Microsoft Sucks Up Sysinternals

Already as of today (18 July) the EULA for all of the Winternals software has been altered into the typical Microsoft-ese EULA. Not only that, the provision that previously allowed the use of Winternals software by sysadmins in a work environment has been revoked by Microsoft. In other words, Microsoft has basically removed the 'free' from the freeware packages, and likely soon will remove all of the packages from public access. What should have been is no more...

The application will be redeveloped for the typical home user, it will be so dumbed down as to be useless and until everyone realizes it it will be a short lived profit center. The usefulness will disappear soon and it will simply be another roadkill company. Perhaps the Europeans will step up and design a useful replacement because it's clear this product is dead.

What took MS so long! That being said, they should suck couple more companies like lavasoft, zonealarm (alas this one's bought already), executive software and grc.com

Watch all this stuff evaporate over the next few weeks. This stuff was just too good.

Microsoft doesn't want anyone to see what is really going on in it's operating systems. (W98-Vista) This is pushing computer users to Linux or the new Intel-based Apple computers with a 3rd party boot manager. It looks like Gates left in time to try to avoid associating his name a software company that installs rootkits, spyware, keyloggers and 'adware' from it's new operating systems and intalls this same crap if you login to their update site with any of it's older Win OSs (back to W98). Is Microsoft going to be our next "big brother". 'Heil Gates!' [M]

Good Grief! Has anyone thought that perhaps MS is striving to improve it's product offering? there are a large array of free tools now, available from MS, and I suspect that there will now be more and better ones. Also, and it might just be my imagination, but it seems like MS is trying to asemble some type of "Dream Team", and the addition of Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell certainly plays well into that strategy. People who hate MS just for the fact that MS is one of the truly astounding success strories turned into de facto empire by virtue of the virtual, should try and invent some new method of attack as the old ones are becoming very tiresome. Also, if anyone can let me know of any greater good to the world at large that has come about as a direct result of a competing software company-please read this carefully before flaming me-then please I would love to hear about it.

Microsoft is not the entire reason why you are reading this comment. After all they only account for 90% of the home computer systems, and 75% of all internet browsers.

If they are so horrible, than why do so many use them? If their product sucked so much, then how do they generate a monopoly when "free" replacement software already exist?

So MS bought 2 guys to help them out, and build better utilities. Big deal, people go out in the software world all the time looking for talent. And I'm sure they are being payed handsomely, so MS must have some kind of interest. It takes alot of money and a good game plan to convince talented sofware engineers today

If you read the Microsoft Press book "Writing Solid Code" there is a story about Gates bringing him back to help with the Word team, which was having trouble. Gates was willing to listen to the new (well he worked at MS before then left on good terms) guy and overrule what the team wanted. If the sysinternals guys have the right ears, they may have a big influence.

Some of you have *got* to be living in a different world. I can not think of a *single* product or technology that m$ obtained and didn't screw up. The reason so many users use their products has more to do with package bundles and business users than anything else. If users had to actually choose which applications to use for the basics, I don't think m$ would have such a large install base.

I reason that Linux "that is free" is not so big yet is that it is not click click a user may have to learn some thing and not download a crack.... Linux it self like FC5 is very much like XP.. If people still Bitc# via windows then they really dont care because the solution is hear.. Mac o/s is Linux based.... Mac never hit big becasue it was not simple like windows....

i think the intention of MS is definately to make things better i think even if MS is providing a full house OS if someone wants to go for anything else he/she is most welcome no one is stopping them but even than people prefer MS products i agree 100% with ''pierre'' that one must look at the intention not the output

//Those are words that send chills down the spine of anyone familiar with Microspeak. //

Yes, for anyone with the common MS is evil paranoid mob mentality or their servers who wallow in the conspiracy theories are good for blogging cesspool, I'd say this is good and scary.

Mandrake 10 and Ubuntu are looking beter and better each day...

Microsloth is making my mind up for me as to 'where do you want to go today?"

To a stable secure OS, without Patch Tuesdays, and with a much more reasonable pricing scheme...

Thanks for making the decision just a little easier each day M$.

"Contorversial Windows Genuine Advantage" - What is wrong with proving you paid for Windows before giving you a utility that eats into the profit margin generated from buying the Operating System?

I DO agree that the deployment method - by calling it a "critical update" - is a bit sketchy - but what is wrong with closing loopholes on stolen Product Keys? And right now it is the only method of enforcement - so much as I complained about it I can live with the concept of stopping the thief.

Your article about shrinking independent developers is tainted by that assertion.

The problem with PC World's market is that (and I estimate by looking at the reply posts here) your readership retains the freebooting, freewheeling style of early 1970's computing. They were really just big radios and we used to build computers with our "electronics" magazine in hand and a soldering iron in the other.

For sure the Linux adopters will trumpet their "superior" system. But Linux market share in the BUSINESS WHERE WE MAKE MONEY BASED ON ROI CALCULATIONS sector, fell last quarter (IDC). That tells you something about what works and really makes money. As soon as enough people adopted Open Source Firefox - the bad guys went after it and we got 13 proof of concept holes in it last month. Sure early Windows was not very secure - but then neither was anything else for that matter in the open marketplace. As the bad guys attacked - the developers put up the defences and it will continue to cycle as before. If the good guys can stay ahead of the bad guys - the good guys will win. This is no different than any other area of human activity and to argue that Microsoft (or any other vendor) "should" have been bomb proof at the outset is to argue from a position of naievity in the commercial sector. If taking two skilled developers and their tools to Redmond improves the overall product - I'm all for it.

Come on guys - those "free" utilities for the hobbyist are not "free". They get paid for somehow - in the dot com era - by consuming vast amounts of venture capital and now through, trying to dump advertising sponsored spyware on your computer when you download them, through using them as a loss leader to promote Enterprise business or to raise individuals' heads above the parapet and get hired by someone who notices they are skilled people and who will pay them for their valuable services. That - as I recall - is the American way.......

I'm just very sad that these great tools will now lose their trustworthyness. I'm quite unhappy with the way people keep fighting in two camps Windows-Linux. You know what is better? That what works for you and you feel comfortable using. Just a word for the people who think that Microsoft's good percentage in the market is because users would CHOOSE to use Windows. Sorry, but that decision is made by our bosses who couldn't find their arse unless someone pointed it out to them.
Microsoft is not evil? Yes, they are. At least in my perception of them. And you know, Perception is everything. I perceive them as such, so to me, they are, regardless of what anybody else says. The purchase of this set of tools is for me just another piece of evidence that my perception is right.
At home, I've switched to Linux long ago. At work, I HAVE to use Windows, because it's what the company buys, not because I choose to do so.

I think that MSFT acquired a really important asset, but if MSFT refuses to keep system internals functioning, I will probably go to Linux because I think that the recent demonstrations of corporations playing loose with the public warrant it. For Marrk, I think that this is LONG OVERDUE recognition. But then again I think of Micro-Eye, Sue Moeshner, Ginsburg, ECMS, and Todd Walker and wonder what their talent might have been if they had not been mislead into bad tech platforms because Steve Balmer wanted it that way, I say great for Mark and a blow to the public.

The sysinternals tools are awesome and I use
them almost every time I have anything to
troubleshoot. This is going to go one of two
ways:

1. They integrate the tools and the deep info
they provide into the OS so that all admins can
use and view them. They’ve done this before
with other good tools.

2. The clowns in upper management do
exactly what the community is worried about.
They kill the usefulness of the tools by ‘design-
through-committee’ and the two dev guys get
dropped in a Redmond hole so deep that the
world never hears from them again.

Inertia. Most people don't know how to set the thermostat in the house. The clock is left at the time that the last powercut reset to (or just blinks on the microwave). The reason that Microsoft is everywhere is that they were smart enough to get installed by default at the factory. Story, end of.

So why does Microsoft want to buy free software companies? Because the guys that wrote this stuff know windows well, they are clearly smart and they write popular applications. Wouldn't you like your software company to be infected by people like that? As for what MS will do the tools, yeah, I tend to the belief that MS will wreck them. Microsoft performs best when it licenses a third party technology and then copies it (e.g Stack Doubler).

Microsoft does *not* by and large, innovate. When it does, it bombs ("Bob" was an MS Innovation - major suckiness). Microsoft identifies important stuff and then embraces and extends (anyone remember Bill Gates declaring around 1994 that the Internet was irrelevant? I do).

They aren't innovators. They are great marketeers. They are lousy software developers with a poor record of security. They will screw up these acquisitions. It's a historical certainty ;)

After growing weary of constantly cleaning my Windows systems of spyware, adware, and paying to renew other security utilities, I made the switch to Linux. It felt that almost every website out there was fighting for control over my system and was attracted to the reported stability of Linux. After switching one of my four PCs to Ubuntu Linux, I loved it so much that I formatted and installed it on two of my other PCs as well. Unfortunately, I keep Windows on one system for gaming purposes, but hopefully PC gaming will start to include Linux, too. I'll admit that at first Linux has a steep learning curve, but that's true for almost anything new. Besides gaming, I haven't found anything Windows does that I can't do in Linux, including graphic design and video editing (all for free, by the way!).

Posted by Pierre on Tuesday, July 18, 2006, 09:04 PM (PST)
Microsoft is not the entire reason why you are reading this comment. After all they only account for 90% of the home computer systems, and 75% of all internet browsers.

If they are so horrible, than why do so many use them? If their product sucked so much, then how do they generate a monopoly when "free" replacement software already exist?

So MS bought 2 guys to help them out, and build better utilities. Big deal, people go out in the software world all the time looking for talent. And I'm sure they are being payed handsomely, so MS must have some kind of interest. It takes alot of money and a good game plan to convince talented sofware engineers today

You're a noob, and an ignorant one at that. You want to know why MS has their grip in now 70% of the home market? Because their marketing and platform is noob friendly, and they spend enough $ pushing their crap. You see the home linux world building up only due to the 31337 GUI'd out the box distros that are being released left and right. Get off of Microsofts nuts ignorant media junkie.

Say so long to free utilities. Keep the copies you have now. The downloads will be shutdown soon.

"Sure early Windows was not very secure - but then neither was anything else for that matter in the open marketplace."

Um, ____OpenBSD____!! Ancient and still the most secure OS available on the open market. It doesn't provide the end user tools MS does, but I'm certain we could find a happier middle ground.

I won't even comment on why so many people are stuck using Win and their associated tools. But we proved a few years ago that you can't try to tear down MS without tearing down the whole of the economy as well (court rulings -> recession). Necessary evil...

The internet golden days are OVER. When the technologies first started, everything was chaotic, difficult to configure, broke with each new release, and required hours of support calls (with NO Google searching to help you out).

This is the price we are paying NOW for having stable working IDEs and OSs.

If only we could get rid of Crystal Reports...

Another company and products we will here no longer.!!! Remember what happaned to FoxPro the great database software in old days...originally known as FoxBASE!!! Became Visual FoxPro and now I think very few developers use it.

Another reason to switch to Linux.

I have installed FC5 linux distro and I am able to do ALL the things which I used to do with Windows.

In Business world decision makers are old, used to Windows, they don't want change. They are very much used to it.

I am totally convinced that Linux can successfully replace windows both at Home and in Business...

Proper marketing and attitude is required.!!!

I'm simply not comfortable with a tool that's meant to report on an operating system BEING part and parcel of the operating system.

That's akin to asking an auditor to audit themself.

Business practices aside, I'd prefer to have independant diagnostic tools. Sure, they still use system hooks, apis and whatnot. However, when there are twenty tools that handle things a little differently, it's more difficult for malware authors to hide themselves. When There Can Be Only One, it's easy for the buggers to target tools becuase they know they'll be there.

Sysinternals utilities all in one pack (7.19.06) in 7z format. ;)
http://s21.quicksharing.com/v/8558154/Sysinternals _all_in_one.7z.html

OS X is not based on Linux. That's an insult.

Thanks Green,,,
I have been archiving the sys site since last night, I think many people are doing that too as the service is being pounded......

Chasteaux,
So BSD is not Linux?!?!?!?

The key difference between BSD and Linux can be summarized in a single term: integration, meaning both a process and the result of this process.

Each BSD distribution is considered a single project. Linux distributions on the other hand are combined from a multitude of separate projects, many of which aren't even Linux-specific. There is a Linux kernel project led by Linus Torvalds. There are toolchain and C library projects. There are a host of different GNU projects that provide various tool collections. And so on.

If Microsoft stops Systernals and criples their uses, It will be the death of MS in many people minds eye....

Only 1000 characters allowed so making it simple.

I'm a Microsoft Windows user and appreciate thier OS (from Windows 2000 onwards only, although I started with MS-DOS 2.2) & other products same way.

Linux would take over the world, I have heard that for last 15+ years :)

Home Users (not-so-techy)
It won't happen because linux (distro'uction are launched with UI thinking that if they just put a Start button in linux everyone will start using it.

Enterprise World
Managing an enterprise network is a different ball game, you might argue that there are existing enterprise networks running Lin*
but that's just like saying there are People who have landed on Moon, does that mean everyone will (can) go to Moon?

Lin* is a good OS for specific scenario where you need to modify source but a long way to go for both home & enterprise.

Here are few requirements other than the "Start" button for a good OS
Application availability
Backward compatibility (very important for enterprise)
Support for versions (I think every dick n harry have a version of Linux now)

I bet Mark would be an asset to MS.

How can this not be a good thing for Microsoft? For the rest of us, that remains to be seen.