by firewoodmik » Fri, 27 Dec 2002 14:00:32
Shame, shame on you. Shame, shame.
by Rex Ballar » Fri, 27 Dec 2002 12:59:42
Pretty much every major "innovation" introduced by Microsoft since
1984 MS-DOS 2.0, has been in response to Open Source technology
generated within the UNIX or Linux communities.
Microsoft's proprietary implementations of this technology were
mainly to compensate for limitations in the fundamental design of
MS-DOS and Windows. Even Windows 2000 is crippled compared to most
modern UNIX and Linux kernels.
Even Windows itself originated whithin the Open Source community
(Smalltalk-80), most of the technology to make Windows functional
also came from Open Source community (Widgets/OLE, DOM/COM,
CORBA/DCOM.
In 1989, Bill Gates was so convinced that UNIX was "dead", that he
sold all rights to the UNIX market to SCO. By 1991, Bill realized
that he had made a big mistake as Sun's debut of the SLC and IPC,
which touted X11R4 Windows, OLIT toolkit, and integrated
applications gathered so much positive attention that Microsoft's
Windows 3.1 release was almost totally eclipsed. At the CES, Gates
was so concerned about SunOS 4.0 that he announced Windows NT,
which was little more than some notes on a napkin based on the most
popular features of SunOS. Bill Gates even promised that Windows
NT would be "a better UNIX than UNIX".
About the best that could be said is that Microsoft's monopolistic
and exclusionary business practices helped to bring about the
creation of "a better UNIX than UNIX" which is now known as Linux.
By early 1994, Windows NT was truly becoming one of Microsoft's
biggest mistakes ever. The release was nearly 2 years late, so
late that the FTC was investigating them for fraud. The available
beta releases were so unreliable that corporate decision makers
decided not to upgrade from Windows 3.1 to Windows NT 4.0.
Microsoft spent nearly $4 billion/year to punish any publication
that didn't lie and sing the praises of NT, especially any
publication who also generated positive coverage of UNIX, SunOS,
SCO Unix, or Linux.
Meanwhile, by 1994, Linux had all of the major features of SunOS
4.0 including the full Open Look toolkit, Open Look Virtual Window
Manager (even nicer than Sun's), a version of Athena Widgets that
looked almost as nice as Motif (but faster), and Plug-n-Play
capabilities that enabled it to detect hard drives, serial ports,
ethernet cards, and video display drivers on most of the available
hardware at the time (VLB, EISA, MCA, ISA, PCI). More importantly,
the price - due to the availability of CD-ROM burners, had dropped
to $20 retail/mail order.
Microsoft was so concerned about the new capabilities of Linux,
that they delayed the release of Windows "Chicago" for nearly 1
year. Most of the delay was the legal wrangling required to
lock-up PCI PnP technology, to prevent OEMs and ISVs from
disclosing the secret codes used for Microsoft's proprietary
configuration technology. Microsoft also had to find ways to
implement "clean room" implementations of internet technologies,
including a reliable form of Winsock, Web Browser, and e-mail based
on open standards, without being exposed as pirates. In many
cases, Microsoft obtained intellectual property rights by using
puppet corporations such as SpyGlass, promising them the moon if
they could deliver Mosiac without restrictions on branding or
derivative works, only to let them shrivel into a third-rate
consulting company once the rights were obtained.
Microsoft finally released Windows 95, and to further make sure
that Linux didn't share the hard drive, Microsoft added code
required to completely sabotage Windows 3.1, OS/2, and Linux, by
trashing and rewriting the entire master boot record and partition
table. Microsoft eventually forced the OEMs to sign agreements
which prevented them from adding boot managers, additional
competitor software, or anything else that altered the "boot
sequence" (or enabled OEM installation of competitor software).
Even with all of this arm-twisting, Microsoft found itself with two
competitors. The first was Linux, which was becoming very popular
with Gen-X users, and the second was Windows 3.1, which had already
been installed in several hundred million computers already on the
market.
To prevent Windows 95 from becoming another economic disaster,
Microsoft punished Software vendors who released Windows 3.1
software instead of Windows 95 software by releasing some support
packs and Second Edition, which deliberately crashed code written
for Windows 3.1.
Linux was still far superior to Windows 95 in terms of reliability,
performance, security, and stability. While Windows 95 users were
thrilled that they ONLY had to reboot their machines once a day,
instead of several times each day as they did with Windows 3.1,
Linux users were running Linux for weeks without rebooting.
Furthermore, Linux had cracked the PCI PnP codes, and had begun
generating the autoconfigurations required to install on nearly all
available PCs.
Microsoft eventually released Windows NT 4.0. This time they went
streight to the corporate IT managers. They promised that Windows
NT would be better than UNIX. In fact, they pushed IT managers to
install Windows NT4 servers and use them to run applications that
had been previously running on UNIX. Within 6 months, Managers
were less than thrilled. Microsoft offered free upgrades to
Windows NT 5.0 when it came out, on the condition that the
corporate workstations were converted to Windows NT 4.0 now.
Microsoft by this time was concerned that WINE had made it possible
to run Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 applications on Linux. Red Hat
4.0 had captured the limelight from Windows NT 4.0, winning product
of the year. The Linux community even won the award for best
service and support.
Ironically, USB was a protocol that Motorola had been developing
for a while and had been ignored by Microsoft for many years. The
Linux community started to support the standard, and an open
standards group formed to define a formal USB standard. Microsoft
came into the standards group and promised to include USB as a key
feature of Windows 98 IF the standards body would put all of the
technology under Nondisclosure agreement and they would use
proprietary codes instead of establishing a set of wellknown
identifiers and a public registry as originally proposed by the
Linux community. They used similar tactics to hijack control of
the DVD compression/encryption standard.
Eventually of course, Linux hackers cracked the USB codes, and
began to support IEEE 1394, which was more inclined to support open
source standards. The open standard was used to access USB mice
and keyboards, and eventually added peripherals such as Printers
and Scanners. As USB Peripheral makers began to notice that Linux
supported devices were often outselling Linux-hostile devices, they
began to covertly or publicly support Linux. Hewlett Packard
eventually announced that all of their printers and scanners would
support Linux.
Linux hackers also had no trouble decoding DVD either. In fact, a
young man in Norway, using publicly available White Papers, some
open source DES encryption software, and some simple deductive
logic, was able to decode DVDs and integrate them into existing
MPEG viewers (since DVD decodes to MPEG-2 video). Ironically, the
intended use was actually quite legal. The community was only
intending to use it as a device driver. A Microsoft-friendly site
published DECSS as a "piracy tool" to be used for copying and
distributing DVDs via the web. Microsoft went to the MPAA,
generated enough panic to trigger a series of legal actions, and
managed to manipulate the DVD Standards committee into harassing
the entire Linux community for any attempt to install DECSS or any
other DVD technology, based on the belief that Linux users would
use the technology to pirate movies. Ironically, the big feature
of Windows ME was the ability to pirate, edit, and reproduce movies
from content stored on Commercial DVDs. Yet the MPAA ignores
Microsoft while continuing to harass Linux users.
Windows NT 5 wasn't doing very well either. Microsoft had hoped to
get a quick upgrade out quickly enough to prevent corporate IT
managers from opting for Linux instead. The NT 4 servers were
becoming incredibly costly, and NT still had some serious
reliability problems. Windows NT 5 wasn't looking much better. In
fact, on several occaisions, Bill Gates was demonstrating NT 5
technology, and the system crashed on him. This included a keynote
...
read more »
by d2002 » Fri, 27 Dec 2002 16:10:19
Calm down!!! You forgot they can't read!!Quote:> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative minds,
> people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free, and effective
> option to the tyranny of M$. You should be grateful and supportive of
> those good folk in the OSS world, who have paved the way for us to lives
> that, insofar as software is concerned, are under our own control, rather
> than under the suffocating authority of the world's largest and most
> megalomanical monopoly.
> Shame, shame on you. Shame, shame.
by Paul E Larso » Fri, 27 Dec 2002 18:12:42
Appears you didn't get your Christmas wish! Maybe next year you shall gain
what the Scarecrow gained!
by NiceNe » Fri, 27 Dec 2002 19:39:25
>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
>> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free,
>> and effective option to the tyranny of M$.
> Not to mention creating nearly every great M$ "Innovation",
> including Plug-n-Play, Internet Access, TCP/IP Stack,
> Mosaic/Internet Explorer, SGML/XML, PERL->VBScript, Java &
> Javascript, SSL, e-mail/Outlook, newsgroups/Messagging, IRC/Instant
> Messaging, LDAP/Active Directory, Preemptive Multitasking,
> fork()/MTS, Interprocess Communications (SysV IPC/MSMQ, Named
> Pipes, Shared Memory), Threads, BSD Sockets/Winsock, Limpel Ziv
> compression (Zip, MNP Modems) GIF, JPEG, MPEG, PNG.
Thanks for posting this. It was very informative.Quote:> In most cases, Micrososft either manages to find a strict judge who
> will rule on what appears to be a minor technicality (making the
> critical evidence inadmissable), or they lose on the technicality,
> draw up a quick settlement, seal the court records (to prevent the
> unfavorable ruling and discoveries from being used in other cases),
> and then force everybody to sign nondisclosure agreements.
--
NiceNeo.
by Simon Cook » Fri, 27 Dec 2002 23:26:22
>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
>> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free,
>> and effective option to the tyranny of M$.
> Not to mention creating nearly every great M$ "Innovation",
> including Plug-n-Play, Internet Access, TCP/IP Stack,
> Mosaic/Internet Explorer, SGML/XML, PERL->VBScript, Java &
> Javascript, SSL, e-mail/Outlook, newsgroups/Messagging, IRC/Instant
> Messaging, LDAP/Active Directory, Preemptive Multitasking,
> fork()/MTS, Interprocess Communications (SysV IPC/MSMQ, Named
> Pipes, Shared Memory), Threads, BSD Sockets/Winsock, Limpel Ziv
> compression (Zip, MNP Modems) GIF, JPEG, MPEG, PNG.
You really are clueless.
Simon
by Simon Cook » Fri, 27 Dec 2002 23:27:38
Why should anyone be beholden to the OSS community? It was THEIR choiceQuote:> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative minds,
> people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free, and
> effective option to the tyranny of M$. You should be grateful and
> supportive of those good folk in the OSS world, who have paved the
> way for us to lives that, insofar as software is concerned, are under
> our own control, rather than under the suffocating authority of the
> world's largest and most megalomanical monopoly.
Simon
by firewoodmik » Sat, 28 Dec 2002 00:07:39
>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative minds,
>> people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free, and
>> effective option to the tyranny of M$. You should be grateful and
>> supportive of those good folk in the OSS world, who have paved the
>> way for us to lives that, insofar as software is concerned, are under
>> our own control, rather than under the suffocating authority of the
>> world's largest and most megalomanical monopoly.
> Why should anyone be beholden to the OSS community? It was THEIR choice
> to do what they're doing. Let them sink or swim without any help from
> me. I didn't tell them to go and do anything -- so I don't owe them
> squat.
> Simon
Yes, you owe them nothing and that alone should give you pause to think. --
Since when does the best of our culture cost us anything? The blessings of
life and the most wonderful creations of our civilization are free to us
for the taking. It is no coincidence that OSS is free for your use and open
for you to build upon and carry forward to other generations and other
times.
Have a little respect for your betters.
by Simon Cook » Sat, 28 Dec 2002 00:15:03
>>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
>>> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free, and
>>> effective option to the tyranny of M$. You should be grateful and
>>> supportive of those good folk in the OSS world, who have paved the
>>> way for us to lives that, insofar as software is concerned, are
>>> under our own control, rather than under the suffocating authority
>>> of the world's largest and most megalomanical monopoly.
>> Why should anyone be beholden to the OSS community? It was THEIR
>> choice to do what they're doing. Let them sink or swim without any
>> help from me. I didn't tell them to go and do anything -- so I don't
>> owe them squat.
>> Simon
> Ironically, your choice of words ("I don't owe them squat")
> exemplifies the virtue of the paradigm you disparage. The heart of
> the OSS philosophy is that you and every user of software should be
> free - free from constraint to use and modify software, and free from
> the onerous financial burden of paying a tyrannical monopoly for the
> right to use software over which you, the consumer, have no rights
> and no control.
> Yes, you owe them nothing and that alone should give you pause to
> think. -- Since when does the best of our culture cost us anything?
> The blessings of life and the most wonderful creations of our
> civilization are free to us for the taking. It is no coincidence that
> OSS is free for your use and open for you to build upon and carry
> forward to other generations and other times.
> Have a little respect for your betters.
Respect is earned. Sorry, but they haven't earned mine.
Simon
by firewoodmik » Sat, 28 Dec 2002 00:32:12
>>>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
>>>> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free, and
>>>> effective option to the tyranny of M$. You should be grateful and
>>>> supportive of those good folk in the OSS world, who have paved the
>>>> way for us to lives that, insofar as software is concerned, are
>>>> under our own control, rather than under the suffocating authority
>>>> of the world's largest and most megalomanical monopoly.
>>> Why should anyone be beholden to the OSS community? It was THEIR
>>> choice to do what they're doing. Let them sink or swim without any
>>> help from me. I didn't tell them to go and do anything -- so I don't
>>> owe them squat.
>>> Simon
>> Ironically, your choice of words ("I don't owe them squat")
>> exemplifies the virtue of the paradigm you disparage. The heart of
>> the OSS philosophy is that you and every user of software should be
>> free - free from constraint to use and modify software, and free from
>> the onerous financial burden of paying a tyrannical monopoly for the
>> right to use software over which you, the consumer, have no rights
>> and no control.
>> Yes, you owe them nothing and that alone should give you pause to
>> think. -- Since when does the best of our culture cost us anything?
>> The blessings of life and the most wonderful creations of our
>> civilization are free to us for the taking. It is no coincidence that
>> OSS is free for your use and open for you to build upon and carry
>> forward to other generations and other times.
>> Have a little respect for your betters.
> That's the thing; they're not my betters. Peers, potentially. Betters?
> Nope. Sorry.
> Respect is earned. Sorry, but they haven't earned mine.
> Simon
Does it surprize you that OSS is succeeding? That surprize should tell you
something, because history is replete with circumstances of oppression of
one sort or another and people who have reacted by giving everything they
have to extricate themselves and others from the heel of their oppressors.
Once again, I repeat - have a little respect for your betters.
by Simon Cook » Sat, 28 Dec 2002 00:40:03
>>>>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
>>>>> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free,
>>>>> and effective option to the tyranny of M$. You should be
>>>>> grateful and supportive of those good folk in the OSS world, who
>>>>> have paved the way for us to lives that, insofar as software is
>>>>> concerned, are under our own control, rather than under the
>>>>> suffocating authority of the world's largest and most
>>>>> megalomanical monopoly.
>>>> Why should anyone be beholden to the OSS community? It was THEIR
>>>> choice to do what they're doing. Let them sink or swim without any
>>>> help from me. I didn't tell them to go and do anything -- so I
>>>> don't owe them squat.
>>>> Simon
>>> Ironically, your choice of words ("I don't owe them squat")
>>> exemplifies the virtue of the paradigm you disparage. The heart of
>>> the OSS philosophy is that you and every user of software should be
>>> free - free from constraint to use and modify software, and free
>>> from the onerous financial burden of paying a tyrannical monopoly
>>> for the right to use software over which you, the consumer, have no
>>> rights and no control.
>>> Yes, you owe them nothing and that alone should give you pause to
>>> think. -- Since when does the best of our culture cost us anything?
>>> The blessings of life and the most wonderful creations of our
>>> civilization are free to us for the taking. It is no coincidence
>>> that OSS is free for your use and open for you to build upon and
>>> carry forward to other generations and other times.
>>> Have a little respect for your betters.
>> That's the thing; they're not my betters. Peers, potentially.
>> Betters? Nope. Sorry.
>> Respect is earned. Sorry, but they haven't earned mine.
>> Simon
> Your responses are a marvelous study in bobbing and weaving. You
> have yet to address the point - freedom. You lack, apparently, the
> ability to recognize when good people offer you gifts. Come down off
> your high horse for awhile and open your mind to the possibility that
> generous men and women are trying to find, in a giving and collective
> way, a positive way out, for themselves and others, of the
> monopolistic quagmire in which much the software world is painfully
> entrapped.
> Does it surprize you that OSS is succeeding? That surprize should
> tell you something, because history is replete with circumstances of
> oppression of one sort or another and people who have reacted by
> giving everything they have to extricate themselves and others from
> the heel of their oppressors.
> Once again, I repeat - have a little respect for your betters.
Respect is earned. The OSS community has not yet earned my respect.
And before you respond again, no, your shouts of 'freedom!' remind me
too much of Braveheart to be taken seriously. "Monopolistic quagmire?"
Uhuh. Whatever. 99% of people use OSS because it's free as in libre, not
free as in liberte.
Simon
by GreyClou » Sat, 28 Dec 2002 03:45:08
> >> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
> >> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free,
> >> and effective option to the tyranny of M$.
> > Not to mention creating nearly every great M$ "Innovation",
> > including Plug-n-Play, Internet Access, TCP/IP Stack,
> > Mosaic/Internet Explorer, SGML/XML, PERL->VBScript, Java &
> > Javascript, SSL, e-mail/Outlook, newsgroups/Messagging, IRC/Instant
> > Messaging, LDAP/Active Directory, Preemptive Multitasking,
> > fork()/MTS, Interprocess Communications (SysV IPC/MSMQ, Named
> > Pipes, Shared Memory), Threads, BSD Sockets/Winsock, Limpel Ziv
> > compression (Zip, MNP Modems) GIF, JPEG, MPEG, PNG.
> LZ compression, GIF, JPEG and MPEG are all proprietary.
> You really are clueless.
by Erik Funkenbusc » Sat, 28 Dec 2002 03:51:12
>>>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
>>>> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free,
>>>> and effective option to the tyranny of M$.
>>> Not to mention creating nearly every great M$ "Innovation",
>>> including Plug-n-Play, Internet Access, TCP/IP Stack,
>>> Mosaic/Internet Explorer, SGML/XML, PERL->VBScript, Java &
>>> Javascript, SSL, e-mail/Outlook, newsgroups/Messagging, IRC/Instant
>>> Messaging, LDAP/Active Directory, Preemptive Multitasking,
>>> fork()/MTS, Interprocess Communications (SysV IPC/MSMQ, Named
>>> Pipes, Shared Memory), Threads, BSD Sockets/Winsock, Limpel Ziv
>>> compression (Zip, MNP Modems) GIF, JPEG, MPEG, PNG.
>> LZ compression, GIF, JPEG and MPEG are all proprietary.
>> You really are clueless.
> Who, Rex?? I don't think so. He's been around for a very
> long time in cola. Actually, this is one of the shortest
> post I've read from him.
by Simon Cook » Sat, 28 Dec 2002 03:51:42
>>>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
>>>> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free,
>>>> and effective option to the tyranny of M$.
>>> Not to mention creating nearly every great M$ "Innovation",
>>> including Plug-n-Play, Internet Access, TCP/IP Stack,
>>> Mosaic/Internet Explorer, SGML/XML, PERL->VBScript, Java &
>>> Javascript, SSL, e-mail/Outlook, newsgroups/Messagging, IRC/Instant
>>> Messaging, LDAP/Active Directory, Preemptive Multitasking,
>>> fork()/MTS, Interprocess Communications (SysV IPC/MSMQ, Named
>>> Pipes, Shared Memory), Threads, BSD Sockets/Winsock, Limpel Ziv
>>> compression (Zip, MNP Modems) GIF, JPEG, MPEG, PNG.
>> LZ compression, GIF, JPEG and MPEG are all proprietary.
>> You really are clueless.
> Who, Rex?? I don't think so. He's been around for a very
> long time in cola. Actually, this is one of the shortest
> post I've read from him.
No one has ever claimed that any of the things that Rex has listed were
MS innovations -- and most of them were not created by the open source
community -- unlike Rex's claims.
Plug n Play -- a specific Microsoft innovation for enumerating devices
on the PCI architecture. No, Apple doesn't count (they didn't have plug
and play in this respect; they had built in support for all of their
home-grown devices right in the OS -- providing a driver library with
every OS does NOT count as plug and play). This common mixup is made
because people think that they're talking about "oh, you plug in a
device and it works", when in fact it's a specific technology.
Java -- a Sun technology which is proprietary.
GIF - relies on LZW, a patented Unisys compression algorithm. Created by
Compuserve.
MPEG - the Motion Picture Experts Group; a coalition of businesses. It's
highly patented -- thus, proprietary.
JPEG - again, another coalition of businesses. And again, not an Open
Source innovation.
LZ compression - patented, proprietary.
Would you like to point out where Rex was actually right in his post? Or
would you like to just assume that because he's been posting pro-Linux
trivia for several years that he's factually correct even though he's
completely wrong?
Simon
by mkosc » Sat, 28 Dec 2002 04:19:36
> >>> You Wintrolls disparage the generosity of thousands of creative
> >>> minds, people who work diligently to offer us all an open, free, and
> >>> effective option to the tyranny of M$. You should be grateful and
> >>> supportive of those good folk in the OSS world, who have paved the
> >>> way for us to lives that, insofar as software is concerned, are
> >>> under our own control, rather than under the suffocating authority
> >>> of the world's largest and most megalomanical monopoly.
> >> Why should anyone be beholden to the OSS community? It was THEIR
> >> choice to do what they're doing. Let them sink or swim without any
> >> help from me. I didn't tell them to go and do anything -- so I don't
> >> owe them squat.
> >> Simon
> > Ironically, your choice of words ("I don't owe them squat")
> > exemplifies the virtue of the paradigm you disparage. The heart of
> > the OSS philosophy is that you and every user of software should be
> > free - free from constraint to use and modify software, and free from
> > the onerous financial burden of paying a tyrannical monopoly for the
> > right to use software over which you, the consumer, have no rights
> > and no control.
> > Yes, you owe them nothing and that alone should give you pause to
> > think. -- Since when does the best of our culture cost us anything?
> > The blessings of life and the most wonderful creations of our
> > civilization are free to us for the taking. It is no coincidence that
> > OSS is free for your use and open for you to build upon and carry
> > forward to other generations and other times.
> > Have a little respect for your betters.
> That's the thing; they're not my betters. Peers, potentially. Betters?
> Nope. Sorry.
> Respect is earned. Sorry, but they haven't earned mine.
Quote:> Simon
1. Wintrolls should be ashamed of themselves
I met one of them recently. He was installing my DSL modem- to do so he
was using WinXP. I asked him 'how do you find it?'. He replied, that XP
is far better (than '98 for ex.), because he doesn't have to reboot
every time he changes IP address...
I met also another one. When I said, taht I will be using Linux, he
asked, if I will ever be able to surf on Internet.
The same- Comp. Expo in Warsaw, few days ago. Some education authority.
In short- he stated, that GUI <=> Windows. Seems, that he didn't even
hear about MacOS...
Quiet majority can't see the world through their windows... They just
don't know, that there is something else (at least- more stable)- poors
successfuly indoctrinated by M$.
Marcin.
2. HELP!! I could use some help setting up X windows, PLEASE!!!
3. Stupid $PATH question that I am ashamed to ask, but having no pride, I proceed
7. A Better Wintroll Than Wintrolls (was: Re: Desperately Seeking Intelligent Windows Advocates...)
10. So Ashamed ;-(