Re: Common carriers Re: A letter to Joe

Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@gambetta.ICS.uci.edu)
Mon, 18 May 1998 14:51:28 -0700


> > In some ways you can. If you look at IE for unix, its more than
> > just IE ported to Unix. What's been done is a port of various
> > windows APIs and subsystems to unix.
> > I'm not an expert on Windows OS stuff, being more of a Unix hacker,
> > but it seems that the COM interfaces have been built on Unix.
>
> Yes, they have. Ported by Software AG, of Germany. See
> http://www.sag.de/corporat/partners/software/ms-facts.htm.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I have Softwindows from Insignia
running on my SGI O2 at home, but I never understood why
MS Windows wasn't just another windowing system and/or
toolkit/window manager.

Let's say that I picked up the phone and called Joel and told
him that the only action his department should take was to
breakup MS. Microsoft Windows competes on it's own; Microsoft
applications compete on their own. Wouldn't that be a good
thing? There's a few MS applications I can't stand, but I don't
use them. In general, I would say they make good software
(some of it even great). What keeps me from using their software?
It's the operating system, stupid. I think it'd be better for
both Microsoft and for the software-using public at large.
The breakup of the phone company was seen as a wild success.

Greg