Re: Linux support denial in commercial products?

tony@trishul.sci.gu.edu.au
Tue, 20 Aug 1996 11:31:20 +1000


Dominic Binks <dominic@aethos.co.uk> wrote:

> > > By the way ... Did I really hear that Microsoft is going
> > > to port Explorer to Linux?
> >
> > HAR-harharhar!!!
> >
> > Geez, I needed a good larf about now too!! :-(*)
>
> You may be laughing louder and longer. I read that MS intend to
> release Unix Internet explorers next year! I'm going to be interested
> to see how late they are, and in addition, how buggy they are.
> Windows -> X programming is not that simple a transformation; cf
> Wordperfect for Unix 5.1.

True. (I saw a VB program that I liked... I had ideas to port it to
linux/X, but one look at the VB code made me chuck that idea and think
about starting again from scratch using the basic design idea:)

It's just amazing just how much (private) email was generated by this
tongue-in-cheek comment I made.

It's true though... apparently it is quite likely that m$ will port
explorer to linux; they are already committed to Solaris.

It seems that micky$loth is trying to take on netscape, and it's all
part of a much wider battle concerning Caldera, Netscape, billy goates,
other weird and wonderful (and mainly rich) people, over getting some
slice of the internet scene (especially web server software).

I suspect m$'s motives. M$-net was a big flop and they are hurting.
After chasing up some of the (URL) references(*) that people sent me,
I'm as skeptical as ever. But I am now more educated in what sort of
games these dudes are playing (eg, the DR-DOS/Caldera vs m$ lawsuit).
Sad really.

(*) www.caldera.com, www.willows.com, www.microsoft.com, etc.

I'm blissfully happy not to have even one bit of software by m$
residing on my 1.5Gb of hard drive. If they port explorer to linux,
I'll still be blissfully happy to go on living like that :-)

Cheers
Tony