Rusty, re: porting its Unix rendering application would have been a huge chore, Forsyth said. The application is about 2 million lines of code and might have taken years to rewrite for Windows, he said. "We thought about that for three nanoseconds."
I'm all for linux, everyone I know loves it but just remember this applies to the software companies too. Before NT we had to port to 40+ unix variants: sunos, irix, dynix, hpux, .... and now linux.
For those that don't know for example porting a database requires knowledge of the OS kernel lock manager, which interfaces with the dbms latcher, the point being, OS internals R&D is required, and needs to be maintained for the life of your core product.
Software companies are not willing to do this anymore. These unix vendors better standardize on one unix variant. Lets see if they are grown up enough to pull it off, they weren't last time, which is why McNealy's whining falls on deaf ears at times and even Oracle jumped onto NT so quickly (even though we all know Larry hates BG). |
