A good friend from Microsoft wrote to tell me that the Longhorn specs listed here the other day are craaaaazy. Those specs are actually just musings about what a high-end machine might run, not minimums.
The same friend explains that there are many reasons why WinFS isn't simply a locking-in mechanism, as Vaughn-Nichols talks about. I agree, insofar as an advanced file system that works like a database is a hell of a lot better than what folks have now...but that doesn't address the 10 patents a day deal, and I do believe that elements within MSFT are very interested in locking out the Open Source community. At the same time many believe the horse has left the barn, if it was ever in the barn in the first place, and they need to win by being ubiquitious and first-class, since they can't win on cheap.
2:48 PM
Dilettante Archives