Text 1460, 93 rader
Skriven 2006-07-20 12:56:00 av George Vandervort (1:382/8)
Ärende: Microsoft Buys SysInternals; Inc.
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Hello All!

NEWS FLASH!!! ALL the "MS" News that's fit to Print..

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Today @ PC World

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/002432.html

News, opinion, and links from the PC World staff.
See all Today @ PC World.


Microsoft Sucks Up Sysinternals


Posted by Edward N. Albro

Tuesday, July 18, 2006, 11:47 AM (PST)


It's hard to know how to feel about Microsoft's purchase, announced today, of
Sysinternals, one of the best sites around for free Windows utilities, and
Winternals, its sister site that produces paid enterprise recovery, security
and defragging tools.

While Sysinternals tools -- such as Process Explorer, Regmon and DiskMon -- are
wonderfully useful, you have to feel that this deal is more about Redmond
acquiring two more big brains: the sites' co-founders, Mark Russinovich and
Bryce Cogswell. Russinovich will be one of Microsoft's technology fellows and
Cogswell a software architect.

Now, I'm not one who believes that Microsoft is evil; I'm certain they want to
produce superior, highly useful products that make a decent profit. It's just
that their system doesn't seem very well set up to do that at this point. I've
visited Microsoft all of once, so I can't claim any inside insight, but it acts
like an institution so mired in bureaucracy, history and conflicting goals that
it's unable to react swiftly to problems and really excel. And I can't see two
more software engineers, as bright as they may be, changing that.

On the other hand, I can see things changing for PC users. Russinovich says in
his blog that Microsoft is looking for the best way to integrate Sysinternals
into the company's own community efforts. And Microsoft's press release on the
acquisition says the company is "evaluating how the Winternals products and
technologies can be integrated within Microsoft offerings to maximize customer
value." Those are words that send chills down the spine of anyone familiar with
Microspeak.

It seems highly likely that you'll soon have to prove, through Microsoft's
controversial Windows Genuine Advantage system, that you're running a legal
version of Windows before you can download something like DiskMon. And perhaps
the best thing about Systinternals utilities is that they give you a full,
unvarnished look at what's happening behind the scenes in Windows. Am I
paranoid to think that someone in the Microsoft bureaucracy may decide that
users will only be confused by all that information and the tools should be
scaled back?

Finally, the computing world will lose two more independent voices. You may
remember that Russinovich is the guy who discovered and publicized Sony's
disastrous rootkit DRM scheme on music CDs, something that had apparently been
on the market for months without anyone finding out. The tech world will always
have smart, unbiased watchdogs, but especially now, as technology interests
become more and more subsumed by business interests, we can use as many as we
can get.


Comments


Posted by Raymond Lang on Tuesday, July 18, 2006, 04:38 PM (PST)
Already as of today (18 July) the EULA for all of the Winternals software has
been altered into the typical Microsoft-ese EULA. Not only that, the provision
that previously allowed the use of Winternals software by sysadmins in a work
environment has been revoked by Microsoft. In other words, Microsoft has
basically removed the 'free' from the freeware packages, and likely soon will
remove all of the packages from public access. What should have been is no
more...

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Regards,
George Vandervort

'Using yesterday's software to create tomorrow's problems today'


...Very funny Scotty... Now beam down my clothes!

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