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Microsoft

Microsoft Withdraws Linux NTFS Threats 140

Posted by michael from the hurray,-I-guess dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes: "http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/this-week/0084.html has a post by one of the developers working on NTFS utilities for Linux, stating that Microsoft has dropped legal threats against them and apologized. Therefore, development of these NTFS utilities will continue." Our previous story was here.
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Microsoft Withdraws Linux NTFS Threats More

Microsoft Withdraws Linux NTFS Threats

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  • Does linux ever threaten ms?


  • Does linux ever threaten ms?

    Yes by moving up in market share.

  • uh.... (Score:1)

    by jmd! ( 111669 )
    well, i didn't see that one coming.

    someone DROPED legal actions for once? what's going on here?
  • I think that guy that cracked Slashdot is still posting articles.

  • Huh? (Score:4)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @04:59PM (#741157) Homepage
    Microsoft apologized?

    I think that this, in addition to recent outburst of repeated posts, is a clear indication that the editors of /. have had a *long* week and are getting delirious.

  • ooops...i answered my own question...linux threatens MS all the time with the amount of people that are now using linux..MS hates losing marketshare..

    offtopic note: my pastor mentioned Bill Gates in his sermon today...he was talking about what a lot of people do on sundays other than going to church and he managed to slip in "sharpening predatory monopolistic business practices" this was right after he made a comment about bill gates being a loser. :) I am not used to hearing microsoft bashing at churhc. =)


  • ...Microsoft does take its (intellectual property) rights very seriously.

    Does this mean that if M$ does not like one of it's competitor's ideas, that they can go ahead and bully them out of business, therefore acquiring the competition (and their IP) through a buyout?
  • Linux wants to threaten MS. Maybe MS sees that it is to their advantage to set the standard. If Linux users start to use a Microsoft-created standard en mass, then Microsoft has options should Linux ever take away it's stronghold on the OS market.

  • Email. (Score:4)

    by laserjet ( 170008 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @05:07PM (#741161) Homepage
    "Microsoft has threatened us with litigation due to our support of Linux NTFS development, and we have dissolved our NTFS licensing agreements with Microsoft...," Merkley wrote in one of his e-mails. Merkey said he has no idea how it happened, but their e-mails first were posted on an Internet weekly Linux newsletter and reposted Tuesday on Slashdot.org. " Hmm... Possibly because email is not the secure communications medium that everyone thinks it is. I would consider a cordless phone safer than email for confidential communications - at least its broadcast does not go over a quarter mile or so.

    I just think it's funny that emails are often times a culprit for the media to strike. Lord knows Microsoft has sent a few emails that they did not want to get out to the public... All it takes is one person and the forward button...
  • Does this mean that if M$ does not like one of it's competitor's ideas, that they can go ahead and bully them out of business, therefore acquiring the competition (and their IP) through a buyout?

    They would never do that...it would show that they have monpolistic tendencies. I'm being sarcastic if you didn't pick up on that.

  • Why didn't ATT/Berkeley/McKusik/etc threat THEM for stealing all unix filesystem strategy?

    And also what about them using "sockets"?!?!

    Play the same rules your enemy chose!

  • WHOA! (Score:1)

    by RJ11 ( 17321 )
    hmm. I guess the Marketing/Legal department at MS really does have its limits...

    I'm *shocked*
  • Wow that's funny. I wonder if he also mentioned that some people also skip church to fix errors in the Linux kernel, or maybe to try to get a "first post" in on /. while some of the competition is at church... Do any ministers read /.?

    "Tis better to be hacking on the Linux kernel and thinking of being in church, than to be in church and thinking of hacking on the Linux kernel."

  • is probably what the real juice of this story should be. You have to know that Merkey & company have some ace in the hole that they waved at Microsoft and made the M$ legal battalions cut and run. Or perhaps they agreed to give Microsoft some really sweet deal on their products under the table, and that appeased the beast enough to make a phony public apology. While I realize that this is pure speculation on my part, I am also aware that the data that I can see out there certainly does not offer one any real insight into why Microsoft would do a complete 180 degree turn from their normal M.O. That's kind of like expecting the Pope in Rome to suddenly convert to Taoism. Not very likely. I'm sorry to have to say it, but anytime a company as big and brash as Microsoft pulls a move like this, you have to know that the stuff you and I get to see is only the tip of the iceberg...

  • NTFS (Score:4)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @05:19PM (#741167) Journal
    Well this makes sense for MS, because it allows NTFS to live on, no matter how big linux gets. Really these people are writing something that MS should be writing. Its going to make an MS product easier to use in a mixed environment.

    MS just realized it a way to get free innovation. :)
    -
  • M$ finally got enough flak from the press and the public that they had to do something to not look like the bad guys. M$ will just start trying to find another, more covert way to exercise some market muscle until this group, like others before them, is assimilated.

    Phoenix
  • Guys, I don't think this is that great of a news... Microsoft is now resorting to the tactic of threatning to sue before their legal dept even looks at something. Then if there's bad publicity (ie it's posted on /.), then they withdraw. What if they sue a small person who can't get the word out? Then that person is screwed.
  • The writing is on the wall as far as Microsoft's future is concerned. Why not take this as an opportunity to release the source code to NTFS?
    It is not like there are companies standing in line to steal NTFS for use in another proprietary OS(or opensource, for that matter).

    The truth is out there, I walked passed it getting on the T.
  • In the Merkey rant that was printed in "Kernel Traffic" he mentioned having dirt on MS that would take care of any serious threats. Don't know what it was though.
  • Anyone who looks at what is happening in the computer industy soon begins to realize that people and companies are aligning themselves for the "holy" wars that are about to come.

    There are two side in the war the Unix and the Microsoft site. Even Apple with OS X has moved to the Unix side. Just look. IBM, Dell, Corel, and Others who have been shafted by MS are moving over and preparing for battle. This article is another sign with many others that Microsoft is losing the battle. Just look how they've push up their prices. Could this be because they are suspecting that they will not be making as much in the future?

    ********************************
    In a world with out fences,
    who needs gates?
    ********************************
  • There was a story on the Register about Merkey having some special knowledge of either NDS or some other Netware component from his days as Novell and that Mickeysoft was real eager to get at them.

    I can't remember if the insinuation was interoperability with NDS or discovered the magic solution to some distributed database problem (which is what NDS is).

    What I find curious is that any NDS info Merkey has seems to date from NW4.11, which is rather out of date. I can't imagine that Merkey could deliver abstract information about a directory relative to MS' ADS that would necessarily improve it, although I can see where the info might enable MS to better interoperate with it.

  • Maybe the company who had licensed Microsoft's NTFS code found evidence of borrowing from copyleft sources and threatened to go public unless Microsoft dropped their suit.

    Sweet karmic justice, but highly unlikely.

  • curious...

    i'm waiting for the big "PSYCHE!" press release to come out of redmond.

    and april 1st doesn't roll around till... april..

    could it be a typo?

    WHAT GIVES? THIS NEWS IS DEFECTIVE!
  • You and I both know this isn't how Microsoft plays the game. Their strategy has always been to make their product incompatible and then to try to make customers use their product over the competition. If you've their OEM clout and their marketing dollars, it's not a half bad strategy.
  • Actually, from the email, it sounded like MS thought they had licensed certain IP to a company in order to build MS compatable tools. When the company quit building tools, they withdrew the license. Could it have been that MS thought they were making use of this proprietary information to build NTFS compatability into Linux?

    In other words, did they appear to take licensed information and then mis-appropriate it? If his was the case, then MS could have been justified in their threats, or at least in trying to protect this information.

    --

  • Source code to what? NTFS is a format for shoving stuff into an array, essentially. Give us the spec. And it sounds like it's already known in full; the tricky part is getting it to work. I've heard NTFS calls for some magnicient acrobatics. Is anyone familiar with this?
  • This isn't consistent with our knowledge of this enemy
  • What we don't see here is the standards are changing on the next Windows upgrade to be totally incompatible with it. Think LoadLin and WIN ME. Think Kerbos and WIN 2000. Think SMB and ... See a pattern. Of course they would like an early copy of developing competition.. So they can be incompatible with it...

    They don't need to litigate it, just outrun it.

  • Don't Believe the Conspiracy Theories (Score:5)

    by rabtech ( 223758 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @05:52PM (#741181) Homepage
    In a big corporation, such as Microsoft, IBM, etc..., the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing sometimes. Things can get skewed out of proportion and bad managers make stupid decisions. Don't make a bigger deal than it is... instead, praise Microsoft when they do something right. Send them emails saying you are glad they are making the correct decisions. Lord knows they get enough flak when they make the wrong ones. If you really want to see things change, TELL the companies when they are pleasing you, not just when they screw up!
    -----
  • I think it's a good idea that MS is finally settling to work more with Linux. I have a network system comprised of both Linux (dealing with underground network servers) and Windows (dealing with workstations). When they work together, they are an unbeatable solution. I think if we make Linux and Windows work together, we may actually get benefits from both worlds. And hey, why limit ourselves to only 1 option when we can use several at the same time?

  • I think they called Microsoft's bluff (Score:4)

    by leereyno ( 32197 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @05:56PM (#741183) Homepage Journal
    With the outcome of the anti-trust case still uncertain, the last thing that Microsoft needs is bad publicity. If they were to actually sue someone for trying to improve Linux's NTFS compatibility, it would be nothing but bad publicity. It would also reinforce the government's case against them in the public eye.

    I like to think that the NTFS developers knew this and simply told Microsoft where to stick it. That's certainly what I would have done. Microsoft, seeing that attempts at intimidation had backfired, knew there was nothing they could really do that wouldn't cost them more than it was worth in the long run. So they backed down and "apologized" before the situation turned into a PR disaster.

    One of the most effective tools anyone can use against a company like Microsoft is a good publicist. Someone who knows how to attract the attention of the media and therefore the public is every bit as frightening to a corporation like Microsoft as its lawyers are to everyone else.

    Microsoft may or may not lose their legal appeal. However they've already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Win or lose in court, business as usual is over for them.

    Lee Reynolds
  • nuclear - It's pronounced new-clear - Homer

    It's pronounced new-queue-lurr. Noo Q Lur. Homer.
  • isn't that being agnostic?
  • This shows that Microsoft is scared. Not only of the public opinion but off what linux truly represents. Linux represent people controling what thier computers do. Not some company tells you how your computer should work.
  • You should probably call yourself an agnostic then, as lots of atheists believe that god does not exist, and aren't really worried about some startling evidence that he is.
  • No, it makes sense for Microsoft because they want Merkley's NetWare migration tools, and pissing him off by going back on their licencing agreement was probably a stupid idea for them.

    BTW, "mixed environment" doesn't mean dual-boot. Having two OSes on your hobby machine might be useful, but in a real environment it only happens during migration.
    --
  • While I'm all for new tools with Win2000 (it's my operating system of choice currently, until there is a decent distribution of Linux with antialiased fonts, support for my USB hub, correct support for my HP printer, etc.) and while it's nice to see Microsoft let people into an arena, I'm a little concerned about the nature of this announcement.

    Company A decides to make it easier to port things back and forth between Windows NT and Linux. Company B (Microsoft) originally decides they don't want these tools. They'd rather make the tools themselves, but won't because it would ruin marketshare at the time.

    Then Company B decides to be crafty. Sure, other people can make the tools. Symantec makes a defragmenter. Adaptec makes a CD-burner driver. Company A makes some tools to get into Linux and WinNT cross-compatibility easier.

    Company B buys Symantec's defragmenter and makes it a critical part of the system. They license the CD-burner driver for a rock-bottom price to use in their new Media Player to burn music easier. They buy Company A's tools to force them out of the market, or they just buy Company A entirely.

    I like Microsoft products. I like Windows 2000. I think it's a good example of bucking the trend of bad programming plaguing the entire industry. However, I don't like Microsoft's business practices, and this seems like a devil in disguise.


  • Unlikely.

    More likely is that people will use NTFS to access existing filesystems from Linux. Not to create new filesystems in NTFS format.

    Just the way people use support for accessing various flavors of FAT filesystems now.

    In Linux, better filesystems are both on the way, and already here, in various forms. And some of the latest filesystems for Linux are very promising.
  • Here's a link from Kernel Traffic [linuxcare.com] "... We are concernd about the veracity of your associates. Despite the representations they have made to you, we have not been taking GPL code from Linux and using internally at Microsoft. This approach by these Linux people is little more than an attempt to [blackmail Microsoft] with unsubstanciated rumors. We see no benefit whatsoever to provided NTFS R/W capabilities on Linux ..." Not very nice to be sure. I know that black and white markings (like a penguin) are in style right now, but white and black stripes are not ! :-) But he concluded, "I have the ability to litigate against them. They know this and I doubt will go any further than to bluster and threaten." End Of Thread (tm).

    Jeff V. Merkey knows something interesting. I think we can all be glad they backed off.

  • For the Linux developer.
    • Improved NTFS gives Linux a better chance at being accepted into a "mixed" environment.
    • You can now use a Linux boot disk so that you can hack that NT server they give you an account on.

    For the microsoft developer

    • You now have hundreds of free programers working for you. You don't ever have to worry about that whole "health insurance" issue your other "temp" programmers had.
  • Microsoft threatons people normally anyway..
    The diffrence here is they caved due to SLASHDOT publicity...
    Hay... mark it down.. This is the day the evil empire caved to a bunch of "Unix Zellots". This is a good thing....

    All you need to get Slashdot attention is an e-mail address and a threat from Microsoft....
  • Jeff Merkey was the NetWare chief architect for a number of years. It's probably safe to say that he knows more about NetWare than anyone working outside of Novell.

    Merkey now runs a independant company and is under contract from Microsoft to write a number of NetWare migration tools, including a NWFS driver for W2K and perhaps an NDS migration tool. His logic is that there are millions of old NetWare boxes out there running 3.x and 4.x that will never be upgraded, and that anyone with the proper migration tools can get a big chunk of the file+print market, often in large corporations.

    (Novell recently announced EOL for NW 3.x and 4.x in a last ditch effort to get shops to NW5. Many aren't going to budge though, because they really don't want to support a specialized OS like NetWare and are planning on moving to something else. NW4.11 compatibility is still very relevant, and the differences in NW5 are probably not that great anyway.)

    The irony is that he's using the MS funding for NWFS for Windows to also develop NWFS for Linux. Microsoft didn't seem to have a problem with that. The problem came when he started working on the Linux NTFS driver. Since he has NDAed access to the NT source, Microsoft rightfully worried that he was going to "go over" and break his NDA and start working on Linux. (What actually happened is that he announced work on a NetWare clone called MANOS. Now, who really wants that?)
    --

  • Well, if you go back to the original Slashdot article [slashdot.org], and then from there follow the link to the Kernel Traffic discussion [linuxcare.com] , you'll see that about four paragraphs down, you see the following.

    The last thing they need is for me to take the stand and testify just what kind of deals they offered to get us to leave Novell in 1997 and divide the NetWare markets by using the "Linux IP Laundry-Mat" to launder Novell's NDS for their consumption (Oh! Look what we found on the internet and downloaded today!).

    So maybe there is more reason than meets the eye for why they might have apologized and dropped the lawsuit. Could their lawyers have said, "Hey you better not pursue this one."?


  • Whether or not they thought this was the case, they must have obviously decided that it wasn't the case if they withdrew their pit bulls and apologized.
  • or else they want to use linux but everything they need isn't there yet, be it MS Office, Quickbooks, GAMES, 3D Studio Max, Adobe Premiere, QuickTime, see the pattern of things not yet available for linux? Just about everything?

    Yes. Linux makes a great server. But if nothing else, this past week has taught me that it's in no way ready for the desktop... (THOUGH I'm incredbily happy to have been pointed towards VMWare... installing NT4 as I type this note...)

  • How this was won-maybe (Score:4)

    by 64.28.67.48 ( 217783 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @06:29PM (#741198)
    Merkey said Norman described the fracas as "an apparent miscommunication. Andshe also said 'please don't post those e-mails.' "

    This suggests that if "those e-mails" had not been posted, MS would not be backing off. The internet hasn't changed the state of intellectual property (as some might think) where companies are now trying to take away the rights of every independent hacker or developer. They always have. It's just that every piddling lawsuit that large corporations file, every cease-and-desist, every vague threatening letter from their law firms, is now posted far and wide. These things have always been going on, but we never heard about them. Microsoft knows that if every time they threaten anyone, it will be all over the net, they will look even worse than they do now (and maybe they realize more now than before how bad that can be for them).

    So keep posting them! If their lawyer tells you not to, it ain't 'cause it's in YOUR best interest.

    -------------
  • Having just been given my first 5 points of moderation power, I was reading some of the posts with a little more attention. It came to my attention that we need some kind of downward moderation category that is somewhat like "Redundant", but much more derogitory, and call it "Duh". Also, it is almost the opposite of "Informative". My simply reading it one loses priceless storage areas in your brain, resulting in a lethargic state of being that causes you to write things like these.

    on priciple alone, this should be moderated down.

    although, i thought the original thread which this article is based on was a worthwhile read. It made microsoft appear to have a bit of humanity. maybe the bit was flipped by electronic interferance though.

  • Dude, I'm an atheist too. Can't an atheist make some funny (to myself at least) comments with a sort-of religious bent?

    Hell, if you were to have tried to find me today at noon, you would have found me at a meeting of the Atheist Community of Austin.

    I was sitting there in the atheist meeting, thinking of hacking the Linux kernel, honest!
  • Can we really be sure they aren't working on their own distribution of linux?


    I can see it now:
    Red Hat, SuSe, Mandrake, Microsoft Windex 2001.

    There is a catch somewhere, I trust the minds at Slashdot to find it. There is always something for Microsoft to gain from their moves......




    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  • I have yet to see evidence that there is no tooth fairy either. The person making the claim needs to show the evidence, or else there's no reason to believe. If you make an extraordinary claim, that demands extraordinary evidence.
  • Damn MicroSoft!

    Again, as always, will they keep on impeeding on free software. Once more, they'll fsck with us and keep us from interoperating with their screwed up file system and even more screwy legal department by sending us

    ...er...

    ...appologies?

    Never mind.

  • "It all kind of got out of proportion," Merkey said of the threats. He spoke about them only after some of his private e-mail was intercepted and posted on the Internet.

    I don't think the linux-kernel mailing list [insecure.org] is exactly "private e-mail". I wouldn't expect Pat to know what a mailing list is, but come on here. It seems as if Pat didn't even bother digging up the post that started it all. I wonder if Pat even asked Merkey about how the incident flared up.

    sheesh, basic story research...
    -------------

  • Well, if you go back to the original Slashdot article [slashdot.org], and then from there follow the link to the Kernel Traffic discussion [linuxcare.com] , you'll see that about four paragraphs down, you see the following.

    The last thing they need is for me to take the stand and testify just what kind of deals they offered to get us to leave Novell in 1997 and divide the NetWare markets by using the "Linux IP Laundry-Mat" to launder Novell's NDS for their consumption (Oh! Look what we found on the internet and downloaded today!).

    So maybe there is more reason than meets the eye for why they might have apologized and dropped their threats. Could their lawyers have said, "Hey you better not pursue this one."?

    I posted this already, but thought it was relevant again here.
  • I agree. and I hate the blue haired religious old ladies that think that athiests are devil worshipers and that we want to bring down all religion. Athiests don't believe in a god or satan. True atheists don't give a damn about religion at all, that includes not caring whether the word god is in the constitution or not. sheesh
  • True, true. It's just way too temptingly simple to actually think of MS as a single personality, and consider everyone involved with MS as "the dark side" or whatever you want to call it. Stereotyping is too easy. MS isn't just composed of identical drone employees that share the exact same mindset. Like the parent post says, in any large corporation, the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing. And usually dumb decisions result from this.

    On another note, don't you find it ... um... fascinating that MS seems to be responding to Slashdot a lot recently? IIRC this must be the 2nd story within the last 7 days that MS responded to Slashdot. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? :-P (OK, this one isn't to slashdot directly, but still, MS seems to be uncharacteristically responsive these days. Effect of being under scrutiny, perhaps?)
    ---

  • More little minded snot-nosed kids that do not believe in god.

    Carl Marx
    Ayn Rand
    George Carlin
    Arthur C. Clark
    Bill Gates
    Jack Nicholson
    Arnold Schwarzenegger
    Anaxagoras, Greek philosopher (500?-428? BCE).
    Voltaire
    Frederick the Great
    Thomas Paine
    Percy Bysshe Shelley
    James Madison
    Charles Robert Darwin
    Abraham Lincoln
    Andrew Carnegie
    Samuel Clemens "Mark Twain"
    Thomas Edison
    George Bernard Shaw
    "H.G." Wells
    Frank Lloyd Wright
    Albert Einstein
    Joseph Stalin
    Virginia Woolf (I guess you would be afraid of her)
    Ernest Hemingway
    George Orwell
    Howard Hughes
    Isaac Asimov
    Carl Sagan
    Charles Schultz

    And that is just to name a few.
    You can add me to that list to.
    Thanks for your time
    Will
  • Dude.
    What do you mean. The tooth farry use to always leave me money

    Will
  • There is a catch somewhere, I trust the minds at Slashdot to find it. There is always something for Microsoft to gain from their moves......


    Sure. Somebody realized that if Microsoft lets the Free Software Folks work on NTFS compatibility, they won't have to spend any money later to do it themselves.

    Moderate as "redundant" as necessary.

  • Who fed the 800lb gorilla his bananna?
  • BTW, "mixed environment" doesn't mean dual-boot. Having two OSes on your hobby machine might be useful, but in a real environment it only happens during migration.

    Yeah, I wasn't thinking dual boot so much as migration, and other stuff you would run across in real life. Maybe someone would stick an NT drive into a Linux workstation for data recovery. Maybe removable media/portable drives with NTFS, things like that. More compatibility is never a bad thing.

    I think I know what mixed environment means. At work we have Irix, Linux, SCO, MacOS, Windows 95/98/NT4.0, whatever OS a S/36 runs (everything on it is in RPG), Netware, and used to have CLIX about 6 months ago, until we migrated all the data out of the Integraph system. Things are interesting to say the least. Good thing we are a pretty small company.

    I am personally pushing them toward migrating the SCO and Netware stuff to Linux servers. We will never be rid of MS or Mac stuff in the forseeable future though.
    -

  • Every once in a while you get an educated, flameless post on this site. Thank you!
  • No, agnostics (like myself) do not pretend to know one way or another.
  • Poll suggestions:
    1. Why is it that, in the previous article about MS threatning to sue NTFS developers, some people bash Merkley deserving to be sued, and then in this story there's a post praising MS for dropping the lawsuit?
    2. Why is it that MS is severely criticized, bashed, flamed, in the previous story, and then in this story, you get reactions like "Huh? MS apologized?!" and "I'm glad MS is starting to work with Linux"?
    3. Why is it that when MS does something bad, it's Yet Another Reason To Flame MS, and when they do something right, it's because they're trying to clutch at straws to save their PR because the DoJ is coming after them?
    4. Why is it that when something goes wrong with an open source projects, it's not open source's fault but it's that one oddball jerk developer that caused the problem; and when open source projects are successful, it's Yet Another Reason to Bash Proprietary Software?
    5. Why is it that some crack-smoking moderators will mark this post down even though this is clearly a parody of the Slashdot Zealot Kneejerk Reaction Syndrome?
    6. Why is the sky blue?

  • Re:I think they called Microsoft's bluff (Score:3)

    by Phexro ( 9814 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @07:07PM (#741216)
    "It would also reinforce the government's case against them in the public eye."

    maybe it's the pessimist in me thinking, but who are you kidding? most of the public doesn't care. they know that microsoft is the company that makes windows, office and ie. ms has worked very hard to maintain their public image as the kind, loving company that gives you windows. and for the most part, it has worked. in the eyes of the public, msft has more credibility than the naysayers who point out it's missteps.

    unless, by "public eye", you mean the slashdot readership. and it's not like we need more evidence to believe that msft is in the wrong.
    --

  • But Linux doesn't make such a great server if you have to take it down in order to boot into Windows to run some lame program, and then boot back into Linux.

    If you're really running a server on Linux you don't dual boot.

    If you dual boot, you don't run a (real) server. More likely, you fall into one of the two categories:

    1. Run Windows primarily. Install Linux to brag about it as mentioned by the poster above.
    2. Run Linux primarily. But need an occaisional Windows app that doesn't have a free counterpart suitable for your use.

    But in either case, you don't run a real server.

  • Slashdot Poll Suggestion (Score:3)

    by PollMastah ( 174649 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @07:14PM (#741218) Homepage
    Poll: Slashdot is mostly run by:
    1. Clueless posters who post Slashdot dogma and think that's what it means to be "Insightful".
    2. Clueless moderators who mod up Slashdot dogma conforming posters
    3. Equally clueless moderators who mod up appropriately labelled, non-conforming posts as Insightful just because it's different from the other posts
    4. Karma whores
    5. The trolls
    6. CmdrTaco

    (Hint: the last option, although it looks like the usual obligatory nonsense choice, isn't actually nonsensical :-P)

  • How about: 3- run windows primarily, but would like to learn enough about linux to feel comfortable abandoning windows?

    Or is that category just not good enough for you?

    Yes, you don't reboot an office server. But if you have just a couple of machines in your home, you can set one up as a server/router for the rest and feel free to take it down whenever you want.

  • I like Windows 2000. I think it's a good example of bucking the trend of bad programming plaguing the entire industry. However, I don't like Microsoft's business practices, and this seems like a devil in disguise.

    I'm skeptical. Some of the worst programming I've ever seen came from Microsoft (without having seen the source code). Especially in some of their Mac products, but also on Windows.

    Devil in disguise? What disguise?

  • >Microsoft has dropped legal threats against them and apologized.

    Wow!

    Microsoft, I appologize for telling everyone I know that your software is crap.

    Windoze sucks!

    Ooops, sorry, did it again.
    Geoff

  • It's good enough for me.

    Just embarrased I didn't think of it.

    I got a seperate box for learning Linux.

  • Everything I've heard about the Windows 2000 filesharing protocol says that it's proprietary and breaks Samba. So much for networking.

    I personally use NT as a very nice X-terminal for my *nix boxes. The window manager actually works with my mouse's funky features, and it frees me up from having to configure the fsck out of the Linux window managers. (I'll probably end up switching anyhow. One more flavor of *nix can't hurt.)

  • Very true. An example which I think qualifies: JDK1.3 was released for Windows NT months before Solaris. Despite the fact that more Java developers probably use NT, Sun should have delayed its NT release. Why? Because as a Solaris user, I would've expected the "perk" of getting Sun software before Windows users do. :-)

    I'm sure it's because Sun is a big company, the SunOS and Java disvisions are completely separate, and the echelons of upper management can't be worried by things a minor as synchronized release schedules. In a companies as large as SMI, IBM, Microsoft, et cetera, the separate divisions really are just like different companies.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • I can see by rabtech's post here that my comment isnt going to be well received. Call me cynical, but I'd like to think things of this nature are calculated. Remember the Halloween documents! MSFT have always been aware of the geek factor. It's just that as of late, they've learned we are a force with which to be reckoned. I figure they're just doing this to put up another smokescreen. What's coming next?

    Bob

  • Why Microsoft, Why? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When will Microsoft stop? Why stop a repair tool? And why not let the masses create tools....i ask why.
  • While that can be true of certain departments, my original intent is usually correct in regard to large corporations: Its hard to get thousands of individuals on the same page and usually boneheaded moves result.... that and the fact that managers can tend to make uninformed decisions and blame in on the employees... we call that "empowerment" :)
    -----
  • Score 10. You are closer than you realize here.

    :-)

    Jeff
  • He asked me how the emails got posted and I told him I did not know. I send lots of private emails but I think some folks have auto-reply or something and they post back to the list at times. This may be one case where MS got bit by their own software. When I was using Outlook, it would post back to the list invisibly unless configured properly (some bugs in Service Pack 5 on NT).

    Some of the posting I made were to the list, but some of my replies to Andre were not, but they ended up there anyway. Could have been my fault -- might have been theirs.

    :-)

    Jeff
  • You don't see the guy who wrote NTFSDOS getting any malarkey from M$. Isn't that tool basically the same? Making NTFS accessible from another OS. The only difference is NTFSDOS happens to be platformed for an OS that Microsoft owns.
  • Well, you may as well give it up, then. You're not going to 'see evidence of god' that your atheistic little mind will be able to wrap around.

    So I am little minded because I dont follow the "status quo" of today started 2000 years ago? I am little minded because I don't automatically inherit my elders beliefs? I am little minded because I take a scientific look at life and the universe? If anything, that would make a person more open minded.

    You blew it. There's this thing called 'faith' and if you're incapable of 'faith' no amount of rationalism can save you.

    faith? .. Ok, maybe I should ask you a question: Do you have any evidence to back your post up? Basically, what you are saying is that people should have faith just because. You think your way is the correct one and people should follow because you cant explain things? There is no point to try to make up beliefs just because people cant comprehend what the "meaning of life" (if there is one, that is).

    Anyway, wait until you're a little older. It's common for snot-nosed kids to carry on about their lack of faith. It's a sign of immaturity, and we have patience that you'll grow out of it.

    So, in a nutshell, your point is that people get more ignorant when they age. Well, age doesn't discriminate. What this "lack of faith" deal you were talking about is just human evolution. Putting old ways and methods behind us is how we evolve.

    I am all for people believing what they want to believe, as long as they dont try to push it on others. I hope you can face the fact that everyone doesn't believe in a god, and you shouldn't try to denounce them everytime they open their mouth.

  • Belief in God and belief in ritualized dogma (religion) are not quite the same thing. They do often go together however. That is not to say that they must go together.

    I do believe in God (God is everything), but I don't see any reason to go to church. Religion is for people who want to be part of God, but can't really get their minds around that concept.

  • When I was growing up, the kids a few blocks away had this really fun thing they would do to newbies to their block.

    They'd take you over to meet "Bud", a really friendly dog. Bud was in on it, too.

    They'd say "Look at Bud! He's a friendly irish setter. Go pet him.

    Bud sat near the porch, tail wagging, with this friendly, eager look on his face.

    Of course, as soon as you got close, he would suddenly growl and leap at you, chasing you down the hill til his chain ran out, biting and snarling the whole way.

    The kids would roar with laughter. During my introduction, my pants were torn a bit, but no broken skin, forutnately!

    Anyway, welcome to Microsoft "Bud".
  • Yeah, yeah. Lots of "OhmyGAWD, they apologised", "They feel the heat", etc., etc. posts. No one seems to notice that this opens the door for YAISMTMTFS (Yet Another Industrial Strength Multi Tasking Multi Threaded File System) for ALL operating systems. NTFS, especially V5, (fragmentation aside) is fast, stable, hard to corrupt and reasonably secure. IMHO, it's one of the few really good things to come out of Redmond - period.

    Perhaps the Redmond boys _have_ finally seen the light. After all, they employ geeks. Geeks who are exposed to other geeks, who have not been assimilated. They are, I'm sure like you and I - interested in all the latest cool stuff, including Open Source, open standards and new and fresh ideas. This stuff can't be filtered out by any firewall I know of. (Except MS Proxy, maybe, but that's because it tends to filter THE WHOLE FSCKING NET! GA....oops, sorry, lost meself for a sec. Back to Karma Whoring...)

    One's IQ does not necessarily drop 40 points once you walk into the M$ campus, does it? Is it posssible that they do some sort of black magic ceremony that instantly turns you from a moral person into one of Bill's evil minions? I think not. I think that we are indeed affecting the Microsoft mind set - for the better. This wonderful movement called Open Source has spread to the Campus, and started to change things for the better. How could it not? Yes, Hugh is alive and well in the collective [startrek.com]. Bet on it.

    Besides, there are (or were, anyway) a few M$ employees here on /. who have an inordinate amount of Karma. ;o)

  • I don't think so. Check this message [tux.org] on LKML:

    There was a historical referrence, in the beginning, that implies that I was accussing Microsoft of using Linux code. The reality was that I offered to help them with the solution I was working on because of the huge mess that the great taskfile debate brought out. People were pointing out that because I was exposing how to abuse it in the kernel and that a policy of preventing harmfal combinations was not acceptable. Since this information could/would/did spill over to the script kiddies, I thought it was the better part of valor (sp) to inform an aquaintance at Microsoft of the potential problem that they could see.
  • Apologies, my prejudgApologies, my prejudice that everyone on Slashdot is a part-time Linux wannabe must have snuck through.

    Anyway, I'm not arguing that good NTFS support wouldn't be useful. (Right now it eats filesystems which is what Merkey's Windows-based tools were designed to solve.) Microsoft probably thinks otherwise --make it easy to migrate to, make it hard to migrate off, as you are probably discovering while converting systems. Ironically, this all revolves around Merkey's NWFS drivers for Microsoft and Linux.
    --
  • We all know that the only good thing to come out of Redmond is fdisk /mbr. Don't go getting all wimp on us...

    -Nev
  • I'll have to disagree here. I have been running Linux since early '95. I have no Windows partitions. I do, however, have a 10MB DOS partition. Here is why I use loadlin.

    Running any any kind of boot manager where the configuration file is just a normal text file on a file system of one of the operating systems it boots seems a bit dangerous to me.

    Want have your linux stuff somewhere greater than 1024 cylinders?

    Ever forgot to run "lilo" after a kernel build and couldn't boot after?

    Ever had that annoying "LI" and bugger all else on bootup (I've made mistakes in my lilo.conf like everybody else who actually uses it)

    Just last week, installed SuSe 7 and didn't install the correct kernel *BANG*. Oh well, 'cause I'm using loadlin I'll just boot the kernel from the previous install and change the root device. *BINGO* :)

    loadlin never ever ever ever breaks. Lilo does.

    Regards

  • Tried and convicted? I thought that 70% of Americans liked Bill Gates! Then again, 70% is less then MSFT's market share.....
  • 8. Why do you read the extremely pro-linux /. when it quite obviously offends you?
  • You missed out:
    MS-fans who get upset about Slashdot bias.

    Really, if you don't like it, I'm sure there's plenty of MS-brown-nose sites, go there, and bask in the glory of the Gates God-being.
  • But if the American media told them the truth instead of making out like Netscape were just a bunch of clowns that couldn't run a business, I would be surprised if that approval rating stayed so high. Has there been any articles in any of your newspapers summarizing the findings of fact, or has it all been Microsoft press releases masquerading as stories?
  • Why worry about something that doesn't exist?
  • If NDS support had made it to the kernel in its GPL'ed form and MSFT had taken that code to use in one of their projects, closed source, as usual.

    Wouldn't the Linux community and the DOJ have had a massive bear trap for Mr. gates and company? shit we should have let them do it just so we could get them by the short and curlies

  • The dark side is composed of many individuals, 2,000 or so in Redmond, more but fewer with time elsewhere around the world. Each chasing his own selfish interests, seeking to take advantage of the crumbling monopoly and the work that has already been put into it. All the effort increases that body of work and makes it more seductive for others. As MS continues to destroy and envelope those comanies that used to compete, it is more obviously a collective. One hand washes the other.

    This piece of responsiveness was forced by the position being too obviously wrong. Judging from all of the MicroTurd responses around here, I'd say that there are lots of MS programers with nothing better to do than read Slashdot.

  • Somebody moderate this guy up for having an insightful clue! (Who let this guy in here anyway?) Much faster than the legal system, the court of public opinion/access has always been a real thrasher.

    Code commentary is like sex.
    If it's good, it's VERY good.

  • While your title (you don't have to conspire to be evil) is true, I think you are reading too much into this. Do you honestly think that anyone who says anything positive about Microsoft is lying or a paid drone?

    Thats as biased as the people who claim anything pro-Linux is false and just a farce by Microsoft's competitors.

    Both ideas are false. In computers, and even life, things are usually never black and white. Microsoft is not the evil empire, and Linux is not a white knight that will solve all our problems. If only we could actually reduce all arguments to simple child-like A or B answers, but the real world likes to present us with A, B, C, D, E, F, G ... and Z choices in most situations.

    -----
  • "Microsoft has dropped legal threats against them and apologized."

    Okay, it would've been nice if they had given them some specs to NTFS 5. But it's widely known that in the corporate paradigm, you never guide your foe's knife to your own heart. Still, it would've been a nice olive branch gesture on Gates' part.

  • Reasonable people can be missled. This is why we must be careful to examine the consequences of what we do. Here is a reduction:

    A contribute to a monopoly.

    B contribute to a free code.

    Oh yeah, you need to eat. Seek and you will find.

    Free software will not solve all of our problems, but it will eliminate the problems of comercial software. Microsoft is evil.

  • Unless said 133t hax0r can afford an RS6000 or a Proliant, I think you're sadly mistaken. I'm referring to the amount of servers shipped with Linux over the past year, not the number cover-mounted RedHat Linux CDs. This a real figure determined by the simple equation:
    (number of servers shipped with linux / total number of servers) * 100. If I was making figures up surely I would have said that Linux has more market share than NT, which it doesn't, NT has 35%. These are the facts, as confirmed by Dell, IBM, Compaq when they release their sales information.
  • Really? Using what version of Samba? I wonder what changed... This is good to hear!
  • I will ask him why he is such a vindictive asshole and tell him to play nice with the other kids. Seriously.

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