3 ms·

> It's a drag on the whole Microsoft ecosystem and heavily rate-limits the cycle time for new products. I don't see this as a problem; I like the stability of

> It's a drag on the whole Microsoft ecosystem and heavily rate-limits the cycle time for new products. I don't see this as a problem; I like the stability of MS vs. Linux (having watched the rise and fall of devfs and hal now, along with the death of gnome-mount, gconf, gdm theming and xdmcp serving, etc.) OTOH, I think IE6's 10+ year support guarantee was a bit extreme. But, comparing developing something on IE vs. Mozilla, IE would be the clear winner. I mean, Firefox extensions, which you would expect to be developer-friendly, aren't necessarily compatible between 3.5.x and 3.6.x of the product! Do I really want to be constantly fixing things that used to work every few months? Does the business want to pay for it?

jcromartie 16y ago
> I don't see this as a problem; I like the stability of MS vs. Linux (having watched the rise and fall of devfs and hal now, along with the death of gnome-mount, gconf, gdm theming and xdmcp serving, etc.) The problem that I see is that "stability" in the Microsoft world is entirely conditional on your willingness to upgrade everything all of the time since the whole toolkit is in a constant state of flux. Sure, you get working and officially-supported frameworks, but the goalposts are always shifting further down the field, and I think that's intentional on Microsoft's part.
- sapphirecat 16y ago
  I don't think you can say Linux is better in that regard. Every 6 months, there's a new Ubuntu or a new Fedora, and within a couple of years (except for Ubuntu LTS releases, which last three! years on the desktop) they're gone again.
- runjake 16y ago
  Could you clarify what you mean by: "upgrade everything all of the time" and "the whole toolkit is in a constant state of flux"? What toolkit, and what upgrades? And how is it different to you than the Linux side of things?

jcromartie 16y ago

> I don't see this as a problem; I like the stability of MS vs. Linux (having watched the rise and fall of devfs and hal now, along with the death of gnome-mount, gconf, gdm theming and xdmcp serving, etc.) The problem that I see is that "stability" in the Microsoft world is entirely conditional on your willingness to upgrade everything all of the time since the whole toolkit is in a constant state of flux. Sure, you get working and officially-supported frameworks, but the goalposts are always shifting further down the field, and I think that's intentional on Microsoft's part.

sapphirecat 16y ago
I don't think you can say Linux is better in that regard. Every 6 months, there's a new Ubuntu or a new Fedora, and within a couple of years (except for Ubuntu LTS releases, which last three! years on the desktop) they're gone again.
runjake 16y ago
Could you clarify what you mean by: "upgrade everything all of the time" and "the whole toolkit is in a constant state of flux"? What toolkit, and what upgrades? And how is it different to you than the Linux side of things?