What has Microsoft done that is innovative? [LWN.net]

What has Microsoft done that is innovative?

Posted Apr 25, 2003 16:27 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137)
In reply to: What has Microsoft done that is innovative? by Xanadu
Parent article: Ballmer: No sleep lost over Linux (News.com)

"Linux is based on a 20 year old Operating System". First of all, it's over 30 years old (not 20 - assuming they mean UNIX in general)... Secondly, Where did they get their Bread and Butter code for their TCP/IP stack? Where did they get their NetBEUI (crap) stuff? Hmmm... It wasn't theirs in any sense.

I think what Steve is really trying to do here (and for the most part succeeding at, unfortunately) is exploit the ignorance of most IT "professionals." I don't mean to belittle anyone, I'm just trying to point out the problem: there are tens of thousands of people (maybe more) who consider themselves to be computer experts who can't even partition their own hard drive. They buy the "Linux is based on a 20 year old operating system" line hook, line, and sinker, simply because they don't know any better, and they don't have the motivation to find out otherwise. There's a certain security in shared ignorance. I could go on all day... :-)

Following Steve's line of reasoning, I guess we could say that Windows XP is based on CP/M. After all, DOS 1.0 was based on CP/M, so everything that MSFT has done since must be too, right? I think the fact that Linux has always been just "Linux", and not "Linux 386", "Linux for Workgroups", "Linux 95", "Linux NT", "Linux 2000", or "Linux XP" leads many people to think that it hasn't changed much, not realizing that parts of it have been rewritten so many times that it bears little resemblance to what we called Linux 7 or 8 years ago.

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