The annual Debian developers conference, debconf 16, is taking place July 2-9 in Cape Town, South Africa, featuring for the first time ever Microsoft as a silver sponsor.
This seems consistent with the strategy, that pessimists may define EEE (embrace, extend, extinguish), of seeking close integration with the GNU/Linux system.
The move, from a traditionally hostile company that recently started showing enthusiasm towards open source software, is causing a mixture of derision and opposition in the community. As the grey beards in the IT community might recall, most of Microsoft partners, from IBM to the humble dev, tend to end up screwed in the long term. Will GNU/Linux be the exception?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by nukkel on Friday April 15 2016, @05:00AM
Pessimists? Realists more likely.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @05:04AM
How long time before they introduce a new syscall? or calling convention? sue someone for "infringement"?
Hopefully Unix software will demand pay $$ to run on Microsoft.
Time for Usenet Death Penalty. It has a tendency to cool entities down.. :->
(Score: 3, Touché) by dyingtolive on Friday April 15 2016, @05:08AM
microsoftd vs. systemd?
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @05:23AM
Microsoft created systemd via a system of collaborators?
ie SCO all over again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @01:26PM
$ cmp microsoftd systemd
cmp: No differences detected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:18AM
Actually it wouldn't be terrible if the Linux kernel supported NT syscalls. If you've ever tried Wine, you might have noticed that Wine does NT syscalls with a userspace daemon, which has the painful consequence of mode-switching in and out of the kernel for calls that Linux and Windows would just do in the kernel. There have been attempts to make wineserver into a kernel module, but it's like, Wine, and as you know Wine is an M$ W1nbl0ws compatibility thing which should always suck forever, so nobody seriously gives a fucking shit about it.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @05:26AM
Make it a kernel module at the peril of kernel panic?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:36AM
Well let's see now. If I want to run Windows software that makes lots of system calls, which will I choose,
(1) Wine makes kernel calls in userspace with lots and lots of overhead. Sure it slow but itz teh bestest evar cuz rezsons!!1!!1one
(2) Windows makes kernel calls in the kernel. Now why wouldn't I want this?
So yeah. I'm sticking with Windows because fuck you.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:41AM
Good riddance. You clearly don't care about freedom, or else technical quality wouldn't be paramount for you.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:53AM
Care about Freedom, you say. I do not believe you. Here is why.
ReactOS is a project to clone Windows by building an NT compatible kernel for Wine.
Longene is a project to build a hybrid NT and Linux kernel capable of running both Windows software and Linux software.
Do you care about these Free projects, and why not? Because they are not Linuxy enough for you, that is why not.
You do not care about Freedom. You only care about your social clique of Linux dweebs.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday April 15 2016, @06:42AM
Or maybe because they re-implement something already available. If they do it well enough, I'm certain (no, IANAL) they will infringe on several patents and be sued into oblivion.
If I want Windows, I pay for it and use it. If I want Windows, but slightly more stable, I get a VM on my Linux and install Windows there, taking snapshots on a regular base (that's what I actually do). Re-implementing existing Windows, open source or otherwise, is doomed to fail because some Windows Software depends on unspecified behaviour. Best you can get is something "good enough for most things".
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @07:27AM
Or maybe because they re-implement something already available.
The entire purpose of Linux is to re-implement something that is already available. Not only is Unix already available but BSD is free. Linux does not even need to exist. There is only one reason Linux is not a footnote in history. Linux has an insanely loyal following of rabid fanboys frothing at the mouth about how everything that is not Linux is complete crap.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday April 15 2016, @07:39AM
I'll take it.
If it's FOSS that means no telemetry, no licensing fees, and a "good enough" slice of working programs to be useful. If a large enough slice, then developers might even consider isolating their development to what that is. Just like web development is often "flattened" to what works across all browsers.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday April 15 2016, @06:32AM
If I want to run Windows software that makes lots of system calls, which will I choose,
Easy. You chose Windows. Linux is for people mainly running Linux software.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @09:33AM
How long time before they introduce a new syscall? or calling convention?
No! It's too late! Wasn't the newest Debconf created by "calling convention"?!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by stormwyrm on Friday April 15 2016, @05:59AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @07:19AM
Debian has already been doing a good job of doing itself in.
That said, does anyone now wonder if Ian Murdoch's death was actually part of some conspiracy towards a Microsoft takeover of Debian and/or Linux?
Microsoft IS bigger than all but 10-20 nation-states after all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @09:38AM
does anyone now wonder if Ian Murdoch's death was actually part of some conspiracy towards a Microsoft takeover of Debian and/or Linux?
Some people do, but it might not be MS just some other alphabet soup agency. Could be a classic case of Zersetzung. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @01:23PM
Yeah but that could never happen in the US of A! ... oh wait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @08:16AM
In the case of IBM, they did it to themselves.
Every unit they produced in the Boca Raton (PC) facility had a (business) customer who could hardly wait to get his mitts on it and those folks were willing to pay for the "quality" of Big Blue.
The open architecture of the IBM PC allowed -other- vendors to supply the troublesome, low-volume hobbyist cheapskates.
Everything was going smoothly for IBM.
...then they got greedy and decided to go proprietary with their incompatible-with-everything MicroChannel Architecture.
Now, folks who had legacy equipment couldn't even use parts from spare|dead boxes to fix IBM's new stuff.
Folks quickly lost interest in "real" PCs and went with clone makers.
.
Now, from their start with PCs, IBM clearly saw itself as a HARDWARE company.
The suits at Boca clearly didn't read microcomputer journals or they would have been aware who-all was producing software--specifically OSes--and who wasn't.
The clowns from Boca showed up on Gary Kildall's doorstep without even making an appointment.
Gary, having a meeting with someone who HAD made an appointment "went flying" to that meeting.
The IBM guys were left standing around with their dicks in their hands.
...and they decided to go see Gates--who DIDN'T have an OS to sell them.
...though Tim Paterson (one t) did have one of those (as did Kildall).
OS/2 was just the epilogue.
...which is not to say M$ hasn't stabbed LOTS of "partners" in the back.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @10:39PM
I have a friend who was a hardware engineer at IBM in Boca through the end. He was one of the last engineers there. Tells stories of how he and the other final few had nothing to do and moved their offices around for kicks to where they each had their own desk in giant empty buildings. He had been there for some time, and ended up getting stiffed out of months of vacation he had saved up.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:03AM
Wouldn't be the first time Microsoft did a Unix. Remember Xenix? No of course you don't.
The burning question is whether Microsoft will discontinue NT in favor of Leenix. Remember when Apple discontinued Mac OS in favor of OSX? No of course you don't.
What could be the motivation. Golly I wonder if the NT developers at Microsoft are growing up to be old grey beards themselves and the cheapest way for Microsoft to move forward is to replace them with millennials who are so very passionate about Linux.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @08:33AM
That lasted for all of about 12 months.
...and YOU couldn't buy it to put on YOUR box.
M$ would only sell licenses directly to hardware manufacturers.
I borked the markup just a bit. [soylentnews.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Friday April 15 2016, @08:47AM
I may be old, but I'm not demented, you insensitive clod.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday April 15 2016, @11:31AM
Not on your life. For one reason: The GPL, which means that if they do that, any Windows compatibility layer they build in will have to be GPL too. Which means that some reasonably enterprising geeks can remove any of the bad stuff that it does to invade people's privacy or show ads on their screen, compile their own, and poof one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows is gone.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by jummama on Friday April 15 2016, @06:57PM
Not necessarily. Wine is all in userspace, so if Microsoft decided to make a Windows subsystem for Linux, they could put it all in userspace and do whatever license they want, with or without source code.
That said, if they wanted to bring in support for Windows drivers, that code would need to be in the kernel, and thus would have to be GPL.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday April 15 2016, @02:27PM
Anyone remember A/UX? :-)
Anyway, to me it seems that the fox is now in the hen house. But yes, maybe trying to outsource Windows kernel development to young, enthusiastic new-ways-of-working Indians didn't work out so well.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday April 15 2016, @03:48PM
Some of us old folks remember Xenix. Solid operating system. Plug a multiple-port serial card into your 286 and it would drive a lot of Wyse terminals.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dltaylor on Friday April 15 2016, @05:19AM
Since systemd (too much in one service, ridiculously complicated and arcane, buggy) now makes desktop linux works so much more like Windows, it is only natural for them to come along.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by aristarchus on Friday April 15 2016, @06:02AM
Be afraid! Be very afraid! We have not yet seen the end of this. And this is not the beginning. Perhaps it is the beginning of the beginning of the end. Or the end of the beginning. The past is prelude. But when you stare into the Microsoft, Microsoft stares into you. Literally.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @06:03AM
"Ian Ashley Murdock (28 April 1973 – 28 December 2015) was an American software engineer, known for being the founder of the Debian project and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company."
RIP. I can only imagine what he would've said about this.
I give Linux 10 years before it is absorbed and/or nullified/owned by patents.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @06:08AM
I give Linux 10 years before it is absorbed and/or nullified/owned by patents.
Stupid troll, Google already forked Linux, absolutely everyone uses Android instead, and Debian remains a niche distro for basement dwellers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @06:48AM
Stupid troll, Google already forked Linux, absolutely everyone uses Android instead, and Debian remains a niche distro for basement dwellers.
Hello troll, you should consider registering here with a real username.
You can "Google" Android and patents and discover where in the world (or where in many worlds) one company is pulling in money from patents already.
Everyone doesn't use Android.
Debian is a good strategic project to absorb. Once community oriented distros are absorbed, it will be easy to "treat" the others. Take away
the large spring which nourishes other distros with its packages and efforts, and the others can fall (easier). IMO your comment about Debian
confirms the presence of ONE WAY "watchers" on the web.
10 years, and it's all ONE WAY. Stay tuned! Openbsd has already received a kind donation. Those saying switch to BSD may eventually
find themselves lost in the same wasteland.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday April 15 2016, @12:06PM
Yes... For $5000 (silver sponsor), the Embrace is extended.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by q.kontinuum on Friday April 15 2016, @06:48AM
"Ian Ashley Murdock (28 April 1973 – 28 December 2015) was an American software engineer, known for being the founder of the Debian project and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company."
RIP. I can only imagine what he would've said about this.
This should offer a way out of the energy crisis. Wrap him in copper wire, put some magnets next to him, ...
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 5, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Friday April 15 2016, @06:08AM
Until micro$oft repeals any request of money for Android phones, EVERYONE in Linux should steer clear.
This may be business to them (as it must be), but it shows they have intentional malfeasance running through the company policy, like a mint stripe through blackpool rock.
FOSS isn't just a buzzword. It is a fundamental ideal that ALL of humanity benefits in the free exchange, modification, improvement and dissemination of software, free of commercial obstruction.
So, [large barge pole] --------> Microsoft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @09:47AM
FOSS isn't just a buzzword. It is a fundamental ideal that ALL of humanity benefits in the free exchange, modification, improvement and dissemination of software, free of commercial obstruction.
You're aware that Linus doesn't really share the core views of RMS that really are our only hope. "Tivoization" is fine to Torvalds, he doesn't give a flying shit about end user freedoms.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Friday April 15 2016, @03:55PM
What Torvalds things does not matter that much though. Its not as he "owns" linux. He is, by his own admission, just an engineer. And that is perfectly fine.
The free software community can very well form an opinion on these ideals. In fact, I would argue that it would be illogical of the community NOT to care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:11PM
Your wrong, Linus own the trademark Linux. He could sell it and the kernel would have to be renamed to something else if the new owner of the Linux TM did not want it to be used on the linux kernel.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Friday April 15 2016, @06:44AM
The Debian organizers are stupid and harming the conference. Pretty soon Debian whether GNU/Linux or GNU/kFreeBSD will be just a footnote, with the malefactors having taken over and tainted with their content. Debian is the foundation for a lot of other distros, so just like with systemd, this is screwing a much larger community.
It's not like the Debconf organizers even have an excuse for not knowing. Here is one of the relevant court exhibits from the late, great Groklaw [groklaw.net] :
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @07:50AM
Don't invite fillers on the peril of dilution into irrelevance?
Time for some McCarthyism.. "Are you now or have you ever been paid by the evil Microsoft empire of the United States?"
"Are you part of a conscious and articulate instrument of the Microsoft conspiracy?"
"Have you ever knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the [...] desirability or propriety of overthrowing the free software movement or any open source project by coercion or bribes, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an disruption, or for anyone to become a paid associate of or to affiliate with any Microsoft activities?"
Of course the free open source movement must start the, House Committee on Un-Unix Activities! :p
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @09:56AM
Time for some McCarthyism..
For all the hate he got, McCarthy actually turned out to be right about damn near every one of the people on his list of subversive agents. The FBI files even revealed that the Communist Party USA (which had many close ties to the Democratic party) was not directly subservient to Soviet Russia...
So, yes. Indeed. It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you. And inviting known subversives to your "open environment" is only survivable if constant vigilance is maintained.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @06:22PM
Microsoft is kind of like CCCP in this context: Yuri Bezmenov: Psychological Warfare Subversion & Control of Western Society [youtube.com].
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @07:43PM
You forgot to put "subversive" in quote marks.
the Communist Party USA [...] was not directly subservient to Soviet Russia
In fact, the vast majority of members were ANTI-Stalinist.
They recognized that (top-down) Totalitarianism is the OPPOSITE of Communism.
What USAian Communists wanted was a more egalitarian sharing of the immense wealth of the USA and the DEMOCRACY EVERYWHERE paradigm inherent in Marxist philosophy.
...rather than the concentrated wealth inherent in Capitalism and the oligarchy inherent in the founding documents of USA (with a only a veneer of actual Democracy in order to try to keep the proletariat pacified).
In fact, the USA's Constitution leaves a loophole for changing the system (via amendments).
In addition to that, Thomas Jefferson advocated a Constitutional Convention every generation to see if the Constitution needed to be rewritten.
If the USAian Commies had included one or both of those in their rhetoric, they would have been called Jeffersonian Patriots.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @07:01AM
Since SteamOS is Debian maybe MS decided murder the hypotenuse.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday April 15 2016, @08:06AM
It's Debian which partners with Microsoft. Not GNU/Linux.
And I don't think Debian still needs Microsoft to end up screwed in the long term; they already managed to enter that path on their own (unless Microsoft already secretly had its hands in those Debian decisions). Microsoft might speed up the demise, though.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @08:23AM
Crouching Microsoft, Hidden Patents
This story is two fold:
(1) Possible moves to overthrow or replace Debian & other pressure points
(2) MS patent licensing deal with Rakuten covering Android AND
Linux devices!
###
(1) Well... THAT didn't take very long.
Ian Murdock (28 April 1973 - 28 December 2015)
Microsoft Releasing a Debian Linux Networking Distro (Jan/Feb/Mar?? 2016)
damn, that and the donation to OpenBSD is pretty much chess moves, IMO.
All MS should do is buy up Canonical/RedHat and knock over the systemd
distros with some type of patent(s) and/or buy some out and that leaves
a tiny amount of 'fringe' distros. Debian will probably be gobbled up
in the process (what happened with Corel Linux and further down the
line, that party with Novell?) and BSD wouldn't be too difficult to
buy/donate out anyway. WINE could possibly have patent(s) suits
against it...So what's left?
Hurd, my good man, where HAVE you been?
+++
(2) And So It Begins...
Microsoft and Rakuten sign patent licensing agreement (Linux/Android+)
Microsoft signs patent licensing deal with Rakuten covering Android and Linux devices
By John Callaham - Wednesday, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:23 pm EST
"Microsoft has entered yet another patent license agreement with a third-party company. This time, it's with Japan-based Rakuten, and it will cover both company consumer electronic products, including any Linux and Android-based devices."
http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-signs-patent-licensing-deal-rakuten-covering-android-and-linux-devices [windowscentral.com]
https://archive.is/2VwbO [archive.is]
+++
Microsoft and Rakuten sign patent licensing agreement
"REDMOND, Wash., and TOKYO - March 9, 2016 - Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Rakuten Inc. on Wednesday signed a worldwide patent cross-licensing agreement covering each company's respective consumer electronics products, including Linux and Android-based devices."
Hahahahaha: "The terms of the agreement are confidential."
http://news.microsoft.com/2016/03/09/microsoft-and-rakuten-sign-patent-licensing-agreement/ [microsoft.com]
https://archive.is/bnylI [archive.is]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @10:28AM
When they picked up systemd as the only option, they turned into Debhat. The writing is already on the wall, burned in with an industrial laser. What was Debian sold out to Redhat.
(Score: 2, Informative) by dmbasso on Friday April 15 2016, @04:15PM
When they picked up systemd as the only option
Wtf are you talking about?
apt-cache show sysvinit-core
Package: sysvinit-core
Source: sysvinit
Version: 2.88dsf-59.3
Installed-Size: 220
Maintainer: Debian sysvinit maintainers <pkg-sysvinit-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Replaces: systemd-sysv, sysvinit (<< 2.88dsf-44~), upstart
Depends: initscripts (>= 2.88dsf-13.3), sysv-rc | file-rc, sysvinit-utils (>= 2.86.ds1-66), libc6 (>= 2.15), libselinux1 (>= 1.32), libsepol1 (>= 1.14), debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, debianutils (>= 4)
Conflicts: systemd-sysv, upstart
Description-en: System-V-like init utilities
This package contains programs required for booting
a Debian system and doing basic process management.
.
The most important program in the package is /sbin/init.
It is the first process started on boot and continues
to run as process number 1 until the system halts. All
other processes are descended from it.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Saturday April 16 2016, @11:25PM
Take a look at http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/sysvinit.git/log/ [debian.org] and you'll see that it's no longer maintained particularly actively. Being present in the archive doesn't tell the whole story. How many packages, particularly gnome-related ones, deliberately removed and broke sysvinit support? Running sysvinit is certainly *possible*, but that doesn't mean everything will work with it. The playing field hasn't been level for some time.
(And wow, time flies. Two years and three months since my last commit.)
(Score: 2) by dmbasso on Sunday April 17 2016, @03:02AM
Take a look at http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/collab-maint/sysvinit.git/log/ [debian.org] and you'll see that it's no longer maintained particularly actively.
Looks like a healthy stable mature package to me.
How many packages, particularly gnome-related ones, deliberately removed and broke sysvinit support?
That's not Debian's fault.
Running sysvinit is certainly *possible*, but that doesn't mean everything will work with it.
Just as you can't easily put a V8 engine in a Tesla car. You can, however, continue to use your Mustang with all its compatible pieces.
The sysvinit-core package works as intended, so you can't say systemd is the only option. Unless you don't mind being intellectually dishonest, as the GGP (and whoever modded my previous comment overrated).
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @02:38PM
Microsoft is welcome at open source conferences. Open source developers? Not [ibiblio.org] so [amerika.org] much. [twitter.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @03:43PM
So this is why the state assasinated Ian Murdoch. No surprise really...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @06:01PM
Bit of a stretch, from what I understand he was already off the Debian project.