[Sussex] Cnet interview with Steve Ballmer

[Steve Dobson]

Alan

On Sun, Apr 27, 2003 at 12:25:21PM +0100, Alan Fitton wrote:
> http://news.com.com/2008-1082-998297.html?tag=fd_top
> 
> An interesting read, 

I sure was.

>                      i must say. This has to be my favorite quote from it 
> though:
<snip> 
> "Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old"

I did like that one - and I wish I'd been there to point out that Windows
can still run programs written for DOS - his point being :-)

My favorite quote was:
     There is nobody to turn to if you as a (Linux) customer says,
     'I need this.' You can't turn to IBM. They don't write the thing.
     It's not like IBM can support Linux the way they support the
     mainframe operating system. They don't write the code for it. All
     they can say is, 'You can call us and ask us a question, but if
     you actually want something done we can't do it.' 

It misses the point about open source so much.....  I just wish no one
would be taken in by this but I know that there will be.  As to not going
to IBM well I hope they counter than one big time.  For a start they 
employ one (if not two) of the second level Lunix Kernel hackers; if 
those guys can't fix or make chances then I don't know how can.

Someone must point out to Ballmer in a public forum that anyone, 
including Microsoft, has access to the source.  All that is needed
is programming competence - Microsoft's programmers may not understand
the source but this is not true of all programmers.

> True, but there is little to none code that old, its been mostly replaced. 
> Just some of the concepts are that old, that doesn't mean they aren't good 
> ones though.

Agreed, but I think that is a moot point.  The really important thing,
IMHO, about *nix is the stability of the API.  That makes it so much easier 
to develop and plan long term.  Changing APIs is a problem.  As a 
for instance does anyone here remember Sun's new interface to the 
network.  I programmed to it once and I can't remember the name.  It
was a complete replacement to sockets, in fact the socket API was just
a library wrapper to the new interface.  The problem with this was that
all those programs that used the sockets API ran slower.  As a result
Sun had to do another u-turn and put sockets back in to the kernel.

Steve