Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Has Created Its Own FreeBSD (microsoft.com)
Simon Sharwood, writing for The Register: Microsoft has published its own distribution of FreeBSD 10.3 in order to make the OS available and supported in Azure. Jason Anderson, principal PM manager at Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center says Redmond "took on the work of building, testing, releasing and maintaining the image" so it could "ensure our customers have an enterprise SLA for their FreeBSD VMs running in Azure". Microsoft did so "to remove that burden" from the FreeBSD Foundation, which relies on community contributions. Redmond is not keeping its work on FreeBSD to itself: Anderson says "the majority of the investments we make at the kernel level to enable network and storage performance were up-streamed into the FreeBSD 10.3 release, so anyone who downloads a FreeBSD 10.3 image from the FreeBSD Foundation will get those investments from Microsoft built in to the OS."
Although you joke, those who use Linux, especially those who use it seriously and for the long term, should be getting worried right about now.
We're seeing turmoil within the wider Linux community, mainly thanks to systemd. Regardless of your take on systemd, it has been very divisive.
Systemd has been a total disaster for many users, resulting in Linux installations that don't boot properly.
Even those who don't dislike it completely do realize that it represents a dangerous consolidation within the Linux ecosystem.
It goes beyond systemd, including problematic software like GNOME 3, PulseAudio, and even newer versions of Firefox.
A monoculture is developing, where all of the major Linux distros are becoming very much alike.
Linux users who don't want to be part of this monoculture are told to use obscure niche distros, which is a polite way of telling them to "fuck off and die".
So many have looked elsewhere. The *BSDs are an obvious choice for many refugees from Linux, and OS X for others.
We're seeing a resurgence of interest in FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and it won't be good for Linux.
There is now a whole generation of young developers and sysadmins who missed out on the FreeBSD glory years of the 1990s, but who are now rediscovering what we knew then: that the BSDs provide the best open source UNIX-like experience available.
So while we're seeing the Linux ecosystem disintegrate, we're seeing the FreeBSD and OpenBSD ecosystems becoming even stronger.
Linux users should be very concerned about the long term viability of Linux. Those who have enough foresight to see what's happening to the Linux ecosystem are already moving to FreeBSD or OpenBSD, and they will be glad that they got out before things got really bad.
This explains why they have a hosts file in an etc directory in %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\drivers.
There's been similar code from Microsoft in the Linux kernel for years now.
Welcome to 2009. Enjoy your stay!
Do you see that big word MAJORITY in there? That means there are parts of the kernel that Microsoft is keeping closed source to themselves.
That is the classic, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. We're to the Extend part right now. It has been extended with proprietary extensions that are not given back to the community.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
The reason the hosts file is there is for POSIX compatibility which was a requirement for some US gov contracts, IIRC.