Linux in Government: How to Misunderstand the Enterprise Linux Desktop (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Tom Adelstein and Sam Hiser explain why switching from Microsoft to Linux makes good business sense. "Add to Microsoft's security woes an under-reported challenge enterprises will face in making the transition to Microsoft's next version of Windows. The next version of Windows produces an equally disruptive effect on Microsoft's installed base. Microsoft's technologies place as much if not more demands on an enterprise IT departments as a full-house transition to Linux, which wouldn't be required given the cross-platform nature of open-source software."

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Linux in Government: How to Misunderstand the Enterprise Linux Desktop (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 25, 2004 15:54 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (4 responses)

And the most important sentence, in my estimation, was this one, whose impact seems to get lost in the noise a lot:

Third, the next version of Windows--due in two years--makes radical changes in filesystems and application program interfaces (APIs). Microsoft also will be phasing out the Win32 standard in its next OS release.

To me that means that Microsoft has noticed WINE, and decided that it would never do to allow someone else to ship something that would run Windows-intended apps on another platform.

To the extent that it's accurate, it seems that Microsoft has decided that it's better to screw their entire development community just to keep from losing market share to Linux.

So, if you were a developer, and you were faced, potentially, with recasting large parts of your application because the Win32 API you'd been writing to was about to be killed off, what would you rewrite to?

I think I'd pick Qt/KDE, myself.

A little advocacy in the ISV community seems indicated here.

But who knows? Maybe it's just me.

So many, many things are just me...

Linux in Government: How to Misunderstand the Enterprise Linux Desktop (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 25, 2004 23:51 UTC (Sun) by whitemice (guest, #3748) [Link] (2 responses)

>To me that means that Microsoft has noticed WINE, and decided that
>it would never do to allow someone else to ship something that would
>run Windows-intended apps on another platform.

1.) WINE doesn't work well enough for M$ or anyone else to care.
2.) What they have replaced the Win32 API with is ".NET".

.NET's CLR & CIL is an open standard administered by a third party (standards body) making it officially MORE open than Java.

The reason for dumping the Win32 API is that the Win32 is a crazy jumbled up mess, the result of a decade plus of ad-hoc evolution. .NET is designed, well documented, and easily entensible.

>So, if you were a developer, and you were faced, potentially, with
>recasting large parts of your application because the Win32 API you'd
>been writing to was about to be killed off, what would you rewrite to?

.NET, no doubt about it. And I'm writing that .NET app on a Linux workstation, since .NET is cross-platform.

Linux in Government: How to Misunderstand the Enterprise Linux Desktop (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 26, 2004 5:40 UTC (Mon) by ron_ivi (guest, #23431) [Link]

I'm also developnig a .NET app on Linux (target platform = Windows, though), and I mostly agree with what you said.

However, despite the CLR and CIL being an open standard, some parts of .NET (ADO.NET, ASP.NET, Windows.Forms) are proprietary and likely patent encumbered. ( http://www.mono-project.com/about/licensing.html ) So despite being cross platform technologically, legal restrictions might make such applications windows only.

Linux in Government: How to Misunderstand the Enterprise Linux Desktop (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 20:14 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

> 1.) WINE doesn't work well enough for M$ or anyone else to care.

That's not what *I'm* hearing, though admittedly, I haven't personally used it for anything larger than Spider. ;-)

What, precisely, are you basing that opinion on?

Linux in Government: How to Misunderstand the Enterprise Linux Desktop (Linux Journal)

Posted Jul 26, 2004 10:11 UTC (Mon) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link]

> To the extent that it's accurate, it seems that Microsoft has decided
> that it's better to screw their entire development community just to
> keep from losing market share to Linux.

AFAIK Microsoft did not introduce .NET for the reasons you give.

Actually, they realized how their current component system (and
therefore development platform) just stinked, and decided to go
towards a more rational design for the future (this is clearly
explained in the Don Box "bible" .NET book).

This, technically, is just a smart move on their side.

Luckily (both for "us" and "them"), they understood that being
completely closed hurted also themselves, so submitted the core
of this new framework for standardization, and this made the
reimplementation of it easier (and desirable).