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Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member
- devereaux 10y agoSo much has changed in 10 years! The old me would never believe how the future me moved more "Micro$oft sucks" to "wow another great product!" I am happy to use Office in wine, as it gives me a very stable experience, full unicode supports even with my Xorg keymaps. I use Visual Studio in wine - not as good as Office, but still very good. I have a Windows phone, a priced relic since Microsoft abandoned them. Rock stable, last for a week in airplane mode. I have a Windows 10 LTSB in a separate partition. Initially I just wanted to test it out. Now I consider running it in KVM for Visual Studio, in case I want more than what wine can now offer. Hell, I am considering replacing my Thinkpad by one of Microsoft surfaces. As soon as it runs Linux as well as a Thinkpad, can get 32G of RAM, a user replacable SSD, wifi and lte module, I buy one. Seriously, even if the keyboard is not as good. And given Microsoft new focus on developpers, I wouldn't entirely dismiss the idea of a Surface Developper, bulkier but sturdier and user upgradable. People say "hell froze over". I don't care. I look forward for more change from Microsoft. Because their tools are innovative again.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago>I am happy to use Office in wine, // It'd be great if companies would support this sort of use if they're not going to bother creating native versions. I used to play games using PlayOnLinux but the company, Origin (IIRC), updated their game manager software seemingly in order to break the Linux compatibility. The games were paid for and worked perfectly well. Annoying as hell when companies appear to be actively hostile to you buying their product.
- ascendantlogic 10y agoMe from 2001 is pretty blown away.
- randomguy23 10y agoI'm still suspicious.
- tracker1 10y agoYeah... the me from that era would never have thought that MS would be where it is today.
- floopidydoopidy 10y agoMe from 2001 is astounded that people keep falling for same lie, year after year.
- LyalinDotCom 10y agoHell has frozen over, but that's just my opinion :)
- ekianjo 10y agoExcept that Microsoft is still hostile towards Linux with patents at the same time but no one talks about it.
- adrianN 10y agoIt's a big company. The people being hostile with patents probably don't talk to the people donating to the Linux Foundation.
- SSLy 10y agoMicrosoft loves Linux (the kernel), but they hate with passion anything userland that could ever have the dreaded "GNU" or "GPL" letters anywhere mentioned.
- NetStrikeForce 10y agoIsn't WSL Linux userland running on NT Kernel? Just the opposite of what you said? Sorry if I said something silly :)
- mhall119 10y agoWSL is an implementation of (some of) the Linux kernel APIs on top of the Windows kernel. The userland that you run in WSL is technically independent of WSL itself, but Microsoft provides direct support for installing Ubuntu there.
- lagadu 10y agoHell has indeed frozen over and it's time to get the skis out and enjoy it!
- organsnyder 10y agoAnother example of how far Microsoft's focus has changed. Rather than focusing on products, they're focused on selling solutions.
- cmdrfred 10y agoAren't all products essentially solutions?
- rbanffy 10y agoNot Microsoft products. /me ducks.
- JBReefer 10y agoNot according to http://bad.solutions http://bad.solutions
- organsnyder 10y agoYes, but if your focus is on selling hammers, everything looks like a nail. If your focus is on selling fastener-drivers, you realize that sometimes you need a screwdriver instead.
- atomic77 10y agoI also think the shift is genuine. The parallels with how IBM evolved from being the Prime Evil in the tech world to a large but relatively benign tech company are interesting.
- vvdcect 10y agoEmbrace(check), extend(check), and extinguish(?)
- oedenfield 10y agoMS employee here - the new Microsoft is: Enable (make sure open source runs well on MS platforms) Integrate (make sure MS platforms work well with open source) Release (release key MS technology into open source) Participate (commit MS engineers to participate in communities)
- BentFranklin 10y agoNice of you to say but what about this: https://eugene.kaspersky.com/2016/11/10/thats-it-ive-had-enough/ https://eugene.kaspersky.com/2016/11/10/thats-it-ive-had-eno... Obviously Kaspersky isn't open source, but the tiger's stripes certainly haven't changed. Also, Microsoft bundling Windows 10 upgrade malware into its security update channel has turned me off Microsoft, probably forever. Still don't understand why installing 10 after being told not to isn't a CFAA violation.
- blahi 10y agoKaspersky and all of the AV vendors deserve to get wiped out.
- BentFranklin 10y agoI'd like to know why you think that, and also if you think that W10's unstoppable updates is the right way.
- intern4tional 10y agoNot the grandparent, but I think the issue is that people want clients to have an uptime that is comparable to a server. Windows Server has controllable updates and reboots. Win 10 - is a client OS and wasn't designed with the same level of hardening and shouldn't have the same uptime requirements. The challenge is convincing the general public of this; people want a Ford Fiesta with the speed and features of a Audi R8, meaning they want the best of all worlds at reasonable cost and no penalties. By forcing updates on clients, MS has eliminated a generation of machines being owned by various botnets. They've also made it relatively cheap to get a server in Azure should you have a temporary need for uptime (like a research project for a week). That aside, some portions of those updates are bad (like removing functionality, pushing telemetry, etc), but the overall strategy of auto updating isn't a bad idea if they can convince people to adjust to it and use Server when they need stability.
- jepler 10y agofirst they mock you, then they fight you, then they coopt you, then they win.
- mtgx 10y agoKill it from the inside.
- 1281281918 10y agoDon't forget that we have the New Microsoft[tm]! Source: Hacker News.
- An9238 10y agoHacker News is really the site with the least amount of self criticism on the entire Internet. 'dang, go ahead and do you thing.
- floopidydoopidy 10y agoMoney talks, right. These are paid ads and paid shills/astroturfers.
- colemickens 10y agoWhat an absolutely unfounded and absurd accusation.
- colemickens 10y agoFor the four people who have cowardly and silently downvoted, let me break this down so I can understand where you're coming from exactly... "These are paid ads This seems to be an accusation against HN moderators and admins. Are you really asserting that the mod staff was paid off to fake votes for these stories or rig their rankings? That's quite an accusation. and paid shills/astroturfers" Do you really think a huge public company like Microsoft would be so stupid as to pay for shilling, let alone even imply or encourage it? Just absurd. Take your out-dated blind hatred for Microsoft and find literally anything better to do with it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- l3m0ndr0p 10y agoMaybe this will force Apple to improve the XCode platform.
- pksadiq 10y agoI don't think they are going to support GPLv3, ever.
- SEJeff 10y agoFWIW, the same could be said for the Linux foundation. They're not really pro GPLv3 either. Linux is GPLv2 and will stay that way. Open Source != Free Software
- forgottenpass 10y agoThe new game is to use as much open source as possible to build a closed source ecosystem with vendor lock-in. Microsoft was late to the game, but we gotta give them props for contributing back something more useful than "open core", platform onboarding or "hire me" piles of code.
- blackaspen 10y agoI guess the other thread was the one that became the dupe: I'm fairly certain all of 2016 is a mass-hallucination. Or something. In all seriousness though, I don't think this is surprising. Visual Studio on macOS is more surprising to me. Azure runs on Linux and that's a really, really big business for Microsoft. And they've also built a Linux Subsystem into Windows. Rock on Microsoft, rock on.
- ekianjo 10y agoIf they could contribute to WINE that would be most welcome.
- rufius 10y agoAzure runs on Linux? What? Small portions do, but it's misleading to say it "runs on Linux". Edit: clarifying
- blackaspen 10y agoSarcasm? I imagine that they're not emulating the Linux Kernel on Windows... From what I've gathered from job postings and whatnot, their virtualization system is in line with AWS's (Xen) on Linux.
- rufius 10y agoThe primary backbone of Azure is an OS known as "Red Dog OS". It's based off of Windows, with much of the core kernel tailored by Dave Cutler. When you're running Linux on Azure, it's via Hyper-V or rather the Azure flavored form of it. Windows is very much the core of Azure. Azure Cloud Switch does use Linux - on metal I believe so no virtualization. Edit: a word
- blackaspen 10y agoAh! Ok, that actually makes a bit more sense... thanks for clarifying! That's actually quite neat then.
- thejj 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extingui... Let's see how they'll try the next step.
- airesQ 10y agoI really don't see how that strategy would work with open source projects. Wouldn't most contributions for the "extend" phase be open source? Once open source, it's much harder to extinguish.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoMostly just ignore the parent comment, some people are inherently compelled to link a twenty year old business strategy on EVERY Microsoft-related thread.
- quickben 10y agoI can see you aren't reading the current changes in ms db licencing costs, not moving a finger about Kronos to favour directx and the likes. What do you think changed in ms after 20 years? Them providing a cute text editor for Linux and now they are the good guys?
- nilved 10y agoNope. In fact, that term is almost always applied to open technology. Right now Red Hat is doing it to Linux and Google is doing it to the Web. See the list of examples on the linked article for more.
- akerro 10y agoOpen source means nothing and is same easy to extinguish, it's only more visible when someone is trying to. Microsoft, Google, Apple do open source work for publicity, if you as a single developer want a change in a projects, you submit PR... and wait weeks. First you need to write RFC, at some point RFC will be discussed behind closed doors by corporatisation members, you can have your vote in it on GitHub, but nothing else as we saw once already with MS. All you can do is fix documentation and tests for them, means they get free labour to improve their products, you can have an important repo forked on GitHub.
- bomdo 10y agoApparently, being a platinum member entails donating $500k [1], so it's not that big a deal for Microsoft ($85B revenue[2]). And as the article states, there has been negativity in the linux community regarding the old arch-enemy joining their ranks. Looking at the new Microsoft however, I think it's fair to assume that the days of "embrace, extend and extinguish"[3] are over and they are genuinely interested in cooperation. It's an important political gesture that Nadella goes in this direction. Since they also added a linux subsystem into the latest Windows release[4], I get the impression that he wants to leave the cloud to linux and try to position Windows as a user-facing client. This is a difficult decision to make, but it makes sense. Microsoft without Ballmer is seeing its position in the Corporate world as it is and I hope we will continue to see more openness as a result. [1] http://www.slashgear.com/hp-pays-500000-for-linux-foundation-platinum-membership-05255636/ http://www.slashgear.com/hp-pays-500000-for-linux-foundation... [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2016-Q4/press-release-webcast https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2016-Q4... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12234735 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12234735
- simosx 10y agoWhile Microsoft was the effective monopoly, they stayed as a monopoly trying to reap the fruits of the new status quo. It makes financial sense for them to join the Linux Foundation. Joining the Linux Foundation does not make them to, for example, start contributing to WINE, since that does not make financial sense to them.
- paulddraper 10y ago> being a platinum member entails donating $500k HP's donation isn't necessary Microsoft's > so it's not that big a deal for Microsoft So what? It's a big deal for the Linux Foundation. And that's what matters. It's not about everyone paying "their fair share". It's about ensuring a good future for the high-quality very popular open source OS Linux. The circumstances of the donor doesn't affect the efficacy of their donation. I hope we focus more on the outcome than the drama.
- Roritharr 10y agoEverytime I see a big corporation donate money to a software project, I like to imagine what the software project would do with 10 or 1000 times that amount. What would a Billion Dollar funded Linux Foundation do?
- MikusR 10y agoFight about who gets the money.
- winter_blue 10y agoAs the Mythical Man-Mnth says, you can't build software faster by adding more programmers. So not much, unless the work they have to do is highly parallelizable (i.e. can be broken up), and would truly benefit from more developers. I can imagine KDE benefiting from this, because KDE is an umbrella organization with hundreds (if not thousands) of projects underneath it.
- ssalazar 10y ago? Thats a pretty negative/limited view. Tons of open source projects could benefit from additional roles/resources aside from programmers: project management, graphic design, UI/UX, technical writing, QA engineering. Additionally, longer-term funding for the main contributors to a project might allow them to elevate a project's status beyond a nights-and-weekends hobby, with likely improvements for code quality/overall quality.
- zanny 10y agoI can't imagine how much great software KDE could produce with another 50k, let alone 500k, in corporate sponsorship. It has fewer developers with a broader reach than Gnome and an even older legacy. Just a really easy example is how they now have the Kirigami UI framework, and they released their software store redone in it a few months back (Discover) but the man hours and work required to port more of the collection to that toolkit would be immense. And even Discover is missing a lot of polish since its primarily a demo product at this point. Throw another 10 developers in there (at 50k a pop?), and all those complaints about "it looks like Windows" with toolbars and dropdowns would be abated.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- 0xmohit 10y agoThe company has become an enthusiastic supporter of Linux Curious to know from any users out there: How well does Mono work, especially on Linux?
- MichaelGG 10y agoWorks fine for me in the server-side backend apps I've done. Telecom processing, routing/call records. Handled billions of messages a week. Code/debug/etc. on Windows, copy exes to Linux and run it. There's a few discrepancies here and there but overall it was fairly easy.
- pionar 10y agoMono works really well. But, Mono's not the future. The future is Roslyn, CoreCLR, and CoreFX, basically the compiler, runtime and standard library for .NET applications. They all work really well on Linux. They're part of the .NET foundation (https://github.com/dotnet https://github.com/dotnet).
- pasbesoin 10y agoThis. All the Visual Studio stuff (shame, as their tools have long had a good reputation). .NET . Etc. It's a trap. Been around long enough to have formed that singular impression of such Microsoft initiatives and to have it confirmed, repeatedly. They failed in mobile. They are losing mindshare elsewhere. It's a trap. I'm not going to try to back up my statement, here and now. Just keep it in mind. The more wary you remain, the quicker you can move away when the noose tightens. Cheers
- atomic77 10y agoYes, it's a trap, but not much different than the traps other companies are attempting to lay for you. Remember that the majority of people working at Microsoft today probably have little to no memory of the tech world of the early 2000s. They don't seem too much better or worse than others in attempting to shape open-source projects to their benefit - that's something you should always be wary about.
- rbanffy 10y agoFirst they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Still, it'll be a while before they are worth our trust. They fought dirty and hard.
- sterex 10y agoSo a person buying a Windows license is indirectly paying for my Linux usage? Interesting!
- chipperyman573 10y agoMicrosoft has $85B of revenue[0] and joining as a platinum member costs $500k. Even if Windows licences are the only ways Microsoft makes money (they're not, by a longshot), every copy would only account for 0.000008% of the donation. [0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2016-Q4/press-release-webcast https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2016-Q4...
- sterex 10y agoRight. But you know, it's a nice feeling. Even if it brings 0.000008% of joy. :)
- unixmask 10y agobut they still getting money for the patents over linux ...
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoMS is going all Oracle-y on us, they'll probably release a full fledged MS Linux distro soon. (Social game: what will they call it? I'd say something like Unsinkable Linux ;-) They should also have their own filesystem - ow, right, NTFS. I was thinking they could take another go at the database FS that stalled Vista a decade ago ...
- mevile 10y agoThis thread is full of people making the familiar mistake of treating an organization with hundreds of thousands of employees as a single entity with a single mind instead of a vast organization with multiple departments and different teams.
- acd 10y agoMicrosoft are doing good by supporting Linux and shipping Ubuntu as an option in Windows 10 which is good for developers. In the past Microsoft has released a UNIX based operating system called Xenix and there has also been a subsystem for Unix in previous Windows NT versions. Windows subsystem for Linux https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/07/22/fun-with-the-windows-subsystem-for-linux/tem https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/07/22/fun-with-t... Xenix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix Microsoft Interix, Windows services for Unix historic link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interix
- thebspatrol 10y agoI think most of us are feeling extremely cautious about the recent Embrace-Extend-Extinguish overdrive.
- jaxondu 10y agoIs there a possibility that MS buy Canonical/Ubuntu?
- shmerl 10y agoDoes it mean they'll stop patent aggression against Android now?
- jordigh 10y agoThe Linux Foundation troubles me a little. They have vested interest in making sure Linux's copyleft is not enforced. For example, VMWare is part of it, and has used its clout to refuse funding to Software Conservancy, due to the ongoing GPL lawsuit. I guess the money from the LF is helping pay Linus' paycheque, but it has also become a bit of a lobbying group to steer Linux into more proprietary software.
- joelbondurant 10y agoembrace && extend && extinguish
- native 10y agoPride gets in the way of many things, especially progress and innovation, in Microsoft's case, it's holding on to the Window's O.S. If I were the new man at Microsoft, I would immediately set course to release two versions of Windows, and let people make the decision: One with the standard Window's filesystem and one built on the Unix/Linux kernel, like Apple has done. And above all lead with design. The possibilities of what they can do at that point would be endless. But you gotta let go of that pride first!!!
- eevilspock 10y agoOpen source is "Un-American", Linux "a cancer", and should be made illegal. Microsoft in 2001. http://www.infoworld.com/article/3042247/open-source-tools/bill-gates-gets-real-about-free-software.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/3042247/open-source-tools/b... http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5015 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5015 https://slashdot.org/story/04/07/11/1714235/gates-open-source-kills-jobs https://slashdot.org/story/04/07/11/1714235/gates-open-sourc...