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Unix to beef up Longhorn

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Zombie9920:
Last year rumors surfaced that Microsoft was considering including its Services for Unix (SFU) into Longhorn. Today vnunet is reporting that Microsoft is indeed going to include SFU into its next generation OS. Exactly how Microsoft will go about this remains to be seen. SFU cannot be shipped with Windows currently because it contains open-source software. This is probably why Microsoft bought licenses from SCO last year.

Microsoft is set to include its Services for Unix (SFU) add-on for Windows as an integral part of the next major release of the Windows server operating system, codenamed Longhorn and expected in 2008. Some analysts said the move could eventually sideline conventional Linux and Unix operating systems. A growing number of firms are using SFU, currently a free add-on for Windows 2000, 2003 and XP Professional, because it enables a single system to run Windows, Linux and Unix software. Systems running SFU provide an excellent environment for integrating applications - for example, to add Active Directory support to a Unix application.

Jason Zions, a solutions architect at Microsoft, said there are development versions of SFU that enable a single process to run code both from Windows and Unix libraries. Currently this feature, which would dramatically ease integration tasks, is not available in SFU. Zions said, "We've been working on research versions that would solve that particular problem. It wouldn't surprise me to see that capability appear in a future release of Windows."

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hm_murdock:
what stops them from shipping it?

why don't they just ship it and post the req'd source on their website?

WMD:
Is it just me, or does MS SFU seem like it would work better for switching to *Unix* rather than the other way around?  Not to mention that it's called "Services for Unix" when really it's services *from* Unix.

Aloone_Jonez:
It would be kule if their next version of Windows was Unix based, then hardware vendors would ship their equipment with Unix drivers.  This would make it much easier for people like me to switch to Linux, and it's also why it will never happen.

By the way what would happen if MS stole some Linux code and then used it in Longhorn which is closed source, so how could this be proven?

[ July 13, 2004: Message edited by: Aloone ]

hm_murdock:
lol

Longhorn will not be UNIX based. MS only spent a decade developing the NT kernel and building their OS around it. it's not the flaky crapfest that it used to be, it's much improved, and there's no way they'd start over from scratch with UNIX.

Besides, if you thought Windows was complex now... wait until you put it on top of UNIX with its thousands of little layers.

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