RandomThoughts

There’s an article floating around on the web claiming that Microsoft will no longer implement new major revision numbers to the Windows operating system kernel. You can read more about it here, but essentially what they’re saying is that Vista broke many applications by incrementing from kernel version 5.1 to version 6.0. Windows 7, in an attempt to preserve as much application compatibility as possible uses kernel version 6.1 rather than going to a 7.0 model. To me this time, it makes sense. You’re doing a pretty major refresh to Vista with a lot of new code and functionality built-in, plus many new performance and stability improvements. At the same time, the kernel probably isn’t that much of a different animal–it’s just a 6.0 kernel evolution that is enough of of a change to be a major revision increment to 6.1. Cool. I’d say this versioning scheme will remain in effect for the next several versions, perhaps like Apple did with OS X v10.1, 10.2, etc…but eventually you make enough changes to the core of your OS that you are almost required to increment the major version number! The issue of these articles is that they make it sound like every version if Windows from here on out is going to follow this pattern. The word ‘all’ is rather misleading.

So worry not–innovation is not keeling over, and Microsoft will continue to produce innovative software as long as there is competition out there to ‘encourage’ them Because we all know that without competition, any company is liable to stagnate, right? (*cough* Palm *cough*)

There’s my two cents.