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Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 08:07:10 -0800
From: Chris Telting <cdtelting-ml AT comcast DOT net>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: RE: MS offers "Services For Unix" free of charge
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Buchbinder, Barry wrote:

>Does this mean that that MS finds that Cygwin (and U/Win, MKS, et al.) is a
>threat?  Or that they were not making much from SFU but cannot drop it for
>various reasons, so are going for brownie points?
>  
>
The motivation is probably so that they can realease other unix software 
and tools to entise people over to the dark side.  Tools both for SFU 
and Linux.  It gives them and partners a commercial developement 
platform to seriously target.  But mostly it's recognition of all the 
unix code that exists.  All comercial unix platforms are going down the 
drain due to Linux and Bsd so it's not inconcievable that Microsoft is 
extending an olive branch to them in hopes that will enbrace windows and 
port their commercial applications, first to SFU and then then to their 
windows API's.  If microsoft wanted they could go whole hog and create a 
complete formidable unix environment; something to supercede the dos 
environment..  Nothing in their kernel prevents it, though they could 
make it more efficient for such.

Microsoft is interested in the bottom line.  I don't see cygwin 
affecting them much at all.  Mozilla, Aphche, Open Office and all other 
threatening programs compile natively so cygwin has no impact except as 
a development environment.  They don't exactly make much money on their 
development tools though since developers are quite a small market.



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