Re: Ethics question...

> > Why would Microsoft be using Solaris, or Linux even? (hint, the same > > reason -- their stuff works less good). > > Do you know for a fact that they do? If so, how? That'd be a very cool > tidbit of information to share . . . Yep it is (was) true. We used to laugh about it at work. (We were in the middle of a big Unix vs. NT debate). They used solaris on their web servers early on. (Probably because a) The Intel "server class" machine market was relatively immature at that point and b) Prior to NT4 SP3, NT had no chance of holding up under any sort of load). They are all Win2k now last time I checked. Hotmail did use FreeBSD as I recall. This was an external company that Microsoft acquired and they made the decision not to completely rewrite it when they acquired it (although considering how completely clueless Hotmail was about web security they probably should've done it). There are (or used to be) some number of publically available Linux boxes in the microsoft.com domain. (Mostly in their research labs.) You should be able to do a web or deja search and find info on them if you are really interested. -Brian