Slashdot Mirror
Will Linux Innovation Be Driven By Microsoft? (infoworld.com)
Adobe's VP of Mobile (and a former intellectual property lawyer) sees "a very possible future where Microsoft doesn't merely accept a peaceful coexistence with Linux, but instead enthusiastically embraces it as a key to its future," noting Microsoft's many Linux kernel developers and arguing it's already innovating around Linux -- especially in the cloud. An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld:
Even seemingly pedestrian work -- like making Docker containers work for Windows, not merely Linux -- is a big deal for enterprises that don't want open source politics infesting their IT. Or how about Hyper-V containers, which marry the high density of containers to the isolation of traditional VMs? That's a really big deal...
Microsoft has started hiring Linux kernel developers like Matthew Wilcox, Paul Shilovsky, and (in mid-2016) Stephen Hemminger... Microsoft now employs 12 Linux kernel contributors. As for what these engineers are doing, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman says, "Microsoft now has developers contributing to various core areas of the kernel (memory management, core data structures, networking infrastructure), the CIFS filesystem, and of course many contributions to make Linux work better on its Hyper-V systems." In sum, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin declares, "It is accurate to say they are a core contributor," with the likelihood that Hemminger's and others' contributions will move Microsoft out of the kernel contribution basement into the upper echelons.
The article concludes that "Pigs, in other words, do fly. Microsoft, while maintaining its commitment to Windows, has made the necessary steps to not merely run on Linux but to help shape the future of Linux."
Microsoft has started hiring Linux kernel developers like Matthew Wilcox, Paul Shilovsky, and (in mid-2016) Stephen Hemminger... Microsoft now employs 12 Linux kernel contributors. As for what these engineers are doing, Linux kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman says, "Microsoft now has developers contributing to various core areas of the kernel (memory management, core data structures, networking infrastructure), the CIFS filesystem, and of course many contributions to make Linux work better on its Hyper-V systems." In sum, the Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin declares, "It is accurate to say they are a core contributor," with the likelihood that Hemminger's and others' contributions will move Microsoft out of the kernel contribution basement into the upper echelons.
The article concludes that "Pigs, in other words, do fly. Microsoft, while maintaining its commitment to Windows, has made the necessary steps to not merely run on Linux but to help shape the future of Linux."
MS has backed up it's words with c#, .net core, Microsoft code editor, SQL server, and Git VFS all ported to Linux. Also Ubuntu for Windows 10 is coming along nicely as well.
Competition is good and since it's now the 2010s I hope most slashdoters realize as Microsoft's new CEO realized. That the 1990s are over.
I feel MS is really worried about losing web developers which explains Ubuntu for Windows as well as Android emulators and Python into VS 2017 (no folks you did not misread that.)
Time will tell
http://saveie6.com/
It is the hard truth. Microsoft has not changed its underlying culture. As soon as it feels it has enough power to do so, it will pervert the open source community around Linux. Even the summary already spells it out: "open source politics" as if that is bad. The corporations not wanting to participate in those politics, shouldn't be using open source software. I've (professionally) seen many examples in the past few years of Microsoft putting on an open source friendly face for their own benefit, and stabbing open source based companies in the back at the same time. All the development described here is for the benefit and enhancement of their own products, mainly because in the server space their lunch is being eaten by Linux. Once they feel they have what they need, they'll start fighting it again.
Came here for this, did not leave disappointed. Yeah sure, EEE makes sense if you're completely blind to what MS has done in the past 10 years, but it fails the sniff test and also doesn't make sense if you apply any thought at all.
They have zero incentive to extinguish Linux. It isn't costing them even a spec of market share. For all the fucking over of users, for the privacy invasions, for the forced updates, for the unusable hardware... their desktop market share has given up but a rounding error to Linux. While their desktop market doesn't budge, their server market won't either as Linux has absolutely nothing to offer comparable to Active Director + Sharepoint + Exchange.
On the flipside the single most profitable part of their business (cloud services) are incredibly dependent on Linux with over 1/3rd of Azure instances running the OS.
So sure, maybe you're right, or maybe they won't shoot the goose which lays golden eggs.
It is hard to imagine a time where MS is offering Office for Linux.
I have no problem opening up Office 365 on Linux. Before you say it's not "Office" remember that if you search Microsoft Office on any search engine or go to Office.com or go to the Microsoft store the first thing you will be greeted with is Office 365.
To say they aren't pushing a desktop version would be disingenuous, they are actively hiding it. So their "premier" Office product most definitely runs on Linux.
They embraced the idea ... web browsers were new then
Gave it away free
You must hate Linux then. And OpenOffice. And Pages, Numbers and Keynote for the Mac. And... well, you get the idea.
It is not evil to make your own program and include it in your operating system. This sort of thing happens all the time. I remember shareware authors complaining when AmigaDOS added functionality that their little programs offered in an operating system update. Windows didn't originally have TCP networking stack, so a company called Trumpet sold a version. Later, this was added into Windows. Was that unreasonable? Should the operating system not have had built-in access to the Internet?
Is it unreasonable for an operating system to not have a web browser too? You would be hard-pressed to find an OS these days that doesn't have that functionality. You want to blame Microsoft for that, but perhaps you should be thanking them.
And in the case of Netscape, that was even less of an issue considering that the first browser ever written was public domain - so other browsers were free too! Also, Netscape Navigator was free for personal use. Is it that much of a stretch for make a competing browser that extends this free use to all?
Finally, this is all irrelevant because it is absolutely NOT an example of Extend, Embrace and Extinguish. You should have ignored the Extend part of the phrase, assumed that Embrace can mean just making your own version of a product (which it doesn't), and that any Extinguish is still part of it when this even when Netscape has to share the blame for making a bloated mess of a browser that required a lengthy rewrite.
What killed Netscape wasn't so much the price, but the fact that IE was included -- in fact, they claimed it was an inseparable part of Windows back then (it wasn't, someone removed the browser from Windows and it kept working). It's like every desktop/notebook being sold with Windows so that nobody really needs to think about installing a new OS (e.g., Linux).
No. What killed Netscape was that it was a bloated mess. As I said before, browsers like Chrome are having great success even though Windows comes with two browsers these days. As you said later in your post, Microsoft don't ask which browser you want to use initially, and yet it hasn't stopped the decline of their browsers' usage. What more proof do you need? If the alternatives are superior then users will find a way to download and use the software.
As for Internet Explorer being a part of Windows, it was true - despite the fact that you could remove the DLLs. You could also remove the DLLs that handle printing and the OS would still work; at least until the applications tried to print and then it would fail. Developers can rely on the print system being there. Similarly, they could also rely on Internet Explorer being there too, and call its API. When Microsoft made the version of Windows without IE for the European market, some people complained when some software stopped working.
Sorry, no, I don't get the idea. I don't know about the Mac, but on Linux, Openoffice never prevented the installation of other suites
And Microsoft never prevented the installation of any other web browser. But my point was that all those programs mentioned were free offerings that could be said to undermine commercial software's revenue. If you complain that IE was released for free, then why not also that OpenOffice performed the same functions as Microsoft Office? Should we cry for Microsoft? No,because it's simply competition.
Heck, now you are even pushed to open pdfs with Edge -- not what Firefox do, when you're browsing, but for local PDFs, too. Talk about EEE...
It defaults to Edge, but you can change this to whatever software you want. I use Sumatra. What operating system doesn't come with a default PDF reader these days? And if you think that this is EEE, tell me what software has been extended or extinguished? Once again, having competing software is not EEE.
Dude, if you were there, stop trolling as you know darn well what they did. And if you're young and wasn't there, do your homework and learn what a cutthroat Microsoft was.
I was there, and I'm not trolling. I remember installing Internet Explorer before it was ever included with Windows and found it to be a breath of fresh air compared to the bloated Netscape Navigator. Fast forward to Mozilla releasing Firefox and once again it was breath of fresh air from the stagnated IE. So just because I don't agree with your viewpoint doesn't mean that I am trolling. However quotes like this:
if you cannot kill them, join them. And kill them from inside...
...are definitely trolling because you don't provide any evidence that they are doing this nor do you say even how they could kill an open source project.