Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 14:11:42 -0500 From: "G. Adam Stanislav" <adam@whizkidtech.net> To: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>, "J McKitrick" <jcm@freebsd-uk.eu.org>, <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: M$ anti-trust case Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20000417141142.008aee60@mail85.pair.com> In-Reply-To: <001201bfa891$92066480$021d85d1@youwant.to> References: <3.0.6.32.20000417104107.0088ee50@mail85.pair.com>
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At 10:22 17-04-2000 -0700, David Schwartz wrote:
> So now Netscape and Sun are the small guys?!?!?! The Microsoft anti-trust
>case is not about big versus small.
I did not say anything about Netscape or Sun being the small guy. I was
simply offering an example of how MS methods stifle software productivity.
I certainly did not mean to imply that was the only example. Just my own
drop in the ocean.
To balance my example, I should mention Steve Gibson, the author of
SpinRite. He is an example of a small guy who has been very successful.
Surprisingly, M$ never tried to create a competitive product. Perhaps it is
because SpinRite has always been in 100% assembly language - and pretty
much had to be (it is a program that maintains the hard disk by testing it,
refreshing it, even reformatting it without any loss of data, depending on
user's choices).
M$ is certainly not too strong in the assembly language department. It
seems to me they like to pretend assembly language does not exist. During
DOS era they used to document DOS on the assembly language level. Since the
ascent of Winbloats they have kept absolute silence about asm level
programming. In fact, many programmers are quite surprised when they learn
it is even possible to write assembly language software for Windows! I have
a geocities web site dedicated to winasm programming, and I often get email
from programmers who had no idea they could write Windows software in 100%
assembly language.
For a couple years M$ did not upgrade MASM, and even after they made it
work for Windows 95, the enclosed documentation kept complete silence on
how to use it for it. Only after NASM became popular did they upgrade MASM,
though by now most asm programmers do not give a hoot about MASM. After
all, with NASM you can assemble the same source code (with perhaps a few
conditionals) for Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, and just about anything else.
But MASM only produces DOS and Windows object files.
Cheers,
Adam
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