Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 10:21:58 +0100 From: Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: MS Exchange server on FreeBSD? Message-ID: <1344929422.20050322102158@wanadoo.fr> In-Reply-To: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNCEOBFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> References: <1457754528.20050321194129@wanadoo.fr> <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNCEOBFAAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com>
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Ted Mittelstaedt writes: > There is a third option. Microsoft can simply quite releasing new > versions of it's established products and go to work creating new > products that people would want to buy. That business model doesn't work, which is why no PC software company is using it. It costs a great deal of money to build completely new products, and it can take a decade to recover the investment in development, even if the product does well. Additionally, there is a huge risk of it _not_ doing well, in which case the losses may be great enough to sink a company. Overall, it's not nearly as safe or profitable as adding new bells and whistles to existing products and releasing "upgrades." Therefore all PC software companies emphasize upgrades, not new products. > Think of it. Instead of every 2 years yet another tired old bloated > overengineered version of Windows, they could come out with a brand > new operating system named something completely different. For > example, 'doors' Even Microsoft can't afford to do that. They were already taking major risks with Windows NT, but fortunately it worked out. Nobody is going to rewrite 250,000 applications for a new operating system today. New operating systems must not only be superior to their competitors in a number of ways, but they must also have vast amounts of application software available for them in order to have any hope of being adopted. The risks for the OS vendor and the application developers are huge. That's why practically no one writes new operating systems. That's why Apple couldn't afford to develop a new OS. That's why Microsoft has consistently kludged its NT-based systems to support older Windows applications. Even so, NT was initially hurt by a lack of compatible applications. > Doors would be a completely 64 bit OS, would NOT run Windows binaries > and not be backwards compatible at all. It would be written to be > lickety-split fast. It would be voice-activated, no mouse. > Applications would have to be recompiled for it. That's not going to happen. But if you think it's a good idea, nothing prevents you from writing such an OS yourself. After all, Linus wrote his own home-baked kernel. > Because of the lack of all the Windows baggage, Microsoft could use > all of the good things they have learned writing Windows, to create > their new OS "Doors" and not have to inherit any of the bad things and > mistakes of Windows. Except that nobody would buy Doors, because everyone wants to use applications that run only on Windows. > But of course, you won't ever see this kind of visionary product from > Microsoft, because they are a company of mediocre programmers. No, you aren't likely to see this from Microsoft (or anyone else) because the company doesn't want to dig its own grave. They've done it in the past: Windows NT being the classic example. But it gets harder with each generation, and eventually it becomes so expensive that even a Microsoft doesn't have the financial resources to bet on such a project. > That is why 50 years from now we will still be running Windows, and > computers will not look anything whatsover like they do in Star Trek. FreeBSD is an implementation of an OS that existed nearly twenty years before Windows. So, when you will start writing your replacement for UNIX? -- Anthony
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