Re: Things that Longhorn seems to be doing right

Neil Brown
2003-10-30T03:17:35Z

On Wednesday October 29, trelane@digitasaru.net wrote:
>
> "Sounds like?" Sure. It kind of does, now that you mention it.
>
> Regradless of the similarities and the validity of Pascal's argument, my
> argument, I think, stands. I outlined the four potential futures. We
> have control over only one bit, Microsoft has the other. The tech sounds
> nice, it is an interesting avenue to persue, Pascal aside.
>
> I don't see any reason why we *shouldn't* look at the problem and try to
> do it. What reasons do you see for not persuing the problem to its
> inevitible implementation?

There are lots of other interesting problems. Why persue this one?
(as with Pascal: there are many who claim to be "god" and demand
worship, which do you follow).
That doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue this one. It just means that
you haven't given a good reason.
"Microsoft might do something that we haven't so we should" isn't a
good reason.
"I find this interesting" or "I have an immediate need for this" are
both good reasons, and if they apply, then by all means, pursue it.

>
> I see big pitfalls in *not* looking at the problem. In what respect are
> the pitfalls of ignoring it as outlined by me invalid?

The future is full of pits that we cannot see, and many that we do
see are mirages.
Your main pitfall seems to be patents. There are lots of patents out
there that might be a problem, and lots more that will undoubtedly be
taken out. Why target this one?
History seems to suggest that patents for seriously clever ideas
aren't a problem. It is usually possible to come up with a different
clever idea that achieves the same end (I gather the RTLinux patent
has been avoided that way, but I don't follow RT much. gzip and
vorbis are other examples). It is mainly the trivial patents that
are a problem.

If you look at your argument, you will see that it gives no hint of
what the technology is that we might be wanting to persue. It is
purely a "Microsoft ways they will do it, so I think we should to"
argument, and there are many things that Microsoft do that I
definately don't think we should do.

NeilBrown

[Just for the record
- I don't think database transaction support should go in the kernel.
I'd rather take things out of filesystems than put them in.
- I do think there is a God worth worshiping
]