Microsoft acquires Winternals
Tuesday, July 18 2006
Just announced today, Microsoft will acquire Winternals Software which includes SysInternals Freeware (Mark and Bryce's extremely popular personal site of Windows utilities).
From the press release:
Winternals was established in 1996 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, who are recognized industry leaders in the areas of operating system design and architecture. Russinovich will join the Microsoft Platforms & Services Division as a technical fellow, working with numerous technology teams across Microsoft, and Cogswell will join the Windows Component Platform Team in the role of software architect.
I've had my eye on Mark for some time, said Jim Allchin, co-president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft. The work he and Bryce have completed in system recovery and data protection illustrates the depth of thinking and skill they will bring to future versions of Windows. The addition of their deep kernel-level expertise to our existing strong talent will help provide us with the edge we need to continue to raise the quality and functionality bar for Windows on both the client and the server.
This is pretty big news. Mark and Bryce are infamous for independently reverse engineering the Windows operating systems and providing invaluable feedback both to the IT community and directly to Microsoft. They are a great independent validator of and contributor to the Windows operating systems. Personally, I think their independence has been one of the key contributing factors to their astounding reputation in the IT industry. Mark claims [and I believe him] that they have never been granted access to the Windows OS source code...everything they have learned has been through reverse engineering. I took a 5 day debugging class from Mark a few years ago in which he demonstrated his techniques and tools for doing this...it was very interesting, although way over my head. I for one am glad to see two extremely intelligent and well respected people join Microsoft! Welcome aboard fellas. :-)
~tod
tags: winternals sysinternals mark+russinovich bryce+cogswell
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