From: John P. Looney (jplooney-ilug at domain online.ie)
Date: Tue 09 May 2000 - 13:01:44 IST
On Tue, May 09, 2000 at 11:51:54AM +0000, Caolan McNamara mentioned:
> 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.
You don't think that they would just release a new version, citing
"performance reasons" for not keeping backward compatibility ?
If every major PC vendor shipped their own version of windows (as Compaq
do currently), Microsoft couldn't introduce "Value added tech", as the
Unix companies did in the 80s - because it wouldn't work on a Gateway PC
for instance.
> 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.
Hmm...very true...
> 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.
That'll take a while. But a POSIX-style document for Windows would be
very welcome to a lot of developers...
Kate
-- "The fool must be beaten with a stick, for an intelligent person the merest hint is sufficient" -- Zen Master Greg
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