In-Reply-To: <199607040240.MAA24856@yallara.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII



	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard


On Thu, 4 Jul 1996, A Shelton wrote:

> 
> Thanks for the response
> 
> You seem more clued than me, so I'll keep my response in mail
> (and limited).

I prefer to reply publicly (we may uncover something interesting and
relevant to the larger conversation).

> > > >>You remember we had a microsoft salesman a while back? Standard 
> > > >>environment was Visual C++ with MFC on NT...How much of that is
> > > >>portable?
> > 
> > In case you haven't read, MFC is available for Several UNIX platforms,
> > including HP and SUN.  No Linux port (YET).  Microsoft isn't stupid, they
> > are hedging their bets.  The announcements and advertising is almost
> > exclusively in unix oriented publications such as Dr Dobb's Journal.
> 
> That I didn't expect....too broke to buy Dr Dobbs. Does this mean 
> that MS apps are trivially portable to Unix?

I seriously doubt Microsoft will willingly give up control of their
virtual monoply on operating systems by giving up their flagship
applications.  On the other hand, if Linux/Unix continues to grow at it's
current rate, and NT/95 continues to flounder at it's current rate,
Microsoft isn't going to allow itself to be locked out of the Unix Market
either.  Microsoft probably has a better feel than anyone of how Unix is
REALLY doing against how NT/95 is doing.

> > > Yep... you can use the Portable solution ( X ) which is what unix
> > > uses.
> > 
> > It is much easier to make NT look like a Unix station than it is to make a
> > Unix station look like an NT box.  When you have 32 bit emulations calling
> > dynamically loaded DLLs and VXDs which go out and hammer hardware and do
> > their own resource allocation, it becomes tricky to deal with backward
> > compatibility.
> 
> That sounds more like an indication of dodgy practices used in writing
> win32 apps rather than an indication of the operating systems. 

MS-Windows programmers are a very undisciplined bunch.  The worst
offenders of all are Microsoft's own staff.  They have access to "Inside
Info", including how to bang at hardware registers in such a way as to
defy emulation systems.  Win16 apps were always kludgy.  Win32 apps are
often ports which include the worst offenses.

> > Of course, if the legacy applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and
> > CC-Mail were supplanted with Netscape Gold, WordPerfect, Fig, Andrew,
> > and/or Caldera, this would result in less demand for the Microsoft
> > versions.
> 
> We can hope... A more likely candidate is starOffice though.. That
> could be the biggy for linux.

I'm not familiar with it.  More likely, we will see internet-standard
compliant software.  You can do WYSIWYG HTML-3, MIME/SMTP E-Mail, and
similar standards (Gif, Jpeg, Ghostscript, PHIGS/X, VRML...) for other
media elements.

> > > >>I realise Ansi-C is almost 100% portable, but that's true for all
> > > >>OS's so it doesn't seem a very worthwhile argument.
> > 
> > While the language is portable, there are dependencies like libraries, asm
> > directives, and "Pragmas" that are common on Microsoft code that would
> > shred man "Standard ANSI C Compilers".  If you want portability, target
> > the GCC compiler and use your "proprietary but fancy" compiler to port the
> > GCC compiler.  Use the GCC compiler to build the GNU libraries.  You would
> > also need to port X11/R6 libraries under GCC.
> > 
> > Of course, once you've done that, you can just go ahead and port the
> > entire Linux application suite.  But then you would have to choose between
> > Linux and Linux/NT (Linux on an NT kernel).
> 
> NT is a ridiculously inefficient microkernel ! The closed nature of NT,
> it's less than stellar performance and the fact (most important for me)
> that I do not need MS-ware make this fairly abhorrent.
> 
> I'd much rather see the development of Cross-platform applications.

Again, the predictable future is that more of the IETF and GPL media
standards will be adopted.  Then you can choose between Notes, CC:Mail,
Eudora, Xmh, Xmail, or Pine for that matter.  Conformance to Open Systems
Standards gives the customer a wider range of choices.  Customers will pay
extra for ease of use, simplified configuration, and real-time telephone
support.

> > A more interesting proposition would be to MFC for gcc.  Then you could
> > run NT/Linux (NT on a Linux kernel).
> 
> Much better...

Caldera is offering WABI, which lets you run Win16 apps on Linux.  You
need 24 meg of RAM + 20 meg of swap to run it.  Windows, as currently
implemented is a resource pig.

> > Actually, the FTP Associates developer's kit provides source code
> > compatibility with BSD.  Winsock doesn't deal with errno global values
> > well (Neither does any other NT VXD or DLL call - too many Win apps
> > exploit global sharing as a form of interprocess communication).
> 
> gak....

I haven't gone into the really uglies yet.

> > the last process dies).  In fact unix cleans up after itself (something NT
> > can't do - breaks Windows Legacy applications that depend on preallocated
> > TSR/DLL managed memory between instantiations).  Unix has a few memory
> > leaks, called Zombies.  They're nasty but easy to identify and fix.
> 
> I don't think you're right here. I thought zombies where dead child
> processes unacknowledged by a still running app. They don't cost any
> performance (just a slot in the process table).

A zombie is a child process who's parent process dies before waiting for
the child to die.  Normally, you are correct, the ram is cleaned up.  If
the Zombie was running a Message Queue or Shared memory buffer, it may not
complete the exit routines properly, leaving a memory leak.  I have
encountered this once in 10 years, with Oracle.

> > > >>>Posix on NT is also growing, making running what was previously
> > > >>>considered to be "UNIX" code much easier.  
> > > 
> > > >>I'm glad... Mr `Todd' of MICROSOFT clearly indicated something along
> > > >>the lines of "Serious development should be steered towards MFC"
> > > >>which seems to put you in differing positions.
> > 
> > Developing in MFC makes your system dependent exclusively on Microsoft.
> > This means that they can come back after you've been on the market for a
> > year and take 20%, up front, of your gross revenue, which they will use to
> > clone your application, buy you out for pennies on the dollar, or to fund
> > your competitor.  Next time you go to one of those "First Names Only"
> > training programs in Seattle, look carefully to your right and to your
> > left.  Both are probably competitors.  Mr Gates will choose to let one of
> > you live (your companies anyway).
> 
> I wonder how many business realise this? Mr Todd got very shitty when
> I tried to express the same saying that the growth microsoft caused
> made this irrelevant (hmph)

Climbing into bed with microsoft is a big gamble.  Gate's is like a
scorpion.  He won't strike until he has both claws firmly planted so that
you can't escape.  He "just want's to hold hands more closely", you don't
know until you have completely surrendered whether you are a new
subsidiary of Microsoft, or Lunch for the new subsidiary.

The rewards for the winners are huge.  A pivital patent can be worth
several million dollars.  Of course, you will receive your share as a
Microsoft Employee.

> > > >There are a lot of people at Microsoft, and they have a lot of
> > > >different opinions.   
> > 
> > The only opinion that seems to count is "I want world domination of the
> > international information infrastructure" (I want to rule the world) Mr.
> > Gates.  When I turn my will and my life over to God, I don't call him
> > Bill.
> 
> The best one I heard was the quote from their app. sales manager .
> 
> "I'm here to insure microsoft gets a fair share of the Apps market,
> 100% sounds about fair".

The cost of gaining market share increases exponentially with the
percentage to be gained.  The last 5 percent can cost more than the
preceeding 95 percent.  The last 1 percent can cost more than the
preceeding 99 percent.  Unfortunately, those resources are not available
to create new markets.  Gates was so busy trying to dominate the LAN and
PC market that he completely missed the boat on the Internet and
Unix/Workstation market.

> > Windows NT, out of the box barely squeaks through Posix 1.0 compliance.
> > It doesn't even support 2.0, and Posix 3 compliance is entirely dependent
> > on third party products.  The price for the "free" part of the operating
> > system can run well over $1000 ($500 retail for NFS, $500 for X11/R6, $200
> > for IPC, $400 for "shells and posix commands/apps".  Even the shareware
> > versions are unreasonable.
> > 
> > For $2000 I can have Posix compatible NT.  For $15, I can get a Linux CD.
> 
> Thank god...
> 
> An extremely informative post...facts and balance, better clean up
> your act of we'll kick you out of the advocacy groups :)

I've been doing my research for 20 years.  I've also been "advocating" for
20 years. :-).

	Rex Ballard



From rballard@cnj.digex.net Fri Jul  5 14:22:49 1996
Status: O
X-Status: