[mdlug] What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: Robert Adkins

> 	Anyway, the sigficant difference in bloat between Microsoft products
> and Open Source products has a great deal more to do with the 
> underlying development model than anything else.

 Exactly, and as you point out MS is finally realizing their development model
is unsustainable. When you're dealing with over 50 million lines of code (the
current conservative estimate for Vista) modularity is *vital* - humans simply
cannot manage that kind of codebase if it doesn't have clean lines of separation
based on functionality.

 Vista was *years* late, and they literally had to throw away their work and start
over in the middle of the process - with greatly reduced ambitions - just to
manage to ship *something*. And, as it turns out, it's not something anyone really
wants.

 Open-source software is almost universally modular, because that's the only
practical way for disparate groups of people to work on a large codebase. As a
bonus, it makes the whole system easier to think about and tends to localize
bugs, making them easier to find and fix.

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                      (313) 227-2317

 [Y]ou notice he said "do not destroy oil wells" before "do not
  use weapons of mass destruction"? - Tom Tomorrow, on Bush's
                ultimatum to Saddam Hussein
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