XP has the infrastructure to make this possible. The real source of it was the Citrix technology which Microsoft "licensed" (actually they dragged it out of Citrix - the original asking price was $1 billion, but they settled for $170 million if I recall correctly).
The key issue is that the terminal services abilities are now embedded in every version of Windows - which means that some decent programmers with enough time could make a multi-user remote desktop system using built-in components for much of their work. This bypasses a lot of issues, of course. In my opinion, the biggest one is the "evolutionary heritage" of Windows, and this is where the envy comes in - which goes way below X11. Simply put, as we all know, Unix and Linux were born as multi-user systems. Remote access is not an issue for Unix because that's the original case for it! Windows, however, has had that "one pc/one user" issue for years - and to this day programmers are writing and deploying software that break all sorts of rules about user vs. system space usage, modularizing front end and back end pieces...* Making Windows act as a multi-user system is no longer all that difficult. Making the stuff you need to run work with it is, however, an issue that will be fought for years to come. ============= * A note on this - two of the most interesting offenders are Microsoft Office and Star Office. Microsoft Office has a significant problem with how it is modularized. In spite of all the work with COM, to this day to access Office services you need to have GUI support for some things. The most common problem with ASP use of Office, for example, is the fact that when you initialize an Office component for the first time via IIS it wants to display all sorts of user dialogs which cannot be programmatically bypassed. This leads to all sorts of bizarre issues with instances of Microsoft Office running and not terminating, perpetually trying to display a window to a desktop that does not exist. Star Office, which I would expect to be one of the very best office suites to deal with multiple simultaneous user access makes *no* provision for this! In the Terminal Services newsgroups, you will see questions every few weeks about deploying Star Office on TS; due to how it handles temp files and user initialization, two or more users running it will immediately begin having settings and temp files collide. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Beerse, Corni" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, 2002-04-22 05:29 Subject: RE: Newbie question > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Alex K. Angelopoulos [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > The short story is, XP could be theoretically converted into > > a simultaneous > > multi-user graphical OS. They want to make sure they get > > Do you realy think so? They at M$ would like to but they cannot do that on > their own... > > > paid for access if > > anyone does. In any case, on Windows VNC does what NetMeeting, Remote > > Assistance, and the Remote Desktop features do, so this > > doesn't apply to it. > > As far as I know, winvnc just copies the display to somwhere else and copies > the mouse and keyboard actions from there. > > As long as the machine running vncviewer is also WXP, there is no problem at > all. > > > > > It's a pity, since I'd just *love* to see someone try to ban > > an Open Source > > application. It would be a bit like trying to bail out a > > boat with a fork.... > > :-) > Somehow I get the feeling they don't like the power of X11... > > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Bruce Williams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > What is the word here about Microsoft, VNC and XP? > > > From > > http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/03/18/020318oplivingston.xml > > > > Microsoft's XP license agreement says, "Except as otherwise permitted by > > the NetMeeting, Remote Assistance, and Remote Desktop features described > > Was VNC listed below? > > > below, you may not use the Product to permit any Device to use, access, > > display, or run other executable software residing on the Workstation > > What about all other communication products? If not listed, they cannot be > used at all, since device can be harddisk too. I read the above that you > cannot use the machine as a network server for anything. If not listed, not > even a network share may be made... > > > Computer, nor may you permit any Device to use, access, display, or run > the > > Product or Product's user interface, unless the Device has a separate > > license for the Product." > > ... need a license for the hardisk, for the floppy, for the cdrom, for the > keyboard, for the video... > > As I read the M$License, if you like to use WXP for a server for whatever, > you need to have an XP license for every device that needs access. Since > you cannot control the public, it cannot be used for a public server like > webserver or such. Then again, if I need a WXP license for my SunSparc > processor, they'd get me the software to use it too... > > naa, the more I think about those lines of text, the more I'd like to see > them in court, sueing the XP users for every hacker that accesses their > machine... > > :-) > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the line: > 'unsubscribe vnc-list' in the message BODY > See also: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/intouch.html > --------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the line: 'unsubscribe vnc-list' in the message BODY See also: http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/intouch.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------
