[Sussex] Microsoft to collapse..

[Geoffrey Teale]

Chris Jones wrote:
> Yes, but Longhorn is supposedly going to have a db-like filesystem and
> lots of local searching. It might just turn out to be a themes pack for XP
> though ;)

I believe they've dropped the DB filesystem idea for Longhorn.  I'd also 
heard that their plan was more akin to "lets bundle SQL Server" in order 
to try to promote that technology on the back of the OS's market share 
(not eactly a new tactic from Microsoft, see IE, Windows Media Player, 
etc., etc., for details).  Of course there's no way Microsoft would give 
you the ability to use this database to serve many users without 
requiring you to pay lots of extra money in licenses.

Besides which it's not new or revolutionary to have a database as a 
filesystem.  Even if you ignore the obvious point that every filesystem 
_is_ a database, IBM has had a database as a filesystem since the 1970's 
and Be OS had a 64bit extensible database as it's filesystem from the 
mid 1990's (functionality that's being reproduced on Linux by at least 
one group of ex-BeOS hackers as we speak).

Really the only advantage for the average user is a much improved search 
function - this isn't to be underestimated as a function, Google 
certainly think it's a winner; Apple seem to put a lot of store in 
"Sherlock" (or whatever it's called this week); and Beagle seems to be 
the cool app of the moment on Linux .

--
Geoff Teale
Free Software Foundation <tealeg at member.fsf.org>