Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 16:27:18 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "FreeBSD Advocacy" <freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: TheRegister article on Hotmail Message-ID: <006d01c29172$7abb7500$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <20021121135115.GA63164@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi>
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Is MS still trying to port Hotmail to Windows?? Hotmail is a good example of exactly the kind of environment that will probably _never_ benefit from migration to Windows. Single-purpose, high-volume applications work best with stripped, simple operating systems that are designed to do nothing but achieve that purpose as efficiently as possible; this is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of a do-it-all, general-purpose, GUI-based operating system such as Windows. And as Microsoft itself apparently admits, UNIX is admirably suited to this type of use, since it is simple to begin with and can be stripped further for speed by any qualified administrator. MS was already looking to replace Hotmail's custom SMTP (IIRC) with Microsoft Exchange Server years ago, but Exchange just would not scale, and Exchange Server is ill-suited to simple, high-volume environments (although it is ideally suited to lower-volume, complex environments such as internal corporate mail systems). Still, anything is possible if you can throw enough hardware at it, and if you are willing and able to tweak software until it looks like what you should have installed in the first place. One reason MS is so hellbent on this, incidentally, is that the company was constantly belittled by customers back in the days when it sold Microsoft Mail. See, Microsoft never actually used Microsoft Mail internally; the company itself used the MS Mail client, true ... but it used a Xenix-based back-end that was never sold to customers in place of the standard MS Mail MS-DOS-based MTA. Customers knew this and humuliated Microsoft regularly over the fact. When Microsoft Exchange Server was released, Microsoft vowed to move all internal e-mail to Exchange ... and it did. It took a while, but the migration went well, and Microsoft Exchange Server is perfectly suited to Microsoft's internal use (in fact, some design features were influenced by Microsoft's own practices). It also happens to be well suited to just about any other corporate or organizational e-mail environment, much more so than SMTP or similar bare-bones e-mail systems. Microsoft's dream, though, extended further, to using Microsoft Exchange Server (which represented a staggering development investment for the company) for ISPs and heterogenous, Internet-based e-mail systems. But Exchange Server has never really been able to handle that. The same feature-rich design and resulting bloat that makes the e-mail systems arguably the best anyone can buy for internal corporate use also makes it a poor choice for high-volume, feature-lean, heterogenous environments such as Internet Service Providers ... and Hotmail. The fact is, one size does not fit all, and you simply cannot write an e-mail system and OS that will be all things to all people. Windows and Exchange definitely have very secure places in the IT world, but they can't do all e-mail for everyone, and Hotmail is just about as far from the ideal case for Exchange as any e-mail system can be (even standard SMTP really was never quite suitable for Hotmail, and had to be modified). The attempt to convert Hotmail to Windows and Exchange is a good example of politics and marketing overruling common sense. I often think that nobody is really fooled by this except Microsoft itself. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Seaman" <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 14:51 Subject: TheRegister article on Hotmail > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28226.html > > Cites an internal MS white paper discussing switching Hotmail from > Unix over to Win2k, which ends up sounding like a sales pitch for > FreeBSD... > > Cheers, > > Matthew > > -- > Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks > Savill Way > Marlow > Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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