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Microsoft's Midori operating system is still alive (and seemingly well)

By | September 21, 2010, 11:02am PDT

Summary: It looks like Microsoft is continuing to incubate its stealth Midori operating system project. On September 18, a thinly-veiled Midori reference appeared on a blog of one of its team members who noted that the OS incubation project on which he works is actively hiring.

It’s been eerily quiet on the Microsoft Midori front — at least since March of this year when Jonathan Shapiro quit the stealth Microsoft operating system project and left the company.

Shapiro hasn’t been willing/able to comment on why he left. And Microsoft execs have continued to refuse to acknowledge much about Midori other than yes, there was a codename for an operating system incubation project by that name.

I’ve gotten more than a few reader queries about Midori. Did Microsoft quietly kill the effort? If not, what’s the latest about it?

On September 18, a thinly-veiled Midori reference appeared on a blog of one of its team members, Joe Duffy (who identifies himself as “principal architect on an OS incubation project at Microsoft”). Entitled “We are hiring,” Duffy’s post begins:

“I have several positions open on my team here at Microsoft.

“My team’s responsibility spans multiple aspects of a new operating system’s programming model. The three main areas are concurrency, languages, and frameworks. When I say concurrency, I mean things like asynchrony and message passing, data and task parallelism, distributed parallelism, runtime scheduling and resource management, and heterogeneity and GPGPU. When I say languages, I mean type systems, mostly-functional programming, verified safe concurrency, and both front- and back-end compilation. And when I say frameworks, I mean virtually anything you could imagine wanting out of a platform framework: all things XML, data interoperability (database, web services, etc.), collections, transactions, multimaster synchronization, and even low level things, like regex, numerics, and globalization.”

I realize there is no mention in Duffy’s post of Midori, or even Singularity, the Microsoft Research operating system project (which was the original inspiration and foundation for Midori). But past leaks about Midori have indicated that the operating system is focused on bringing concurrency, distributed computing and parallelism to the fore.

(Duffy, by the way, was Lead Developer and Architect for Parallel Extensions to .NET. and author of the book Concurrent Programming on Windows.)

There are no new hints about how close Midori is to debut or any new insights as to how Microsoft is planning to position it if and when it does go public. But at least it seems Midori hasn’t fallen prey to the cost-cutting ax, at least for now….

(Thanks to reader Vincent-Philippe Lauzon for the pointer to Duffy’s post.)

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Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Disclosure

Mary-Jo Foley

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.

Biography

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

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RE: Microsoft's Midori operating system is still alive (and seemingly well)
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Yes but.....
Economister 21st Sep 2010
if/when it starts to threaten one or more of MS's existing business units, will it survive? And I cannot see anything really worthwhile in MS's future that will not threaten something very entrenched. Haven't we been there before?
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I guess your post reflects...
Economister 21st Sep 2010
@Rama.NET

you intellectual capacity. Well done.
@Rama.NET I believe Rudy de Haas (Murphy) has room in his museum at the moment - why not apply?

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It;s been eerily tranquil about the Microsoft Midori front ??? at least since March of this year when Jonathan Shapiro quit the stealth Microsoft operating system project and left the company.Shapiro hasn;t been willing/able to comment on why he left. Make Money With Your Blog
@Economister

MS has the best OS, best products, best research, best programmers, best systems... Your alternatives are garage software, development by an advertising company, bad makeover jobs on Unix or the little OS that couldn't - Linux.

It may be a shock economister, but the world's moved on and some time ago as well.

I believe Rudy de Haas (Murphy) has room in his museum at the moment - why not apply?
0 Votes
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Best is very subjective......
James Quinn 21st Sep 2010
@tonymcs@...
The Chinese have by far the most people followed by India so are they the BEST people? As for the Best products well Zune is the best? How so? What about their smartphone or smartphone OS? Have you seen Apple's profits of late? Or it's company value?

Pagan jim
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I guess that is why their stock....
Economister 21st Sep 2010
@tonymcs@...

is doing so well. Thanks for pointing that out to me.
@Pagan Jim

"@tonymcs@...
The Chinese have by far the most people followed by India so are they the BEST people? As for the Best products well Zune is the best? How so? What about their smartphone or smartphone OS? Have you seen Apple's profits of late? Or it's company value? "

Nowhere was it said that most == best, so I'm not sure where your comment on China and India comes from.

Yes, the Zune is better than the iPod in many ways in my opinion, and I have owned both but gave up on iTunes and went with a Zune pass which is a better deal and a better software experience hands down. Again, my opinion, but you asked happy

Microsoft doesn't make a smartphone, just the OS, so they don't control the hardware aspect.

As for Apple's profits and company valuation, how is that relevant? Yes, Apple has made a lot of money for their shareholders, no one can argue that, and yes, they are now the 2nd biggest tech company in the world, but they are also being sued on all fronts for various patent violations of products that got them there. As for their CEO, he's a different story as I simply despise the man for his unrelentless arrogance and disregard for anyone who doesn't fall in love with his offerings. There are many public examples of this as of late.

Again, it's all just my opinions and I could be wrong (yes, I stole that from Dennis Miller!) happy

Pat
@tonymcs@...

I believe you need to take a step back look at the larger picture.

MS sweet spot isn't related to kernel development. Users don't care about the kernel of their OS anyway, it is completely invisible, unless it breaks. The do care users about user experience. MS needs to build (and sell) their graphical shell that is the user experience on top of Linux. MS can cut development and maintenance costs. MS could also better succeed in an extremely important area where they are being destroyed, mobile and embedded systems. Linux, and Apple's iOS are ruling the mobile and embedded markets. Sony, Cisco..etc are using Linux in almost everything going forward. Intel has really pushed Linux out there pretty hard as well (Moblin).

At the fortune 150 company that I work at, we are deploying Linux for safety critical projects, in places where we wouldn't dream of putting MS. Why? Cost. Cost of acquisition, deployment, maintenance, diagnostics, ...etc. At our company we will deploy 100K of embedded Linux systems over the next 6-8 years for one project.

On the systems manager side for servers and desktops, Linux systems can be patched on the fly, no reboot needed, even the kernel (read about ksplice).

That garage O/S, is everywhere, you may have just missed it. Blu-ray, phones, TVs, cars, ..etc. happy

Enjoy.
@tonymcs@...
Then what's Vista?
@Economister - I take it that your pen-name refers more to the size of your intellect than your grasp of basic economics.

What has a company's stock price got to do with it's operational success and effectiveness?

A company's stock price is largely controlled by the whims of a bunch of 20-somethings who trade stocks for a living. These traders barter stocks based more on rumor than anything else.

If you would care to do some basic research you'd note that Apple has indeed done well, but is some way off besting Microsoft:

Last year, Apple made $12.24Bn on sales of $57Bn while Microsoft made $18.76Bn on sales of $62.48Bn. Apple will have to work hard to reap higher profits because they primarily make money on hardware sales which have a high COGS vs. Microsoft's primarily software and services businesses. And let's not forget that iPhone sales are slowing, Mac desktop sales are slowing and while iPod is doing well, the competition is only just arriving so they won't have the pool to themselves any more. Interesting times are ahead.

When it comes to which company would you bet your money on: Would you bet your money on a well diversified company with fingers in a HUGE number of pies to help it weather even downturns in several markets? Or would you bet all your cash on a vendor of 4-5 niche products and a somewhat narcissistic and abrasive leader without whom the company would largely collapse and who's already fallen seriously ill several times in the last couple of years? Not wishing illness - or worse - on ANYONE, but one has to consider the facts.
@tonymcs@... These are the comparisons that have been going on for nearly 2 years now (since the Diamond came out). iPhone 4 isn't out yet so it isn't relevant. Besides, while it might be a tiny sliver thinner, it still takes up far more room in the pocket. Try fitting an 8.5X11 piece of paper in your pocket without folding it. You can't do it even though the paper is thin, thin, thin!

I'm LAUGHING at the stupidity of an iPhone owner calling anything else a brick considering that the iPhone isn't a small phone either. Like I said, it's all relative and you would have realized that if your vision weren't so impaired from Apple's RDF. iPhone is a brick. Deal with it. araba oyunu yeni oyunlar oyunlar kral oyun
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The Customers Want It
Robert Hahn 22nd Sep 2010
@Economister MSFT's existing business units are moving into the cloud. The server OS of the future will be managing a massively parallel, physically distributed 'thing' in which instructions and data are flying around the world at light speeds to take advantage of momentary resource availabilities. Midori sounds like it is aimed right at that problem. It is therefore critical to the existing business units. Microsoft is flailing and failing at the device level as mobile "things" of various sorts eat into the 'business desktop' market. But the enterprise server market is still open to them, and something they will either keep or die trying.

What tends to kill successful tech companies is that their customers tie them in knots with short-term demands for new features and extensions to existing capabilities. The entire sales and marketing organization becomes a bullhorn for these demands, and in most places is able to keep the R&D budget aimed squarely at what the existing customers want. Meanwhile, the "new paradigm" (whatever it is) -- which the engineers and the visionaries see coming and are warning about -- gets short shrift because the big customers aren't asking for it. But they are asking for something else, something they need now, or next year.

Thus does MSFT watch helplessly as Google runs off with the smartphone market. Verizon's wireless side is not a big Microsoft customer. The Microsoft salesforce isn't clamoring for things that wireless carriers want. The salesforce promises revenue -- next quarter -- if R&D will just perform these six minor tweaks to Windows Server 2011.

Midori is something the product marketing people can run by the big customers and hear, "Yeah, we're going to need that, and we'll buy a bunch of it." So that stays funded. Windows Phone 7, on the other hand, stays in the budget by the skin of its teeth, and only because the stock analysts keep asking where it is.

This is the same process that killed all the non-IBM mainframers, all the minicomputer companies, Word Perfect, Lotus, and so many others. Their own customers kill them, by demanding incremental progress that they need now.
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@Economister
I can't see Microsoft building a rival to Windows. If anything project Midori is an incubation project for future editions of Windows, where the best features will be integrated into Windows.
@Economister - "Midori" isn't a replacement for Windows - it's a runtime environment in which "Midori" applications can run. Since "Midori" applications are compiled with compilers that can guarantee that code doesn't interact directly with memory outside its own process and that it doesn't contain many of issues that affect concurrent code, it can be run in independent sandboxes interacting with other "objects" and "services" via in-memory and network-based message passing.

You should do your homework before making yourself look any less informed than you already do. You can even go download the source and all design docs for Singularity (predecessor to "Midori") if you want:
http://singularity.codeplex.com/

But we all know you won't in case it de-fuses your ABM ignorance.
@Economister

The same advertisers that brought us Seinfeld (lets play footsie and wiggle our shorts Bill), Laptop Hunters (that got all sorts of bad press for lies (incorrect pricing and customer never actually went into an Apple store) and portraying windows as "cheep"), And Windows 7 was Macs idea (where a college kid who can't get laid and get kicked out of his dorm room (by his Mac roommate) has to watch TV in the hall because he doesn't even have a friend whom he could visit).

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There are no new hints about how close Midori is to debut or any new insights as to how Microsoft is planning to position it if and when it does go public. But at least it seems Midori hasn???t fallen prey to the cost-cutting ax, at least for now
Escort Napoli
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0 Votes
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Makes sense to me...
No_Ax_to_Grind 21st Sep 2010
64-Bit computing with multiple CPUs requires a new paradigm in both the OS and app coding.
0 Votes
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I agree ...
BrentRBrian 21st Sep 2010
@No_Ax_to_Grind

It's called L I N U X
@BrentRBrian

Partying like it's still 1992 huh?
@BrentRBrian
I have mountains of respect for Linux, but I have tried and tried again over the years to use it as my main desktop OS. It is now 2010 and only Ubuntu 10.04 is it getting anywhere near close to Windows in terms of usability, boot up time, power management, etc. For all the failings of MS, they do get MOST of it right and they do provide a lot of functionality for FREE.
IMHO:
Windows - best desktop OS by far, in terms of Server features also is not too shabby.

IIS - excellent FREE web server, relatively easy to administer with many iterations.

Xbox/Xbox360 - Best games console per era - Live is rarely disputed to be the best online games service and now integrates TV and more besides.

Windows Mobile - For all the slating it gets thanks to the debut of the 'shiny and wonderful' iPhone dinky-toy excuse for a phone. Windows Mobile has been doing more for years on excellent HTC devices - it has served me well anyway and has always integrated with Windows Media library, Outlook and exchange, etc. - what's the big deal?

People say Microsoft are not forward thinking - and yes, they are not always an innovator, but let's not forget - Microsoft tried to introduce tablets and media centers years ago (like 15 years). Windows7 is crammed with so many features that a home user may not appreciate so much, but are amazing and forward looking non-the-less.

Coming back to Linux - for all the gloating, do you realise that almost anything you touch can pretty much render a Linux system unusable? A case in point - pam_mount. The task I was trying to achieve? MAP A NETWORK drive. Have you any idea how insane it feels to a Windows tech when he/she cannot map a network drive in some simple, intuitive way. pam_mount requires mountains of configuration, I didn't get it to work and it left my system unable to get past the login screen (which I fixed by disabling a mountain of pam_mount configuration). You know what the hard way is in Windows??

net use G: \\server\share /peristent:yes

Linux is not the future, yet....
@BrentRBrian - You claim LINUX is the new paradigm for 64-bit and many-core. Seriously? Did you have a stright-face when you typed that?

LINUX is and always will be a UNIX derivative atop a kernel that closely mirrors the architecture of the SystemV from 4 years ago.

Most LINUX code is written in C/C++.

Thus LINUX is NOT the OS that is going to make concurrent code easier for developers to write and testers to test.

An entirely new approach is required with comprehensive concurrency support built into the very core of the OS and a more highly abstracted programming model exposed so that 90% of developers can write code knowing that it doesn't contain race conditions, lock convoys etc.
0 Votes
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Maybe, but....
Economister 21st Sep 2010
@No_Ax_to_Grind

is that where the mass market is heading? Seems to me that a lot of consumer HW and the OS are being "down sized".
0 Votes
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Microsoft is floundering: Visionary Engineers wanted!
daniel.pereznet Updated - 21st Sep 2010
Microsoft is in desperate need of a Chief Engineer with a vision for the future. There are too many Business Executives at the helm of Microsoft.

It may be true that Microsoft is not really threatened by anything Apple does, since Microsoft's Enterprise and Business divisions continue to rake in $$$.

However, they need to do what IBM did years ago.
I don't mean a painful and long restructuring.
I mean Microsoft must decide on a direction, on a focus.
I look at that Excel sheet of the development code names and it makes me wonder, where in the world is Microsoft headed?

No software development team can hope to accomplish anything, if it does not make the often painful choices of which platforms, frameworks, api, kernel and hardware to support.

Microsoft seems willing and able to make the smart business and financial moves needed to continue to survive, but Microsoft seems to be floundering in R&D.

In the end focused, determination when it comes to R&D has brought Apple, IBM and back from oblivion. Others who have floundered in R&D or who insanely went off the deep-end with decision that were not well-conceived crashed and burned or simply faded away with time.

This Midori OS project sounds promising, as long as that is what Microsoft decides on as their future.
@daniel.pereznet

Daniel, it appears you don't know that MS is doing the research in a huge number of different fields. Apple on the other hand, keeps an eye out for other people's work to copy while it perfects spin, marketing and packaging. wink
@tonymcs@...

I do understand that Microsoft is doing research in a great number of fields.....

that is exactly my point

Microsoft has tried to be the master at everything..

They have become a powerful force in business with their Business execs driving smart financial moves, etc....

I get all of that...

My point is that Microsoft is being trumped in many fields.
Perhaps not by better products and software, but by timing.

Microsoft needs to realize that the tech filed will not stand still for them to figure out which of the myriad projects to cancel, put off, start up again later.

Microsoft needs to focus and show that they have a clear direction, that it can lead in the tech field instead of appearing as if it is following it.
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Yawn
nomorebs 21st Sep 2010
Mary Jo is the only one obsessed with this O.S. I guess she has nothing else to report. Slow day MJ?
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What's Midori?
cp_ 22nd Sep 2010
Is that a new OS?
0 Votes
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the real story
john_gillespie@... 22nd Sep 2010
This is all a smoke screen to hide the real story. MicroSoft is secretly creating the next big advance in OS which will blow all others away (and also be the most secure version of Windows, ever,really! ... etc.)
It's code name is "Apocalypto" and it will be rolled out on Dec 22, 2012.
0 Votes
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What I see is...
LapDRx 22nd Sep 2010
Microsoft will expand itself to the government sector (Like it already hasn't done that already) take over their military objective and create a mega-system just for strategic interface, (Skynet) only to have some kid hack into it (Twitter) and mess with the code, thus causing Global Thermonuclear War, sending panic through Norad, putting the US on DEFCON 1 (NBC's Chuck) and almost starting a strike, only to be curved by a simple game of Tic - Tac - Toe (Wargames... W.H.O.P.P.E.R). People this is where this new OS is heading. If not exactly there, then somewhere real close. Anything that gives me more room for my 500GB hard drive is gonna be a plus for anyone. But in order to utilize it, what a T-2 Line? So that means I'm going to pay $99 (Win ME) for a program I need to pay $199 a month in internet charges just to keep it afloat? That's crazy. I mean, am I the only one who thinks that far ahead? End of Everything (Knowing 2009) is a scary thought, but like it was said, every beginning has its end (Most recently said 'Glee')
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Hi,A well article on Midori operating system.I want to know more information about this operating system.Well Thanku for this article.
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