xcopy32 and xxcopy

[Gerald Combs]

On Fri, 28 Jun 2002, DCT Jared Smith wrote:

> Imagine if you're selling an OS. Not giving it away,
> selling it. Now imagine you realize that one of the tiny
> parts of the OS you're selling is allowing people to
> easily replicate your OS anywhere for free.
> 
> Would you keep that part in your OS? Why, if so?

Sun charges quite a bit for Solaris.  It ships with a pile of tools that
let you make an exact copy of a system (ufsdump, dd, tar, pax, etc) as
well as install customized versions of the OS on thousands of machines at
once (JumpStart).

If Solaris did not ship with these tools, it would make it easier for
competitors to sell Sun's user base on a more "complete" and "useful" OS.  
So they keep and actively support them.  Since Microsoft is a monopoly as
far as Windows-compatible OSes are concerned, they can strip out whatever
functionality they damn well please with impunity.