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Richard Stallman vs. Canonical's CEO: 'Will Microsoft Love Linux to Death?' (techrepublic.com)
TechRepublic got different answers about Microsoft's new enthusiasm for Linux from Canonical's founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth, and from Richard Stallman. Stallman "believes that Microsoft's decision to build a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) amounts to an attempt to extinguish software that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve."
"It certainly looks that way. But it won't be so easy to extinguish us, because our reasons for using and advancing free software are not limited to practical convenience," he said. "We want freedom. As a way to use computers in freedom, Windows is a non-starter..." Stallman remains adamant that the WSL can only help entrench the dominance of proprietary software like Windows, and undermine the use of free software. "That doesn't advance the cause of free software, not one bit," he says... "The aim of the free software movement is to free users from freedom-denying proprietary programs and systems, such as Windows. Making a non-free system, such as Windows or MacOS or iOS or ChromeOS or Android, more convenient is a step backward in the campaign for freedom..."
For Shuttleworth, Windows' embrace of GNU/Linux is a net positive for open-source software as a whole. "It's not like Microsoft is stealing our toys, it's more that we're sharing them with Microsoft in order to give everyone the best possible experience," he says. "WSL provides users who are well versed in the Windows environment with greater choice and flexibility, while also opening up a whole new potential user base for the open source platform..." Today Shuttleworth takes Microsoft's newfound enthusiasm for GNU/Linux at face value, and says the company has a different ethos to that of the 1990s, a fresh perspective that benefits Microsoft as much as it does open-source software. "Microsoft is a different company now, with a much more balanced view of open and competitive platforms on multiple fronts," he says. "They do a tremendous amount of engineering specifically to accommodate open platforms like Ubuntu on Azure and Hyper-V, and this work is being done in that spirit."
The article also points out that Microsoft "does seem to be laying the groundwork for WSL to extend what's possible using a single GNU/Linux distro today, for instance, letting the user chain together commands from different GNU/Linux distros with those from Windows."
For Shuttleworth, Windows' embrace of GNU/Linux is a net positive for open-source software as a whole. "It's not like Microsoft is stealing our toys, it's more that we're sharing them with Microsoft in order to give everyone the best possible experience," he says. "WSL provides users who are well versed in the Windows environment with greater choice and flexibility, while also opening up a whole new potential user base for the open source platform..." Today Shuttleworth takes Microsoft's newfound enthusiasm for GNU/Linux at face value, and says the company has a different ethos to that of the 1990s, a fresh perspective that benefits Microsoft as much as it does open-source software. "Microsoft is a different company now, with a much more balanced view of open and competitive platforms on multiple fronts," he says. "They do a tremendous amount of engineering specifically to accommodate open platforms like Ubuntu on Azure and Hyper-V, and this work is being done in that spirit."
The article also points out that Microsoft "does seem to be laying the groundwork for WSL to extend what's possible using a single GNU/Linux distro today, for instance, letting the user chain together commands from different GNU/Linux distros with those from Windows."
Microsoft used in Windows 8/10, I do not trust ANYTHING they say. I must view anything and everything they do now as EVIL.
Shuttleworth's optimism seems naive. "Embrace and Extend" has been Microsoft's mantra for how many years?
MS whats linux user to stop dual booting and just use Linux within windows 10 so they can data mine. Microsoft cannot be trusted..ever
Jack of all trades,master of none
By persuading people to run free software under MS Windows, Microsoft gets the ability to subject it to its spyware (sorry, I meant to say: telemetry) and upload the results of key-logging & other snooping that it could not do on a native Linux system.
Has anyone actually verified what MS claims is uploaded ? Do we know who MS shares this information with ?
FTFA :-
Shuttleworth takes Microsoft's newfound enthusiasm for GNU/Linux at face value
Then Shuttleworth is a fool.
[Shuttleworth] says the company has a different ethos to that of the 1990s, a fresh perspective
Indeed : tech has moved on and they have found new ways of screwing the user and new ways of spinning it. This is the company that rammed Win10 spyware down users' throats.
The parent commenter apparently meant to say, starting at the title: "Thanks to the Spyware and tactics... Microsoft used in Windows 8/10, I do not trust ANYTHING they say."
Others agree. Here is a Network World article: Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. Quote from that story: "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."
If Microsoft had paid ad agencies a billion dollars to convince the public that Microsoft cannot be trusted, the ads would not have been as effective as the abuse of including spyware. My opinion, shared by many others.
With stuff like systemd, Gnome 3, Wayland, PulseAudio, and Firefox, it's the open source projects that are destroying themselves. Microsoft isn't responsible. If there's one thing that Linux users should fear, it's the developers of the open source projects that seem to be so intent on ruining their user experience.
From what I've seen over the years, Stallman is usually right about everything and Shuttleworth is usually wrong.
You're right. Stallman's position is that of an extremist fanatic. The only reason Linux and OSS has gotten any traction is because people ignore Stallman and do what is practical instead of clinging to ideological purism.
I'm not sure who he is referring to when he says "we", when I use Linux it is because it does a particular task better than Windows does, for example controlling the machine remotely. And when I use Windows or macOS it is because it runs the programs I need to run to do a particular task. I'm a Linux user and Windows user and a macOS user, I'm not choosing a tool for a job based on the professed ideology of some of its contributors.
There is some merit to the idea that you shouldn't carry a smartphone, you shouldn't communicate over unencrypted channels, you shouldnt use hardware or software that you don't understand or haven't had vetted by somebody you trust that does understand it, you shouldn't use traceable electronic payment mechanisms, etc but it really isn't practical to take a religious absolutist approach to it so along the way people make compromises, some more than others, but in the general sense if you compromise one you compromise all. For example if you use any reasonably modern Intel or AMD processor it has a remote access backdoor which can theoretically compromise your whole system.
So I do understand Stallman's point that you could be compromised by a malicious actor with sufficient enough resources but is there really any practical scenario where you can be confident that can't happen? I would say probably not, so where is the sweet spot of compromise between privacy/security and practicality?
The only reason Linux and OSS has gotten any traction is because people ignore Stallman and do what is practical
Linux succeeded because Linus paid attention to RMS and put an appropriate license on linux.
Last time I checked, you needed to purchase an iPhone to get iOS, and those are most definitely not free.
Last time I checked, you needed to purchase a Mac to get OSX, and those are even more expensive.
And, given the very long EULA required to actually use either, one that places considerable restrictions on its users at that, they are not Free either.
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
You present these statements about Gnome, Firefox et cetera as facts.
But how do you know Microsoft hasn't infiltrated those projects to try to destroy them from within? Given that company's history, how could you put it past them?
I disagree; we should not judge the software by the person or organization that wrote or published it. We should reject the vast majority of Microsoft's software because that software is non-free (user-subjugating, proprietary) software. We can't trust any non-free software. This has nothing to do with its author. Microsoft's free software is like any other free software: we can evaluate its trustworthiness by inspecting the code, and if necessary improving the code. Then we can help ourselves by running that improved code (if it is helpful to us), and we can help our community by distributing copies of the improved code. These are the freedoms we get with free software and we should respect all computer users' software freedom regardless of the authors of that code.
Digital Citizen
On the AOSP Preparing to Build page under the heading Obtain proprietary binaries:
"AOSP cannot be used from pure source code only and requires additional hardware-related proprietary libraries to run, such as for hardware graphics acceleration."
https://source.android.com/source/building
Yes the code is there but you can't really use it in a practical sense without proprietary binaries and that's even before you get to real world uses cases of actually using Android applications that depend on the play services binary.
From a theoretical standpoint yes the Android source code in the form of AOSP is there and it is open source but in the real world nobody actually uses it that way.
Well yes but in the case of the actual system running on actual hardware it isn't open. Like I said, in a theoretical sense it could be but in a practical sense it isn't and if anything Android in general is getting less open as more and more Android applications depend on Play Services.
When you actually use an Android phone or tablet it's far from an open source system, there's some open source bits in between but really if what you want is confidence that you control the computer and it isn't spying on you then you aren't getting that with an Android device.