Hilarious. Now I know why ACPI sucks so much.

[drag]

This is funny stuff.

It's a Email from Bill Gates to a couple buddies. I'll copy it down here by hand, but you can find the original PDF at:
http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03020.pdf

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 1999 8:41 AM
To: Jeff Weslorinen; Bon Fathi
Cc: Carl Stork (Exchange); Nathan Myhrvold; Eric Rudder
Subject: ACPI extensions

One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try and make "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific.

It seems unfortunate if we do all this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great having to do the work.

Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me.

Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open.

Or maybe we could patent something related to this.

Oh.. and I think they did. One major example of this is DSDT. Both Intel and Microsoft provide DSDT compilers for implimenting ACPI support in the firmware/bioses of many laptop and desktop computers.

If people use Intel's compilers they generally work well with Linux since it uses a more strict interpretation of the ASL code and throw errors and warnings out for buggy code.

However if people use the Microsoft supplied compiler it won't. It'll let a lot of buggy code compile fine. So OEMs would typically use Microsoft's stuff and ship hardware with very buggy ACPI support. The sort of errors that didn't get exposed with Microsoft's compilers were the sort of bugs that didn't affect Windows much.

As a result for laptops and such to work correctly with Linux it wasn't uncommon for Linux users and developers to have fix and recompile bad OEM DSDT-related code.

Obviously this is a huge pain the ass for anybody that wants to get sleep or suspend or other power management features to work correctly in Linux.

I think this is less common then used to be.

But with that and this memo it gives you a good idea of what sort of thing Linux developers have to work with on Wintel hardware.

Now don't get me started on USB non-standardized standards...

 

[BladeVenom]

I don't imagine this surprises anyone.

 

[Nothinman]

That would have happened whether Gates thought about it or not. Hardware OEMs that only want to support Windows would have done their QA only with the MS ACPI tools no matter what MS said so there would still be tons of broken firmwares out there.

 

[smack Down]

So your whining because MS was supposed to make sure linux's code would work? Why would MS make tools to test functionality that isn't used by MS.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: smack Down
So your whining because MS was supposed to make sure linux's code would work?

Nope. Just create a way for software to work with a hardware.

Why would MS make tools to test functionality that isn't used by MS.

It's sorta used by Microsoft Windows.

Certainly buggy DSDT stuff affects Windows users also, it's just that they don't know who to blame when their laptop or desktop doesn't come back from hibernation or sleep correctly, or why after they apply driver updates their video card fans won't turn off. They'd probably blame the OEMs or drivers or something like that. It just affects them _less_.


Anyways, who is whining? I was just stating facts. Maybe your the one that is being a bit defensive or something. I don't know.


Two points:
Wanting to use your clout with vendors to intentially make hardware difficult to support is a bit underhanded, don't you think? You know, a bit un'trust'worthy?

A person would think that Microsoft would at least make a effort at supporting standards that _they_themselves_ have created instead of undermining it.


I find the thing just very funny.