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Head of Oracle Linux Moves To Microsoft (zdnet.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the on-a-whim dept.

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."

53 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Money Talks by ISoldat53 · · Score: 1

    Still

    1. Re:Money Talks by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

      Man you have that one right!

  2. Seen this before? by Enforcer-99 · · Score: 1, Informative

    Embrace, extend and extinguish

    1. Re:Seen this before? by Natales · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Not this time. I think this is an acknowledgment that they need to rethink what's important, and it's not the OS anymore. It's the Cloud (both, IaaS and PaaS), where AWS is the biggest competitor and the one to beat, reason why Azure is so strategic for Microsoft. They need to have expertise and business solutions whatever underlying OS the customer may choose. If Linux, they need to have an outstanding support for it in Azure and across all their offerings.

      We may think this is the same old Microsoft, but I believe they are going through one of their biggest reinventions to date.

    2. Re:Seen this before? by Burz · · Score: 1, Troll

      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.

    3. Re:Seen this before? by Burz · · Score: 2

      I should have also mentioned that Hyper-V is the Azure hypervisor, which is competing with Xen used by AWS. Both hypervisors are the "bare metal" type.

    4. Re:Seen this before? by dontbemad · · Score: 4, Interesting

      At the personal tech. level, however, not even the pretense of being FOSS-friendly is there.

      Small steps, friend. As a "personal" user of Windows, as well as a developer, I can't tell you how excited I am to see the .Net framework open-sourced, Xamarin made free, Visual Studio given a powerful free version, and just the many other changes that have been made recently at the company. These have huge implications for the amount of small-scale, well functioning open-source projects that can start to exist for Windows now.

      Yeah, Microsoft isn't quite matching RMS's level of enthusiasm for FOSS, either in the enterprise or on the personal computing level, but I think the behemoth has to move at a slow pace, at least for now, to shake off all the rust that has accumulated under Ballmer's reign. I like what I'm seeing so far, and I'm excited to see where it goes.

    5. Re:Seen this before? by EETech1 · · Score: 1

      How long before MSLinux?

    6. Re:Seen this before? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      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"?

      Implying that rethink is an all or nothing, black and white approach?

      I see this brought up every time this is discussed, MS can most definitely contribute to open source (a philosophy) while continuing to extract loads of money from Android (a specific project) vendors.

    7. Re:Seen this before? by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 1

      Did you know they're bringing the bash she'll to Windows?
      Do you realize how much code they're making open source?
      This really isn't the same MS. Sure they still want to make money, but who doesn't?

    8. Re:Seen this before? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I don't know what *he's* implying, but I won't trust MS as long as they abusively sue, or threaten to sue, over patents that either they won't specify, that are obviously invalid, or both.

      You can't threaten to sue over the unspecified. They start with licensing, then if licensing breaks down they sue. That again has nothing to do with open source and everything to do with taking in money from a purchased patent portfolio. By the way the patents in question are: http://images.mofcom.gov.cn/pe.... Refusing to specify them does not make them obviously invalid.

      Just because defending against a patent lawsuit is too expensive to survive does not make the patent valid. It merely makes the litigant someone who should be harmed in any way feasible.

      Yes poor Samsung, HTC, and Acer, they would never survive if they went to court on a patent lawsuit. /sarcasm. This point closes the loop nicely with your earlier claim, given that Microsoft rake in $billions from companies who can afford the litigation and who have crack legal teams of their own, I'm going to err on the side of the patents being very valid, and in the ownership of a practising entity that actually produces things.

      On the scale of shit-in-the-patent-world this doesn't worry me one bit.

    9. Re:Seen this before? by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Embrace, extend and extinguish what?

    10. Re:Seen this before? by fox171171 · · Score: 1

      If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... and then take over.

    11. Re:Seen this before? by sydbarrett74 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, Microsoft isn't quite matching RMS's level of enthusiasm for FOSS, either in the enterprise or on the personal computing level, but I think the behemoth has to move at a slow pace, at least for now,

      Exactly. RMS doesn't have shareholders to placate, so he can afford to be ideological. MS has many more constituencies and priorities to juggle, so there is much more inertia. It's also pretty obvious that there are competing factions within MS with different visions. Hopefully Nadella will listen to the engineers and politely tell the marketdroids to get bent.

      --
      'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
    12. Re:Seen this before? by exomondo · · Score: 1

      The plan is to have a Linux dist license M$ BS patents ( they could be broken in court at $10,000,000 per patent ) - use it as a way to attack free (as in freedom ) distros - like Debian, Gentoo, Slackware etc..

      If they make a custom distribution that incorporates their patented software that doesn't affect free distros like Debian, Gentoo or Slackware at all, much less 'attack' them.

    13. Re:Seen this before? by exomondo · · Score: 1

      And I quote from the book of Ackbar, "It's a trap!" Their licenses are lame.

      Then all open source is "a trap", a quick look at their github page and their major projects are using OSI licenses:
      -.net core - MIT license
      -msbuild - MIT license
      -bot builder - MIT license
      -visual studio code - MIT license
      -objective C for windows - MIT license
      -f sharp - Apache license
      -c++ REST sdk -Apache licenes
      -typescript - Apache license
      -node js tools for vs - Apache license

      There's even projects released under the GPL: R host and Tocino

      Or the computational network toolkit here, what's 'lame' about that license?

    14. Re:Seen this before? by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Keep watching, bub...

      I've been watching for decades, I'm getting bored of seeing people like you parrot the same thing over and over with empty hypotheses and no result. With Java, HTML, Javascript, Linux, webmail, etc... still never "extinguished" in fact they just end up utilizing them and making money, which is exactly what a for-profit company wants to do. Not supporting them only hurts Microsoft and drives people to other platforms and indeed that we have seen.

    15. Re:Seen this before? by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 1

      I think you're just bitter that this is finally the year of Linux on the desktop and it's MS that's making it happen.

    16. Re: Seen this before? by afidel · · Score: 1

      It's coming in the windows 10 anniversary update, they've added a Linux personality subsystem that will run unmodified Linux binaries on the Windows kernel through a mapping layer kind of like WINE. There announced it at BUILD last week and had someone from Ubuntu on stage at their freaking developer conference, how different from the Halloween letters MS can you get?

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    17. Re:Seen this before? by Maritz · · Score: 1

      At first I thought your spittle-flecked rant was coming from a ultra-FOSS-fan viewpoint. But then I realise you're just an Apple nutter. Yes we get it, Microsoft = bad Apple = good. Cheers for that.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    18. Re:Seen this before? by ThatsNotPudding · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ahh, those heady feelings one has during the Embrace phase...

    19. Re:Seen this before? by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Just because Samsung would survive doesn't meant that every company would. Perhaps MS has finally specified the patents, I haven't followed it carefully, but certainly when they originally threatened to sue over installing Linux they weren't willing to specify the patents. China eventually got them to specify some of them, and of those, many were obviously patents that should never have been issued, others could have been worked around if people had known what was being objected to. There may have been a few reasonable ones in the mix, but nobody has listed any that I've noticed. And since they declined to specify they may have been threatening with others.

      You don't need to specify to threaten to sue, only when you finally sue. And sometimes you can get that hidden by the court...at least for some period of time. Perhaps the judgment must be public, but I wouldn't even bet on that.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    20. Re:Seen this before? by Burz · · Score: 1

      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.

      Its amazing how many MS shills there are on /. modding stuff like this down...

  3. And Microsoft thinks this will help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Wim will focus on deepening our engagement, contributions and innovation to the open-source community."

    Because he's done so well at that at Oracle

    1. Re:And Microsoft thinks this will help? by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 2, Funny

      I read "deepening our engagement" and the first thing that comes to mind is they found some lube...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    2. Re:And Microsoft thinks this will help? by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 1

      Perhaps a military engagement? 'Contribution' measured in artillery shells, 'innovation' measured in holes blasted in the landscape...

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    3. Re:And Microsoft thinks this will help? by bungo · · Score: 1

      Because he's done so well at that at Oracle

      You may laugh, but it is true. Oracle were never going to turn itself into an Open Source company, and give away it's database for free.

      Back in 1997, Oracle didn't have any official open source policy. It was not possible to officially run Oracle on Linux. There was a SCO release, and it was possible to grab a couple of SCO libraries and get Oracle running. There was no official project inside Oracle to get the database running on Linux.

      Any open source work that was going on at the time was non-official, by individual employees, with no official support by Oracle management. Now, Oracle are paying people to work on the Linux kernel, along with a number of other Linux related open source add-ons.

      Wim was an important player in getting Oracle to have an open source policy, and getting an official Linux version of the database, even if they did rip-off Redhat.

      For a car analogy, Oracle have delivered an open source sub-compact, and if you were expecting them to deliver a fleet of 18 wheelers, then you're going to be sorely disappointed - but you can't say that they didn't deliver something, which is more than nothing.

      It's really difficult to turn around an organization like Oracle, and the amount of open source support, no matter how small, is still more than I would have expected back in 1996.

           

      --
      "The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
  4. Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm) by OffTheLip · · Score: 2

    Finally.

    1. Re:Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, this was ignorant thinking. The NT kernel itself is quite mature and holds it's own against Unix in terms of features, security, and performance. It's not the 1990s anymore. Apple screwed itself by holding onto MacOS, which was never well designed to begin with, for too long and by 1999 it was the only major OS without protected memory and fully pre-emptive multitasking. They had little choice but to dump their own kernel because they really didn't have the technical prowess to develop their own. They ended up choosing a cheaper way out.

    2. Re:Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm) by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      What if the NT kernel itself just became POSIX compliant?

      https://i-msdn.sec.s-msft.com/...

    3. Re:Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm) by Celarent+Darii · · Score: 1

      Very ironic when we consider that systemd refuses to be POSIX compliant.

    4. Re:Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm) by amiga3D · · Score: 1

      And really why develop your own when a free one is just there for the taking. Jobs was brilliant. Not very nice, but brilliant.

    5. Re:Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm) by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

      Really? I thought the complaint about systemd is that it doesn't follow the unix philosophy of "do one thing and do it well".

    6. Re:Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm) by StormReaver · · Score: 1

      Funny you should mention that, because I've been converting individuals and businesses to Linux desktops for years.

    7. Re:Year of Linux on the Desktop (tm) by Celarent+Darii · · Score: 1

      No, actually systemd uses things that are exclusive to Linux. This is why systemd cannot be used on *BSD systems. This also forces the BSD people to actually write shims around systemd in order to port normally portable software such as GNOME which have a dependency on systemd.

      Systemd is wrong on so many levels. It is not POSIX compliant and makes normally portable software UNPORTABLE to other unix systems. It is a lot like what Microsoft did in the past - make their system necessary for any application. The whole purpose of POSIX was to provide a basic standard which applications could rely on for portability. Granted that POSIX didn't always succeed in this goal, but systemd has fundamentally destroyed years of work for no gain at all.

  5. Ahhh... Nostalgia... by Rydell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know what struck me while reading this story submission? I decided to go read the comments from the previous slashdot stories linked in the article summary that dated back to 2004-2007. The number of quality comments back then that were devoid of SJW b.s. or other political nonsense completely unrelated to science and technology. Whipslash, how do we bring all those commenters back to the site? That's what we need right now.

    1. Re:Ahhh... Nostalgia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The number of quality comments back then that were devoid of SJW b.s

      BTW it's just sjw now, no capitalization needed. New AP Style Guide.

    2. Re: Ahhh... Nostalgia... by cyber-vandal · · Score: 1

      This was before the dark times. Before Twitter. Are there any sites free of SJWs anymore?

    3. Re:Ahhh... Nostalgia... by hankwang · · Score: 1

      Politics and SJW'ing creep into discussions if the topic of the story invites it. Not the case for this topic, today or back in 2004-2007. In my perception, any topic vaguely related to national US politics would invoke hundreds of comments. Not sure about SJW, but then, I'm still not entirely sure exactly what kind of comments those bickering about it are referring to.

      But yeah, back then, there were more people knowledgeable about obscure technical topics to generate 100+ comments on stories that were not political or car-related.

      --
      Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
    4. Re:Ahhh... Nostalgia... by Maritz · · Score: 1

      As a rule of thumb it seems safe to ignore anyone who uses "SJW" unironically. Seriously. Take your gaming journalism and your ethics and shove it way up where none shall ever see its like again. ;) Stay scared of women, sporty.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    5. Re:Ahhh... Nostalgia... by Maritz · · Score: 1

      The general tone/tenor is becoming very like that of 4chan.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    6. Re:Ahhh... Nostalgia... by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      Show me a person who is not interested in social justice and I will show you a privileged asshat who has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    7. Re:Ahhh... Nostalgia... by martinfb · · Score: 1

      I second this notion!

      --


      Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
  6. Re:Little bread crumbs... by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

    This may not be totally out of the question. When IBM exited the PC business and other stuff, a lot of people looked at that as the misstep of death. Now look. Cloud. Big Data. AI. They are doing pretty good without there former core business.MS develops a lot of software and technologies, I would not be surprised at all if Windows is a resource hog on the company. I have no idea how a total migration in Linux would look or work, but it would not catch me off guard.

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  7. The weather is so much better in Seattle by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    He was getting tired of the California lifestyle.

  8. Re: Little bread crumbs... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    Sure. They hired an expert in a Linux distro very few people want to run. Maybe they're trying to save .NET and the server revenue isn't worth the effort anymore. Desktop + Apps + Web IDE might be enough in 2016. The days of a CAL for everything are replaced by subscriptions to everything and app stores. Fighting admins who won't accept public-facing Windows servers is an uphill battle.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  9. Wim Coekaerts - the software thief. by khz6955 · · Score: 1

    "Wim Coekaerts .. turned Oracle into a Linux distributor with the launch of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) clone, Oracle Linux."

    Don't you mean, stripped of Red Hat copyright notices and fraudulently distributed RHEL as its own. How appropriate he's now moving the Microsoft.

    1. Re:Wim Coekaerts - the software thief. by Alioth · · Score: 1

      No, they didn't fraudulently distribute RHEL as their own. The GPL explicitly allows and is designed to let them do what they are doing. The software they are redistributing as their distro is all appropriately licensed so they can do this.

      --
      Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  10. April fools? by loufoque · · Score: 1

    Is it?

  11. Re:Little bread crumbs... by laffer1 · · Score: 1

    Seems reasonable. Microsoft used to have a Unix distro, Xenix.

    They ditched it when the got far enough along with NT.

    --
    MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
  12. Yes, they're making $$$ from Android Linux by raymorris · · Score: 1

    Yes. Keep in mind that top executives typically don't know the people six or eight levels down the chain of command who actually do the work. Nor do they typically know much about the work that those front-line people do. At the top, specifics are lost, they manage DIVISIONS, not people or projects. It's their job to buy and sell entire companies, like buying Nokia or Motorola. So everything comes down to dollars (with a pinch corporate vision mixed in).

    For Gates and Balmer, Linux and open source threatened to take away billions of dollars of sales. Microsoft's dominance could only be conceivably threatened by Linux or Apple. Gates saw no good in FOSS, it was simply one of two threats to Microsoft's position.

    Now, Linux and open source have become a source of REVENUE for Microsoft . Rather than being purely a threat, the Android patent royalties are Microsoft's primary revenue in mobile. So yes, that is part of Microsoft seeing open source as an opportunity rather than a threat. Android is bringing Microsoft two billion dollars each year. Two billion dollars a year would certainly change my point of view!

  13. Microsofties think criticism is trolling by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Which is the same mentality that leads Microsoft to spy on everyone all the time and tell them that it's for their own good. What I don't get is why anyone not getting paid would defend them, or alternately, why they would think it was worth paying for Slashdot moderation.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  14. OEL will finally become a real distro? by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    All OEL is - is a RHEL rip off. They didn't even bother to remove /etc/redhat-release file, nor the other stuff they're required to. Added a few things, screwed up a lot of things and call it OEL.
    Maybe now that he's gone they can make it into a real distro. Set things up so if you have an exadata system you don't need a team of people to upgrade it. They are ALWAYS behind. Even with premium support.