🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.unix.questions Jeffrey Siegal <jbs@quiotix.com> wrote:
: Steve Mading wrote:
:>(I'm glad the DOJ didn't pursue the "split MS into
:> OS and application companies" solution to their evil practices.
:> While I agree that MS got where it is through evil unethical means,
:> I was scared of the prospect of the government deciding where the
:> dividing line between OS and App is when even technical people don't
:> have a hard and fast definition.  It's like trying to define what
:> does and doesn't count as a "high level" programming language.)

: You're confusing two different usages of the same word here.  What the 
: DOJ or a court would have considered to be an operating system and what 
: technical people consider to be an operating system need not be the same 
: thing at all.

Even sticking to the market definition of "stuff that comes
bundled with the OS is the OS", there is still a huge problem,
mainly that over time stuff that used to be considered "optional"
becomes mandatory to have a minimally functioning system.

Consider TCP/IP.  It wasn't standard with the OS in early versions
of UNIX, but it became so popular, and started being used so
heavily in UNIX daemons that eventually a UNIX system without a
functioning TCP/IP library object would be considered incomplete
by most people.  The marketplace line between OS and App keeps
moving over time.  Incedentally, so does the technical as well.
Once upon a time in days of yore, trying to make two programs run
at the "same time" (actually swapping between them, of course)
was a userland problem.

In inferior OS'es, that wasn't too long ago (In DOS, multi-process
had to be faked by a userland application if you wanted it, for
example Windows 3.1)  Now multiprocess and multithread features
are provided provided by the kernel, even in something as behind
the times as Windows.  Message passing, process synchronizing,
and shared memory are all services for processes to use that are
provided for them by the kernel today, but weren't in days of yore.

So using either the most strict technical definition that only
the kernel is the OS, or using the fuzzy marketplace definition
that programs shipped with the OS is the OS, in either case it
is still true that the dividing line between OS and App changes
when technology changes.  Which is why it wouldn't be right for
the DOJ to force MS to stick to the same OS features ten years
from now as exist today, which is what would happen if a static
legal definition were in place.  I want to see MS lose, badly.
I want to see the day when I don't have to choose their crap just
to be compatable with other people who choose to use their crap.
But unlike MS themselves, I want to see it happen in a fair and
just way.