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Microsoft Phasing Out FAST Search For Linux, Unix 146

Posted by Soulskill
from the going-away dept.
viralMeme writes "Microsoft plans to begin phasing out Unix and Linux platform support for its FAST enterprise search products, as of its next release. According to a Thursday blog post from Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Bjørn Olstad, 'We’ve continued to sell, support, and update the Linux and UNIX versions of FAST ESP, and we’ve designed the next wave of FAST products (scheduled for release in the first half of calendar year 2010) to include a cross-platform search core that has been extended to take advantage of web services and support mixed-platform deployment models. With our 2010 products scheduled for release in a few months, we’ve just started to plan for our next wave of products. As a part of that planning process, we have decided that in order to deliver more innovation per release in the future, the 2010 products will be the last to include a search core that runs on Linux and UNIX. Many of our customers run FAST ESP on Linux and UNIX today, and we recognize that our future focus on Windows means change. To ease the transition, we’re investing in interoperability between Windows and other operating systems, reaffirming our commitment to 10 years of support for our non-Windows products, and taking concrete steps to help customers plan for the future.'"
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Microsoft Phasing Out FAST Search For Linux, Unix More

Microsoft Phasing Out FAST Search For Linux, Unix

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  • Fear and Opportunity (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dreamchaser (49529) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:07PM (#31072990) Homepage Journal

    It's a clear sign that MS still has a (probably growing) fear of *nix, especially Linux.

    It's also an opportunity for some enterprising company or group to fill the void. All it will do is cost MS some sales. I doubt many organizations will migrate to Windows Server just for FAST.

  • Uh, yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dwiget001 (1073738) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:08PM (#31073008)

    "...As a part of that planning process, we have decided that in order to deliver more innovation per release in the future, the 2010 products will be the last to include a search core that runs on Linux and UNIX...."

    Translation:

    "We are canning Linux and UNIX support to solidify Microsoft lock-in."

  • It's a company after all... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Robert Zenz (1680268) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:12PM (#31073076) Homepage
    "...and taking concrete steps to help customers plan for the future."
    Reads:
    "We'll try to force everyone to use Windows in the future."

    Well...who expected something different anyway?

  • I'll continue using Linux (Score:2, Insightful)

    by okmijnuhb (575581) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:13PM (#31073088)
    Linux is getting better and better, with more features added, and I'm not a pawn in corporate revenue/greed/forced upgrade strategy.

    Thanks Linux.
    F.U. Microsoft.

  • Monoculture, yes monoculture! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jollyreaper (513215) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:13PM (#31073098)

    All hail the IT monoculture! Praise and glory to the brand!

  • Re:Fear and Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bert64 (520050) <bert.slashdot@firenzee@com> on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:13PM (#31073100) Homepage

    You'd be surprised... This is how MS got in to start with.
    Years ago, windows machines were only used for lowend desktops (hence why its called windows - named after its gui) but they gradually got pushed out to servers because users built up a familiarity with it.

  • Re:cool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bert64 (520050) <bert.slashdot@firenzee@com> on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:14PM (#31073118) Homepage

    Yes, but how much does it hurt the world to be squeezed out through someone's fingers...

  • And nothing was lost (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SgtChaireBourne (457691) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:15PM (#31073146) Homepage
    FAST died on the vine a long time ago. It was a dot-com that just missed the tail of the dot-com mania. So they sold their hype to Microsoft and then disappeared off the face of the planet until this week. Track down the marketeers that stired up the FAST mud again.

  • Re:"more innovation per release" (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:22PM (#31073242)
    That's measured in units of "we only know how to program in VB" but you can probably also eyeball the results in units of "this is where we push our lock-in velocity to plaid".

  • Re:Uh, yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ircmaxell (1117387) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:26PM (#31073306) Homepage
    Well, yeah, but then they say this:

    To ease the transition, we're investing in interoperability between Windows and other operating systems, reaffirming our commitment to 10 years of support for our non-Windows products, and taking concrete steps to help customers plan for the future.

    I'm REALLY confused now. So they are dropping *NIX support, to futher their goal of interoperability? WTF? Can someone explain how these 2 are NOT related?

    Either that, or the subtext of "reaffirming (their) commitment" by dropping non-win os support sheds some insight on their "commitment" in the first place...

  • Re:I'll continue using Linux (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Robert Zenz (1680268) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:50PM (#31073750) Homepage
    You mean like a real Multi-User-Environment which UNIX copied 40 years ago from Microsoft? Or the headless-server-mode which 'invented' Microsoft in 2008? Or the Desktop-Effects/Widgets which Gnome/KDE copied 2002? Or the OpenDocument-Format which was just a former copy of OOXML? Or Firefox which was just a cheap copy of Internet Explorer 7?

  • Re:Uh, yeah... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ocularsinister (774024) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:53PM (#31073824)
    Two words: "Java" and "Qt"*. Writing a cross platform tool kit is hard. Fortunately, someone has already done that. Several times, in fact. If you are trying to write cross platform code and you are not writing a tool kit, then you are probably using the wrong tool for the job.

    * Yes, I know there are others...

  • Re:Uh, yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Third Position (1725934) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @12:57PM (#31073886)

    To ease the transition, we're investing in interoperability between Windows and other operating systems, reaffirming our commitment to 10 years of support for our non-Windows products, and taking concrete steps to help customers plan for the future.

    That's certainly considerate of them, isn't it? /sarc

  • Re:Uh, yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Imagix (695350) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @01:07PM (#31074052)
    Yes, routinely. And it's not that hard to do while you're not attempting to twiddle with either OS internals, or direct hardware. And even for those, there's likely an interop layer that exists, or could be written, to smooth over even those differences. It _does_ require some discipline when coding though.

  • Whoah... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by c (8461) <beauregardcp@gmail.com> on Tuesday February 09 2010, @01:13PM (#31074154)

    amazing how nobody saw that one coming...

    Seriously, folks, is this really news? I'd imagine that when Microsoft does a takeover these days, one of the criteria they're using is "are we going to have a repeat of the Hotmail clusterfuck?" They were planning on doing this before they bought the company, and the only question was when and what excuse they'd be using...

    c.

  • Remind me... why is MONO a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rob Y. (110975) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @01:52PM (#31074732)

    This is exactly why nobody should ever get sucked into Microsoft 'interoperability' ploys. They are not about interoperability. They are always about extending the MS monopoly into areas that they could not reach without paying lip service to interoperability.

  • Re:Monoculture, yes monoculture! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Tuesday February 09 2010, @02:02PM (#31074890)

    You know what's funny? How German and English words look and sound the same but have entirely different meanings. "Gift" means poison in German. "Mist" is dung. And "brand" is burning (the fire kind as well as the technical grinding wear kind). It could also mean mildew. And necrosis.

    I find it funny how often English words unintentionally have a far truer meaning when used as their German homonyms.

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