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Microsoft Joins the Linux Foundation (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the boom dept.

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.

3 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. WINE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could they maybe see their way to helping out the WINE project?

    Until that happens, I'm not really going to congratulate them.

    AC

    1. Re:WINE by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Do you even think Microsoft is even able to help? By example, the current situation with SMB is, when Microsoft needs to know something particularly subtle about SMB, they go ask the Samba guys. See, Microsoft never cares much about clean and transparent design, or keeping accurate historical records. Whatever they happen to cobble together by RC date is the definition of the "standard". If undocumented or partially documented APIs shifted a little, so what? You can see how this design culture might create issues with trying to run random Windows binaries from any point in that 20 year reign of chaos. To sort all that out requires real dedication to the art of fecal archaeology. Not something you're going to find a lot of in Microsoft's backbiting engineering culture, and if it does exist, it will be managed out soon.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  2. Caution, but optimism by sg_oneill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Theres good reason to be cautious, Microsoft doesnt exactly have a spotless record of playing nice with FOSS, but recent behavior , that is microsoft realising it can still make silly money selling Azure and various microsoft software packages to the linux world means that so far its been a pretty good citizen.

    Now, I wonder if they'll eventually give us Office for linux. That'd make a LOT of suits happy.

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.