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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.
Could they maybe see their way to helping out the WINE project?
Until that happens, I'm not really going to congratulate them.
AC
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.
Choose a personality:
Clippy
Cortana
Nah, this is just the 'Embrace' phase of EEE that Microsoft is so well known for.
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.
Embrace
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
It's not that surprising. As Microsoft moves towards being a service company, they care less and less about keeping their own source closed or sabotaging open source projects. You can use Azure to run Linux just as easily as Windows. Why should Microsoft care, they get paid anyhow.
I doubt they'll ever open source their core product like Office, but if open sourcing their tools or contributing to open source projects makes it easier for people to use Microsoft services, that's money for Microsoft that isn't going to someone else.
They'll never be as open source friendly as some would like, but at least they're a lot less hostile. Since they got rid of Ballmer who was the obstinate type that kept trying pound square pegs into circle holes, they've been a lot more willing to accept that not every single part of a solution needs to be something from Microsoft.
This year: - Trump became president elect - The cubs win the world series...playing the INDIANS no less! - Apple stops having growth - Microsoft joins the Linux foundation If we have too many more things happen my head will explode and melt away. What's next? The discovery of real Unicorns?
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..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
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?)
YASOTET - Yet Another Sign Of the End Times
Note that rapture index - record high 189 - 10 Oct 2016
Satan says "damn Russian hackers hacked my Nest thermostat"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
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.