, for example.
The ways in which those two OS companies send their products on market
are sooooo diverse that you either follow what you _must_ or you chose
what _you_ can and like to use.
To each his own.
And I chose to use this tool, as I can do what I need not being reminded
every few moments, when connected to the www. to get permission(s) to
read the next screen. I paid in hard cash for the OS, not for
kindergarten teacher to remind me to 'behave', to some standards which
changed since I left school.
For me Vista is RIP. But Win98se is used (sometimes) to perform as a
program in ways that are too much of a bother to teach Linux to do it.
And don't say NT, I have one Unix clone on my box and it serves my needs.

Have fun.

Stanislaw
Slack12 user from Ulladulla.
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Stanislaw said:
Must be a poor day in MS, missing brains, Linux IS free but limited for
non-commercial redistribution,that's why they don't know how to handle
it. Look what they done to the bought Unix (NT in their own lingo).

Stanislaw
Whom Windows95 converted to Linux, bless you MS.

Well ..... Microsoft used to sell a version of Xenix a long time ago.

Graham
 
P

Paul Hovnanian P.E.

Jan 1, 1970
0
DJ said:
Linux may be distributed both commercially and non-commercially. Red
Hat, for example, has many commercial Linux offerings.

Perhaps you meant "limited to non-PROPRIETARY distribution"? That's a
completely different word, you know, with a completely different
meaning.

Even so, you can certainly distribute proprietary applications on
Linux. Look at Oracle for Linux, for example.

The GPL would cause Microsoft some serious problems if they really
wanted to pull this off. There is no central 'rights holder' who could
restrict owners (those who have purchased or downloaded copies) rights
to use, modify, and redistribute copies.

Microsoft would have to purchase every copy out there. If one slipped
by, its owner could go into business burning copies and starting the
whole movement over again.
 
J

Jan Panteltje

Jan 1, 1970
0
The GPL would cause Microsoft some serious problems if they really
wanted to pull this off. There is no central 'rights holder' who could
restrict owners (those who have purchased or downloaded copies) rights
to use, modify, and redistribute copies.

Microsoft would have to purchase every copy out there. If one slipped
by, its owner could go into business burning copies and starting the
whole movement over again.

At the risk of being wrong... I did read today that a federal judge
has ruled that not SCO, but Novel holds the copyright on Unix.
As Novel is in bed with Microsoft these days, and sort of cross-licencing,
ownership of Unix comes nearer to them (MS), all they have to do is take
over Novel.
Hostile or not hostile, then they could play the same game SCO - IBM as MS - IBM.

Something sucks in all this.
As far as the GPL goes, [and] there is now GPL3, it may make little difference
if MS sells Unix with a service contract.

The gist of it all is, that as things become more important, then the big companies and
governments grab them.

I would be surprised if MS started selling Linux soft I wrote, or contributed to,
On one hand it is nice for the ego, but on the other hand I wannebee rich too.
LOL
:)
 
M

Matt

Jan 1, 1970
0
Eeyore said:
Well ..... Microsoft used to sell a version of Xenix a long time ago.

Graham

You can find recruiting literature from Microsoft from the mid-80's in
which Gates says he doesn't put much value on advanced degrees in
computer science. As you read it, you get the idea that he even
considered such advanced degrees as liabilities. That doesn't seem
consistent with trying to get the best and the brightest. At least from
'88 to'92 MS, didn't make recruiting visits to my school, which is one
of the better land-grant universities. After looking at the history of
MS's relationship to Unix and noticing that my school's graduate CS
department had a strong Unix orientation, it didn't seem so odd. I
believe that doing CS or EE or CprE graduate work after about 1986 at
one of the leading universities meant that you would be experienced with
Unix.
 
D

DJ Delorie

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jan Panteltje said:
On one hand it is nice for the ego, but on the other hand I wannebee
rich too.

Well, it's your fault for giving them permission to do so, then.
 
Must be a poor day in MS, missing brains, Linux IS free but limited for
non-commercial redistribution,that's why they don't know how to handle
it. Look what they done to the bought Unix (NT in their own lingo).

Stanislaw
Whom Windows95 converted to Linux, bless you MS.

Well, ummm....

NT did not start out as Unix. NT started out as OS/2; until XP there
was an 'os2krnl.exe', which was an RMX scheduler.
Microsoft did buy an AT&T source license for Unix, which they sold as
Xenix.

I've read some of the memos regarding open source software. Aside
from the marketing "stuff", there are 2 real reasons MS won't get any
where near Linux:
1) If there was a chance some GPL'd code got into one of their
products, they could be forced to release the rest of their code.
2) They can't figure out how to make money from it.

Cheers.
 
J

Jan Panteltje

Jan 1, 1970
0
Well, it's your fault for giving them permission to do so, then.

I have released a lot of stuff under GPL2, and contributed to some stuff
under GPL2.
If MS decides to make a Linux distro, sold with a service contract for many $$$
including that GPL2 stuff, then there is nothing I can do.

Even if I started making different non compatible versions so it
would only work with my stuff ... like Redhat did (libc for example)... it would not work.
They (MS) would split and create their own branch.

If I see this right, then the existence of Redhat is now in danger too,
unless the make allies with MS.


I will have to have a look at GPL3 again.
Or sell Redhat short.
 
N

Nobody

Jan 1, 1970
0
I've read some of the memos regarding open source software. Aside
from the marketing "stuff", there are 2 real reasons MS won't get any
where near Linux:
1) If there was a chance some GPL'd code got into one of their
products, they could be forced to release the rest of their code.

No, they'd just have to pay damages for copyright infringement, the same
is if they incorporated any other code without permission (cf. Stacker).
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
Matt said:
You can find recruiting literature from Microsoft from the mid-80's in which
Gates says he doesn't put much value on advanced degrees in computer
science.

He put his foot in his mouth there, but I can see where he's coming from: For
every 1 guy who's doing fancy algorithm research, you probably need about 99
that are just doing relatively straightforward coding, and truth be told you
don't even really need a four-year college degree to be a good "coder" like
that -- plenty of high-school kids do it just fine.
That doesn't seem consistent with trying to get the best and the brightest.

There's not as much correlation between "best/brightest" and "advanced
degrees" as you might assum... :)
After looking at the history of MS's relationship to Unix and noticing that
my school's graduate CS department had a strong Unix orientation, it didn't
seem so odd.

Windows NT (which begat 2000 which begat XP which begat Vista) was largely
designed by David Cutler, who did a lot of VMS's design as well. At the
Kernel level, VMS's roots still very much show!

---Joel
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
NT did not start out as Unix. NT started out as OS/2; until XP there
was an 'os2krnl.exe', which was an RMX scheduler.

This is a little confused. NT was designed "from the ground up" by David
Cutler and others; it was largely influenced by Dave's former work on VMS. At
that point in time, *it was not at all clear* which *API* was going to be the
predominant/"winning" choice among programmers; indeed, many people thought
that numerous would continue to flourish. As such, NT was designed to be able
to support multiple programming APIs, including OS/2's, some base-line UNIX
models, and of course DOS. Over time, as Microsoft took over the world, they
dropped support for OS/2 and UNIX.

Not that NT was originally designed as somewhat CPU-neutral as well, with its
hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and all -- at one point it ran on all of x86,
Alphas, and MIPS.

---Joel
 
N

Nobody

Jan 1, 1970
0
He put his foot in his mouth there, but I can see where he's coming from: For
every 1 guy who's doing fancy algorithm research, you probably need about 99
that are just doing relatively straightforward coding, and truth be told you
don't even really need a four-year college degree to be a good "coder" like
that -- plenty of high-school kids do it just fine.

A degree won't make you a good "coder", but it may make you a
significantly better software engineer.

I've seen people with 20 years of programming experience do silly stuff
like hand-optimising insertion-sort routines in assembler when a call to
qsort() would have done a better job.

"Qualified-by-Experience" programmers tend to have a habit of
independently discovering one solution to a problem then sticking with
that solution for the rest of their career, even if a better solution has
been known for decades.

Someone with a theoretical background is more likely to determine the
minimum theoretical time complexity for a problem then look for a solution
which at least comes close. Even the greenest CompSci graduate isn't going
to invest effort hand-tuning an O(n^2) sorting algorithm, or even consider
using it in the first place if performance is an issue.

For "end products", ability to code something which does the job in a
reasonable timescale is normally more important than any architectural
qualities. OTOH, for an operating system or library whose potential use is
open-ended, being able to actually *design* software matters. And that
requires both experience and knowledge.
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi Nobody,


Nobody said:
A degree won't make you a good "coder", but it may make you a
significantly better software engineer.

Yes, maybe. I can't tell you how many people I've seen with "C++ experience"
on their resumes (and 4 year degrees) that write codes that's really 95+% C
code.
I've seen people with 20 years of programming experience do silly stuff
like hand-optimising insertion-sort routines in assembler when a call to
qsort() would have done a better job.

That sort of person is hopeless -- they never figured out that one of the most
important things you can learn is what you *don't* know. Even if you don't
have time to learn how to do things better, it's a fatal character flaw for an
engineer/programmer if it doesn't routinely occur to them, "there *must* be a
better way possible... when I get a little time I'll see if I can figure out
what it is..."

The ax I usually grind around here is that college gives people a great
*opportunity* for deeper learning, yet many attending college today are
specifically trying to do *as little learning as possible* while still being
able to walk out with a degree. :-(

I thing we generally agree about programmers, we'd probably just quibble about
the exact numbers and hence just *how* dumb Gates' remarks were.

---Joel
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Linux may be distributed both commercially and non-commercially. Red
Hat, for example, has many commercial Linux offerings.

Perhaps you meant "limited to non-PROPRIETARY distribution"? That's a
completely different word, you know, with a completely different
meaning.

Even so, you can certainly distribute proprietary applications on
Linux. Look at Oracle for Linux, for example.

From how I interpret the GPL, you're _allowed_ to distribute proprietary
wrappers, apps, eye candy, etc - the only part that _has to be_ open
source is the part that's already open source when you get it.
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

Which is why I don't understand why M$ hasn't jumped on it, unless it's
a pride thing.

Cheers!
Rich
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
A degree won't make you a good "coder", but it may make you a
significantly better software engineer.

I've seen people with 20 years of programming experience do silly stuff
like hand-optimising insertion-sort routines in assembler when a call to
qsort() would have done a better job.

Yeah - it's fun sorting an 800KB data file in 32K (that's K as in 32768
bytes) chunks, then merging all of those buffers. ;-) (malloc could go to
65534, I think, but powers of 2 are much easier to manage at that level.)

I also once stumbled on a "string-matching" algorithm that would actually
return a "percentage match", i.e., if you say, for example,

percent = fuzzy_match("string1", "string2" );

the answer would come back with some percentage less than 100, but more
than, say,

percent = fuzzy_match("string1", "buttwart");

which would return zero.

I don't remember the exact algorithm, and I sold the code long ago, albeit
I made a little more money by selling the customer's mailing list to one
of his competitors about a year later. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich
 
D

DJ Delorie

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich Grise said:
From how I interpret the GPL, you're _allowed_ to distribute
proprietary wrappers, apps, eye candy, etc - the only part that _has
to be_ open source is the part that's already open source when you
get it. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

If two works are mere aggregates, like two independent programs on one
cd-rom, the licenses are independent - the fact that one is GPL
doesn't mean that they both have to be GPL.

If two works are combined into one work, like linking a library into
an application, if either is GPL the combined work as a whole must be
distributed under GPL-compatible terms.

However, my original post was to clarify that the GPL says nothing
about *commercial* distribution - it certainly allows you to charge a
fee for the GPL'd programs you distribute, provided you do so under
the GPL's terms (minimal fees for source distribution, etc). People
think that "free software" means "costs no money" but that just isn't
true - it may, but it doesn't have to.
 
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