LWN: Comments on "Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)"

Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)

art3hur — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 17:25:52 +0000

Fords and Chevrolets have incompatible parts, but they both run on the same road.

Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)

ttraub — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 15:40:10 +0000

It's interesting to see Mr. Gates taking such an interest in Linux. It's gone from a "cancer" and a toy operating system to a competitive threat.

Comparing linux to OS/2 is silly. OS/2 was never truly a threat to Windows; it was simply a different, incompatible version of Windows (originally developed by Microsoft and IBM) based on closed source. For a brief time, OS/2 was the superior multitasking environment, and then NT came along and blew it out of the water.

Now something has arrived that challenges Windows not only in the techie/hobbyist's world but also in server rooms, ISPs, manufacturing plants, third world countries, schools, you name it. The only place Windows is safe for the moment is the end user desktop. Windows XP is stable, slick, runs millions of apps, and comes on every I86 computer that's made whether you want it or not.

No wonder Mr. Gates is scared enough to talk tough to his "MVPs".

Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)

reinout — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:22:07 +0000

Hm. According to that article he sold 1 million COMMON shares (out of some
1.7) for $48 a piece. That's 50million.

But that's also not even comming close to the amount of money (large part in
stocks) he's supposed to have. So there probably is a large percentage of
non-common shares that he still owns. Question is, how big a percentage
those 10^6 shares are to his total volume.

Reinout

Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)

libra — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 09:20:55 +0000

Not only is Microsoft not trully compatible with standards even when they claim to be (see active directory as an example among others), but they are not always compatible with themselves. Latest funny failure I discovered : web folders of XP professionnal do not work, including with webdav enabled IIS6.

Of course everything would work better if they were following some standards and some common sense in their architectures, but it would prevent them from locking other actors out of their system. The problem is that doing too much proprietary things they start to lock themselves out of their own system nowadays.

Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)

jwharmanny — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 07:59:24 +0000

It's all about standards. Two distributions that both conform to the LSB and FreeDesktop.org standards shouldn't give too much trouble cooperating with each other.

On the other hand, Windows doesn't conform to a single standard I know. It took the Samba and Wine projects years before they knew how to cooperate with the OS of mr. Gates. Of coure, Windows is backwards compatible with itself, but it has always been inconsistent and incompatible with all other OS's out there.

Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)

wildman — Thu, 13 Feb 2003 00:08:31 +0000

Guess that's why he selling stock... http://biz.yahoo.com/djus/030205/1750001234_1.html

Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)

rknop — Wed, 12 Feb 2003 22:24:01 +0000

Geez, and here was me thinking we'd put the "Linux is gonna fork just like Unix did during the Unix Wars" FUD behind us some four years ago. Somebody should tell Bill to get with the program and realize that quite a while ago everybody in the Linux community got their panties in a wad over this before realizing that it wasn't a serious worry.

-Rob

Innovative or not?

frazier — Wed, 12 Feb 2003 22:14:19 +0000

<sarcasm>
Microsoft has me confused. Bill Gates says "people do innovations on top of Linux" but not too many months back Steve Ballmer said "There has yet to be any innovation, new features or new capabilities out of the Linux platform.". I don't know if I should stop believing Microsoft or congratulate whoever introduced innovation to the GNU/Linux platform for the first time in the within the last four months.
</sarcasm>

It is entertaining yet annoying how the stories change out of Redmond over time. In this case, just four months time.

Gates Taking 'Pervasive' Linux Seriously (eWeek)

ronaldcole — Wed, 12 Feb 2003 22:01:25 +0000

I guess, in a way, this implies that Gates is rather proud of the stability afforded by people not innovating on top of Windows.