On Tuesday, Microsoft announced it has acquired Winternals Software, a small maker of Windows utility programs, in a deal that the software maker hopes will add key technical talent to its operating system development team.
Terms of the deal to acquire the Austin, Texas-based company were not announced. Among the software that Winternals offers is a set of freely downloadable tools known as Sysinternals.
In buying Winternals, Microsoft is getting the company's free tools, its Sysinternals community Web site as well as several paid-for software products for businesses. However, it appears Microsoft made the deal, in large part, to hire the company's two co-founders.
"It's definitely about talent," Platform and Services division architect Jason Garms said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "Mark is one of the top five or 10 people in the world when it comes to Windows internals."
View: Full Article @ CNET News.com
View: Neowin Forum Discussion
Terms of the deal to acquire the Austin, Texas-based company were not announced. Among the software that Winternals offers is a set of freely downloadable tools known as Sysinternals.
In buying Winternals, Microsoft is getting the company's free tools, its Sysinternals community Web site as well as several paid-for software products for businesses. However, it appears Microsoft made the deal, in large part, to hire the company's two co-founders.
"It's definitely about talent," Platform and Services division architect Jason Garms said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "Mark is one of the top five or 10 people in the world when it comes to Windows internals."
View: Full Article @ CNET News.com View: Neowin Forum Discussion
Not down, only slashdotted.
I can't believe they've taken sysinternals down already! Just a shape of things to come.
Last edited by fabbers on 18 Jul 2006 - 22:12
A quote from Mark Russinovichs' blog: "As for Sysinternals, the site will remain for the time being while Microsoft determines the best way to integrate it into its own community efforts, and the tools will continue to be free to download." As for how long they will available, who knows.
Sysinternals always provided very powerful tools, that could be pretty bad in the wrong hands and circumstances too, so I hope they don't start doing something real stupid like only providing them as part of a package for certified Windows users, or another restricted / trusted only use.
...
Mike
That sounds like a positive spin on negative news more than anything to me. Key word "current term". What's next? Is there a special reason they're limiting their comment only on the current term and not even a near future? Obviously, contracts need to be renewed, but if that was all that was to it, it would seem to me they'd simply claim that the technical support will be maintained as usual, and that's it. Not give hints like these, sounding more like "we'll phase out tech support as it looks today after the current term".
They also avoid to answer the question on how Mark Russinovich will be able to develop and improve Sysinternals tools for free and public use without any necessary bindings the user need to make with Microsoft, such as paying for license agreements, being members of certain customer programs, etc.
It sounds to me like a normal big-company response when they havn't made a decision:
"Q: Are you going to maintain technical support for this product I paid money for?
A: Yes, we will definitely be maintaining it for the current term of your contract. "
It's the same thing for employment contracts: "You will be employed at ($
Yes, the followup question question needs to be asked: "Will MS/Winternals allow renewals of the Product Assurance Contract and/or provide technical support after the end of the Product Assurance Contracts?"
Keep living in that fantasy land. You stand up to a 1 in 5 chance of getting a false positive with WGA. Just do a Google search on "wga failure" and educate yourself.
WGA failure search at Google
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I personally cannot live without "process explorer" and autoruns.
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