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Message-Id: <199909231804.NAA23437@mercury.xraylith.wisc.edu>
To: "Emanuele Aliberti" <ealiberti AT hotmail DOT com>
cc: cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com
Subject: Re: Microsoft Acquires Softway Systems 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 23 Sep 1999 14:18:03 EST."
             <19990923121804 DOT 41149 DOT qmail AT hotmail DOT com> 
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 13:04:51 -0500
From: Mumit Khan <khan AT thor DOT xraylith DOT wisc DOT edu>

"Emanuele Aliberti" <ealiberti AT hotmail DOT com> writes:
> The next may be a bit off topic, but I think it is interesting, since it is 
> related to porting Unix applications to WNT, or POSIX compliance, or the 
> Cygnus CygWin project.
> 
> On September 17th, Microsoft Acquired Softway Systems, the makers of 
> Interix, which is a native POSIX subsystem for WNT. Actually, Softway 
> Systems asked a souce licence to MS for the original POSIX subsystem (POSIX 
> 1003.1 only) and extended it to be POSIX 1003.xx compliant. Currently, 
> Interix can even run Linux binaries, if I read well their pages.
> 
> MS says Interix will provide POSIX compliance to w2k, but I think it will 
> not be bundled with the standard w2k distribution.
> 
> What do you think about that and how (if) can that change the CygWin project 
> and the others commercial POSIX layers for WNT? (for instance, CygWin can 
> run under w9x too, which Interix can't).

Interix (formerly Softway, and now Microsoft) provides a POSIX *subsystem*,
and that's very different from what Cygwin/UWIN provides, which are POSIX
emulation on top of win32 API. When you're dealing with POSIX subystem, you
cannot really use Win32 subystem, and that means that you can't write what
most people call "windows" programs.

Cygwin/UWIN provide something that is quite different -- use POSIX 
functionality *on top of* Windows API.

That said, Interix provides a top-notch POSIX subsystem, with lots of
goodies which include true shared libraries (don't know if it's in the
retail version yet).

Regards,
Mumit


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