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With an article that covers "From Cancer to Cloud" and beyond, Techrepublic asks: What is Microsoft Doing With Linux? Everything You Need to Know About its Plans for Open Source
'Microsoft and Linux' should be a phrase we're used to hearing by now. Microsoft is a member of not only the Linux Foundation but also the Linux kernel security mailing list... Microsoft is submitting patches to the Linux kernel... And when Microsoft wanted to add container support to Windows, it picked an open-source specification designed originally for [Linux].
Now Azure customers get the same hybrid benefits for Linux support contracts as they do for Windows Server licences; Windows runs Linux binaries; some key Microsoft applications are available on Linux; and new services might be built with Linux.
[...] At the recent Azure Open Day, Kubernetes co-founder and Microsoft corporate vice-president Brendan Burns talked about Microsoft having a deep understanding of Linux and contributing to existing open-source projects based on Linux as well as founding new ones like Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime).
[...] In short, Microsoft 'hearts' Linux.
But forget the idea of throwing away the Windows kernel and replacing it with a Linux kernel, because Microsoft's approach to Linux is far more pragmatic and comprehensive. Although the company is now thoroughly cross-platform, not every application will move to or take advantage of Linux. Instead, Microsoft adopts or supports Linux when the customers are there, or when it wants to take advantage of the ecosystem with open-source projects.
With GNU/Linux increasingly a part of both Windows 10 and Microsoft's cloud offerings, do you prefer to get your Linux from Microsoft, or from a more traditional source?
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @07:43AM (5 children)
The company that perma-Temped employees so it wouldn't have to pay them full benefits is now able to monetize software engineering talent for *no salary or benefits at all*. For MS, it was never about proprietary software. It was about making money any way possible. If they can do it by owning software, great. If they can do it by owning developers, even better.
This is what I've never understood about RMS, and other left-leaning people supporting the GPL. It's like... the WORST UNION CONTRACT EVER.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday December 28 2020, @10:16AM (2 children)
No, the GPL is not.
It allows you to monetize providing a service, secure in the knowledge that the tools you use are free (in both senses of free). You are not like an independent motor mechanic unable to afford the proprietary tools needed to service cars and (John Deere) tractors and other agricultural vehicles. Don't think for one minute that if companies could hide software tools behind exorbitant paywalls that they would not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @07:48PM (1 child)
Original AC that was moderated "Troll" here. Sure, it allows you to monetize providing a service, and if your business model is built around providing something *other* than software, that's great for you because you find software to be a cost center, and the GPL brings those costs way down.
"(both senses of free)". The idea that English is inadequate in this regard is silly too, and I find the fact that so many people buy into that to be cult-like. We don't need loan words from French or any other language to tell us what "copyleft" is. It's not "Free as in libre". It's "public as in the commons". At least the *license* gets that right--general PUBLIC license; but the thing about English not having the right word is pure rhetoric for brain-washing purposes. It makes people feel special that they've transcended convention to the point where "English is inadequate". Inanimate objects don't have the quality of being free in the "liberated" sense. It's a silly concept.
I find the GPL as an antidote to the excesses of things like John Deere to be unsatisfying. I'd prefer a right to repair, and even a right to analyze software--but not a requirement that it be permissible to redistribute such things commercially.
The freedom to redistribute things commercially combined with the requirement to open source is leading us towards an operating system monopoly, except that the monopoly is public instead of private.
I don't see public monopolies as being any better than private ones, and of course MS loves monopolies too so getting back to my "Troll" point--"of course MS loves Linux". I'm not surprised at all.
With open source that is BSD-style, you can (if it makes sense) roll it in to proprietary products that compete under the business model that originally got MS where it is. The last thing MS wants is something like Windows without telemetry and constantly changing UIs. competing with the old Windows. So of course they love Linux now. They're in the castle. Time to raise the drawbridge.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday December 28 2020, @10:33PM
I actually agree with you, but probably not in exactly the sense you intended. English *does* have the right word, it's free. However that word is misused more often than not, to mean gratis instead, which is what leads people to find other synonyms to make things clearer. Not because English lacks the right words, but because English has been so abused for so long by marketers that it doesn't matter.
"Inanimate objects don't have the quality of being free in the "liberated" sense."
Again, that's actually correct, though not quite in the sense you intend (and code is pattern, not object, but it probably doesn't matter in this context.) Of course code can't be free in exactly the same way a person can be free - but a license attached to code can be free (suitable for use by free people) or unfree (not suitable for such use - requiring ones freedom as a condition of use.)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @03:40PM (1 child)
>This is what I've never understood about RMS, and other left-leaning people supporting the GPL. It's like... the WORST UNION CONTRACT EVER.
First, GPL have nothing to do with left wing, it is totally apolitical... some people love to do that association, but as true as saying that stealing is right wing thing!
The idea of GPL is protecting the code and user. No where it says that developers must work for free and the true is that most open source developers in bigger projects today are paid for do that.
Yes, in smaller projects, the developer usually work for free, but either it is solving it own problem or hope it will grow and upgrade to paid job... not that different from the right wing idea of a intern not being paid to gain experience. The difference between this and the traditional closed source development is that when a shareware software is abandon, it is lost but in open source, someone else can resume it. Add to that you can reuse other projects and use multiple building blocks, like a lego.
This is what MS is doing, it taking the open blocks, add their own (also open blocks, due to the GPL, and using their own paid developers) and slam it inside a windows hidden VM. Sell that to some clueless companies as a excuse to not migrate to linux and get paid
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2020, @05:44PM
> ...apolitical...
Ballmer wanted "to emphasise the competitive threat, and in some senses the competitive opportunity, that Linux represents. Linux is a tough competitor. There's no company called Linux, there's barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it."
https://www.theregister.com/2000/07/31/ms_ballmer_linux_is_communism/ [theregister.com]