[odf-discuss] Re: Member of EU Parliament asks if Microsoft should be excluded from public procurement

[marbux]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <rms at 1407.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>  That would seem like preparing the ground for the seeds of the campaign
>  of so called "Windows 7" which Microsoft claims will be extremely
>  modular.
>
There were reports about a year ago or so that Windows 7 will use
hypervisor technology, running modularized components as separate
virtual machines. The claimed advantage of this approach is that
Microsoft need  do far less integration work, connecting only the APIs
for the inter-VM communications.

If those reports are accurate, it would say a lot about Microsoft's
reasons for cutting its deal with Novell, which holds a number of
critical patents in the hypervisor realm.

It would also mean that Windows 7 would in effect be Windows Many VM
1.0, a highly drastic rewrite of enormous hunks of the code base. That
doesn't bode well for the quality of Windows 7. The number of bug
splatters on the Windows windshields might be spectacular.

To me, it  sounded like an approach that might eventually be workable
because they could debug VM modules rather than a massive integrated
code base, but I question whether they would be able to put out an
initial point-zero release that functions really well. It would simply
take too much new code.

And where does it put the platform partners? How many ISV Windoze apps
will require major surgery to ride on the new platform?. Somewhere in
the approach you still have to create a core module that routes all
calls to and from the different modules if you are to minimize that
problem. And that particular module would be very troublesome to
write, I suspect.

I don't expect to see Windoze 7 very soon, if this is in fact the
approach they are taking.

Best regards,

Paul