15 ms·

Apparently, 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 ha

by bomdo 10y ago

Apparently, 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 ago
While 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.
- zanny 10y ago
  Linux is a kernel, not an OS, and Microsoft has been abjectly hostile to the OSes that use Linux and respect user freedoms. If they weren't, they would have never pushed hostile proprietary vendor lock in tech like DirectX12 or Universal Windows Platform in recent years.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    (1) That's hair splitting of common usage. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux "Linux was originally developed as a free operating system for personal computers based on the Intel x86 architecture" "Linux has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems." "Linux is not the only such operating system" "Linux is also the leading operating system on servers and other big iron systems" I'm surprised you didn't distinguish it as an OS kernel, instead of leaving it ambiguous as to what kind of kernel it is, e.g. popcorn. (2) The opposite is true. For example, Ubuntu user-space (i.e. sans Linux kernel) is available on Windows.
    - cyphar 10y ago
      > (1) That's hair splitting of common usage. The operating system's technical name is GNU/Linux[1]. Many people call it Linux incorrectly, but it is actually a serious distinction[2]. I would agree however that Linux is the most widely used OS kernel. To make the distinction more obvious, can you explain what the difference is between "Linux" and Android (which uses the Linux kernel). [ Hint: the difference is that Android doesn't contain GNU. ] [1]: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.en.html [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy
      - richardwhiuk 10y ago
        Linux is a class of operating systems which use the Linux kernel. Referring to Linux as an OS, is a perfectly fine thing to generically mean 'an OS which uses Linux as a kernel' and has an agreed common meaning. Almost no Operating System is precisely GNU/Linux - most have vim, an X server, GNOME or KDE, 7zip etc. And the argument that GNU is a more principal argument is incorrect.
executesorder66 10y ago
> and they are genuinely interested in cooperation. In my opinion, they are not at all interested in cooperation until they port Office and Visual Studio to Linux or open source them.
- wmccullough 10y ago
  Do you not count SQL Server, VS Code, ASP.NET core running Linux as cooperation? They are genuinely trying here.
  - executesorder66 10y ago
    It is definitely a step in the right direction. But I'd argue that the most used microsoft product in the world (besides Windows) is MS Office. What holds a lot of people back from running Linux is that they don't like dealing with compatibility issues with LibreOffice and MS Office. Microsoft knows if they open source or port MS Office to Linux, they will lose a massive market share and millions of people will stop using Windows. And I don't blame them, any reasonable business would not do something like that. But unless they do that, I don't see how they can claim to be cooperating when they refuse to port their main product to Linux.
    - Zyst 10y ago
      >Microsoft knows if they open source or port MS Office to Linux, they will lose a massive market share and millions of people will stop using Windows. That's a huge assumption. There's no real indication that people would stop using Windows if Office existed in Linux. If that were the case, then porting Office to OS X would've had a similar effect, don't you think? Ultimately I believe the reason Microsoft doesn't bother porting to Linux is that the market-share is just not worth the cost of re-writing for another platform, and keeping it updated. Additionally, as a compromise Office 365 runs on browser, which further decreases the incentive to port to Linux. Since you can get a similar experience using Office 365 on Linux, that said I won't be so disingenuous as to imply that the experience is as good as a native application. In conclusion, Linux has a very small market share, so making a native application for it might not be cost effective. Additionally, Microsoft might see that market share as "served" regardless due to their online Office 365 web application.
finid 10y ago
I get the impression that he wants to leave the cloud to linux and try to position Windows as a user-facing client. Is that why they're pushing the Azure cloud service - to benefit Linux?
- mhall119 10y ago
  Considering 50% of Azure instances are Linux, perhaps?
  - ickler8 10y ago
    other way around.
qplex 10y ago
Reading your comment, I was suddenly reminded of the days when the Windows vs. Linux TCO (=total cost of ownership) debacle was all aflame... ah the sad irony.
zekevermillion 10y ago
This is the ultimate embrace, extend move. Hopefully it means MS has reconciled itself to the fact that it cannot easily extinguish Linux. I would expect MS to use this position to divert headlines away from the concept of free software, and toward the MS brand; and to introduce dependencies to third-party software that makes it difficult to extract MS proprietary code entirely from the Linux ecosystem.
- Ezhik 10y ago
  I think we need a bot to call EEE every time Microsoft is mentioned.
  - zekevermillion 10y ago
    I don't think they are necessarily doing the extinguish part anymore as a primary strategy. More like embrace, extend, entangle.
    - Ezhik 10y ago
      Making people want to use your product was a good business strategy last I heard.
tn13 10y ago
> being a platinum member entails donating $500k The important thing about this news is not the title or the amount. The important thing to notice that Microsoft has moved from extreme hostility to active co-operation with general Linux community. This is a good move and it benefits Linux community lot more than Microsoft. I always felt that it was needless to paint MS/Linux as some kind of zero some game to begin with. Sad that MS's top leadership fell prey to it in the initial years trying to hurt Linux.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  I don't see how this means they have stopped being hostile. For example, they are still suing android manufacturers. I think they are doing this because they think they have to and not because they have actually embraced anything. I think they are trying to buy goodwill.
  - drvdevd 10y ago
    All of these companies in the mobile space seem to be constantly suing each other though right? Microsoft is no more hostile than Apple or Google in this regard?
- drvdevd 10y ago
  We must also not forget that other companies have since proven that the idea of a proprietary operating system (or just kernel) as the main base of IP has started to look somewhat obsolete anyway. Now we have proprietary services and systems like Android and macOS have demonstrated that you can take an (at least partly) open source OS and slap most of the proprietary bits in userspace quite successfully. For that matter the "next version" of Windows might as well be a rebranded version of Android or something. Why keep maintaining your own OS kernel when you can have the community do it for you with a modest donation? NT will be with us for a while yet, though I can't understand the business case for not end of lifing it at some point, especially when most of the engineers you hire don't know it well.
- hueving 10y ago
  How does this benefit the Linux community even more? Microsofts move to include shells and a kernel compatible with Unix may end up being one of the most damaging things to Linux in a long time. All of the casual users that don't care about open source will just give in and use Windows as their OS when they hit a driver snag or something since they still get the userspace tools they like.
nitrogen 10y ago
Half the HN frontpage right now is MS articles. Seems oddly coincidental. We can't forget about the bad MS is still doing: forced Win10 upgrades, Win10 spyware, Android patent extortion, FAT/VFAT/exFAT patent suits and licenses, etc. The developer arm seems to be working hard, which is commendable. But looking at the rest of the org, this just seems like another Embrace round of the EEE cycle.
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  It's not "oddly coincidental", it's Microsoft's developer conference today, which is where the announcement was made. During WWDC and I/O the front page is filled with Apple and Google news too.
  - tener 10y ago
    Comparing to Apple, Microsoft seems to be getting more attention to their news, which is a praiseworthy change.
    - merb 10y ago
      well since steve jobs died there wasn't anything noteworthy. I mean seriously, was there any new device or and WORTHY feature? I can't think of any. And old devices like the mac series or others weren't overhauled with something that made it more interesting. I mean everything since then was the touchbar from mac, which many weren't seeing as that feature, they basically removed more than they added noteworthy stuff. That's why they probably will suffer soon. They need a leader to bring them forward and not a businessman.
- baybal2 10y ago
  Let's wait for Linux Millenium Edition
  - Crespyl 10y ago
    Well, we did already get 3.11 "Linux For Workgroups"[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names
shmerl 10y ago
> I think it's fair to assume that the days of "embrace, extend and extinguish" are over and they are genuinely interested in cooperation. I'd welcome that, but MS still needs to fix several very major issues which stand in the way of such cooperation. 1. Stop the patent aggression. 2. More support for open standards. Especially in 3D graphics (DirectX lock-in), filesystems on removable media (exFAT lock-in), and so on and so forth. 3. Stop Windows tax / Windows bundling anti-competitive practices. Once those are changed for the better, I'd say MS really changed. There is some progress with the above for example in case of the browser. MS joining Alliance for Open Media is one such case. But quite a lot still remains problematic.
- merb 10y ago
  > 3. Stop Windows tax / Windows bundling anti-competitive practices. well bundling is not a problem for me. I mean most people will use windows no matter how much better linux gets. however the bigger problem is that windows actually allows vendors to create shitty drivers and fix shitty hardware within there kernel, that should not happen. windows should ONLY allow signed drivers for companies that are willing to create specifications for their devices.
- kovach 10y ago
  3. Are they still doing that though, I don't see any evidence? Over here (Macedonia) you can buy laptops/PCs from most brands without Windows, cheaper. 4. What really irks me, is a point you missed: they are dealing with corrupt governments everywhere to make sure all government and education computers have Windows and Office, and that is what gets taught in schools.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    > Are they still doing that though, I don't see any evidence? Over here (Macedonia) you can buy laptops/PCs from most brands without Windows, cheaper. In many countries yes, they are still doing it.
2bitencryption 10y ago
Assuming Platinum is the highest membership, wouldn't it be fair to consider the possibility that MS contributed MORE than 500k?

by bomdo 10y ago

simosx 10y ago

While 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.

zanny 10y ago
Linux is a kernel, not an OS, and Microsoft has been abjectly hostile to the OSes that use Linux and respect user freedoms. If they weren't, they would have never pushed hostile proprietary vendor lock in tech like DirectX12 or Universal Windows Platform in recent years.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  (1) That's hair splitting of common usage. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux "Linux was originally developed as a free operating system for personal computers based on the Intel x86 architecture" "Linux has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems." "Linux is not the only such operating system" "Linux is also the leading operating system on servers and other big iron systems" I'm surprised you didn't distinguish it as an OS kernel, instead of leaving it ambiguous as to what kind of kernel it is, e.g. popcorn. (2) The opposite is true. For example, Ubuntu user-space (i.e. sans Linux kernel) is available on Windows.
  - cyphar 10y ago
    > (1) That's hair splitting of common usage. The operating system's technical name is GNU/Linux[1]. Many people call it Linux incorrectly, but it is actually a serious distinction[2]. I would agree however that Linux is the most widely used OS kernel. To make the distinction more obvious, can you explain what the difference is between "Linux" and Android (which uses the Linux kernel). [ Hint: the difference is that Android doesn't contain GNU. ] [1]: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.en.html [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy
    - richardwhiuk 10y ago
      Linux is a class of operating systems which use the Linux kernel. Referring to Linux as an OS, is a perfectly fine thing to generically mean 'an OS which uses Linux as a kernel' and has an agreed common meaning. Almost no Operating System is precisely GNU/Linux - most have vim, an X server, GNOME or KDE, 7zip etc. And the argument that GNU is a more principal argument is incorrect.

executesorder66 10y ago

> and they are genuinely interested in cooperation. In my opinion, they are not at all interested in cooperation until they port Office and Visual Studio to Linux or open source them.

wmccullough 10y ago
Do you not count SQL Server, VS Code, ASP.NET core running Linux as cooperation? They are genuinely trying here.
- executesorder66 10y ago
  It is definitely a step in the right direction. But I'd argue that the most used microsoft product in the world (besides Windows) is MS Office. What holds a lot of people back from running Linux is that they don't like dealing with compatibility issues with LibreOffice and MS Office. Microsoft knows if they open source or port MS Office to Linux, they will lose a massive market share and millions of people will stop using Windows. And I don't blame them, any reasonable business would not do something like that. But unless they do that, I don't see how they can claim to be cooperating when they refuse to port their main product to Linux.
  - Zyst 10y ago
    >Microsoft knows if they open source or port MS Office to Linux, they will lose a massive market share and millions of people will stop using Windows. That's a huge assumption. There's no real indication that people would stop using Windows if Office existed in Linux. If that were the case, then porting Office to OS X would've had a similar effect, don't you think? Ultimately I believe the reason Microsoft doesn't bother porting to Linux is that the market-share is just not worth the cost of re-writing for another platform, and keeping it updated. Additionally, as a compromise Office 365 runs on browser, which further decreases the incentive to port to Linux. Since you can get a similar experience using Office 365 on Linux, that said I won't be so disingenuous as to imply that the experience is as good as a native application. In conclusion, Linux has a very small market share, so making a native application for it might not be cost effective. Additionally, Microsoft might see that market share as "served" regardless due to their online Office 365 web application.

finid 10y ago

I get the impression that he wants to leave the cloud to linux and try to position Windows as a user-facing client. Is that why they're pushing the Azure cloud service - to benefit Linux?

mhall119 10y ago
Considering 50% of Azure instances are Linux, perhaps?
- ickler8 10y ago
  other way around.

qplex 10y ago

Reading your comment, I was suddenly reminded of the days when the Windows vs. Linux TCO (=total cost of ownership) debacle was all aflame... ah the sad irony.

zekevermillion 10y ago

This is the ultimate embrace, extend move. Hopefully it means MS has reconciled itself to the fact that it cannot easily extinguish Linux. I would expect MS to use this position to divert headlines away from the concept of free software, and toward the MS brand; and to introduce dependencies to third-party software that makes it difficult to extract MS proprietary code entirely from the Linux ecosystem.

Ezhik 10y ago
I think we need a bot to call EEE every time Microsoft is mentioned.
- zekevermillion 10y ago
  I don't think they are necessarily doing the extinguish part anymore as a primary strategy. More like embrace, extend, entangle.
  - Ezhik 10y ago
    Making people want to use your product was a good business strategy last I heard.

tn13 10y ago

> being a platinum member entails donating $500k The important thing about this news is not the title or the amount. The important thing to notice that Microsoft has moved from extreme hostility to active co-operation with general Linux community. This is a good move and it benefits Linux community lot more than Microsoft. I always felt that it was needless to paint MS/Linux as some kind of zero some game to begin with. Sad that MS's top leadership fell prey to it in the initial years trying to hurt Linux.

sqeaky 10y ago
I don't see how this means they have stopped being hostile. For example, they are still suing android manufacturers. I think they are doing this because they think they have to and not because they have actually embraced anything. I think they are trying to buy goodwill.
- drvdevd 10y ago
  All of these companies in the mobile space seem to be constantly suing each other though right? Microsoft is no more hostile than Apple or Google in this regard?
drvdevd 10y ago
We must also not forget that other companies have since proven that the idea of a proprietary operating system (or just kernel) as the main base of IP has started to look somewhat obsolete anyway. Now we have proprietary services and systems like Android and macOS have demonstrated that you can take an (at least partly) open source OS and slap most of the proprietary bits in userspace quite successfully. For that matter the "next version" of Windows might as well be a rebranded version of Android or something. Why keep maintaining your own OS kernel when you can have the community do it for you with a modest donation? NT will be with us for a while yet, though I can't understand the business case for not end of lifing it at some point, especially when most of the engineers you hire don't know it well.
hueving 10y ago
How does this benefit the Linux community even more? Microsofts move to include shells and a kernel compatible with Unix may end up being one of the most damaging things to Linux in a long time. All of the casual users that don't care about open source will just give in and use Windows as their OS when they hit a driver snag or something since they still get the userspace tools they like.

nitrogen 10y ago

Half the HN frontpage right now is MS articles. Seems oddly coincidental. We can't forget about the bad MS is still doing: forced Win10 upgrades, Win10 spyware, Android patent extortion, FAT/VFAT/exFAT patent suits and licenses, etc. The developer arm seems to be working hard, which is commendable. But looking at the rest of the org, this just seems like another Embrace round of the EEE cycle.

Analemma_ 10y ago
It's not "oddly coincidental", it's Microsoft's developer conference today, which is where the announcement was made. During WWDC and I/O the front page is filled with Apple and Google news too.
- tener 10y ago
  Comparing to Apple, Microsoft seems to be getting more attention to their news, which is a praiseworthy change.
  - merb 10y ago
    well since steve jobs died there wasn't anything noteworthy. I mean seriously, was there any new device or and WORTHY feature? I can't think of any. And old devices like the mac series or others weren't overhauled with something that made it more interesting. I mean everything since then was the touchbar from mac, which many weren't seeing as that feature, they basically removed more than they added noteworthy stuff. That's why they probably will suffer soon. They need a leader to bring them forward and not a businessman.
baybal2 10y ago
Let's wait for Linux Millenium Edition
- Crespyl 10y ago
  Well, we did already get 3.11 "Linux For Workgroups"[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_kernel_names

shmerl 10y ago

> I think it's fair to assume that the days of "embrace, extend and extinguish" are over and they are genuinely interested in cooperation. I'd welcome that, but MS still needs to fix several very major issues which stand in the way of such cooperation. 1. Stop the patent aggression. 2. More support for open standards. Especially in 3D graphics (DirectX lock-in), filesystems on removable media (exFAT lock-in), and so on and so forth. 3. Stop Windows tax / Windows bundling anti-competitive practices. Once those are changed for the better, I'd say MS really changed. There is some progress with the above for example in case of the browser. MS joining Alliance for Open Media is one such case. But quite a lot still remains problematic.

merb 10y ago
> 3. Stop Windows tax / Windows bundling anti-competitive practices. well bundling is not a problem for me. I mean most people will use windows no matter how much better linux gets. however the bigger problem is that windows actually allows vendors to create shitty drivers and fix shitty hardware within there kernel, that should not happen. windows should ONLY allow signed drivers for companies that are willing to create specifications for their devices.
kovach 10y ago
3. Are they still doing that though, I don't see any evidence? Over here (Macedonia) you can buy laptops/PCs from most brands without Windows, cheaper. 4. What really irks me, is a point you missed: they are dealing with corrupt governments everywhere to make sure all government and education computers have Windows and Office, and that is what gets taught in schools.
- shmerl 10y ago
  > Are they still doing that though, I don't see any evidence? Over here (Macedonia) you can buy laptops/PCs from most brands without Windows, cheaper. In many countries yes, they are still doing it.

2bitencryption 10y ago

Assuming Platinum is the highest membership, wouldn't it be fair to consider the possibility that MS contributed MORE than 500k?