Microsoft Joins the Linux Foundation (techcrunch.com)

Microsoft today said it is joining the Linux Foundation as a high-paying Platinum member. Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin said, "This may come as a surprise to you, but they were not big fans," describing the two's previous relationship. From a report on TechCrunch: The new Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella, however, is singing a very different tune. Today's Microsoft is one of the biggest open source contributors around. Over the course of just the last few years, it has essentially built Canonical's Ubuntu distribution into Windows 10, brought SQL Server to Linux, open-sourced core parts of its .NET platform and partnered with Red Hat, SUSE and others. As Zemlin noted, Microsoft has also contributed to a number of Linux Foundation-managed projects like Node.js, OpenDaylight, the Open Container Initiative, the R Consortium and the Open API Initiative.ArsTechnica has more details.

Comments

Embrace Phase

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, it is just the embrace phase of their plan.

Re:Embrace Phase

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep:
1) Add incompatible extensions.
2) Don't document the standard ways of doing things, just their way.
3) Noobs who don't know any better write a lot of code that only works on Microsoft Ubuntu.
4) Companies that think they're using a common standard end up as chained to Microsoft's Linux as they were to Microsoft's web browser IE6.

At step 1 they can also rely on their typical bugs to introduce incompatibilities. It's amazing how they've always been able to weaponize their incompetence.

This makes sense

[FictionPimp]

I keep saying it, MS wants out of the OS business. They want to build 'cloud' and charge you by the minute. Developing server/desktop OS is not the business they want to be in.

Re:This makes sense

[subanark]

Kind of. They just don't think it will remain profitable in the long term. And they really don't want to end up like oracle, which just sits on its IP and racks in as much profit it can.

Re:This makes sense

[speedplane]

They want to build 'cloud' and charge you by the minute.

I have several friends at Microsoft who say the motto of the company is cloud cloud cloud. I've also spoken to people in the finance industry (e.g., big banks) who are much more receptive to putting their products on Microsoft rather than Google or AWS. Microsoft has a good shot here to take the market. They'll need a solid handle on linux servers to do that.

Re:The mothership is here!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, this is just the 'Embrace' phase of EEE that Microsoft is so well known for.

Step 1

[fahrbot-bot]

Embrace

Re: Step 1

[TuringTest]

Years ago, this headline would be published on April 1st, and we would have had a good laugh. The times, they have a-changed.

LF charter should ban maker of competing OSs

[Eravnrekaree]

Microsoft never opened sourced the parts of .NET that would help most end users like WPF. Much of Microsofts open sourcing is of things that are already open source in the Linux ecosystem, and would not result in damage Microsofts products. Linux is dominate on servers, so Microsoft open sources server code, but does not open source desktop code where Microsoft is still dominate. The Ubuntu Windows thing is designed to hurt Linux by giving people a reason to not run Linux, instead allowing them to avoid Linux and run Linux apps on Windows, this will weaken the Linux user base and the Linux kernel. Another shrewd move by MS, and it also shows how stupid Ubuntu must be for participating in this and what a bunch of incompetent suckers Ubuntu is. If Ubuntu were really competent they would have done the reverse which is to have Windows apps run on Linux which would have been an advantage for Ubuntu.

Microsoft considering its conniving should not be allowed to join Linux Foundation. The Linux foundation charter should be amended to ban companies like MS who sell competing OSs.

Re:LF charter should ban maker of competing OSs

[kenh]

If Ubuntu were really competent they would have done the reverse which is to have Windows apps run on Linux which would have been an advantage for Ubuntu.

You understand Ubuntu GIVES AWAY their operating system, and by Microsoft including Ubuntu inside Windows desktop environments, it allows hundreds of millions of users try Ubuntu without having to wipe their disk, re-partition it, install a hypervisor (parallels, VM Ware, VirtualBox, etc.) - an obvious good thing for the Ubuntu ecosystem. It also, in the eyes of millions of users validates Linux as a usable operating system.

Running Windows applications under Linux has been done, it's called WINE, and it's kludgy and not very intuitive for casual computer users.

The Linux foundation charter should be amended to ban companies like MS who sell competing OSs.

So let's see, aside from Microsoft, that would also prevent Oracle (they sell Solaris, a Linux competitor), IBM (they sell AIX, a competitor to Linux), and many other large corporations from donating to the Linux Foundation - how exactly does preventing large donors from donating "help" the Linux Foundation?

Re:This does not look like a good thing.

[LVSlushdat]

Call me paranoid, but I'd NEVER allow ANY MS software on any Linux machine *I* control. Just like using Windows 10, you can't audit who/what the OS is talking to, and what its sending to the "mothership".. In the case of MS porting Office to Linux, I would have the same concerns. For all we know, they'd put the "spyware" aspects of Windows 10 into Office for Linux so they could collect everything from Linux users also. To put it bluntly, I trust MS as far as I can throw them, which, being 66 years old, isn't *very* far.. I used/supported MS products for close to 20 years as a sysadmin, but decided I was done when I retired in 2010. Now its 100% Linux on my personal systems..

Makes perfect sense - it's their next phase

[ErichTheRed]

Microsoft is completely done selling operating systems and software the way they were previously. Everything they're doing is 100% dedicated to getting people over to Azure, spending money by the hour forever rather than getting a one-time license payment. The company I work for is building a huge new project in Azure and it's amazing how much money Microsoft makes just by keeping data centers running on their services from failing...the bills are thousands per month and we're a tiny customer.

If they can make that much money just keeping the power and Internet flowing, why not outsource the development of operating systems to Linux? In that case joining the Linux Foundation makes sense. Windows Server 2016 is probably going to be the last "boxed" release of server software from them -- the push is to move workloads to Azure Service Fabric and rebuild everything as microservices anyway. All of their products are moving to the "Azure first" development model -- release everything to Azure first, then box it up as of a certain date and ship it to customers who want to pay for on-site licenses.

In about 10 or 15 years, Microsoft will be where IBM is now -- they will have an assured stream of perpetual revenue coming from customers who aren't locked into a particular OS, but are locked into them as a service provider. (True, you can switch cloud providers, but did I mention they're making it insanely easy for Microsoft customers to migrate in from the on-premises world?)

And that's how Linux died

[frovingslosh]

Step 1: Join

Step 2: Destroy from within

Seriously, does no one in the Linux organization see any problem with this? Microsoft pays money (peanuts to them) and can now influence Linux? Microsoft is capable of every dirty trick in the book. They have a habit of betraying "business partners", even I.B.M. They are the people who, through a Windows "security update" modified the eeprom on my notebook's NIC so that it wouldn't work in Linux and put code in Windows so that they could reinitialize it properly. When you make a deal with the devil you're not bringing him closer to your point of view, you can only expect to sink to his level.

Re:Caution, but optimism

[Rick Schumann]

By heavily funding it they can de-facto own it. They can also use that as leverage to guide it's development to do things like include their so-called 'telemetry' spyware and other malware, under the guise of 'improving the user experience' or 'improving user security', and only people with the chops to manually remove it and recompile it would be free of it -- or they might so firmly embed it all into the kernel that you'd have to rewrite it completely to get rid of it. Then also isn't there the problem of 'secure boot' and signing of bootloaders, and who exactly controls all that?