7 ms·

What does Microsoft want with Linux and Open Source? [video]

25 points by realpanzer 6y ago

varbhat 6y ago
Microsoft is company. It will do anything(ofc legal) for money. They knew where the market exist,so embraced Linux. They wanted to prevent migration of windows users to MacOS/Linux ,so created WSL2 which lured many MacOS users. It also added DirectX for WSL2 , which is proprietary extension. It based it's edge browser on chromium because they were lagging behind chromium wrt performance. They want profit. So,they do these things. Some actions benefit floss while some don't. Problem of capitalist company. They care about capital more than us.
- frozenport 6y ago
  No, for example Microsoft will not produce a product in an unrelated market. Microsoft is unlikely to open a sandwich franchise no matter how much money can be made.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  The whole point of a business is to become a money machine.
  - brnt 6y ago
    In the Anglosaxon model. E.g. the Rhineland model not only shareholders are regarded as stakeholders, and thus a company had a duty to its community, starting with its workers (worker council).
- joshsyn 6y ago
  Problem? Thanks to Microsoft and other capitalist companies for revolutionizing the way we do computing today.
  - techntoke 6y ago
    Microsoft didn't revolutionize anything, they've always just bought the competition (manufacturers, developers, etc) but had to adopt Linux when that stopped working and Linux was winning without having to pay people because the Linux community cares more about progress than profit.
  - anonymou2 6y ago
    What would have happened if Richard Stallman had decided to go work for a capitalist company and just worried about making money?
    - joshsyn 6y ago
      I think linux on the desktop would be been better story. My point is without Microsoft we wouldn't be where we are today. We'd be lagging far behind. Apple being the only competition, would probably still be selling Apple 2.
      - joshsyn 6y ago
        Why is it that Linux is always playing catch-ups with device drivers, KDE, GNOME, wayland to be on par with Windows or Mac equivalent? Cause there are lack of resources, how many people want to invest their time for nothing in return? Very less.
        anonymou2 6y ago
        You value your freedom very little, if you think that it means nothing.
        joshsyn 6y ago
        Poor logic. I never said I don't value Linux or freedom. Last time I checked, nobody dictates what you use. I don't understand why making profits is shunned as such a problem? And takes away your freedom? You are free to not use products from companies you don't like. Trust me I do value Linux, currently typing this from my Ubuntu machine. I hope it speeds up in development, but without the proper incentive, it simply is not happening. Only companies I see in the desktop space are valve at the moment who have vested interest on the gaming aspect. I don't think every developers are going to say kumbaya and develop for Linux without getting any kind of financial support. O.o
- monoclechris 6y ago
  Let me guess, you have a solution and it looks a lot like socialism.
- virtue3 6y ago
  I think the edge -> chromium move was more about compatability than performance. Edge was fine. They couldn't keep up with the evolving web standards. Also pre-chromium edge has friggin the WORST DEV TOOLS EVER. You would get "generic js error" whenever you had a javascript error thrown. It was untenable as a developer. Theyre releasing dX on linux so they can stay relevent in the gpu space. Being able to use a windows driver for your linux install is pretty clutch considering what a cluster that has been . I'm generally giving them the benefit of the doubt because they really didn't have to do -any- of this, and still make money.
koalalorenzo 6y ago
100% agree with the video. I am a macOS user just to have some of the GNU tools and VMs or containers (Vagrant, and Docker for desktop) on the fly when I need to work and get shit done. I still believe that WSL is some sort of slimmed/powered down to nothing version of any gnu/linux distro, and after using it for a while I felt the pain of getting things done and went back to macOS and VMs. I still believe that Microsoft is improving, but I am not sure how it is helping with WSL...
- MCOfficer 6y ago
  WSL is pretty good as long as you stick to the command line (and don't work with virtualization). I hear they are using a "proper" kernel with WSL2, so it probably got even better since i switched.
- m0xte 6y ago
  Exactly the same outcome here. The killer for me is friction and despite Microsoft’s best efforts, it’s always the most painful platform to work on. Nothing is finished, polished or reliable. (I include WSL2 in that)
- mpfundstein 6y ago
  i do most of my work in WSL2 (with win terminal - which is quite good). even if its to just to jack into my headless linux servers via ssh. its just so much better than putty. but i also have vim and screen open all the time as well for some local dev stuff. which i refuse to do on win. pretty happy with it. without, i would not stick with win10 as my primary machine. there are still some annoyances though which ms will fix i hope. granted mac osx does this still better. but i dont want to use mac anymore. did for 8+ years...
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  What I want to understand is why use Windows if you want to use Linux? Surely it's easier to just use Linux.
  - bauerd 6y ago
    Some are forced to use Windows eg in consulting
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
moksly 6y ago
Hasn’t it been fairly obvious for some time that Microsoft “adopted” open source to sell azure? I think the more interesting question should be, what do open source want with Microsoft.
- teekert 6y ago
  I guess they also want to be a nice dev workstation OS, like MacOS traditionally was. Edit: The new Terminal and WSL(2) certainly make my days better. I would prefer Linux "on the metal" but it's getting less annoying that my company standardizes on Windows.
  - techntoke 6y ago
    A good developer workstation cannot exists based on Windows.
    - ygra 6y ago
      I guess a fairly large number of developers would disagree with you.
      - techntoke 6y ago
        Because they are like NPCs who don't really think for themselves
        smcl 6y ago
        There's an argument to be made for your original claim, but that isn't it
    - SahAssar 6y ago
      For you.
      - techntoke 6y ago
kar1181 6y ago
They want developers. OSX gave us Unix AND a sane desktop. Ultimately MS over between 2010-2020 lost developer mindshare and they weren't going to get it back. So pivot time and now we have Linux all the things. Once they have developers back..., well, who knows what they'll start doing then.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's a little like politics isn't it. The best you can hope for is that their interests happen to align with yours. If they do then great but don't be surprised when they don't.
axilmar 6y ago
Microsoft wants to keep developers close to their platform, so as that the value of their stock does not fall.
roenxi 6y ago
Open source is good enough. At some point it catches up to the proprietary software on core things that matter and then it becomes hard to justify proprietary. Not always, but that story has played out quite a few times now. To fight that, proprietary software needs to change quickly to keep ahead. But change is expensive and users hate it. Fundamentally, what advantage is Windows going to maintain with a closed source kernel? How many customers care that MS isn't using the Linux kernel? Not many. The bean counters are eventually going to start ask questions, like "why are we paying to maintain our own kernel when we could just use Linux?". I don't see what strategic edge MS is going to hold maintaining a parallel OS long term. If they change rapidly they lose the legacy advantage, if they don't OSS will catch up. It isn't like NTFS is giving them a huge advantage over ext4. The key patents will all be starting to expire too. The only effective resistance to OSS seems to have been this service-based cloud model that exploded onto the scene in the last, what, 10-15 years?
- dmurray 6y ago
  > Fundamentally, what advantage is Windows going to maintain with a closed source kernel? How many customers care that MS isn't using the Linux kernel? Not many. The bean counters are eventually going to start ask questions, like "why are we paying to maintain our own kernel when we could just use Linux?". Backwards compatibility is a big one, and arguably the key principle behind all of Windows' evolution. Yes, WINE, yes, apps all moving to the browser, but there's a long tail of applications that won't work as well under WINE as they do on modern Windows versions.
- btschaegg 6y ago
  > Fundamentally, what advantage is Windows going to maintain with a closed source kernel? Just to hammer this point home some more: There are actually also significant disadvantages to the Kernel being closed source. As an example: Windows has had an official port of OpenDTrace for a year now. But sadly, the documentation for it is almost nonexistent, and just finding out which functions you might want to instrument (and what context data is available there) is much more painful than on other systems. OTOH, if you're on OpenSolaris or Linux (where you'll likely use bpftrace instead), documentation on the matter is abundant.
- 6y ago
ddek 6y ago
Eh, I disagree with a lot the fundamentals here. I don’t believe that windows devs who have avoided Linux so far are going to ‘try out’ WSL at all, let alone be converted. I work in a .Net house, and the only people who use WSL at all are those who have Linux experience. The rest? Nothing could change their view that windows ‘works’ and ‘is secure’. Also he mentions shells - in Windows we have PowerShell, which is pretty great actually. It’s not as concise as Linux (Resolve-DnsName vs dig), which hinders interactive programming, but the scripts are more readable. In that example, the Linux version requires knowledge of dnsutils, while the powershell is obvious. I’m still more inclined to write scripts in PS than in bash, for this reason. WSL isn’t about giving windows users the ‘Linux experience’ - it’s about keeping people on Windows. With linux dominance in the cloud, there’s more reason than ever for devs to shift to Linux. WSL _extends_ those developers by _embracing_ them, then finally _extinguishing_ them because it’s still a bit $%#= and if they develop for Linux they’ll end up transitioning.
- sah2ed 6y ago
  OT: To achieve italicized text, you need to use asterisks not _underscores_. "Text surrounded by asterisks is italicized, if the character after the first asterisk isn't whitespace." From https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
- virtue3 6y ago
  you're spot on. Thanks to covid I want to use my desktop at home, it's windows, I'm not gonna put linux on it (don't feel like it). WSL allows me to still do modern web development on windows. (fiddler saved my ass with routing to ports). I've heard WSL has pretty poor adoptation. WSL2 fixed a LOT of things. Docker runs fast, the IO is pretty fast now. Overall it's ok. I stopped doing windows updates cuz they kept breaking my shit. :/ Ultimately, M$ needs to provide an ability for developers to do linux. Every server is linux. They would be insane not to have the ability to code that stuff up on windows. What annoys me a bit is how much M$ has moved away from its previous model and people don't see it. They're been pumping SO MUCH into the .net core it's ridiculous. They have fully embraced linux because they realize that they wont keep devs by having windows only on Azure. They've abandoned the platform and they're fully going for service oriented products, and deploying them on everything. (or web).
pelasaco 6y ago
Embrace, extend, and extinguish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
vms20591 6y ago
[Rant] It's all business for them. They don't love Linux anymore than they do FLOSS. Argument would be, "but Microsoft is one of the biggest open source contributors". It's like philanthropy, you give money to those in need, but don't fundamentally address the problem, but make it look like you do. All the corporations that contribute to open source projects in terms of man power & finance, do so because they can create more business opportunities & make them noble in eyes of public. But, what they do is take open source projects that have "permissive license" & are growing in popularity. Then contribute, add in proprietary code, sell them as enterprise solutions. In the end, the user of that program is denied any freedom to study the code & modify for their own needs. A big tech that open sources its internal software can do so for any reasons and let me say one of them. They get a community that basically maintains the software, writes documentation, add features & fix bugs for frere. The tech could then hire people trained with that software which they open sourced, saving them training costs. Licenses from OSI & BSD suffer from their "permissive" nature. They think about freedom, but not for who. They think that the ability for a user to not turn a open source software into a proprietary one, is restricting their freedom. But, Free Software thinks the opposite, and puts people who are denied freedom . Free Software with its Copyleft license, guarantees user the absolute freedom to do anything with the program they got for free/money, provided they give the same freedom to others. Basically make the freedom go viral.

25 points by realpanzer 6y ago

Microsoft is company. It will do anything(ofc legal) for money. They knew where the market exist,so embraced Linux. They wanted to prevent migration of windows users to MacOS/Linux ,so created WSL2 which lured many MacOS users. It also added DirectX for WSL2 , which is proprietary extension. It based it's edge browser on chromium because they were lagging behind chromium wrt performance. They want profit. So,they do these things. Some actions benefit floss while some don't. Problem of capitalist company. They care about capital more than us.

frozenport 6y ago
No, for example Microsoft will not produce a product in an unrelated market. Microsoft is unlikely to open a sandwich franchise no matter how much money can be made.
rootsudo 6y ago
The whole point of a business is to become a money machine.
- brnt 6y ago
  In the Anglosaxon model. E.g. the Rhineland model not only shareholders are regarded as stakeholders, and thus a company had a duty to its community, starting with its workers (worker council).
joshsyn 6y ago
Problem? Thanks to Microsoft and other capitalist companies for revolutionizing the way we do computing today.
- techntoke 6y ago
  Microsoft didn't revolutionize anything, they've always just bought the competition (manufacturers, developers, etc) but had to adopt Linux when that stopped working and Linux was winning without having to pay people because the Linux community cares more about progress than profit.
- anonymou2 6y ago
  What would have happened if Richard Stallman had decided to go work for a capitalist company and just worried about making money?
  - joshsyn 6y ago
    I think linux on the desktop would be been better story. My point is without Microsoft we wouldn't be where we are today. We'd be lagging far behind. Apple being the only competition, would probably still be selling Apple 2.
    - joshsyn 6y ago
      Why is it that Linux is always playing catch-ups with device drivers, KDE, GNOME, wayland to be on par with Windows or Mac equivalent? Cause there are lack of resources, how many people want to invest their time for nothing in return? Very less.
      - anonymou2 6y ago
        You value your freedom very little, if you think that it means nothing.
        joshsyn 6y ago
        Poor logic. I never said I don't value Linux or freedom. Last time I checked, nobody dictates what you use. I don't understand why making profits is shunned as such a problem? And takes away your freedom? You are free to not use products from companies you don't like. Trust me I do value Linux, currently typing this from my Ubuntu machine. I hope it speeds up in development, but without the proper incentive, it simply is not happening. Only companies I see in the desktop space are valve at the moment who have vested interest on the gaming aspect. I don't think every developers are going to say kumbaya and develop for Linux without getting any kind of financial support. O.o
monoclechris 6y ago
Let me guess, you have a solution and it looks a lot like socialism.
virtue3 6y ago
I think the edge -> chromium move was more about compatability than performance. Edge was fine. They couldn't keep up with the evolving web standards. Also pre-chromium edge has friggin the WORST DEV TOOLS EVER. You would get "generic js error" whenever you had a javascript error thrown. It was untenable as a developer. Theyre releasing dX on linux so they can stay relevent in the gpu space. Being able to use a windows driver for your linux install is pretty clutch considering what a cluster that has been . I'm generally giving them the benefit of the doubt because they really didn't have to do -any- of this, and still make money.

koalalorenzo 6y ago

100% agree with the video. I am a macOS user just to have some of the GNU tools and VMs or containers (Vagrant, and Docker for desktop) on the fly when I need to work and get shit done. I still believe that WSL is some sort of slimmed/powered down to nothing version of any gnu/linux distro, and after using it for a while I felt the pain of getting things done and went back to macOS and VMs. I still believe that Microsoft is improving, but I am not sure how it is helping with WSL...

MCOfficer 6y ago
WSL is pretty good as long as you stick to the command line (and don't work with virtualization). I hear they are using a "proper" kernel with WSL2, so it probably got even better since i switched.
m0xte 6y ago
Exactly the same outcome here. The killer for me is friction and despite Microsoft’s best efforts, it’s always the most painful platform to work on. Nothing is finished, polished or reliable. (I include WSL2 in that)
mpfundstein 6y ago
i do most of my work in WSL2 (with win terminal - which is quite good). even if its to just to jack into my headless linux servers via ssh. its just so much better than putty. but i also have vim and screen open all the time as well for some local dev stuff. which i refuse to do on win. pretty happy with it. without, i would not stick with win10 as my primary machine. there are still some annoyances though which ms will fix i hope. granted mac osx does this still better. but i dont want to use mac anymore. did for 8+ years...
rorykoehler 6y ago
What I want to understand is why use Windows if you want to use Linux? Surely it's easier to just use Linux.
- bauerd 6y ago
  Some are forced to use Windows eg in consulting

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

moksly 6y ago

Hasn’t it been fairly obvious for some time that Microsoft “adopted” open source to sell azure? I think the more interesting question should be, what do open source want with Microsoft.

teekert 6y ago
I guess they also want to be a nice dev workstation OS, like MacOS traditionally was. Edit: The new Terminal and WSL(2) certainly make my days better. I would prefer Linux "on the metal" but it's getting less annoying that my company standardizes on Windows.
- techntoke 6y ago
  A good developer workstation cannot exists based on Windows.
  - ygra 6y ago
    I guess a fairly large number of developers would disagree with you.
    - techntoke 6y ago
      Because they are like NPCs who don't really think for themselves
      - smcl 6y ago
        There's an argument to be made for your original claim, but that isn't it
  - SahAssar 6y ago
    For you.
    - techntoke 6y ago

kar1181 6y ago

They want developers. OSX gave us Unix AND a sane desktop. Ultimately MS over between 2010-2020 lost developer mindshare and they weren't going to get it back. So pivot time and now we have Linux all the things. Once they have developers back..., well, who knows what they'll start doing then.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It's a little like politics isn't it. The best you can hope for is that their interests happen to align with yours. If they do then great but don't be surprised when they don't.

axilmar 6y ago

Microsoft wants to keep developers close to their platform, so as that the value of their stock does not fall.

roenxi 6y ago

Open source is good enough. At some point it catches up to the proprietary software on core things that matter and then it becomes hard to justify proprietary. Not always, but that story has played out quite a few times now. To fight that, proprietary software needs to change quickly to keep ahead. But change is expensive and users hate it. Fundamentally, what advantage is Windows going to maintain with a closed source kernel? How many customers care that MS isn't using the Linux kernel? Not many. The bean counters are eventually going to start ask questions, like "why are we paying to maintain our own kernel when we could just use Linux?". I don't see what strategic edge MS is going to hold maintaining a parallel OS long term. If they change rapidly they lose the legacy advantage, if they don't OSS will catch up. It isn't like NTFS is giving them a huge advantage over ext4. The key patents will all be starting to expire too. The only effective resistance to OSS seems to have been this service-based cloud model that exploded onto the scene in the last, what, 10-15 years?

dmurray 6y ago
> Fundamentally, what advantage is Windows going to maintain with a closed source kernel? How many customers care that MS isn't using the Linux kernel? Not many. The bean counters are eventually going to start ask questions, like "why are we paying to maintain our own kernel when we could just use Linux?". Backwards compatibility is a big one, and arguably the key principle behind all of Windows' evolution. Yes, WINE, yes, apps all moving to the browser, but there's a long tail of applications that won't work as well under WINE as they do on modern Windows versions.
btschaegg 6y ago
> Fundamentally, what advantage is Windows going to maintain with a closed source kernel? Just to hammer this point home some more: There are actually also significant disadvantages to the Kernel being closed source. As an example: Windows has had an official port of OpenDTrace for a year now. But sadly, the documentation for it is almost nonexistent, and just finding out which functions you might want to instrument (and what context data is available there) is much more painful than on other systems. OTOH, if you're on OpenSolaris or Linux (where you'll likely use bpftrace instead), documentation on the matter is abundant.
6y ago

ddek 6y ago

Eh, I disagree with a lot the fundamentals here. I don’t believe that windows devs who have avoided Linux so far are going to ‘try out’ WSL at all, let alone be converted. I work in a .Net house, and the only people who use WSL at all are those who have Linux experience. The rest? Nothing could change their view that windows ‘works’ and ‘is secure’. Also he mentions shells - in Windows we have PowerShell, which is pretty great actually. It’s not as concise as Linux (Resolve-DnsName vs dig), which hinders interactive programming, but the scripts are more readable. In that example, the Linux version requires knowledge of dnsutils, while the powershell is obvious. I’m still more inclined to write scripts in PS than in bash, for this reason. WSL isn’t about giving windows users the ‘Linux experience’ - it’s about keeping people on Windows. With linux dominance in the cloud, there’s more reason than ever for devs to shift to Linux. WSL _extends_ those developers by _embracing_ them, then finally _extinguishing_ them because it’s still a bit $%#= and if they develop for Linux they’ll end up transitioning.

sah2ed 6y ago
OT: To achieve italicized text, you need to use asterisks not _underscores_. "Text surrounded by asterisks is italicized, if the character after the first asterisk isn't whitespace." From https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
virtue3 6y ago
you're spot on. Thanks to covid I want to use my desktop at home, it's windows, I'm not gonna put linux on it (don't feel like it). WSL allows me to still do modern web development on windows. (fiddler saved my ass with routing to ports). I've heard WSL has pretty poor adoptation. WSL2 fixed a LOT of things. Docker runs fast, the IO is pretty fast now. Overall it's ok. I stopped doing windows updates cuz they kept breaking my shit. :/ Ultimately, M$ needs to provide an ability for developers to do linux. Every server is linux. They would be insane not to have the ability to code that stuff up on windows. What annoys me a bit is how much M$ has moved away from its previous model and people don't see it. They're been pumping SO MUCH into the .net core it's ridiculous. They have fully embraced linux because they realize that they wont keep devs by having windows only on Azure. They've abandoned the platform and they're fully going for service oriented products, and deploying them on everything. (or web).

pelasaco 6y ago

Embrace, extend, and extinguish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

vms20591 6y ago

[Rant] It's all business for them. They don't love Linux anymore than they do FLOSS. Argument would be, "but Microsoft is one of the biggest open source contributors". It's like philanthropy, you give money to those in need, but don't fundamentally address the problem, but make it look like you do. All the corporations that contribute to open source projects in terms of man power & finance, do so because they can create more business opportunities & make them noble in eyes of public. But, what they do is take open source projects that have "permissive license" & are growing in popularity. Then contribute, add in proprietary code, sell them as enterprise solutions. In the end, the user of that program is denied any freedom to study the code & modify for their own needs. A big tech that open sources its internal software can do so for any reasons and let me say one of them. They get a community that basically maintains the software, writes documentation, add features & fix bugs for frere. The tech could then hire people trained with that software which they open sourced, saving them training costs. Licenses from OSI & BSD suffer from their "permissive" nature. They think about freedom, but not for who. They think that the ability for a user to not turn a open source software into a proprietary one, is restricting their freedom. But, Free Software thinks the opposite, and puts people who are denied freedom . Free Software with its Copyleft license, guarantees user the absolute freedom to do anything with the program they got for free/money, provided they give the same freedom to others. Basically make the freedom go viral.