Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

From: Bob Bramwell <bob_at_copenhagen.cuug.ab.ca>
Date: Tue Apr 23 01:22:19 2002

I didn't catch the posting that seems to have started all this, but ignorance
never seems to stop anyone *else* from stating an opinion, so here's mine :-)

A few years back I spent a little time working for a small company whose primary
focus was Unix system software. They did some Windows work, and this was their
eventual downfall because they were bought out by McAfee who didn't have a clue
what to do with the Unix stuff and weren't interested in finding out.

I was the last remaining employee of the original company. For most of the last
year of its operation I did pretty much all the system administration,
lightweight hardware maintenance, bug fixing, and many of the enhancements to
the two Unix products that had been the mainstay of the company. I forget
exactly how many machines we had and exactly what they ran, but it was something
like:
        Hardware OS Notes
        ======== == =====
        HP/Apollo 700 HP/UX 9.x
        HP/Apollo 700 HP/UX 10.01 + 10.10? dual boot
        DEC Alpha 2000 (?) OSF 1
        Motorola Mxxx Motorola Unix v.X forgotten machine
        Motorola Myyy Motorola Unix v.Y & OS version names
        SUN Sparc 5 Solaris 2.5.1
        SUN SLC Solaris 2.5.1
        SUN 3/60 SunOS 4.1.1
        IBM RS6000 AIX v.X & v.Y forgotten versions,
                                                         dual boot
        Intel SCO Unix
        Intel Dynix
        Intel ?nix more memory loss
        
I am missing a couple of machines and maybe one more OS. Before I started with
the company I had never even heard of some of these variants. The point of all
this is that the same code base built on ALL these things. Sure, we had a
"portability" library of our own to make it easier, there was a fair amount of
#ifdef stuff, and we had to tinker with GNU autoconf to get the builds smooth,
but I could manage ALL of it. We used Emacs and gcc/gdb on all the machines,
and a freeware distributed backup package (Amanda) to run complete backups of
everything automatically (well, OK, I had to change the tapes manually). Of
course, with the network applications that typically come with Unix (telnet,
ftp, NFS, X Windows, etc.) I could sit at my own desk and get at every machine
conveniently and run a parallel build on all the machines. That would have been
completely impossible with the Microsoft (bundled) products available at that
time.

Now, I've watched people trying to do software development on Windows systems
over the years, and I've done a little myself here and there. Every time there
is a new service pack or OS release there are wailings and rendings of clothes
on all sides. New licenses have to be bought for compilers, new versions of the
network backup client have to be purchased, very often a whole new machine has
to be bought, the sys admins have to do all sorts of black magic to get the new
machines to "play nice" with the old ones on the network, and a whole new set of
OS idiosyncracies has to be mastered. I have never observed anything similar in
Unix development shops (well, OK, the more organised ones, anyway). Oh, and
even *less* upheaval takes place in VMS shops BTW, but VMS has other problems.

So:
1. it is perfectly possible to write highly portable software, and once the
   initial portability setup is done the rest is not particularly hard.
2. there is a great deal of very useful "free" software for Unix out there in
   net land, much of which you would have to pay big $ for on Windows
3. there is NOT very much "business" software (word processors, spreadsheets,
   contact management etc.) for Unix because the kind of people who write free
   software aren't generally very interested in "business" stuff, and the kind
   of people who write commercial software don't think there is much of a Unix
   market for it (since they priced themselves out of it a while back).
4. if I were developing software for "back end" applications (servers,
   networking, etc.) I would certainly do it on Unix in preference to Windows,
   and in this respect the market mostly agrees with me.

By all means use Windows for your office work. That's about all it's good for,
and on the whole it does it fairly well.


Bob Bramwell Snail: 60 Baker Cr. NW | If I die in war you remember me;
ProntoLogical Calgary, AB | If I live in peace you don't.
+1 403/861-8827 T2L 1R4, Canada | - Spike Milligan (1919 - 2002)
Received on Tue Apr 23 2002 - 01:22:19 BST