Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 10:17:54 -0600 From: Jon Loeliger <jdl@jdl.com> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Interesting Development on the Windows/UNIX front... Message-ID: <199601111617.KAA03483@chrome.jdl.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Care to speculate how this might be, er, useful to any of us? :-)
jdl
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 10:05:02 -0500
From: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Subject: Windows on Unix compliments of Noorda
Forwarded-by: Eric Varsanyi <ewv@boom.bsdi.com>
NOORDA's WILLOWS TO PUT ITS WINDOWS-ON-UNIX SOURCE ON TO NET
Fresh from its victory over Microsoft Corp last month at ECMA, the
European Computer Manufacturers Association (UX No 569), the tiny Ray
Noorda-financed start-up Willows Software has changed gears, plowing ahead
with a move that is bound to irk the mighty Redmond empire. This week
it'll detail a plan to distribute the source code to its ersatz Win32s
operating environment, described as a subset of Windows 95, free on the
Internet. It will also make its anticipated software development kit, the
Twin Cross Platform Developers Kit (XPDK), similarly available for
personal use. Noorda himself will brief the press. The source code will
allow users of any flavour of Unix - followed in turn by Apple Macintosh,
Novell NetWare and ultimately IBM OS/2 users - to run Windows binaries,
particularly Microsoft's own highly popular Word, Excel and PowerPoint
programs, on their systems. They will not have to pay any operating
systems "taxes" to Microsoft.
Saratoga, California-based Willows claims the move will create something
of a paradigm shift - at least within the narrow confines of Unix - and
spell the end of Sun Microsystems Inc's like-minded but limited product,
Wabi, as well as Motif. Officially, Wabi only runs two dozen of the
thousands of Windows programs available and to run some of them, like
PowerPoint, requires the real Windows underneath, defeating one of Sun's
purposes - to wit, depriving Microsoft of its revenue stream. Willows
chief Rob Farnum says he will spend the next few weeks lobbying Wabi's
greatest adherents, Sun and IBM, to abandon Wabi and license the Willows
solution on favourable terms. He has utter confidence such an appeal will
succeed and make Willows money. (Sun and IBM Corp did after all sit on
the ECMA technical committee TC37 with Willows pushing the technology as
a standard.) Farnum never wanted to distribute the source code, he says,
because Willows doesn't have the financial wherewithal to support it. The
decision to do it anyway was made over the holidays by Microsoft's old
nemesis Ray Noorda and his henchmen. Farnum now believes that despite the
fact the source code won't be supported it will attract tens of thousands
of users.
Outside interest in Willows technology, he said, has always focused almost
exclusively on its ability to run binaries. It is unclear whether Noorda
will also try to tie it in somehow with the Linux freeware-based Corsair
Internet desktop his Caldera operation is pushing. Willows is also now
willing to forego carving out what it estimates would be a modest little
$10m business selling its XPDK toolkit to a couple of thousand Unix
developers a year. Any real money to be made, it figures, lies in what it
calls "professional services," porting applications for people with its
technology or helping them port them. It intends to announce such a
program this week. It also intends to announce licensing schemes whereby
pieces of its technology can be bundled with third-party programs.
Willows will support its technology when applied to commercial purposes
and apparently charge modest licensing fees of $250 a platform despite
the number of developers using it or run-times created. Farnum claims that
when Willows this week announces the imminent arrival of its XPDK for the
Mac - which like its NetWare kit is at the alpha stage - it will bring
pressure to bear on Microsoft's new $1,600 Visual C++ tool for the
platform. Still he remains diffident, or perhaps cautious, about Willows
impact on Microsoft - at one point calling it "mouse nuts" - and
Microsoft's reaction to Willows' moves. He apparently expects Microsoft
to denigrate Willows technology out of a perceived loss of control, loss
of revenue and threat to Win95. At the same time, he admits it would take
Willows 50 man-years just to catch up with Microsoft's OLE work which he
knows he must emulate. Farnum leaves unarticulated or unadmitted - despite
direct questions - Willows long-term purposes respecting Microsoft though
perhaps he and Noorda now feel they will make more daunting foes by using
the Internet to evolve their schemes.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6
iQCVAgUBMPN36zxFdSMFRIw5AQFPPAP/Qox48EABhVunQ7FT0NvPjOc32ptEK+Db
UDR8igkYYo5GXTSV9HZ28+WjsFz/rXtf+7Y+CM3u4m1d5dj79+2wkVDQCn282bO0
GMGddyUOnTeZ5S0OB2l1F+iPTjUd4iiOUvUeu3roHXrxgE1vyC6dp5Jetf9OQdmI
dzsv0mx1i2I=
=XLdk
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
------- End of Forwarded Message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199601111617.KAA03483>