Microsoft buys Sysinternals
p2p news / p2pnet: It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good and Bill and the Boyz have scarfed up a freeware company with Sony BMG nemesis Mark Russinovich at its helm.
Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell own Winternals Software and Sysinternals, NTInternals that was. Used to own, rather. With Russinovich as one of, if not the, people to uncover the infamous Sony BMG’s rootkit spyware, once upon a time, you could go to the Sysinternals blog for a detailed account of how it had worked.
But, “The page cannot be displayed,” said the site when we checked it at 4:30 am this morning.
Now, “The addition of Winternals is a significant advance in Microsoft’s promise to lower customers’ total cost of ownership of the Microsoft Windows platform,” says Microsoft, promising, “Customers will be able to continue building on Sysinternals’ advanced utilities, technical information and source code for utilities related to Windows.”
However, Microsoft also says it’s, “evaluating how the Winternals products and technologies can be integrated within Microsoft offerings to maximize customer value”.
Russinovich will, “join the Microsoft Platforms & Services Division as a technical fellow, working with numerous technology teams across Microsoft, and Cogswell will join the Windows Component Platform Team in the role of software architect,” says a statement.
"I’ve had my eye on Mark for some time," said Jim Allchin, co-president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft.
"There’s a bittersweet quality to the news that Microsoft is acquiring WinTernals Software, the brainchild of Windows guru’s Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell," says InfoWorld.
"On the one hand, you’re happy for Mark and Bruce, who will become esteemed members of Microsoft’s development staff. Mark, in particular, will become one of only 14 Microsoft Technical Fellows, taking his place alongside legends like Windows NT guru Dave Cutler and Jim Gray. On the other hand, you’re sad to see the end of a project like Sysinternals, which has provided free tools like Process Explorer, Autoruns, and Filemon to millions of Windows users and net admins – free – for going on a decade now.
"Sure, I know Sysinternals was the fun side of the business and Mark/Bryce are gonna have to get their kids’ teeth straightened just like the rest of us. But the tools they created and then gave away – dozens and dozens of them – are incredibly adept at cutting through the layers of administrative UI gobbledgy gook and making important features easy to access and use."
Financial details weren’t revealed.
Also See:
rootkit spyware – Sony DRM ‘fix’ still dangerous, November 5, 2005
Microsoft – Microsoft Acquires Winternals Software, July 18, 2006
InfoWorld – WinTernals buy is bittersweet, July 18, 2006
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July 19th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
“Embrace, extend, extinguish”. True in M$’s beginning, and now. Following in the footsteps of many notable (certainly not admirable) “Robber ‘Barrons’” throughout history.
SysInternals shall be _sorely_ missed…..
July 19th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
I installed Fedora Core 4 last September as the default OS in a dual-boot (other OS is XP) system.
I’ve only booted to XP about 5 times TOTAL since then for things like filling in the Canada census online and filing my taxes online (and the rare GTA rampage too.)
There’s tons of games for Linux, and just as many console/arcade emulators as there are for Windows.
The best part is, EVERYTHING on my Linux system is FREE and open-source and so-far spyware free. And it is all generally MUCH more secure and bug-free.
There’s a bit of a learning curve switching to Linux of course, but it’s not as hard as you think as long as you are capable of efficiently finding information on the web and newsgroup archives. The newer distros have come a long long way in terms of intuitiveness from those of a few years ago.
Microsoft is now a non-entity in my life. I no longer live in fear of the next hole to be discovered and exploited. I no longer have to restart ‘explorer’ every ten minutes because it got hung up. MS corporate crap just doesn’t cut it anymore and I don’t trust them to not have backdoors in the OS anyways.