IDG.net: Come together: The quest for a Windows NT community

“…So what exactly has prevented a Windows NT community from
taking shape?”

“…Because of the infancy of NT, many employers seek NT
administrators who have been certified, rather than those who
posses great amounts of experience. In the Unix world, experience
reigns supreme. This experience implies contact with others, and
therefore more of a sense of community.”

“While Windows NT has been guided and developed solely by
Microsoft, Unix administrators and programmers have in some sense
guided the development of their platform themselves. Of course, we
know that Sun does not accept outside source code for Solaris, but
the characterization is fair to make in the case of Linux, which is
entirely open source. It can also be applied to such things as
Samba, sendmail, and BIND. These packages are add-ons to the Unix
operating system that provide required functionality. Many Unix
sysadmins have a somewhat more personalized interest in their
networks, because often they have patched together the code that
makes things work. Sharing that work is a thing of pride. This is
probably one of the biggest reasons why the Unix community is so
strong. The complexity of the Win32 API acts a deterrent for those
who would seek to learn it as a hobby. In addition, it changes
constantly. But that is a discussion for another day…”

Complete
Story