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Head of Oracle Linux Moves To Microsoft (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Wim Coekaerts, formerly Oracle's Senior VP of Linux and Virtualization Engineering, has left Oracle for Microsoft. Many of you may know of Coekaerts as "Mr. Linux" as he delivered the first Linux products, transitioned Oracle's programming staff from Windows to Linux desktops, and turned Oracle into a Linux distributor with the launch of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone, Oracle Linux. Mike Neil, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of the Enterprise Cloud, told ZDNet, "Wim Coekaerts has joined Microsoft as Corp VP of Open Source in our Enterprise Cloud Group. As we continue to deepen our commitment to open source, Wim will focus on deepening our engagement, contributions and innovation to the open-source community."
So that stack of patents they are using to collect from Android -- but won't acknowledge to the public -- Is that part of the "rethink"?
How about all the open formats that Windows ignores? And my favorite... being told I need to reformat an external drive "in order to use it", when it already has EXT4 (and data!) on it. Apparently it would just kill MS to tell users the device contains a Linux format that can't be mounted. HOW FRIENDLY!
In the web space, they are desperate for Azure to compete with FOSS, so they will support FOSS middleware; MS views the hypervisor as the new OS and getting hardware to support your proprietary "OS" as defacto-standard is the first step to locking-out alternatives.
At the personal tech. level, however, not even the pretense of being FOSS-friendly is there.