Fwd: Amusing MS story

["Eric M. Bennett" <ericb@pobox.com>]

Some of you have probably seen this already, but for the rest of the
readers of this list... enjoy!

>To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
>Subject: It's easier to port a shell than a shell script. -- Larry Wall
>From: Joel Ray Holveck <joelh@gnu.org>
>Reply-To: joelh@gnu.org
>Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
>X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
>>Forwarded-by: "Joel Ray Holveck" <joelh@gnu.org>
>>Forwarded-by: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.org>
>>Forwarded-by: nev@bostic.com
>>Forwarded-by: "Kevin D. Clark" <kclark@cabletron.com>
>>Forwarded-by: "Jon 'maddog' Hall, USG Senior Leader" <hall@zk3.dec.com>
>>
>>I've been attending the USENIX NT and LISA NT (Large Installation Systems
>>Administration for NT) conference in downtown Seattle this week.
>>
>>One of those magical Microsoft moments(tm) happened yesterday and I
>>thought that I'd share.  Non-geeks may not find this funny at all, but
>>those in geekdom (particularly UNIX geekdom) will appreciate it.
>>
>>Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager (henceforth MPM), was holding
>>forth on a forthcoming product that will provide Unix style scripting and
>>shell services on NT for compatibility and to leverage UNIX expertise that
>>moves to the NT platform.  The product suite includes the MKS (Mortise
>>Kern Systems) windowing Korn shell, a windowing PERL, and lots of goodies
>>like awk, sed and grep.  It actually fills a nice niche for which other
>>products (like the MKS suite) have either been too highly priced or not
>>well enough integrated.
>>
>>An older man, probably mid-50s, stands up in the back of the room and
>>asserts that Microsoft could have done better with their choice of Korn
>>shell.  He asks if they had considered others that are more compatible
>>with existing UNIX versions of KSH.
>>
>>The MPM said that the MKS shell was pretty compatible and should be able
>>to run all UNIX scripts.
>>
>>The questioner again asserted that the MKS shell was not very compatible
>>and didn't do a lot of things right that are defined in the KSH language
>>spec.
>>
>>The MPM asserted again that the shell was pretty compatible and should
>>work quite well.
>>
>>This assertion and counter assertion went back and forth for a bit, when
>>another fellow member of the audience announced to the MPM that the
>>questioner was, in fact David Korn of AT&T (now Lucent) Bell Labs. (David
>>Korn is the author of the Korn shell)
>>
>>Uproarious laughter burst forth from the audience, and it was one of the
>>only times that I have seen a (by then pink cheeked) MPM lost for words
>>or momentarily lacking the usual unflappable confidence. So, what's a body
>>to do when Microsoft reality collides with everyone elses?
>>
>>---Lisa
>>
>>--
>>Joel Ray Holveck - joelh@gnu.org - http://www.wp.com/piquan
>>   Fourth law of programming:
>>   Anything that can go wrong wi
>>sendmail: segmentation violation - core dumped



--
Eric Bennett (http://www.pobox.com/~ericb/)
Cornell University, Field of Biochemistry
377 Olin Chemistry Lab

First law of computer trade journalism: "No technology exists until
Microsoft invents it."
-Nicholas Petreley



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