“Linux is the long-term threat against our core business. Never forget that!” Microsoft Windows Division Veep Brian Valentine exclaims in a confidential memo to his Sales Brownshirts obtained by TheRegister. Microsoft was winning ground against Unix the last few years and they were converting companies to x86 (intead of expensive SPARCs etc), but many companies were just converting to x86 Unices (and especially, Linux) instead of Windows. And Microsoft does not seem too happy about that.
Microsoft Names Linux as their Long Term Threat
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
if it’s confidential, why is it all over the net? it’s fake, right?
things leak, bob
Things are faked, too.
privacy is dead. even for microsoft veeps. lol.
Though I like to read the articles from ‘The Register’ they do come out with some really off the wall material. Could that email message be intercepted by a hacker?… yeah since email (packets of data) pretty much get splattered all over the internet until they reach their destination. Do I believe this is real, I am skeptical… but it is a good article and I would not be surprised that Microsoft is afraid of Linux and/or UNIX for that matter… it just plain works and has been for 30 years, helk the sad part is that VMS was even better!!!
Their greatest threat is the OS that does not yet exsist.
Maybe, well it sound cool. I think if your looking in long term someone/group could come up with something that utterly changes the OS world. And I don’t think it’s something that exsist currently. We are sorta in a stagnent OS world, you got mac, unix, windows, and a few odd balls right now, and have had the same set up for a decade and not much has changed they have been threats to each other but nothing has happened. Its when some new player steps up with somehting completely new and revolutionary there will be a true threat. Till then everyone is just making up treats cause you have to feel like your competing against someone or you run around in circles, ether in not knowing what to do or kissing your ass.
My guess is that some company steps forward with big ambitions and ideas and the money and effort to do what they say. Sorta like a Be but one that really pulls it off. This is their treat, the one they don’t know about, the one they can’t prepair for.
Sorry for the typos, its 5am and ihave been up all night, typos happen at 5 am
I read the same comment about linux being microsft’s long term threat etc. in a french magazine that came out this week, called “L’ Expansion”. So I guess whoever leaked that, leaked it to more than just “The Register”.
microsoft is a pain in the ass!
if Loonyx is ms’ long-term threat, it sure as hell ain’t on the desktop
This memo may or may not be the real deal. However, what put me off getting an MCSE (or anything else in the MS training scam) was (is) real enough.
About a year after Win95 came out, the company I was working for put us through a training course to get us ready to take the MS cert test for Win95.
At the end of each section in the training manual (a MS product), there were review questions. One third to one half of the questions involved hypotheticals on how you could lead, sell, or push a client on the idea of moving off their UNIX platform, in favor of MS product. I don’t know if MS still does this in their training manuals, but UNIX has been a weed up their crack for quite a while.
Does anybody remember the name of the MS UNIX product? It was horrible, and didn’t last long.
>>Does anybody remember the name of the MS UNIX product? It was horrible, and didn’t last long. <<
I don’t know if you wanted me to answer this, but… I think it was called “XENIX”?!
Nothing new in the memo that everyone doesn’t already know. Everything’s got to be a frickin’ “tooth and nail” fight with those M$ a-holes. They’ve got “screw-the-other-guy-anyway-you-have-to-in-order-to-win” confused with capitalism. Eff them.
LINUX is no threat to the Redmond brown shirts. LINUX supporters have done a POOR job of getting regular people to use it for regular applications– like typing letters, balancing checkbooks, etc.– the stuff most people actually would like to do. What will bury Windows is Mac OS X. UNIX without most of the the pain. And with probably MORE apps than Windows, once all that GNU stuff finishes getting ported over….
XENIX sounds right. I remembered MS tried something, but I couldn’t remember the name. Didn’t MS sell the code, and it resurfaced as SCO?
Wasn’t that what Minix was? an MS UNIX product aimed for the education sector? or am I mistaken? someone who knows about the MS UNIX thing… please enlighten me
Xenix was Microsoft’s Unix-ish operating system. As far as I know it was first released for the TRS-80 Model 16, a 68000-based machine from the mid-80s, although I don’t know how well it did on that platform. (The Model 16 also ran operating systems related to the ones in the other TRS-80 line, and could also run CP/M-68K, the incredibly obscure 68000 port of Digital Research’s CP/M.)
Mike is correct. Microsoft originally developed Xenix with SCO, and SCO had the distribution rights for the PC platform. When MS decided to officially abandon the market–which happened shortly after the Microsoft-IBM alliance developing OS/2 fractured, I think–they sold the complete rights to SCO. SCO Xenis disappeared completely after SCO got the rights to the Unix name, I think.
Minix wasn’t ever related to Microsoft. It was a Unix-ish “learning” OS released with some kind of free license (I don’t think it was strictly public domain) that Linus Torvalds developed into Linux.
Wow, what a wealth of comments to respond to!
First CattBeMac: you know that WinNT was partially designed by VMS folks, right? NT at it’s core is actually very VMS/Unix-y, even more so with the consumption of bits and pieces of the BSD network stack.
Ahhh Xenix… those were the days. I’m just kidding, I’ve never used it, but shame on you Anonymous Coward for getting Xenix confused with Minix! My OS instructor would roll out of his chair if he heard such a thing.
Mister OS X : Tom Barta, I believe whole-heartedly that OS X is just as fantastic as everyone claims. The sad truth of the matter though is that Apple isn’t very good at selling software. This is mostly due to the fact that they would prefer to sell really expensive pieces of hardware than promote the proliferation of the OS (as evidenced by the whole clone scandal). OS X will do fine, Apple won’t flop, but OS X will certainly not terminate WindowsXP, for the same reasons as OS 7 didn’t terminate 3.11 (even though it was MUCH better!). The only difference here is that I really believe WindowsXP to be a better product than OS X. I’m not a very good judge though, since I haven’t really used OS X.
jorge : Of what use is your comment?
Finally, my take on email privacy: If you don’t want the whole world to know what you’re saying, then call your intended conversant up on the phone.
Hello! This is absolutely nothing new.
Mr. Steve Balmer stood in front of 20k+ people and told them practically this very same thing at the MS company meeting.
Actually, I think he said, “Tattoo linux on your forehead if you have to.”
The point is, Microsoft knows the competition, and they aren’t afraid to let the competition know. As Mr. Taco stated…they obviously don’t care if people know.
Remember kids, without an opponent, you don’t have anyone to play against.
Playing by yourself is just dull…and the victory dance doesn’t feel nearly as good.
” Apple won’t flop, but OS X will certainly not terminate WindowsXP, for the same reasons as OS 7 didn’t terminate 3.11 (even though it was MUCH better!)”
System 7 failed to kill Win 3.11 primarily because when both were current, Apple was a disfunctional company that couldn’t manage its way out of a paper bag. Now, they are more costefficient than Dell and STILL sell a much better product. I am left asking the following question now: how long is it gonna take before Microsoft BUYS Red Hat or one of the LINUX companies. Surely you guys don’t wish to avoid upgrading NT to a UNIX kernel forever?
As for XP being “better” than OS X: you are entitled to your opinion. I have no opinions about XP, having not used it, but I’ll tell you that I am totally underwhelmed by Win2000 professional, with which I have considerable experience. Less stable than old Mac OS 9, as near as I can tell. Goes down constantly, even from simple activities lke web browsing.
>>First CattBeMac: you know that WinNT was partially designed by VMS folks, right? NT at it’s core is actually very VMS/Unix-y, even more so with the consumption of bits and pieces of the BSD network stack.<<
This is the first time I have heard this one… oh well, if it is true then ‘NT’ is a total disgrace to ‘VMS’ and Digital Equipment Corporation! I have used both systems at a professional level and there is no comparing these 2 when it comes to reliability and stability!!
thanks for the laugh though ha ha 🙂
You know, the only reason I’ve ever seen Win2K crash is buggy hardware. There really isn’t a whole lot the OS can do when a kernel mode driver starts writing over the memory manager
Anyway, maybe you’ve had a different experience.
Check this out Catt: WNT = V+1 M+1 S+1
Well I haven’t used Win2K professionally… only Windows NT (4.0 Service Pack 5 to be exact) and the unstable and unreliable problem was not due to hardware… all our PCs at my job are Compaq DeskPros with either Pentium IIs or IIIs running at 400 MHz! Though I hate Compaq PCs with a passion, I do not believe the hardware is a problem per say! Oh I decided to check your finding on being that NT was partially built on a similar concept to VMS…. I talked to a software engineer who is also a VMS cronie, his take was that yes indeed Windows NT and even more so apparent in Windows 2000 shares some concepts of VMS in architecture, but only at a network standpoint, my friend finished his answer by saying they forgot to add one important thing… “STABILITY”!! VMS has it… NT doesn’t!!! So we all can rest easy now. Thank you for this educational experience and I liked that very creative thing you added to the end of your post… how intuitive 🙂
I’m male and single