Microsoft kills FAST's Linux and Unix search biz Customers of FAST's Enterprise Search Platform (ESP) on Linux or Unix better develop a taste for Windows or look elsewhere for their enterprise search. Microsoft- which bought FAST in 2008 - has announced it will stop development of FAST's ESP core on Linux and Unix after the release of Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 later …
I've heard reports from certain open source database developers that it takes about three times as much effort to develop on windows as it does on unix. I wouldn't know, because even for the windows version of the open source project I occasionally contribute to, most use linux to develop and compile.
As another anecdote point, if you want to build for multiple platforms, you'd better start porting early and keep it up to date often, othewise you might end up with unnecessairily built-in platform dependencies that are expensive to work around and degrade user experience. Even between such POSIXly-related cousins as FreeBSD and linux there are quirks that need ironing out by abstracting them in a few platform specific modules to be built upon by the rest of the code. (And incidentally it's better and cheaper to develop on FreeBSD and port to linux than the other way around, for platform quirk reasons.) If that doesn't happen, porting gets progressively more expensive, and annoying. And thus easily dispensed with.
So, no, what this micros~1 fellow type chief fscker-up is spinning here is a hundred percent pure micros~1 drivel. ``Get the facts'', indeed.
Good luck with that... with the general pain (in terms of security, speed, and monetary costs) of Windows, I would assume people will stick with what they have or go go to Lucerne.
And, I am amused by the head of FAST saying they are working on interoperability, while making their product single-platform. I really doubt they will be able to "innovate" more by going single platform, indexing and search are a lot of file I/O (particularly to build the index) and some CPU cycles, and if it's distributed then network I/O. The closest thing to being non-portable would be mmap (memory mapping files) if they do that, and threading. But (other than Windows) those follow POSIX standards too. So, if FAST just becomes a part of SharePoint then so be it, but I for one won't consider that particularly innovative.
Microsoft buys company... company drops its Linux/Unix software. Just like when Apple a acquires a company... they discontinue the Widows versions of its software. Time and time again.. it's no surprise.
Wake me up when Microsoft start playing the Apple game of trying to tie software to hardware. When they launch their "Microsoft Certified Hardware" scheme and only permit Windows to be used with Microsoft-labelled or Microsoft certified hardware (inc. peripherals). Naturally they would only certify the hardware of vendors who promise to never provide drivers or support for Linux or Unix platforms. Then, like Apple they could go around suing anyone who installs Windows on computers that are not Microsoft-labelled or certified.
Microsoft do make software which can only run Microsoft certified hardware and is compatible only with Microsoft certified peripherals: it's called the XBox 360 operating system. Not only that but said hardware won't run any software that isn't digitally signed and approved by Microsoft, so third parties are not free to publish their own software. Of course this is nothing new, it's true of all game consoles and to not quite the same extent, all closed hardware platforms.
I don't see how Microsoft are any different to Apple in preventing the XBox 360 operating system running on compatible PowerPC hardware, versus Apple not wanting Mac OS X to be ran on any compatible Intel hardware. Both are pretty much superficial limitations, but both companies are perfectly entitled to do so in order to protect their business interests. Likewise Microsoft are equally entitled to drop Unix support for FAST, it's their choice. It may upset some existing users but I'm guessing the owners of FAST would have seen this coming when they sold out to Microsoft.
that is just SOOOOoooo over used by Microsoft PR these days it's funny. I really love when they use that when talking about open source software. You know the stuff, where the source code is 100% open for viewing so there's nothing hidden or hiding.
Interoperability in the Microsoft dictionary means it all resides in Microsoft code and if not it is tied to some strange patent issue which makes you wonder when they'll pull the rug out from under you.
No Windows product is safe from this because Microsoft wants everything to run on Windows or it does not run.
Paris because if you don't do it her way, she leaves.
After almost 30 years of cross-platform development of large-scale (10M loc) distributed systems software on Unix (Solaris, HP-UX, Tru64, AIX), Linux, and Windows (all software running equally well on all platforms) I can only say... BS!!! to Olstad. At least regarding his comment "only focusing on Windows, the company can deliver more innovation per release in the future". That is just SO bogus! Unfortunately, Bjørn seems to have had more than his company acquired by Microsoft. I think his integrity was purchased as well.
Yeah the hotmail conversion was pretty brutal from what I've read (performance-wise). I do think Microsofts done a lot of work to improve the Windows kernels server performance since then, that was after all the Windows 2000 days. Not so much that I'd expect windows server to outrun Linux or FreeBSD (since they've also made performance improvements over the years), but I don't think it's quite the bloodbath it used to be. Of course, I've read sharepoint's straight up bloated so if FAST is going into it all bets are off.
Oh and I so notice the diplomatic, "Other Operating Systems" accolade, in reference to that domain including Linux. Marketards beware, Microsoft is moving on objective.....
P.S. @Henry Wertz 1: I presume, sir, that you had meant to refer to Apache Lucene. Cheers.
...yes it is business.
The same goes for all those whinging bastards moaning about Cadburys.
No one is FORCING them to sell (well occasionally the receivers will, but thats totally diferrent). Microsoft offered a shitload of cash. the owners added up the figures in there head (lets see..yes thats a tidy profit) and sold, they knew full well what would happen, but at the end of the day, they sold it for a big fat profit, like any sensible business person would do.
So stop being a moron and learn about the business world.
Now would any Linux people like to pay be £1millon to say that MS are evil, that I've just talked utter bollocks and that we all should live in tents and grow beards? Willing to negotiate.
"When they launch their "Microsoft Certified Hardware" scheme and only permit Windows to be used with Microsoft-labelled or Microsoft certified hardware (inc. peripherals). Naturally they would only certify the hardware of vendors who promise to never provide drivers or support for Linux or Unix platforms. "
Consider it done. I think you need to look up "Paladium" or "Trusted computing." this is DRM territory. However actually putting out major hardware with the MS logo on is unlikely. Microsoft's *only* friends are hardware suppliers. MS gives them the 50% (and Office) OS bloat needed to justify scrapping PC's every 18-21 months.
So I could choose to stick with you and not really know if this is just the first of many painful changes to come OR I can change away from this product altogether, just once and avoid unnecessary IT expenditure in the future.... tough one that!!
for Microsoft, the definition is capable of running on the current product and the previous product. That is it...
and as for Microsoft dropping development on a Linux based product in order to increase innovation... hahahahahahahahahahahahahah
Microsoft are completely incapable of innovating anything except inventive new FUD...
Aside from FAST's primary product not being "all that" as some people used to say - various other proprietary search vendors were doing similar stuff in the late 1990s, and yes, those vendors also ran Internet search engines - I'm sure that all the clueless organisations who bought FAST's products and who reassured themselves that it was still a good thing after the Microsoft takeover are now having strategy meetings and fretting about migrations and reliability and server licences and stuff that they could have avoided if they'd bothered to use something even marginally more open and better maintained (in the corporate sense).
I'm sure that the Windows-only regime is also a bitter pill for any of the FAST engineers who haven't already quit, too, but engineering morale is usually a secondary consideration in such businesses. Meanwhile, I wonder if the Norwegian prosecutors have bothered to pick up the case of the misreported financials that went on before the Microsoft acquisition, or whether it's still not worth getting out of bed for.
In any case, FAST customers can just see this as Microsoft tightening the screws as was always going to happen. Many of them run Internet services that I'm sure will eventually end up competing with Microsoft's own offerings, so it shouldn't come as a surprise, but given the levels of cluelessness in the average Internet business's management team, it probably will.
Yes, proprietards, there are some and they're in widespread use!
Lucene, Nutch and Solr; Xapian, Omega, Flax; Sphinx. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you're willing and able to build your own stuff or you want to integrate things more tightly than horsing around with some vendor's perverse "push the document in the slot and wait" interface to their gold-plated solution, start with the low-level stuff. Otherwise, take a look at the higher-level stuff, or just use some kind of search appliance solution, of which there are increasingly many.
Thought at first you meant the Fucking Arseholes and Stupid Tossers. Had a visit from them once, possibly acting on a tip-off from our supplier (we bought in enough parts to make 20 PCs for our office, and one copy of Windows XP for someone else).
The look on the guy's face when I said we did nothing to stop staff copying software from their workstations {then running Mandrake Community Edition, with a web browser and OpenOffice.org: everything on them was Open Source} and we would in fact encourage it, was *priceless*.
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