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Containers is a poor example since it has nothing to do with "Linux community". Containers, Unikernels, Library OSs or whatever you want to call them, have been
by ksk 10y ago
Containers is a poor example since it has nothing to do with "Linux community". Containers, Unikernels, Library OSs or whatever you want to call them, have been a staple of operating system research for decades. Pretty much no feature on any current OS is really all that innovative.
Even so, give the extremely large pool of talent at their disposal, there is nothing that Microsoft would not able to implement on their own. Whats typically the case is they often wait for something to become popular and then enter the market with their me-too. Not knocking their strategy, it certainly works because they are good at making incremental improvements (esp in the core OS/kernel space)
- betaby 10y agoNeither is FAT was/is innovative. This doesn't nullify patent or first adopter arguments. In context of Linux container is good example of Microsoft trying to piggyback on Linux.
- ksk 10y agoYeah, the thing with the FAT patent is ugly and is going to leave a black mark on MS for a long time. But is your argument that MS joined the Linux foundation so that nobody would sue them for using containers? I highly doubt that is the case since nobody has expressed any interest in suing over patents. In any case it would probably be IBM or Sun or one of those old-school commercial UNIX companies that have patents on this stuff. Whats more likely the case that MS wants to make sure that people who don't want to use Windows would still use their Azure services. This is mostly a token amount to show that they're serious about supporting Linux based workloads.