6 ms·

> "That's a long time, and we only heard rumors because another very large operating system vendor told Intel to get off their tails and tell us about it." I w

> "That's a long time, and we only heard rumors because another very large operating system vendor told Intel to get off their tails and tell us about it." I wonder which operating system vendor pressured Intel to tell the Linux dev community, especially because it sounds like it was a non Linux OS vendor. Whomever it was, good job! But it seems like Intel has angered the Linux community as well as the various BSD operating systems. You would think Intel would be doing whatever it can to please all operating system vendors especially now that AMD is getting competitive again.

judge2020 8y ago
My guess is Microsoft seeing how recently they're pouring a lot of resources into the Linux subsystem and how they're trying to seem more "developer-oriented" overall in recent months.
- 2trill2spill 8y ago
  That was my guess as well, also doesn't Microsoft run some Linux in their Azure cloud? So that adds yet another incentive for Microsoft to help Linux folks out. Edit: I found a link confirming that Microsoft uses Linux for networking in their Azure data centers [1]. [1]: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/microsoft-runs-azure-networking-on-linux/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/microsoft-runs-azure...
  - notimetorelax 8y ago
    I work for Microsoft. We build customer facing business applications on Linux, Java, Go, etc. Microsoft is Big!
    - 2trill2spill 8y ago
      I'm sure Microsoft is doing this now, but wasn't that frowned upon before Satya Nadella took over as CEO or was building on non Microsoft products okay before?
      - FireBeyond 8y ago
        I worked in RedWest for Microsoft in the mid 2000s. Firefox, Chrome, Macs were all common in my building.
      - mikekchar 8y ago
        I worked for a Corel at the turn of the century (ha ha, feels weird saying that). We worked very closely with MS from about 2000 (when MS injected about $130 million into the company). While Corel had their Linux distro, when I worked there we were forbidden from using free software (and specifically GPL software) other than on the Linux code. I heard it was due to an agreement with MS (hearsay, but I believe it). I had my knuckles wrapped a few times for disobediently editing my code using Emacs -- eventually I got used to Visual Studio (and even learned to appreciate it to a certain degree). Things started shifting around 2002 or 2003 and by the time Vector bought out Corel in 2004, I was happily using Emacs and SVN with nobody batting an eyelid. We also worked with MS to implement the shared source version of .Net, which probably nobody remembers. It was supposed to be an "open" reference implementation of .Net. Mono really took on that role, I think mainly because the shared source reference implementation had a completely useless license. You could see the wheels turning in the heads of the MS people on that project. They were actually doing really good work, but everyone knew that the project was going to be meaningless. IMHO, it was never a kind of binary switch from "open source is cancer" to "we can make money through open source". It was more of a slow internalisation that open source was a better business model for a lot of stuff that MS was doing. It may be that the switch in CEO helped that transition, but it was clear (at least from my perspective) that the wheels were already in motion for a long time prior to that. I'm sure there are a lot of people still in MS that are rabid about having to control every last scrap of their "IP", but as MS starts to solve some of their revenue problems with open source solutions I think these people will lose relevance. I don't know if the corporate culture of MS (or even most large organisations) will ever get to the point of embracing free software ideals, but at least they seem to see the advantages of engineering collaboration in some circumstances.
        int_19h 8y ago
        It was a slow transition even before Satya - remember the Ms-PL license, and ASP.NET MVC being open sourced under that with great fanfare? Or IronPython and IronRuby? The difference before and after was that before, it felt like carefully controlled and contained experiments, that were still treated as decidedly different and unusual on the inside, and on which the plug could be pulled at any moment. After, it was like a flood with the gates opened. We went from spending a year to get approval to use Boost (and failing!), to a streamlined approval system for pretty much any piece of OSS out there. It's very visible in Visual Studio if you look closely at the files installed - compare, say, VS 2012 to VS 2015, and note how many more OSS bits are in the full install of the latter. The same goes for releasing under OSS. You might notice that a lot more developer tools are OSS these days - even many new bits written for closed-source products like VS. Hell, I shipped some Microsoft code under GPLv2 a couple years ago - and it was easier to do than getting Boost approved under the old regime! So I think it's fair to say that Satya and his cadre of execs did drastically re-imagine the company in that regard, rather than just finalizing an existing process.
  - sparkling 8y ago
    Pretty sure MS has a ton of internal services running on Linux based systems too.
- simcop2387 8y ago
  Along with that I'd imagine that they're really invested in it with Azure and such too. If all their customers were vulnerable to this they could end up in a bad position. They could obviously work on their own patches but they'd have to get them upstream into distros without telling them what's going on because of the nda/silence desired by Intel. That would leave them in a terrible position.
cthalupa 8y ago
Azure has a sizable customer base running Linux, so I imagine it was Microsoft.

judge2020 8y ago

My guess is Microsoft seeing how recently they're pouring a lot of resources into the Linux subsystem and how they're trying to seem more "developer-oriented" overall in recent months.

2trill2spill 8y ago
That was my guess as well, also doesn't Microsoft run some Linux in their Azure cloud? So that adds yet another incentive for Microsoft to help Linux folks out. Edit: I found a link confirming that Microsoft uses Linux for networking in their Azure data centers [1]. [1]: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/microsoft-runs-azure-networking-on-linux/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/microsoft-runs-azure...
- notimetorelax 8y ago
  I work for Microsoft. We build customer facing business applications on Linux, Java, Go, etc. Microsoft is Big!
  - 2trill2spill 8y ago
    I'm sure Microsoft is doing this now, but wasn't that frowned upon before Satya Nadella took over as CEO or was building on non Microsoft products okay before?
    - FireBeyond 8y ago
      I worked in RedWest for Microsoft in the mid 2000s. Firefox, Chrome, Macs were all common in my building.
    - mikekchar 8y ago
      I worked for a Corel at the turn of the century (ha ha, feels weird saying that). We worked very closely with MS from about 2000 (when MS injected about $130 million into the company). While Corel had their Linux distro, when I worked there we were forbidden from using free software (and specifically GPL software) other than on the Linux code. I heard it was due to an agreement with MS (hearsay, but I believe it). I had my knuckles wrapped a few times for disobediently editing my code using Emacs -- eventually I got used to Visual Studio (and even learned to appreciate it to a certain degree). Things started shifting around 2002 or 2003 and by the time Vector bought out Corel in 2004, I was happily using Emacs and SVN with nobody batting an eyelid. We also worked with MS to implement the shared source version of .Net, which probably nobody remembers. It was supposed to be an "open" reference implementation of .Net. Mono really took on that role, I think mainly because the shared source reference implementation had a completely useless license. You could see the wheels turning in the heads of the MS people on that project. They were actually doing really good work, but everyone knew that the project was going to be meaningless. IMHO, it was never a kind of binary switch from "open source is cancer" to "we can make money through open source". It was more of a slow internalisation that open source was a better business model for a lot of stuff that MS was doing. It may be that the switch in CEO helped that transition, but it was clear (at least from my perspective) that the wheels were already in motion for a long time prior to that. I'm sure there are a lot of people still in MS that are rabid about having to control every last scrap of their "IP", but as MS starts to solve some of their revenue problems with open source solutions I think these people will lose relevance. I don't know if the corporate culture of MS (or even most large organisations) will ever get to the point of embracing free software ideals, but at least they seem to see the advantages of engineering collaboration in some circumstances.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        It was a slow transition even before Satya - remember the Ms-PL license, and ASP.NET MVC being open sourced under that with great fanfare? Or IronPython and IronRuby? The difference before and after was that before, it felt like carefully controlled and contained experiments, that were still treated as decidedly different and unusual on the inside, and on which the plug could be pulled at any moment. After, it was like a flood with the gates opened. We went from spending a year to get approval to use Boost (and failing!), to a streamlined approval system for pretty much any piece of OSS out there. It's very visible in Visual Studio if you look closely at the files installed - compare, say, VS 2012 to VS 2015, and note how many more OSS bits are in the full install of the latter. The same goes for releasing under OSS. You might notice that a lot more developer tools are OSS these days - even many new bits written for closed-source products like VS. Hell, I shipped some Microsoft code under GPLv2 a couple years ago - and it was easier to do than getting Boost approved under the old regime! So I think it's fair to say that Satya and his cadre of execs did drastically re-imagine the company in that regard, rather than just finalizing an existing process.
- sparkling 8y ago
  Pretty sure MS has a ton of internal services running on Linux based systems too.
simcop2387 8y ago
Along with that I'd imagine that they're really invested in it with Azure and such too. If all their customers were vulnerable to this they could end up in a bad position. They could obviously work on their own patches but they'd have to get them upstream into distros without telling them what's going on because of the nda/silence desired by Intel. That would leave them in a terrible position.

cthalupa 8y ago

Azure has a sizable customer base running Linux, so I imagine it was Microsoft.