Microsoft hits new ethical low point?

[ddm at pizzashack.org (Derek Martin)]

Today, Derek Atkins gleaned this insight:

> 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

That isn't true.  Specific example: the scanner software that came with my
UMAX Page Scanner works under Windows 95, but NOT under Windows 98 (and I
don't think it works under NT either, but I'm not sure).  Are there
others?  You betcha!  Am I gonna catalog them for you?  No way dude...


> 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>

This, also, is not true.  At least not necessarily, assuming you install
compatibility libraries and run the app appropriately.  In fact, you can
run Linux binaries on most other x86 U*ixes, including (I believe) SCO,
Solaris x86, FreeBSD (and probably the other *BSDs too) using their
various compatibility packages.  And vice-versa, I believe, using the iBCS
module (if that still works these days... never had a use for it).

Windows is WORSE in all cases...


-- 
Derek Martin
ddm at pizzashack.org

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