Microsoft hits new ethical low point?

[smith at missioncriticallinux.com (Jeffry Smith)]

Now that I'm able to send to the list:

Derek Atkins said:
> John Chambers <jc at trillian.mit.edu> writes:
> 
> > In comparison, I have Unix software that I wrote 15  years  ago  that
> > still compiles and runs without problems on any Unix-like system from
> > any vendor.
> > 
> > We really should be publicising things like this.  If  you  seriously
> > want  a  common platform, Microsoft flunks even the most basic tests,
> > while Unix, with all its warts, does a fairly decent job of providing
> > portability  across  years, hardware changes, and even major rewrites
> > of the kernel.
> 
> <Devil's Advocate>
> But I have to recompile my software for every release of Linux,
> Solaris, IRIX, OSF/DUnix, *BSD, etc.  I don't have to recompile my
> software for Windows.  Once I've built it, it works.  It will work on
> all variants, and it will work on all systems.  I can't even build a
> single Linux application that will work on all versions of a single
> release of Linux (it wont work across Linux/x86, Linux/sparc,
> Linux/ppc, Linux/alpha, etc.)
> </Devil's Advocate>
> 

1.  I own a lot of software that worked under Windows 3.1, does not work under 
95/NT.  MS themselves admitted a lot of software that worked on NT/98 would 
not work under Windows 2000.

2.  Concerning Linux versions (x86,sparc, ppc, alpha, etc).  Of course, 
<sarcasm>Windows binaries work equally well on all Windows binaries running on 
those platforms, especially Windows 2000 - Windows works equally well on the 
x86, sparc, alpha, ppc, sh7, S/390, etc</sarcasm>.  This argument is the worst 
I've seen - Windows runs only on the x86.  I have yet to have any software 
that didn't run across all distros of x86 Linux (assuming same kernel version 
(2.2).  Most work with all kernel versions).

At least with Linux, you CAN recompile (assuming Open Source apps - another 
benefit of Open Source).  With Windows you have no choice.  That nifty Sparc 5 
- it's a boat-anchor for windows, but a great Linux machine.

jeff

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffry Smith      Technical Sales Consultant     Mission Critical Linux
smith at missioncriticallinux.com   phone:603.930.9739 fax:978.446.9470
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thought for today:  clobber vt. 

 To overwrite, usually unintentionally: "I
   walked off the end of the array and clobbered the stack."  Compare
   mung, scribble, trash, and 



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