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Linus Torvalds Shares His Thoughts on Microsoft’s New-Found Love for Linux

52 points by Alupis 7y ago

thomasjudge 7y ago
Found this a while back and thought it was an interesting perspective vis a vis some of the collective (mine included) perceptions of Microsoft based on their past behavior, illegal and unethical business practices and such. Not to necessarily excuse or erase that, but Nadella-era MSFT is very different than Gates- or Ballmer-era https://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx https://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  (disclaimer: I used to work at Microsoft) There's an important lesson here: while reasonable skepticism is always good, it's important to remember that a policy of "never forgive, never forget" actually creates moral hazard. If people/companies think they will never be forgiven for current misdeeds even if they get better, then there's no incentive to get better and they might as well keep being horrible. Allowing people (or companies) to turn over a new leaf incentivizes good behavior.
  - zarkov99 7y ago
    One could also argue a policy of always forget/always forgive creates its own set of moral hazards by reducing the deterrence against bad behaviours.
    - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
      It’s not one or the other.
      - zarkov99 7y ago
        Exactly.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    I don't think it is reasonable to expect people completely disconnected from the negative effects of their actions to "turn over a new leaf", especially when they stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. From all the examples I can see, "ask for forgiveness, not permission" is how many of the largest companies have become economically successful.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    At least you would like to see such companies publicly admit they did wrong in the past if they expect any kind of forgiveness.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
      The point is, managers don't think in moral terms. They think in terms like risk vs. market opportunity. I've never heard a phrase like "But wouldn't it be immoral?" during a board meeting. So, if they feel no wrong was ever done, what should they ask forgiveness for?
  - oska 7y ago
    This is flawed reasoning when you understand that some people and some companies are sociopathic. They will never 'turn over a new leaf' because they are incapable of doing so.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- giomasce 7y ago
  Nadella-era MSFT is different from Gates- or Ballmer-era, and this is very good, but, as a Linux user and free software contributor, I wouldn't say I feel "loved". I'd say I feel MSFT is trying to somehow get advantage of my work (which is fine, given that it is free software) while holding back what I would like to have from them (specifications for MSFT interfaces and file systems, if not code, so that better interoperability can be implemented). Which is also fine, of course, they do not owe me anything, but still I do not feel "loved". (BTW, I already have more editors and code hosting platforms than I need, so they are not good points for me)
pdonis 7y ago
The claim that MS is "putting the Linux kernel at the heart of Windows 10 as part of WSL 2" is an overstatement. If they really wanted to put the Linux kernel at the heart of Windows, they would ditch the Windows kernel, which would be no great loss, and make Windows a GUI over the Linux kernel.
- nullbyte 7y ago
  The only problem with this is that there are thousands of business-critical applications that are designed for the Windows NT kernel... Many of them have deep integrations with the operating system. Just think of all the Steam games that are only available on Windows!
  - pdonis 7y ago
    And yet programming languages ever since C were supposed to be cross platform. If you have to call on specific features of a particular OS when writing business application code, that's a problem with the OS.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > And yet programming languages ever since C were supposed to be cross platform. Some were, plenty were not, and C is nothing special as a turning point in that. > If you have to call on specific features of a particular OS when writing business application code, that's a problem with the OS. No, insofar as it's a problem, it's a problem with the application language or libraries, in that they don't abstract sufficiently the deployment platform. Now, if they are bundled with the OS, it may be the same product as the OS, but it's not really an OS. problem.
      - pdonis 7y ago
        > Some were, plenty were not Which ones were not?
        7y ago
yamato2022 7y ago
They pay a good chunk of his salary, I assume?
- CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
  As per https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/, the Linux Foundation pays the salaries of Linux and Greg K-H. So Microsoft do indeed indirectly pay for a part of their salaries; along with AT&T, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, VMware, Accenture, Juniper Networks, Toyota (the list of corporate members is at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/), plus all of the non-student Individual supporters (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/individual/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/individual/).
sys_64738 7y ago
I think Linus will end up working at Microsoft some day.
- chambo622 7y ago
  This is a hot take and I like it
- jimbob45 7y ago
  For those questioning the math like me, he's currently 49.
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  I think Linus will retire.
  - nine_k 7y ago
    I don't think Linus is currently working because he desperately needs money. I suppose that Linus might continue working to further a case he cares about.
corford 7y ago
I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out (https://images.app.goo.gl/Tqj5xPmgueJotQuN7 https://images.app.goo.gl/Tqj5xPmgueJotQuN7) but I agree with Linus. The landscape has changed and the money today is in SaaS and Cloud. MS missed the mobile revolution but they appear intent on ensuring their slice of the "cloud" pie through Azure. Making sure they support the linux ecosystem is a no brainer (and I think they're far too late to embrace and extend). Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too.
- cure 7y ago
  > I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out And XBill, don't forget about XBill! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill
- lbotos 7y ago
  Yes, but now Microsoft owns: - VSCode - GitHub As well. They are fighting for the hearts and minds of the next generation of developers. They might win.
- basch 7y ago
  >I think they're far too late to embrace and extend Isnt that exactly what their new android phone will become? Android that also runs Windows apps? >Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too. In this case, Cloud is saas and iaas/paas. On the saas side, they have a huge industry lead with exchange/sharepoint, and transitioned with a similar playbook to Adobe. Theres too many customers that wont leave Outlook/Excel, and having hosted Outlook/Excel storage native to the programs themselves, is enough for many companies to make an overall vendor choice. Because of Ballmers licensing genius, once you buy Outlook/Excel, bundle pricing makes piecemealing with competitors products prohibitivly more expensive. Winning iaas is mostly just about how much money they dump into capital. Winning paas, if one can win and become the defacto api standard, isnt something Microsoft needs to survive. They could "lose" to aws, adopt all its conventions, and be a drop in replacement. I dont think that would happen, but winning the paas battle, as the only survivor isnt essential to Microsofts survival. Microsoft also has one other push that few others have brought a challenge against, and that is corporate identity. With AD transitioning to AzureAD, and Office 365 being that gateway drug, companies will be invested into Microsoft's Identity services for decades to come. Transitioning to a higher priced product would net nearly zero gain. Okta might be nice if you dont already have anything, but it wont outgrow msft. At least second place and thrown into a bundle is the msft motto. Time will tell if that model translates to Azure paas pricing.
bbanyc 7y ago
Microsoft wants to compete with Amazon and Google, and god bless them if they've been humbled by their recent failures and want to play fair now. I'd be more concerned about IBM, which through its acquisition of Red Hat now controls or funds most of the software in the "traditional" Linux environment.
- pnutjam 7y ago
  Don't forget about Suse, they support alot of the opensource ecosystem. You can actually buy RedHat support from them also. https://www.suse.com/c/know-suse-supporting-rhat-years/ https://www.suse.com/c/know-suse-supporting-rhat-years/
iamwil 7y ago
Whether Microsoft will stay like this just depends largely on their current strategic positioning and how their organization is set up to make money now, rather than how they acted in the past. If the incentives are aligned, they'll be well behaved. If not, then they'll do whatever they can.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Almost. Whether Microsoft will stay like this depends on how they respond to the changing landscape moving forward.
oska 7y ago
Can we redirect to the original article [1] please (linked in the submitted article). [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-isnt-worried-about-microsoft-taking-over-linux/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-isnt-worried-ab...
peterwwillis 7y ago
I remember when everyone was a Google, Facebook and Apple fanboy, and those tunes sure changed. I also remember when the whole Open Source/Free Software community loathed Microsoft. Maybe the lesson in all this is, don't assume what a ginormous capitalist corporation will do based on your feelings about their brand.
- BuckRogers 7y ago
  Apple is still good. But their business model is aligned to be good stewards of the user unlike Facebook or Google. Microsoft and Apple products are irreplaceable today as well, while Google and Facebook offer convenience but no necessary value.
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    > Apple is still good I think you miss my point... an entire company can't be "good". "Apple" is a brand. You may like a lot of their products, but they also have some products with shit features, and they sometimes do "things" that are not so much "good" for "the users" as they are good for the company. Their MacBook Pro keyboards are the worst in the industry. They make it so a user can't repair a product that they own. They censor application platforms based on the country a user is in. The majority of their products are a "captive market", often impossible to use with anything but another Apple product. There's many things Apple does that are against the users. But here you are, enjoying some of their products, so you call their entire brand, and presumably their entire product line, "good". How does one define "good", then? Good enough for all? For some? For you? Good in quality? Good morally or ethically, and if so, based on whose morals/ethics? Do the people and places they effect outside of their immediate users matter? I don't think it's useful to think of an entire brand in such a simplistic way. BTW, Google and Facebook offer necessary value. Facebook is used to keep up with people's lives (without it, many grandparents would know next to nothing of the lives of their grandchildren, for example) and encompasses two of the largest instant messaging platforms. Google is probably the biggest provider of e-mail, an absolutely essential component of having an online life (which is increasingly necessary for more of regular life, from getting a ride somewhere, to accessing government services, to transferring funds), to say nothing of search, maps, docs. And many of these services would be pointless without the Apple/Google/Microsoft platforms, but many of those platforms would be pointless without the services. So what's "necessary" is a bit subjective. (Caveat to all of the above: Fuck Oracle.)
jupp0r 7y ago
The article leaves out the minor detail that through sponsoring the Linux Foundation, Microsoft is paying Linus' paycheck. That being said, I'm really excited about the apparent culture shift inside Microsoft. Let's forget about the ugly past and judge them by their recent actions.
- _eht 7y ago
  Honest question: does this ideology scale to regard white American’s history with slavery?
  - toolz 7y ago
    For me? Absolutely. I hope no one is judging me based on my great grandfather's sins. That would be highly unproductive to treat people as if they were born having done humanity a great wrong.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  Such as their imposition of extensive telemetry in windows 10?
  - folkhack 7y ago
    Right? You're using a piece of adware/spyware if you're not on the LTSC/B version. Even the Enterprise copies are atrocious now. They're arguably worse than they were 10-20 years ago IMO... throwing some Linux support on top of stuff just makes me scoff.
smitty1e 7y ago
I appreciate that Torvalds is no ideologue, and that his "tit for tat" approach extends to Redmond. The relatively more purist views of the FSF are of value, as well. A spectrum of opinion keeps any Towers of Babel from getting too tall.
yaris 7y ago
Funny how some people still fear MS controlling Linux (with intent to kill of course), although RedHat/IBM is much more real danger.
- jitl 7y ago
  RedHat/IBM already won now that SystemD is everywhere because Gnome requires it.

52 points by Alupis 7y ago

Found this a while back and thought it was an interesting perspective vis a vis some of the collective (mine included) perceptions of Microsoft based on their past behavior, illegal and unethical business practices and such. Not to necessarily excuse or erase that, but Nadella-era MSFT is very different than Gates- or Ballmer-era https://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx https://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx

Analemma_ 7y ago
(disclaimer: I used to work at Microsoft) There's an important lesson here: while reasonable skepticism is always good, it's important to remember that a policy of "never forgive, never forget" actually creates moral hazard. If people/companies think they will never be forgiven for current misdeeds even if they get better, then there's no incentive to get better and they might as well keep being horrible. Allowing people (or companies) to turn over a new leaf incentivizes good behavior.
- zarkov99 7y ago
  One could also argue a policy of always forget/always forgive creates its own set of moral hazards by reducing the deterrence against bad behaviours.
  - GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    It’s not one or the other.
    - zarkov99 7y ago
      Exactly.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  I don't think it is reasonable to expect people completely disconnected from the negative effects of their actions to "turn over a new leaf", especially when they stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. From all the examples I can see, "ask for forgiveness, not permission" is how many of the largest companies have become economically successful.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- ekianjo 7y ago
  At least you would like to see such companies publicly admit they did wrong in the past if they expect any kind of forgiveness.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
    The point is, managers don't think in moral terms. They think in terms like risk vs. market opportunity. I've never heard a phrase like "But wouldn't it be immoral?" during a board meeting. So, if they feel no wrong was ever done, what should they ask forgiveness for?
- oska 7y ago
  This is flawed reasoning when you understand that some people and some companies are sociopathic. They will never 'turn over a new leaf' because they are incapable of doing so.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
giomasce 7y ago
Nadella-era MSFT is different from Gates- or Ballmer-era, and this is very good, but, as a Linux user and free software contributor, I wouldn't say I feel "loved". I'd say I feel MSFT is trying to somehow get advantage of my work (which is fine, given that it is free software) while holding back what I would like to have from them (specifications for MSFT interfaces and file systems, if not code, so that better interoperability can be implemented). Which is also fine, of course, they do not owe me anything, but still I do not feel "loved". (BTW, I already have more editors and code hosting platforms than I need, so they are not good points for me)

pdonis 7y ago

The claim that MS is "putting the Linux kernel at the heart of Windows 10 as part of WSL 2" is an overstatement. If they really wanted to put the Linux kernel at the heart of Windows, they would ditch the Windows kernel, which would be no great loss, and make Windows a GUI over the Linux kernel.

nullbyte 7y ago
The only problem with this is that there are thousands of business-critical applications that are designed for the Windows NT kernel... Many of them have deep integrations with the operating system. Just think of all the Steam games that are only available on Windows!
- pdonis 7y ago
  And yet programming languages ever since C were supposed to be cross platform. If you have to call on specific features of a particular OS when writing business application code, that's a problem with the OS.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > And yet programming languages ever since C were supposed to be cross platform. Some were, plenty were not, and C is nothing special as a turning point in that. > If you have to call on specific features of a particular OS when writing business application code, that's a problem with the OS. No, insofar as it's a problem, it's a problem with the application language or libraries, in that they don't abstract sufficiently the deployment platform. Now, if they are bundled with the OS, it may be the same product as the OS, but it's not really an OS. problem.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > Some were, plenty were not Which ones were not?
      - 7y ago

yamato2022 7y ago

They pay a good chunk of his salary, I assume?

CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
As per https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/, the Linux Foundation pays the salaries of Linux and Greg K-H. So Microsoft do indeed indirectly pay for a part of their salaries; along with AT&T, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, VMware, Accenture, Juniper Networks, Toyota (the list of corporate members is at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/), plus all of the non-student Individual supporters (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/individual/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/individual/).

sys_64738 7y ago

I think Linus will end up working at Microsoft some day.

chambo622 7y ago
This is a hot take and I like it
jimbob45 7y ago
For those questioning the math like me, he's currently 49.
newnewpdro 7y ago
I think Linus will retire.
- nine_k 7y ago
  I don't think Linus is currently working because he desperately needs money. I suppose that Linus might continue working to further a case he cares about.

corford 7y ago

I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out (https://images.app.goo.gl/Tqj5xPmgueJotQuN7 https://images.app.goo.gl/Tqj5xPmgueJotQuN7) but I agree with Linus. The landscape has changed and the money today is in SaaS and Cloud. MS missed the mobile revolution but they appear intent on ensuring their slice of the "cloud" pie through Azure. Making sure they support the linux ecosystem is a no brainer (and I think they're far too late to embrace and extend). Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too.

cure 7y ago
> I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out And XBill, don't forget about XBill! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill
lbotos 7y ago
Yes, but now Microsoft owns: - VSCode - GitHub As well. They are fighting for the hearts and minds of the next generation of developers. They might win.
basch 7y ago
>I think they're far too late to embrace and extend Isnt that exactly what their new android phone will become? Android that also runs Windows apps? >Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too. In this case, Cloud is saas and iaas/paas. On the saas side, they have a huge industry lead with exchange/sharepoint, and transitioned with a similar playbook to Adobe. Theres too many customers that wont leave Outlook/Excel, and having hosted Outlook/Excel storage native to the programs themselves, is enough for many companies to make an overall vendor choice. Because of Ballmers licensing genius, once you buy Outlook/Excel, bundle pricing makes piecemealing with competitors products prohibitivly more expensive. Winning iaas is mostly just about how much money they dump into capital. Winning paas, if one can win and become the defacto api standard, isnt something Microsoft needs to survive. They could "lose" to aws, adopt all its conventions, and be a drop in replacement. I dont think that would happen, but winning the paas battle, as the only survivor isnt essential to Microsofts survival. Microsoft also has one other push that few others have brought a challenge against, and that is corporate identity. With AD transitioning to AzureAD, and Office 365 being that gateway drug, companies will be invested into Microsoft's Identity services for decades to come. Transitioning to a higher priced product would net nearly zero gain. Okta might be nice if you dont already have anything, but it wont outgrow msft. At least second place and thrown into a bundle is the msft motto. Time will tell if that model translates to Azure paas pricing.

bbanyc 7y ago

Microsoft wants to compete with Amazon and Google, and god bless them if they've been humbled by their recent failures and want to play fair now. I'd be more concerned about IBM, which through its acquisition of Red Hat now controls or funds most of the software in the "traditional" Linux environment.

pnutjam 7y ago
Don't forget about Suse, they support alot of the opensource ecosystem. You can actually buy RedHat support from them also. https://www.suse.com/c/know-suse-supporting-rhat-years/ https://www.suse.com/c/know-suse-supporting-rhat-years/

iamwil 7y ago

Whether Microsoft will stay like this just depends largely on their current strategic positioning and how their organization is set up to make money now, rather than how they acted in the past. If the incentives are aligned, they'll be well behaved. If not, then they'll do whatever they can.

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Almost. Whether Microsoft will stay like this depends on how they respond to the changing landscape moving forward.

oska 7y ago

Can we redirect to the original article [1] please (linked in the submitted article). [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-isnt-worried-about-microsoft-taking-over-linux/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-isnt-worried-ab...

peterwwillis 7y ago

I remember when everyone was a Google, Facebook and Apple fanboy, and those tunes sure changed. I also remember when the whole Open Source/Free Software community loathed Microsoft. Maybe the lesson in all this is, don't assume what a ginormous capitalist corporation will do based on your feelings about their brand.

BuckRogers 7y ago
Apple is still good. But their business model is aligned to be good stewards of the user unlike Facebook or Google. Microsoft and Apple products are irreplaceable today as well, while Google and Facebook offer convenience but no necessary value.
- peterwwillis 7y ago
  > Apple is still good I think you miss my point... an entire company can't be "good". "Apple" is a brand. You may like a lot of their products, but they also have some products with shit features, and they sometimes do "things" that are not so much "good" for "the users" as they are good for the company. Their MacBook Pro keyboards are the worst in the industry. They make it so a user can't repair a product that they own. They censor application platforms based on the country a user is in. The majority of their products are a "captive market", often impossible to use with anything but another Apple product. There's many things Apple does that are against the users. But here you are, enjoying some of their products, so you call their entire brand, and presumably their entire product line, "good". How does one define "good", then? Good enough for all? For some? For you? Good in quality? Good morally or ethically, and if so, based on whose morals/ethics? Do the people and places they effect outside of their immediate users matter? I don't think it's useful to think of an entire brand in such a simplistic way. BTW, Google and Facebook offer necessary value. Facebook is used to keep up with people's lives (without it, many grandparents would know next to nothing of the lives of their grandchildren, for example) and encompasses two of the largest instant messaging platforms. Google is probably the biggest provider of e-mail, an absolutely essential component of having an online life (which is increasingly necessary for more of regular life, from getting a ride somewhere, to accessing government services, to transferring funds), to say nothing of search, maps, docs. And many of these services would be pointless without the Apple/Google/Microsoft platforms, but many of those platforms would be pointless without the services. So what's "necessary" is a bit subjective. (Caveat to all of the above: Fuck Oracle.)

jupp0r 7y ago

The article leaves out the minor detail that through sponsoring the Linux Foundation, Microsoft is paying Linus' paycheck. That being said, I'm really excited about the apparent culture shift inside Microsoft. Let's forget about the ugly past and judge them by their recent actions.

_eht 7y ago
Honest question: does this ideology scale to regard white American’s history with slavery?
- toolz 7y ago
  For me? Absolutely. I hope no one is judging me based on my great grandfather's sins. That would be highly unproductive to treat people as if they were born having done humanity a great wrong.
AlexCoventry 7y ago
Such as their imposition of extensive telemetry in windows 10?
- folkhack 7y ago
  Right? You're using a piece of adware/spyware if you're not on the LTSC/B version. Even the Enterprise copies are atrocious now. They're arguably worse than they were 10-20 years ago IMO... throwing some Linux support on top of stuff just makes me scoff.

smitty1e 7y ago

I appreciate that Torvalds is no ideologue, and that his "tit for tat" approach extends to Redmond. The relatively more purist views of the FSF are of value, as well. A spectrum of opinion keeps any Towers of Babel from getting too tall.

yaris 7y ago

Funny how some people still fear MS controlling Linux (with intent to kill of course), although RedHat/IBM is much more real danger.

jitl 7y ago
RedHat/IBM already won now that SystemD is everywhere because Gnome requires it.