Funny, Win'95 lets you have 250 open at once...
Gotta love these boys. Just wish I would have gotten this on my Micron with
the cool Steve Jobs MS slam in the .sig. :-)
Tim
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 1996 17:32:10 -0700
From: Ellen Elias <elias@ora.com>
To: pjh@tecoma.mccc.edu
Subject: NT Workstation 4.0: Bad News for Web Servers
Below you will read an alert written by Tim O'Reilly,
President of O'Reilly & Associates. If you would like to
speak with Tim or another O'Reilly executive about the
issues raised in this alert, please contact me.
Thank you,
Ellen Elias
elias@ora.com
(707)829-0515 ext. 322
You may have already heard that in Microsoft's upcoming NT
Workstation 4.0, functionality will be significantly
reduced. If you want to run *any* Web server--O'Reilly's,
Microsoft's, or others'--on NT, you'll have to buy NT
Server for $999. The implications of Microsoft's actions
are serious for the Web community, and I encourage you to
help spread the word about it.
First, the facts: NT Workstation 4.0 will limit the number
of unique IP addresses which can contact a Web server to 10
or fewer in a 10-minute period. No previous version of NT
Workstation has contained this limitation. Of course, this
effectively eliminates NT Workstation as an option for
Internet or Intranet Web server usage.
Now, the implications: this development will choke off one
of the most important new directions for the Web: its
return to its roots as a groupware information sharing
system for the desktop. Like email and the PC itself, Web
publishing belongs on the desktop. With the higher price
tag of NT Server ($999 vs. $290), users who have never
before put up a web site will be extremely unlikely to do
so.
This move by Microsoft will hurt the efforts of Web
developers, Intranet developers, and Internet service
providers, a great many of whom have been happy to create
sites on NT Workstation. Microsoft has been saying that IIS
(the Web server they include with NT Server) is free, and
quite clearly, this is now exposed as untrue. Developers
will have to stick with the older NT Workstation operating
system if they want to use any server other than IIS (noted
for its security problems), or will have to upgrade and pay
extra for the server of their choice.
Chief WebSite developer Bob Denny says: "When I first
started developing Web servers in 1994, nearly all Web
serving was done on the Unix platform. Considering that
companies such as O'Reilly & Associates, Netscape, and a
half dozen more, pushed hard in the fight to legitimize NT
vs. Unix as a Web server platform over the last 18 months,
Microsoft's actions are pretty extreme."
I've sent email to Bill Gates to let him know of my
personal concern about the impact of his plans on Web users
and developers. I encourage anyone interested in
maintaining the open systems nature of the Web to send
email to Microsoft, post this news on their sites and in
newsgroups, and write letters to editors, to put pressure
on Microsoft to reverse their decision. They've reversed
such decisions before, when people have expressed their
opinions about an important issue such as this.
Regards,
Tim O'Reilly
President
O'Reilly & Associates
---= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Do or do not. There is no try. ... YODA -=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- tbyars@earthlink.net