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Comment by colinbartlett | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain this? Does this really have anything to do with why they are calling it Windows 10? Is there really any known rationale for skipping?

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From http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2hwlrk/new_windo...

"Microsoft dev here, the internal rumours are that early testing revealed just how many third party products that had code of the form

  if(version.StartsWith("Windows 9"))
  { /* 95 and 98 */
  } else {

and that this was the pragmatic solution to avoid that."

Because nobody would lie on the internet? Look at the post history. They don't even live in a location with a Microsoft development house.

The poster has posted a bunch of stuff to a London subreddit. A couple seconds on Google returns:

“Our London office primarily serves the MSN and Xbox teams, although the ground floor is set up for hot-desking to ensure that any of our employees can work from this office when they are in London.”

http://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/az/offices.aspx#GB_L...

“Microsoft dev” doesn't mean “Windows kernel hacker”

probably not. doesn't windows 7 identify itself as windows 6.1? they can report whatever string they want to this api call, it doesn't have to exactly correspond to the marketing name.

call it "windows9" with no space and it doesn't collide with any startsWith("Windows 9") calls.

Windows 7 identifies itself as "Windows 7" when you ask for its name. It reports 6.1 as its kernel number, yes. But its name is still the string "Windows 7".

If someone looks up the OS name instead of the kernel number, the app will behave badly.

According to this article:

http://jonisalonen.com/2013/where-java-system-properties-com...

And this code:

http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk7/jdk7/jdk/file/tip/src/share/...

        switch (ver.dwPlatformId) {
        case VER_PLATFORM_WIN32s:
            sprops.os_name = "Windows 3.1";
            break;
        case VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_WINDOWS:
           if (ver.dwMajorVersion == 4) {
                switch (ver.dwMinorVersion) {
                case  0: sprops.os_name = "Windows 95";           break;
                case 10: sprops.os_name = "Windows 98";           break;
                case 90: sprops.os_name = "Windows Me";           break;
                default: sprops.os_name = "Windows 9X (unknown)"; break;
                }
            } else {
                sprops.os_name = "Windows 9X (unknown)";
            }
            break;
        case VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT:
            if (ver.dwMajorVersion <= 4) {
                sprops.os_name = "Windows NT";
            } else if (ver.dwMajorVersion == 5) {
                switch (ver.dwMinorVersion) {
                case  0: sprops.os_name = "Windows 2000";         break;
                case  1: sprops.os_name = "Windows XP";           break;
                case  2:
                   /*
                    * From MSDN OSVERSIONINFOEX and SYSTEM_INFO documentation:
                    *
                    * "Because the version numbers for Windows Server 2003
                    * and Windows XP 6u4 bit are identical, you must also test
                    * whether the wProductType member is VER_NT_WORKSTATION.
                    * and si.wProcessorArchitecture is
                    * PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (which is 9)
                    * If it is, the operating system is Windows XP 64 bit;
                    * otherwise, it is Windows Server 2003."
                    */
                    if(ver.wProductType == VER_NT_WORKSTATION &&
                       si.wProcessorArchitecture == PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64) {
                        sprops.os_name = "Windows XP"; /* 64 bit */
                    } else {
                        sprops.os_name = "Windows 2003";
                    }
                    break;
                default: sprops.os_name = "Windows NT (unknown)"; break;
                }
            } else if (ver.dwMajorVersion == 6) {
                /*
                 * See table in MSDN OSVERSIONINFOEX documentation.
                 */
                if (ver.wProductType == VER_NT_WORKSTATION) {
                    switch (ver.dwMinorVersion) {
                    case  0: sprops.os_name = "Windows Vista";        break;
                    case  1: sprops.os_name = "Windows 7";            break;
                    default: sprops.os_name = "Windows NT (unknown)";
                    }
                } else {
                    switch (ver.dwMinorVersion) {
                    case  0: sprops.os_name = "Windows Server 2008";    break;
                    case  1: sprops.os_name = "Windows Server 2008 R2"; break;
                    default: sprops.os_name = "Windows NT (unknown)";
                    }
                }
            } else {
                sprops.os_name = "Windows NT (unknown)";
            }
            break;
        default:
            sprops.os_name = "Windows (unknown)";
            break;
        }

Java asks for number and derives OS name from it.

wrong source file

Correct link is http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk6/jdk6/jdk/file/d1f592073a0e/s...

In any case, nobody's arguing that os.name in Java is set incorrectly. The argument is that Java programs are using os.name incorrectly to make decisions. If this version of Windows was to be called Windows 9, that function would be (correctly) updated to return "Windows 9" and every Java program that did startsWith("Windows 9") would start misbehaving.

Which is awesome, but highlights another problem: even if MS inserted a special character between "Windows" and "9", it needs to count on all intermediate libraries/platforms to do the same.

What I mean is, for a user-land program to break, all it needs is that the platform underneath it identifies "Windows(r) 9", whose version is 6.3 as "Windows 9". Maybe they also thought it was too much to count on everyone reporting it as "Windows(r) 9"?

For something as big as Java I'm sure that's easily communicable. Maybe less so with the breadth of libraries and platforms available..

Notice the "startsWith" function. It has nothing to do with "Windows 9" and everything to do with Windows 95 and 98

Yes, and "Windows 9" starts with "Windows 9". So the function will see that, "yep, the string's there" and throw it down the path of handling antique versions of windows.

Do you know what "startsWith" does? It checks if the string starts with a given string.

"Windows 9", "Windows 95", and "Windows 98" all start with "Windows 9".

It has nothing to do with it, although it may have been part of their plan to spread this rumor to the programming community, which would really make it be part of their calculus. how big corporations pick names is actually quite interesting: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/title-tk/

> It has nothing to do with it

[Citation Needed]

I gave a citation, and it's is about 100x more authoritative than the random internet comment which this story is based on. I think people are dumb is why I got 3 downvotes and ignored while the other gets front page hacker news status.

I don't know if Microsoft outsources product naming, but with all that rebranding they do all the time, they just have to be a goldmine for naming companies

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