From: "Steve Shaw" <DontSpam_sbsh...@kc-primary.net>
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/06
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Philip E. Perry wrote in message <3488F6D0.6...@concentric.net>...
>I just had to add my $.02 here:
>What's the big deal about NT anyway? UNIX is a much more stable,
>reliable environment, with far more development tools available for it,
>scripting (I'd stick with UNIX for it's scripting tools alone, I mean,
>Csh, Bash, Ksh, Perl, you name it) being one notable example... UNIX has
>been around for decades, is completely trustworthy, and can be obtained
>from a variety of companies in a variety of flavors, it has far better
>security than NT, it can handle any type or size of system you'd care to
>put it on (I have a friend who manages Cray XMP's which interface with
>UNIX systems, and he recently wrote a 2500 line script to manage traffic
>among his systems-- try THAT with NT)... I mean, why use NT at ALL?
>Especially with Microsoft's lousy business practices, their creepy way
>of doing business (if you doubt that they're creepy, ask Compaq or Sun),
>why would anyone want to do business with them? Use AIX, or SVR3, or
>BSD... If you're working on a really small system and don't want to go
>all out, how about Linux? It's mostly free, anyway. You can get a CD for
>what? Forty bucks? And install it on your whole system. See what I mean?
>It just seems kind of silly to use NT in the first place.
>
>How about it, guys? Why NOT UNIX?
>Go with UNIX, you know you want to...
Reasons to use NT:
1. NT is cheaper. I sort of wonder how long this will be true, though.
2. Business chooses NT. (See item #1 above.)
3. NT is the fastest, most efficient, and most powerful.
Just kidding about one of the above, guess which one.
Steve Shaw
From: MishtaEcks <ins...@netset.com>
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/09
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On Sat, 6 Dec 1997, Steve Shaw wrote:
> >How about it, guys? Why NOT UNIX?
> >Go with UNIX, you know you want to...
>
> Reasons to use NT:
> 1. NT is cheaper. I sort of wonder how long this will be true, though.
Uhhhhh, no. Sorry, but NT is in no way cheaper than unix. Especially
linux. Linux = free. You can't beat that. You can get a copy of slackware
distrobution on 4 CDs for like $30, and thats with a lot of software. NT
can't even come close.
> 2. Business chooses NT. (See item #1 above.)
Smart buisness chooses unix. Smart buisness doesn't do things simply
because everyone else is, they do things that other buisnesses aren't
smart enough to do.
> 3. NT is the fastest, most efficient, and most powerful.
Sorry, but NT isn't faster, more efficient, or more powerful than linux.
> Just kidding about one of the above, guess which one.
> Steve Shaw
Hopefully you were kidding about all three.
-+-+-
Mishta Ecks - Mr-X@iRC EFnet
insane at netset dot com http://www.netset.com/~insane
PGP Key Available - Mail Me w/Subject 'send pgpkey'
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From: pe...@martyr.kremlin.com (Vladimir Petroyevsky)
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/10
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On Tue, 9 Dec 1997 17:01:15 -0500, MishtaEcks <ins...@netset.com>
wrote:
>On Sat, 6 Dec 1997, Steve Shaw wrote:
>
>> >How about it, guys? Why NOT UNIX?
>> >Go with UNIX, you know you want to...
>>
>> Reasons to use NT:
>> 1. NT is cheaper. I sort of wonder how long this will be true, though.
>
>Uhhhhh, no. Sorry, but NT is in no way cheaper than unix. Especially
>linux. Linux = free. You can't beat that. You can get a copy of slackware
>distrobution on 4 CDs for like $30, and thats with a lot of software. NT
>can't even come close.
NT is cheaper than commercial Unix. Even if the base OS itself is
more, the applications are more plentiful and cheaper.
>> 2. Business chooses NT. (See item #1 above.)
>
>Smart buisness chooses unix. Smart buisness doesn't do things simply
>because everyone else is, they do things that other buisnesses aren't
>smart enough to do.
Smart business chooses whatever fits their needs. They don't _not_ do
things just because a bunch of nerds think they shouldn't.
>> 3. NT is the fastest, most efficient, and most powerful.
>
>Sorry, but NT isn't faster, more efficient, or more powerful than linux.
On the same token, it's not less. Well, it is less efficient than
Linux, I guess.
From: pa...@pi.net (Jan Mourer)
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/11
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>On Tue, 9 Dec 1997 17:01:15 -0500, MishtaEcks <ins...@netset.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 6 Dec 1997, Steve Shaw wrote:
>>
>>> >How about it, guys? Why NOT UNIX?
>>> >Go with UNIX, you know you want to...
>>>
>>> Reasons to use NT:
>>> 1. NT is cheaper. I sort of wonder how long this will be true, though.
>>
>>Uhhhhh, no. Sorry, but NT is in no way cheaper than unix. Especially
>>linux. Linux = free. You can't beat that. You can get a copy of slackware
>>distrobution on 4 CDs for like $30, and thats with a lot of software. NT
>>can't even come close.
>
>NT is cheaper than commercial Unix. Even if the base OS itself is
>more, the applications are more plentiful and cheaper.
This is a rightout ly.
I take it you never used UNIX (or Linux).
If you did, you would know that for most areas the applications
are freely availeble (in source form as well!!).
This goes from scientific to office apps.
Take a look at sunsite.unc.edu/pub/
For windows (and especially NT) there are comparatively very
few apps, and you do not get the source, AND you have to dish out lots of $$$
Some of these things have really no meat, just some graphical user interface
with some stupid 10 line program hidden behind it.
Just tto suck money out of millions of peoples pockets.
Windows? How was this program called that was supposed to make 4Mb RAM look like
*? It won a bussines award.
It turned out to be a fraud!
On unix, with the source, it would have been there for anyone to see.
J.M.
From: j...@qits.net.au.nospam (John Wiltshire)
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/12
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On Thu, 11 Dec 97 20:14:48 GMT, pa...@pi.net (Jan Mourer) wrote in
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:
>>On Tue, 9 Dec 1997 17:01:15 -0500, MishtaEcks <ins...@netset.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>On Sat, 6 Dec 1997, Steve Shaw wrote:
>>>
>>>> >How about it, guys? Why NOT UNIX?
>>>> >Go with UNIX, you know you want to...
>>>>
>>>> Reasons to use NT:
>>>> 1. NT is cheaper. I sort of wonder how long this will be true, though.
>>>
>>>Uhhhhh, no. Sorry, but NT is in no way cheaper than unix. Especially
>>>linux. Linux = free. You can't beat that. You can get a copy of slackware
>>>distrobution on 4 CDs for like $30, and thats with a lot of software. NT
>>>can't even come close.
>>
>>NT is cheaper than commercial Unix. Even if the base OS itself is
>>more, the applications are more plentiful and cheaper.
>This is a rightout ly.
>I take it you never used UNIX (or Linux).
>If you did, you would know that for most areas the applications
>are freely availeble (in source form as well!!).
>This goes from scientific to office apps.
>Take a look at sunsite.unc.edu/pub/
>For windows (and especially NT) there are comparatively very
>few apps, and you do not get the source, AND you have to dish out lots of $$$
>Some of these things have really no meat, just some graphical user interface
>with some stupid 10 line program hidden behind it.
>Just tto suck money out of millions of peoples pockets.
>Windows? How was this program called that was supposed to make 4Mb RAM look like
>*? It won a bussines award.
>It turned out to be a fraud!
>On unix, with the source, it would have been there for anyone to see.
Wow. Source for all Unix apps is available? Can you get me the
source for Netscape Comminicator? How about Oracle 8? Wait - don't
they run on Unix? More to the point - get me the source for Solaris
or HP-UX!!
Not to mention you really don't understand that one of the *smallest*
components of costing something is the initial outlay. What does cost
a lot is training time, administration time and maintenance time. Who
cares if something is free if it will cost you a few thousand extra
per installation in training?
I guess you never made purchasing decisions for a company?
John Wiltshire
------------------------------------------------------
John Wiltshire | (w) +61 7 38342783
j...@qits.net .au | (m) +61 417 797897
------------------------------------------------------
Fear: when you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and you know what it means.
From: Nathan Hand <nathan.h...@anu.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/12
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j...@qits.net.au.nospam (John Wiltshire) writes:
> On Thu, 11 Dec 97 20:14:48 GMT, pa...@pi.net (Jan Mourer) wrote in
> >I take it you never used UNIX (or Linux).
> >If you did, you would know that for most areas the applications
So here Jan says "most apps".
Which incidentally is true.
> >are freely availeble (in source form as well!!).
> >This goes from scientific to office apps.
> >Take a look at sunsite.unc.edu/pub/
> >For windows (and especially NT) there are comparatively very
> >few apps, and you do not get the source, AND you have to dish out lots of
> >$$$ Some of these things have really no meat, just some graphical user
> >interface with some stupid 10 line program hidden behind it.
> >Just tto suck money out of millions of peoples pockets.
> >Windows? How was this program called that was supposed to make 4Mb RAM
> >look like *? It won a bussines award. It turned out to be a fraud!
> >On unix, with the source, it would have been there for anyone to see.
>
> Wow. Source for all Unix apps is available?
And here John says "all apps".
Which clearly isn't what Jan said.
> Can you get me the
> source for Netscape Comminicator? How about Oracle 8? Wait - don't
> they run on Unix? More to the point - get me the source for Solaris
> or HP-UX!!
You *can* get the source for Solaris if you pay the fee and
sign a couple of papers.
Regardless, I would recommend you turn up the brightness on
your monitor because you're reading stuff that ain't there.
> Not to mention you really don't understand that one of the *smallest*
> components of costing something is the initial outlay. What does cost
> a lot is training time, administration time and maintenance time.
UNIX administration and maintenance time is cheap despite a
lot of bahooey from the Microsoft Press.
The popular MS banner "NT is 1/3 cheaper than UNIX" is such
a blatant *lie* that it makes me physically ill to see it.
I've had NT servers cost more than twice as much as Solaris
servers and require approximately 50% more maintenance.
And this *isn't* an isolated case. This is my experience on
more than a half dozen large sites.
Add to that more frequent system downtime and often there's
a reduction in available features/services.
I've stopped recommending NT for Windows networks. Any site
is better off with a Solaris box, 9 times out of 10.
> Who cares if something is free if it will cost you a few thousand extra
> per installation in training?
This argument could be used to justify *not* replacing UNIX
servers with NT. Yet in real life, that's what's happening.
And similarly lots of companies "upgraded" from working 3.1
installations to 95, with the involved retraining costs.
> I guess you never made purchasing decisions for a company?
In my experience, companies *don't* make sensible decisions
w.r.t computing resources. They often take a working Novell
or UNIX system and replace it with crapola like NT. There's
a lot to be said for good marketting and bad management.
<dreaming>
The IT industry needs an engineering-like standards body to
ensure quality of the *products*. Existing software quality
is aimed at improving the workplace, and typically you need
do little more than document how you work.
If software was required to meet the same exacting standard
that cars, or houses, or electrical equipment was forced to
meet, then I have no doubt that Microsoft NT would've never
been fit to be sold.
Then again most software probably wouldn't be.
</dreaming>
--
The sticker on the side of the box said "Supported Platforms: Windows 95,
Windows NT 4.0, or better", so clearly Linux was a supported platform.
From: pe...@martyr.kremlin.com (Vladimir Petroyevsky)
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/13
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On 12 Dec 1997 14:36:39 +1100, Nathan Hand <nathan.h...@anu.edu.au>
wrote:
>
>> Can you get me the
>> source for Netscape Comminicator? How about Oracle 8? Wait - don't
>> they run on Unix? More to the point - get me the source for Solaris
>> or HP-UX!!
>
>You *can* get the source for Solaris if you pay the fee and
>sign a couple of papers.
>
YOu *can* get the source for NT if you pay the fee, dude.
>> Not to mention you really don't understand that one of the *smallest*
>> components of costing something is the initial outlay. What does cost
>> a lot is training time, administration time and maintenance time.
>
>UNIX administration and maintenance time is cheap despite a
>lot of bahooey from the Microsoft Press.
>
>The popular MS banner "NT is 1/3 cheaper than UNIX" is such
>a blatant *lie* that it makes me physically ill to see it.
>
>I've had NT servers cost more than twice as much as Solaris
>servers and require approximately 50% more maintenance.
No you haven't, liar. If you have, then the Sun was probably an
Ultrasparce 300, and the NT Server was probably a dual PII-300
immediately after release.
In the real world, Intel hardware is generally cheaper and faster (at
tge low and mid-end level) than other crappy shit hardware.
>And this *isn't* an isolated case. This is my experience on
>more than a half dozen large sites.
Your experiance sucks, dude.
>Add to that more frequent system downtime and often there's
>a reduction in available features/services.
>
>I've stopped recommending NT for Windows networks. Any site
>is better off with a Solaris box, 9 times out of 10.
Of course they are, if you don't know _shit_ about NT.
>> I guess you never made purchasing decisions for a company?
>
>In my experience, companies *don't* make sensible decisions
>w.r.t computing resources. They often take a working Novell
>or UNIX system and replace it with crapola like NT. There's
>a lot to be said for good marketting and bad management.
Novell is a fucking abomination and your apparent suggestion that it's
better than NT makes me laugh at you.
><dreaming>
>The IT industry needs an engineering-like standards body to
>ensure quality of the *products*. Existing software quality
>is aimed at improving the workplace, and typically you need
>do little more than document how you work.
>
>If software was required to meet the same exacting standard
>that cars, or houses, or electrical equipment was forced to
>meet, then I have no doubt that Microsoft NT would've never
>been fit to be sold.
>
>Then again most software probably wouldn't be.
></dreaming>
You stupid asshole, NT is actually a decent OS. It has faults, but so
does Uniix, dumbass.
From: Peter Augustin <a...@inode.at>
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/17
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Vladimir Petroyevsky wrote:
>
> On 12 Dec 1997 14:36:39 +1100, Nathan Hand <nathan.h...@anu.edu.au>
> wrote:
> >
> >You *can* get the source for Solaris if you pay the fee and
> >sign a couple of papers.
> >
>
> YOu *can* get the source for NT if you pay the fee, dude.
I really doubt this...
--
Realname: Peter Augustin EMail: a...@inode.at
Homepage: http://www.inode.at/acp/ IRC: ACP #inode
MIME compliant and PGP encrypted/signed EMails welcome!
To get my PGP-Public-Key finger a...@a3000.inode.at or send EMail
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From: j...@qits.net.au.nospam (John Wiltshire)
Subject: Re: Microsoft products are good, so why do all you anti-Microsoft
losers say they suck?
Date: 1997/12/17
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On Wed, 17 Dec 1997 08:18:05 +0100, Peter Augustin <a...@inode.at>
wrote in comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:
>Vladimir Petroyevsky wrote:
>>
>> On 12 Dec 1997 14:36:39 +1100, Nathan Hand <nathan.h...@anu.edu.au>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >You *can* get the source for Solaris if you pay the fee and
>> >sign a couple of papers.
>> >
>>
>> YOu *can* get the source for NT if you pay the fee, dude.
>
>I really doubt this...
Sorry. You can. You just need to pay the license fee.
John Wiltshire
------------------------------------------------------
John Wiltshire | (w) +61 7 38342783
j...@qits.net .au | (m) +61 417 797897
------------------------------------------------------
Fear: when you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and you know what it means.
From: d...@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll)
Subject: NT source (was Re: Microsoft products are good,...)
Date: 1997/12/19
Message-ID: <67coiv$c46@bertrand.ccs.carleton.ca>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 308468962
Followup-To: alt.destroy.microsoft
Organization: Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.linux.development.apps,
alt.netscape.sucks
In article <34999d17.974...@news.uq.edu.au>, John Wiltshire
(j...@qits.net.au.nospam) wrote:
> >> YOu *can* get the source for NT if you pay the fee, dude.
> >I really doubt this...
> Sorry. You can. You just need to pay the license fee.
How much is the fee?
What restrictions are there on use or disclosure of the source?
Can anyone license it?
--
David F. Skoll
From: j...@qits.net.au.nospam (John Wiltshire)
Subject: Re: NT source (was Re: Microsoft products are good,...)
Date: 1997/12/20
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On 19 Dec 1997 03:10:23 GMT, d...@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll)
wrote in comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:
>In article <34999d17.974...@news.uq.edu.au>, John Wiltshire
>(j...@qits.net.au.nospam) wrote:
>
>> >> YOu *can* get the source for NT if you pay the fee, dude.
>
>> >I really doubt this...
>
>> Sorry. You can. You just need to pay the license fee.
>
>How much is the fee?
Not sure. Never asked.
>What restrictions are there on use or disclosure of the source?
Something about big fines and having to talk to lawyers for the rest
of your life if you do?
>Can anyone license it?
I think you have to demonstrate a need?
Not sure.
I don't know the details. I just know it *is* available.
John Wiltshire
------------------------------------------------------
John Wiltshire | (w) +61 7 38342783
j...@qits.net .au | (m) +61 417 797897
------------------------------------------------------
Fear: when you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and you know what it means.
From: bedi...@csn.net (Bruce Ediger)
Subject: Re: NT source (was Re: Microsoft products are good,...)
Date: 1997/12/20
Message-ID: <67h7i1$t7s@teal.csn.net>#1/1
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d...@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll) wrote:
>In article <34999d17.974...@news.uq.edu.au>, John Wiltshire
>(j...@qits.net.au.nospam) wrote:
>> >> YOu *can* get the source for NT if you pay the fee, dude.
[...]
>How much is the fee?
>What restrictions are there on use or disclosure of the source?
>Can anyone license it?
Usenix just had an all-NT conference. You can read a spicey summary
of what researchers say about needing OS source code at:
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt97/summaries/ntsums.html
The article is a hoot and a half. The M$ PR flack and a UW researcher almost
came to blows, apparently.
I gather that the answer to your questions is roughly this:
1. The fee is in the $10,000-$100,000 range for universities. It's
different for firms like Softway or Executive Software.
2. You can't disclose *anything*, even being forced to water-down results of
reasearch. Microsoft owns the programs you write using information
you derive from the source.
3. Probably not.
Interestingly, one of the researchers who has seen the source says that
they found secret APIs embedded in it:
"The conclusion was that Vogels's group used source code only as
documentation (there is no other documentation for NT), examples, and
to understand the behavior of NT. It turned out to be useful for
debugging, and it led to the discovery of interesting APIs that are not
documented or available in Win32."
From: "Brian D. Zill" <b...@evil-empire.com>
Subject: Re: NT source (was Re: Microsoft products are good,...)
Date: 1997/12/20
Message-ID: <67iaum$prv@news.microsoft.com>#1/1
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Bruce Ediger wrote in message <67h7i1$...@teal.csn.net>...
>d...@doe.carleton.ca (David F. Skoll) wrote:
>>How much is the fee?
>>What restrictions are there on use or disclosure of the source?
>>Can anyone license it?
>
>Usenix just had an all-NT conference. You can read a spicey summary
>of what researchers say about needing OS source code at:
>
>http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt97/summarie
s/ntsums.html
>
>The article is a hoot and a half. The M$ PR flack and a UW researcher
almost
>came to blows, apparently.
After reading the above line, I just had to look this up. Turns out I know
personally all three principles: the "M$ PR flack" is actually Todd Needham,
our (Microsoft Research's) University Liaison, not someone from PR); the "UW
researcher" is Brian Bershad, the professor behind "Spin" and a former
member of CMU's Mach project (like half of MSR's OS Research Group); and the
guy who wrote this section of the article is George Candea, a grad student
who was a summer intern this past year in our OS group. These guys all know
each other socially. While I wasn't there, I'm sure they were just kidding
around and George just hammed it up a little in his report.
>I gather that the answer to your questions is roughly this:
>
>1. The fee is in the $10,000-$100,000 range for universities. It's
> different for firms like Softway or Executive Software.
>2. You can't disclose *anything*, even being forced to water-down results
of
> reasearch. Microsoft owns the programs you write using information
> you derive from the source.
>3. Probably not.
Anyone who really wants information about licensing NT source (and there are
both "research" and "commercial" licenses, apparently), should contact the
appropriate people (not me!) at Microsoft directly rather than rely on a
random USENET poster's interpretations of some notes taken by a grad student
at a conference where a Microsoft person spoke on the issue.
Personally, I (as in me, not speaking officially for Microsoft) got a
different impression from George's account than Bruce Ediger did with
regards to question #2. George wrote "The licensee retains all intellectual
rights, but Microsoft gets the license for any software that uses the source
code", which strikes me as substantially different from "Microsoft owns the
programs you write using information you derive from the source". But then,
I'm not a lawyer.
>Interestingly, one of the researchers who has seen the source says that
>they found secret APIs embedded in it:
>
>"The conclusion was that Vogels's group used source code only as
> documentation (there is no other documentation for NT), examples, and
> to understand the behavior of NT. It turned out to be useful for
> debugging, and it led to the discovery of interesting APIs that are not
> documented or available in Win32."
Uh, *all* of NT's APIs are "not documented". They're there to be called by
one or another of the subsystems (most often Win32), not by user-mode
programs. That some of them aren't called by the current incarnation of the
Win32 subsystem doesn't surprise me one bit. There's nothing nefarious
going on here. Sheesh.
--Brian
Speaking only for myself, not for Microsoft.
From: bedi...@csn.net (Bruce Ediger)
Subject: Re: NT source (was Re: Microsoft products are good,...)
Date: 1997/12/21
Message-ID: <67jvmt$d0e@teal.csn.net>
X-Deja-AN: 309150816
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Organization: H1DE()U5 MUT4NT5!!1!!!
Newsgroups: alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
"Brian D. Zill" <b...@evil-empire.com> wrote:
>regards to question #2. George wrote "The licensee retains all intellectual
>rights, but Microsoft gets the license for any software that uses the source
>code", which strikes me as substantially different from "Microsoft owns the
>programs you write using information you derive from the source". But then,
>I'm not a lawyer.
If you'd really read the article you'd have read Margo Seltzer's comments
that pretty much reinforce my interpretation of the whole thing.
>Uh, *all* of NT's APIs are "not documented". They're there to be called by
>one or another of the subsystems (most often Win32), not by user-mode
>programs. That some of them aren't called by the current incarnation of the
>Win32 subsystem doesn't surprise me one bit. There's nothing nefarious
>going on here. Sheesh.
I don't see how anyone can still maintain the Party Line that "NT doesn't
contain Secret APIs". There's lots of proof floating around, some of it
from very pro-NT sources.
http://www.osr.com/insider/native.html
"One of the most interesting things about the NT API is that it has
never been comprehensively documented by Microsoft. This must make NT
the worlds only commercially available operating system with an
undocumented set of native system services!"
"A neat facility available through the native NT API but not through
Win32 is the ability to cancel all I/O requests that you have
outstanding on a particular file handle."
http://www.osr.com/insider/syscall-sp2.html
"So what are the new calls doing there, and what could have prompted
Microsoft to suddenly augment the Win32 API in the second service pack
to a major operating system release? The answer is also one that
highlights the tight integration between the operating systems and
applications groups at Microsoft: the performance of a major Microsoft
application, SQL Server, is significantly enhanced by using these new
services."
http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt97/summaries/ntsums.html
PANEL SESSION: "Do You Need Source?"
"So, because of the lack of NT source code, we see that most of the
papers reporting research done under NT tend to be wishy-washy when it
comes to proving their theories."
"Vogels cautioned that NT consists of millions of lines of code and only
six pages of documentation, which barely tells you how to get it off
the CDs and how to build a kernel from scratch at the top level. You
need a 5GB disk (I managed easily to fit it in less than 3GB along with
the entire build environment). This amount of code makes it difficult
to search for strings; {findstr /s /I} doesn't really cut it when
you're talking millions of lines of code. The MS Index server, although
excellent for Web pages, crashes on source code; and when it works, it
comes up with 1,000 irrelevant matches."
"The conclusion was that Vogels's group used source code only as
documentation (there is no other documentation for NT), examples, and
to understand the behavior of NT. It turned out to be useful for
debugging, and it led to the discovery of interesting APIs that are not
documented or available in Win32."
http://www.winntmag.com/issues/1997/May/NTInternals.html
"As development of NT 4.0 began in 1995, Microsoft invited a Diskeeper
developer to Redmond, Washington, to participate in the design and
implementation of NT 4.0's defragmentation support. Basing Diskeeper
on NT's built-in support let Executive Software avoid shipping custom
versions of NT and meant Microsoft's technical support didn't have to
troubleshoot non-standard versions of NT. One month before NT 4.0's
public release, Executive Software offered a trial version of Diskeeper
2.0--the version for NT 4.0--on its Web site. (For Jonathan J. Chau's
review of Diskeeper 2.0, see Lab Reports, "Diskeeper 2.0," April 1997.)
Symantec has since entered the NT disk defragmenting market with its
Norton Utilities Speed Disk, which also uses the NT 4.0 defragmentation
support.
The defragmentation support introduced in NT 4.0's file systems consists
of five commands: GetVolumeBitmap, GetRetrievalPointers, and MoveFile
(common to both FAT and NTFS), and GetVolumeData and ReadMFTRecord
(specific to only NTFS). Microsoft doesn't document these commands or
officially acknowledge that they exist."
From: j...@qits.nospam.net.au (John Wiltshire)
Subject: Re: NT source (was Re: Microsoft products are good,...)
Date: 1997/12/22
Message-ID: <34ad7bc8.6894023@news.uq.edu.au>
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On 21 Dec 1997 13:54:53 -0700, bedi...@csn.net (Bruce Ediger) wrote in
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy:
>"Brian D. Zill" <b...@evil-empire.com> wrote:
>>regards to question #2. George wrote "The licensee retains all intellectual
>>rights, but Microsoft gets the license for any software that uses the source
>>code", which strikes me as substantially different from "Microsoft owns the
>>programs you write using information you derive from the source". But then,
>>I'm not a lawyer.
>
>If you'd really read the article you'd have read Margo Seltzer's comments
>that pretty much reinforce my interpretation of the whole thing.
It seems to me that if you have a *research* license then you can't
make anything commercial from it. You retain IP but MS gets rights to
your sources.
It would be quite different if you had a *commercial* license which
isn't mentioned in the paper.
>>Uh, *all* of NT's APIs are "not documented". They're there to be called by
>>one or another of the subsystems (most often Win32), not by user-mode
>>programs. That some of them aren't called by the current incarnation of the
>>Win32 subsystem doesn't surprise me one bit. There's nothing nefarious
>>going on here. Sheesh.
>
>I don't see how anyone can still maintain the Party Line that "NT doesn't
>contain Secret APIs". There's lots of proof floating around, some of it
>from very pro-NT sources.
>
>http://www.osr.com/insider/native.html
>
>"One of the most interesting things about the NT API is that it has
> never been comprehensively documented by Microsoft. This must make NT
> the worlds only commercially available operating system with an
> undocumented set of native system services!"
>
>"A neat facility available through the native NT API but not through
> Win32 is the ability to cancel all I/O requests that you have
> outstanding on a particular file handle."
Sure but the native NT API is not guaranteed stable and should not be
used except via the subsystems. Surely you understand this concept?
IOW - there is no guarantee that SP4 won't come out and the whole NT
API will change. Win32 programs, OS/2 programs, Win16 programs and
POSIX programs will still run though because the subsystems will
contain updates which allow then to interact with the altered API.
Simple interface abstraction at work.
If it is going to change, what is the point in documenting it?
>http://www.osr.com/insider/syscall-sp2.html
>
>"So what are the new calls doing there, and what could have prompted
> Microsoft to suddenly augment the Win32 API in the second service pack
> to a major operating system release? The answer is also one that
> highlights the tight integration between the operating systems and
> applications groups at Microsoft: the performance of a major Microsoft
> application, SQL Server, is significantly enhanced by using these new
> services."
Sure. The need for a performance improvement in SQL Server meant that
the SQL Server group asked for a few new APIs. In much the same way
as the Diskeeper issue you mentioned below. I'm not sure SQL Server
is part of the apps group though?
>http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix-nt97/summaries/ntsums.html
>
>PANEL SESSION: "Do You Need Source?"
>
>"So, because of the lack of NT source code, we see that most of the
> papers reporting research done under NT tend to be wishy-washy when it
> comes to proving their theories."
So if you want to do research it helps if you have source. Duh!
>"Vogels cautioned that NT consists of millions of lines of code and only
> six pages of documentation, which barely tells you how to get it off
> the CDs and how to build a kernel from scratch at the top level. You
> need a 5GB disk (I managed easily to fit it in less than 3GB along with
> the entire build environment). This amount of code makes it difficult
> to search for strings; {findstr /s /I} doesn't really cut it when
> you're talking millions of lines of code. The MS Index server, although
> excellent for Web pages, crashes on source code; and when it works, it
> comes up with 1,000 irrelevant matches."
Except you forgot:
"Needham also said that the documentation for NT source is the source
itself. (Having hacked for a summer on the NT kernel, I can attest to
the fact that the NT kernel and executive code are pretty well
documented.)"
>"The conclusion was that Vogels's group used source code only as
> documentation (there is no other documentation for NT), examples, and
> to understand the behavior of NT. It turned out to be useful for
> debugging, and it led to the discovery of interesting APIs that are not
> documented or available in Win32."
Vogel was just one speaker. Why don't you quote the others or do they
just not suit your argument?
>http://www.winntmag.com/issues/1997/May/NTInternals.html
>
>"As development of NT 4.0 began in 1995, Microsoft invited a Diskeeper
> developer to Redmond, Washington, to participate in the design and
> implementation of NT 4.0's defragmentation support. Basing Diskeeper
> on NT's built-in support let Executive Software avoid shipping custom
> versions of NT and meant Microsoft's technical support didn't have to
> troubleshoot non-standard versions of NT. One month before NT 4.0's
> public release, Executive Software offered a trial version of Diskeeper
> 2.0--the version for NT 4.0--on its Web site. (For Jonathan J. Chau's
> review of Diskeeper 2.0, see Lab Reports, "Diskeeper 2.0," April 1997.)
> Symantec has since entered the NT disk defragmenting market with its
> Norton Utilities Speed Disk, which also uses the NT 4.0 defragmentation
> support.
>
> The defragmentation support introduced in NT 4.0's file systems consists
> of five commands: GetVolumeBitmap, GetRetrievalPointers, and MoveFile
> (common to both FAT and NTFS), and GetVolumeData and ReadMFTRecord
> (specific to only NTFS). Microsoft doesn't document these commands or
> officially acknowledge that they exist."
IOW - Microsoft allows the same lattitude to external companies as
they do for their own applications division?
:-)
John Wiltshire
------------------------------------------------------
John Wiltshire | (w) +61 7 38342783
j...@qits.net .au | (m) +61 417 797897
------------------------------------------------------
Fear: when you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and you know what it means.
From: jer...@netcom.com (Jeremy Allison)
Subject: Re: NT source (was Re: Microsoft products are good,...)
Date: 1997/12/28
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j...@qits.nospam.net.au (John Wiltshire) writes:
>>>Uh, *all* of NT's APIs are "not documented". They're there to be called by
>>>one or another of the subsystems (most often Win32), not by user-mode
>>>programs. That some of them aren't called by the current incarnation of the
>>>Win32 subsystem doesn't surprise me one bit. There's nothing nefarious
>>>going on here. Sheesh.
>>
>>I don't see how anyone can still maintain the Party Line that "NT doesn't
>>contain Secret APIs". There's lots of proof floating around, some of it
>>from very pro-NT sources.
>>
>>http://www.osr.com/insider/native.html
>>
>>"One of the most interesting things about the NT API is that it has
>> never been comprehensively documented by Microsoft. This must make NT
>> the worlds only commercially available operating system with an
>> undocumented set of native system services!"
>>
>>"A neat facility available through the native NT API but not through
>> Win32 is the ability to cancel all I/O requests that you have
>> outstanding on a particular file handle."
>Sure but the native NT API is not guaranteed stable and should not be
>used except via the subsystems. Surely you understand this concept?
>IOW - there is no guarantee that SP4 won't come out and the whole NT
>API will change. Win32 programs, OS/2 programs, Win16 programs and
>POSIX programs will still run though because the subsystems will
>contain updates which allow then to interact with the altered API.
>Simple interface abstraction at work.
>If it is going to change, what is the point in documenting it?
Quite simply because Microsoft application programmers are using
it to gain an unfair advantage over other third party application
developers.
It doesn't seem to bother them that it's undocumented and 'subject
to change without notice'. I'd like the same access to that API please,
let me worry about what breaks.
And yes I do have examples of this being used by MS apps.....
MS really should have two options - either cause your application
programmers to play by the same rules that everyone else has to
play by, or get split into two companies by the US Government,
an apps devision and an OS division - who can only communicate
by publishing books on the API's.
Jeremy Allison,