First, let's not get confused here. If you keep a Windows box around for Netflix and Steam, that has nothing to do with Microsoft's "passive-aggressive apathy".

First, let's not get confused here. If you keep a Windows box around for Netflix and Steam, that has nothing to do with Microsoft's "passive-aggressive apathy". It has to do with the fact that Netflix and Steam chose not to develop for Linux, just like antirez is choosing not to develop for Windows. I would bet that having to keep that extra Windows box around is at least a minor annoyance to you, that you'd much rather be able to use Linux for everything, including Netflix and Steam. This is the exact same situation Windows users are in with Redis. Except that, instead of just "coming out the message 'but...but...but...you should support everybody!'", Microsoft actually did something very helpful. They didn't just complain, they took it upon themselves to help improve the situation with Redis by providing the patch. Let's also be clear that when comparing Microsoft and antirez (or open source software in general), we're comparing two very different things. We all know that Microsoft is a for-profit company, so expecting them to go out of their way to improve their competitors isn't really reasonable. Open source software, however, is about making software freely accessible to everyone, so an expectation, or hope, that antirez would embrace Windows support is quite reasonable. Of course, that's not to say he has to. It is his project, and there for his right to choose not to support it. But I personally think it's a mistake. He is encouraging a fork, and forks generally lead to problems. Client libraries will have multiple versions to target. Developers will have more to learn, and more time will be spent trying to keep feature parity between the forks.