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posted by martyb on Friday April 15 2016, @04:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the speechless dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by nukkel on Friday April 15 2016, @05:00AM

    by nukkel (168) on Friday April 15 2016, @05:00AM (#332066)

    Pessimists? Realists more likely.

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  • (Score: 2) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @05:04AM

    by bitstream (6144) on Friday April 15 2016, @05:04AM (#332068) Journal

    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

      by dyingtolive (952) on Friday April 15 2016, @05:08AM (#332071)

      microsoftd vs. systemd?

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bitstream on Friday April 15 2016, @05:23AM

        by bitstream (6144) on Friday April 15 2016, @05:23AM (#332079) Journal

        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

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @01:26PM (#332207)

        $ cmp microsoftd systemd
        cmp: No differences detected.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:18AM (#332074)

      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

        by bitstream (6144) on Friday April 15 2016, @05:26AM (#332082) Journal

        Make it a kernel module at the peril of kernel panic?

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:36AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:36AM (#332084)

          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

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:41AM (#332085)

            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

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @05:53AM (#332088)

              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

                by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday April 15 2016, @06:42AM (#332099) Journal

                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

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @07:27AM (#332118)

                  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

                  by edIII (791) on Friday April 15 2016, @07:39AM (#332121)

                  Best you can get is something "good enough for most things".

                  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

            by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday April 15 2016, @06:32AM (#332097) Journal

            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

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @09:33AM (#332147)

      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

    by stormwyrm (717) on Friday April 15 2016, @05:59AM (#332089) Journal
    Indeed. Given Microsoft's track record of stabbing its partners in the back, it isn't pessimism to think that they're going to be out to mess with Debian this time the way they always have, only realism. Over the past thirty or so years they have consistently shown themselves completely without scruple when dealing with their "partners" and despite their continuing slide into irrelevance of late this shows no sign of changing. In fact, desperation may make them more ready to use their most evil business tactics.
    --
    Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @07:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @07:19AM (#332114)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @09:38AM (#332148)

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @01:23PM (#332206)

          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

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @08:16AM (#332129)

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2016, @10:39PM (#332469)

        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.