Vaporware Extraordinaire zdnet.com
I was getting a little worried about esteemed ilk sister Mary Jo Foley, her last couple columns have been pretty mellow. Back to work this week, though, on the subject of COM+/COM3/whatever it is, the alleged successor to COM (or is it replacement for DCOM?). I've noticed a few stories here and there about a new offensive to port COM to Unix, thereby replacing the old "open" DCOM of a year and a half ago. But I'm getting ahead of the story.
Like all software vendors, Microsoft has been guilty of pushing a lot of vaporware, a criticism to which Microsoft has become increasingly sensitive in recent years. But with COM+, the successor to Microsoft's current Component Object Model (COM) technology, The Evil Empire just may beat its own record for tardiness.
Microsoft's done more than its fair share of promising to deliver operating systems, applications and tools within a year or two that ultimately didn't make it out for three or four years (depending on how carefully you count delays). Rather than admitting that code was late, those ever-clever Redmond types claimed they were only trying to provide product roadmaps for long-term planning purposes, not real ship date estimates.
With COM+, Microsoft is taking a new tack. In addition to releasing no code, Microsoft has opted for a policy of releasing no dates, either. If you don't have any anticipated delivery dates, the product can never be classified as late, right?
Hey, this isn't new. There's no ship date for NT5 at this point, is there? They bet the company on it, of course.
But in reality, Microsoft has been dangling before techno-crazed developers the promise of a new and better object model since it began leaking information on NT "Cairo." Remember Cairo? We foolishly thought Microsoft was talking about NT 5.0, which still has yet to debut, mind you. Not so. Code name Cairo has disappeared quietly from Microsoft slides, charts and websites. There is not now, nor was there ever a Cairo with a completely new object file system on tap at any time, according to the rewritten record books.
Oh dear, this sounds positively. . . Orwellian. Or Stalinesque, if you prefer. Never mind. I guess I'll leave the rest for interested observers.
Cheers, Dan. |
