From: Caolan McNamara (cmc at domain stardivision.de)
Date: Tue 09 May 2000 - 12:51:03 IST
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
On 09.05.00, 12:15:08, "John P. Looney" <jplooney-ilug at domain online.ie> wrote
regarding Re: [ILUG] Windows to go opensource:
> Anyway. Scrap breaking up microsoft. Just make them GPL Windows - so
> everyone could make their own Windows distribution....and Microsoft would
> have to pay attention to their APIs from now on, instead of adding bits
> when they thought of it..
Personally I reckon that the source to windows is of limited use to
anyone, a massive hodgepodge of tightly interlocking components numbering
a truly ludicrous number of lines will be very difficult to read and
understand. What would be of much more use is that all interfaces are
clearly defined and documented, the code to samba might be of some use,
but to force MS to release the new smb API and be forced to stick to the
published API for any new versions of samba that they sneak out the door
would better satisfy the major gripes against them from a coding and
interoperability point of view.
The same holds for the office suites and other technologies. Of course
the other set of issues which such as buying technologies and sitting on
them
(VRML, Where is DimensionX nowaday eh?) frightening venture capitalists
into not supporting startups in areas of tech that ms has expressed an
interest in , licensing technologies from other companies and using
market share to destroy the interoperability with the original version
(realplayer), bundling deals (Dell/Compaq) and all the rest are probably
of more importance than some archaic gently rotting codebase.
Indeed being forced to document all interfaces (in the AT&T breakup
style) would be of benefit to MS themselves, bring a bit of structure
into their code. You can see the lack of internal documentation and
direction and even internal interoperability rattling around in the
internals of their own office formats, we can usually get a really good
chuckle once or twice a week when another obscenity come to light.
C.
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