From bounce-linux-biz=Bernard.Lang=inria.fr@zip.mail-list.com Wed Nov 17 21:37:42 1999 From: Con Zymaris In-Reply-To: from "Collette K. McNeill" at "Nov 17, 99 11:28:11 am" To: collette@mlwebworks.com (Collette K. McNeill) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 07:27:41 +1100 (EST) Cc: linux-biz@lege.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL37 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: [linux-biz] Re: NT Client vs Server X-Unsubscribe: send a blank message to linux-biz-off@lege.com Precedence: bulk Message-Id: Status: RO Content-Length: 4856 Lines: 91 > This O'Reilly paper was written in 1996. I found out about it last night. > > Take a look at: > > ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/windows/win95.update/ntnodiff.html > > Exerpt: > "Microsoft recently introduced version 4.0 of NT Workstation (NTW) > and NT Server (NTS), and claims that there are substantial technical > differences between the Workstation and Server products. Microsoft > uses this claim to justify an $800 price difference between NTW and > NTS, as well as legal limits on web server usage in NTW, both of > which have enormous impact on existing NTW users. But what if the > supposed technical differences at the heart of NTW and NTS are > mythical? > > We have found that NTS and NTW have identical kernels; in fact, NT > is a single operating system with two modes. Only two registry > settings are needed to switch between these two modes in NT 4.0, and > only one setting in NT 3.51. This is extremely significant, and > calls into question the related legal limitations and costly > upgrades that currently face NTW users." > > > -- > Collette K. McNeill > McNeill/Lynner WebWorks > http://www.mlwebworks.com/biz/epc.html - EPostcards for Business Yup! It's fun isn't it. ORA's Andrew Schullman (of Undocumented Windows and AARD code detection fame) made a lot on this back then. If people recall, ORA's web server product for Windows NT also ran on NT Workstation, and was getting quite a lot of installs. At the time, Microsoft was releasing IIS for NT _Server_ and giving it away free for that platform. But since NT server was 4 times to cost of NT Workstation, a lot of people who wanted a cheap NT web server would just buy NT Workstation and grab the ORA web server product which ran perfectly happily on that platform. Of course this pissed Microsoft off, as it wanted to a) position IIS as the natural platform for doing web stuff on the Internet and b) it wanted to sell the much more expensive NT Server product. Sooo, Micosoft introduces the NT 4 Workstation product range with a stupid and obviously contrived licence which in effect limited the maximum number of incoming TCP/IP connections to 10 per a 10 minute interval. There was much crying out from the NTW developer community, but Microsoft prevailed by stating that NT Workstation is only a 'Workstation--class' system, and therefore cannot seriously be used to serve any services, like Web etc.; if you want to serve Web services, buy the 'Server' product. Oh, and by the way, this product comes with a 'free' web server, so you will never have to buy a competitor's product, thus we will kill the market for all of these companies (and hopefully them too!) It's sad to say that it did. Can anyone name any commercial alternatives to IIS that exist nowdays? The only problem with this was that a couple of tech guys found that changes to two registry settings in NT Workstation would cause a cascading alteration which resulted in turning it into a full version of NT Server! ORA's Schullman picked up on this, and ORA much publicised this obvious sleight of hand by Microsoft to kill ORA's web server product line for NTW from a distance. Needless to say, this was just another small nail in Microsft's DoJ-trial coffin, and it left plenty of egg on Microsoft's face. But the story has a happy ending (which _will_ be repeated in the platform wars! ;-) Round-about the same time all this was happening, a little bundle of patches to the NCSA web server for the Unix/Linux platform started to get some recognition as a darn-good little httpd. This bundle of patches acquired a name: Apache (a-patch-y get it ;-) In time, this little web server was to conquer all others before it, and was to lead the big push for the deployment of millions of Linux Internet systems, much to the detriment of NT and IIS. Thus, Microsoft's dream of wiping out its competition and ruling the web on the NT platform was sunk, in part because they forced the price issue by mandating only the grossly-expensive NT Server product was powerful enough to server web pages. Further, by torpedoing ORA's web server for NT with anti-competitive restrictions, they acquired a powerful enemy in Tim O'Reilly, who as you will have noticed, rarely misses an opportunity to push open source and Linux nowdays to receptive journalists. con (ps: this is all from memory, it's too early in the morning here in Melbourne to go looking up the historical references ;-) _____________________________________________________________________ Con Zymaris Cybersource Pty. Ltd. Unix/Linux/Windows Systems Administration & Rapid Application Development +61 3 9642 5997 Level 8, 140 Queen Street, Melbourne Australia ------------------------------------------------------------------ Unsubscribe: To: linux-biz-request@lege.com, Subject: unsubscribe