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Comment of the Day - November 3, 2005 NT Open System

Posted by tadelste on · 5 comments
LXer -Article; By Paul Ferris 		Mail this story
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Paul remembers the migration of applications from UNIX to NT following the NT being declared an "Open System". He writes: " I was an engineer making a living installing CAD/CAM applications on Unix systems (joy). Anyway, the apps all fell to NT over the space of about a year or so, many of the vendors promised to continue support for Unix, only to have those promises fall through."

Related to the article: How Microsoft Got its OS Declared an "Open System" and wound up in Government

I remember the days of this time frame with disgust.

One example, of many; I was an engineer making a living installing CAD/CAM applications on Unix systems (joy). Anyway, the apps all fell to NT over the space of about a year or so, many of the vendors promised to continue support for Unix, only to have those promises fall through.

It was amazing to me, how many vendors did this, until I found out what happened. Basically, Microsoft promised the vendors a toolkit for developing CAD/CAM applications that would include a set of libraries that would make it easily portable to any Unix.

Vendors coding up new CAD products under Unix and then porting them to NT said "Whoa -- we can make one code base, and hit the port button, and have multiple products with less hassle". Made economic sense, as taking Unix CAD products to NT was often painful and required some serious creativity (Bentley, in my not so humble opinion, seemed to do an incredible job of this).

What happened, though? Microsoft bascially waited a year or so, and said "oh, we decided that porting kit didn't make economic sense."

Suddenly, all but a few Unix CAD/CAM products were gone. Great work on the shady side of the fence. Awesome move business wise.



The problem is that this is standard fare -- used to be at least. I seriously have my doubts that Microsoft is done with this kind of "promise now, but only deliver the goods that help us, later" mentality.



You had to be there to seriously appreciate the stupidity of this. Basically, tons of stuff like this was going on, to the point where people were saying things like "It's just like the way Lucy holds the football for Charlie Brown" -- every time Charlie goes to kick the ball, whoosh, Lucy would pull it out of the way, each time offering a different excuse as to why.

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Comments (5)

dinotrac ·
Microsoft took advantage of the basic business handshake, the level of understanding and trust that lets business function without calling in the lawyers on every damned decision you have to make.

Part of that handshake is that if you say that you'll do something, you intend to do it.

Things come up, everybody understands that, but vendors don't intentionally hang their customers out to dry. It doesn't make business sense.

Market power goes a long way, but I think Microsoft will have trouble pulling that kind of crap on that kind of scale again. You can only burn your "friends" so many times before they cast a wary eye.

It may not always seem that way, but Microsoft is getting a lot of wary eyes these days.



tadelste Story submitter ·
It doesn't seem like Microsoft's getting a lot of wary eyes and people have started to back up a few inches.

This stupid move in Massachusetts could backfire. How does a Secretary of State get to hold a hearing on a very vetted CIO of the state. And, I happen to know, they did more due diligence than anyone has ever done on anything.

If this gets nasty and I expect it will, the Mass tech people will bury Microsoft.

How many companies includeding the Bell Systems have ever had as much continuous anti-trust concerns as Microsoft? If you look at the last AT&T actions, it didn't last as long as Microsoft's. That's huge.

dinotrac ·
Massachusetts is a drop in the bucket. It will be nasty if Microsoft manages to pull that one out, but still a drop in the bucket.

Microsoft has screwed a lot of people up. Just remember: Five years ago, the smart money was on a nearly all-Microsoft world. There would be no Unix and Linux would still be a hobby preserve.

It hasn't worked out that way, and it's not going to.
mvermeer ·
I still wonder how far they can go with that. If they pull off Massachusetts, we will see the spectacle of a four-person 'chaperone commission' overseeing everything ITC in the commonwealth all down to buying cell phones... above and beyond the constitutional supervision over the executive already duly exercised by elected representatives. That cannot be pretty to watch, especially not if people start digging into the backgrounds of the people (and the money!) involved. One of them being Pamela Jones BTW.

I agree with Dino, this looks like a rather hopeless rearguard action. Even if they win, they lose.
PaulFerris ·
One of my articles: http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage...

Contains the following quote:
Quoting: On top of all of this, Microsoft has made it extremely clear that it's not going to lose any fight to Linux. --- ... Regardless, a recent leak involved a "win-at-all-costs" strategy to keep large corporations in the fold. The memo in question made clear that, no matter what, in certain corporate settings a sale was not to be lost to Linux --- ... Oddly enough, this provides a really good reason for companies to adopt an open source strategy. For one, it isn't going to cost much to create an evaluation committee to, let's say, look at replacing all corporate desktops with Linux. Granted, it may not be a workable solution for the company; it may be totally unsupportable given the current desktop support staff, Windows inertia of expertise, applications, and so on.

Given the Microsoft sales strategy, however, the rules change. A sizable company with a large Microsoft desktop investment would be crazy not to create a credible internal initiative that evaluates open source.


In other words, if you are getting ready to negotiate a big sales contract with Microsoft, you would be stupid not to create a simple evaluation commitee to point to during that time.

Likely to save you a ton of cash.

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