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Date:      Wed, 17 Nov 1999 02:50:01 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
To:        davids@webmaster.com (David Schwartz)
Cc:        jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org, dscheidt@enteract.com, erickw@taurus.oursc.k12.ar.us, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Judge: "Gates Was Main Culprit"
Message-ID:  <199911170250.TAA05887@usr08.primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <000001bf3095$9d3e7640$021d85d1@youwant.to> from "David Schwartz" at Nov 16, 99 04:49:33 pm

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> > How about this, then.  We all stand idly by while Bill
> > Gates makes billions by making it necessary to upgrade
> > regularly to enjoy the latest benefits of technology.
> 
> 	It will always be necessary to upgrade regularly to enjoy the latest
> beenfits of technology. This is not a Bill Gates invention. To remain even
> remotely current, I've had to replace processors, memory, hard drives, and
> graphics cards about every two years. Why should software be any different?

You mentioned components of your machine.

Did you replace components of your OS, or did you replace your
entire OS?

It has been commonplace since the 1800's to build mechanical
systems with interchangable parts.  We owe this innovation to
Eli Whitney, who is unfortunately more well known for his
vastly less valuable gift, the cotton gin.


The point is that we have known for years how to build with
components, to standardized interfaces, in the software
industry, just as Mr. Whitney built modular gun components
for the U.S. Army in the American Civil War, well after his
invention become well known.

Yet Microsoft does not do this frequently, and in the rare
instances in which it does, it does so for reasons of taking
the trade dress away from other vendors, in order to render
their applications or components "just one more OS component".

More frequently, it builds components, and then does not
document their use or behaviour fully.  There are things that
Word can do that other word processor software from other
vendors can not do (without including "Word" functionality
via DLL or COM componentry) because the interfaces which
Word uses have not been documented.  People, including Frank
van Gilluwe, have made much money from books documenting
what Microsoft would not, but which was known to their own
programmers.

A good recent example is the WININET.DLL, which, unless you
violate their license and distribute it, you have to have
the user install IE 5.0 or the Windows 98 "upgrade".  There
is no other way of using this "standard" component to write
Windows internet software using the MFC contained in version
7.0 of Visual C++ (downgrading to 6.x fixes this problem, so
you are advised not to use 7.0 if you are writing network
aware applications for Windows, and want to offer your users
the option of using Netscape or running the code on Windows 95).


> As I've said before, SP1 through SP6 for NT4.0 represent tremendous
> enhancements and maintenance over many years for which Microsoft
> charges _nothing_.

Not overt costs, anyway.  But they didn't do this "tremendous"
work without paying their programmers with money that came from
somewhere.  It was amortized into a bottom line _somewhere_,
and someone _did_ pay for it.


> > Then, we will also allow him and his company to shut down
> > competition so we really won't have any viable alternatives.
> 
> Show me a competitor that he has 'shut down' without having a better
> product to compete with it. Show me one. Please.

Banyon.  Artisoft.  Univel.  Marc Williams Co..  To some extent,
Novell.


> In every case, Microsoft has 'shut down' competition by providing a
> superior product.


No, it did it by bundling inferior "equivalents" for their
products into the OS.


> Perhaps. If Bill Gates is smart enough and Microsoft dynamic enough, he can
> stay on top of the next revolution too. Of course, he can only do that by
> embracing the new technology. He has no power to keep it from us.

Really?  When you plug a new printer into your network, does a
dialog box come up on your screen because of the SLP broadcasts
it makes, offering to make it your default printer?

Maybe this is because Microsoft has a proprietary competing
protocol to SLP, and hasn't integrated it into the OS's that they
ship, and which get installed on nearly all computers.


> Exactly. If Microsoft can stay on top throughout more revolutions, it will
> do so by offering revolutionary products. If those products are better than
> the competition, and better than the previous products, people will gladly
> pay to upgrade.

Have you ever noticed the following relationship?

	H A L		V M S
	I B M		W N T

Windows NT is _not_ new technology, it's technology I was using
in 1983, and it still doesn't meet the same Orange Book levels
as DEC's predecessor OS.


> Look at the Linux scalability project. An awful lot of that work arose out
> of embarassment over comparison tests between Linux and NT. Linux benefits
> from that embarassment, and its users benefit from the enhancements that
> came out of it.


The embarrassment was a result of the Linux people putting
forward unfounded claims, and Microsoft defining the playing
field (SMP and Windows 95/98 instead of Windows NT Workstation/
Windows 2000 clients, etc.).  In a lot of ways, it was Linux
foot-in-mouth syndrome.  But make no bones: on the same field,
FreeBSD would do no better at this point in its life; the only
difference is that the FreeBSD numbers weren't published.

Does NT have superior threading?  Yes.  Is NT better at serving
SMB clients?  Yes, for some clients and for some very large
server installations.  Can a sinfle NT server hold a candle to
the FTP load of cdrom.com?  Not a chance in hell: see, FreeBSD
can win too, if it's allowed to define the playing field.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.


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