Apparently, being a platinum member entails donating $500k [1], so it's not that big a deal for Microsoft ($85B revenue[2]). And as the article states, there has been negativity in the linux community regarding the old arch-enemy joining their ranks. Looking at the new Microsoft however, I think it's fair to assume that the days of "embrace, extend and extinguish"[3] are over and they are genuinely interested in cooperation.
It's an important political gesture that Nadella goes in this direction. Since they also added a linux subsystem into the latest Windows release[4], I get the impression that he wants to leave the cloud to linux and try to position Windows as a user-facing client. This is a difficult decision to make, but it makes sense. Microsoft without Ballmer is seeing its position in the Corporate world as it is and I hope we will continue to see more openness as a result.
Half the HN frontpage right now is MS articles. Seems oddly coincidental.
We can't forget about the bad MS is still doing: forced Win10 upgrades, Win10 spyware, Android patent extortion, FAT/VFAT/exFAT patent suits and licenses, etc.
The developer arm seems to be working hard, which is commendable. But looking at the rest of the org, this just seems like another Embrace round of the EEE cycle.
So what? It's a big deal for the Linux Foundation. And that's what matters. It's not about everyone paying "their fair share". It's about ensuring a good future for the high-quality very popular open source OS Linux. The circumstances of the donor doesn't affect the efficacy of their donation.
I hope we focus more on the outcome than the drama.
This is the ultimate embrace, extend move. Hopefully it means MS has reconciled itself to the fact that it cannot easily extinguish Linux. I would expect MS to use this position to divert headlines away from the concept of free software, and toward the MS brand; and to introduce dependencies to third-party software that makes it difficult to extract MS proprietary code entirely from the Linux ecosystem.
The important thing about this news is not the title or the amount. The important thing to notice that Microsoft has moved from extreme hostility to active co-operation with general Linux community. This is a good move and it benefits Linux community lot more than Microsoft.
I always felt that it was needless to paint MS/Linux as some kind of zero some game to begin with. Sad that MS's top leadership fell prey to it in the initial years trying to hurt Linux.
While Microsoft was the effective monopoly, they stayed as a monopoly trying to reap the fruits of the new status quo.
It makes financial sense for them to join the Linux Foundation.
Joining the Linux Foundation does not make them to, for example, start contributing to WINE, since that does not make financial sense to them.
> I think it's fair to assume that the days of "embrace, extend and extinguish" are over and they are genuinely interested in cooperation.
I'd welcome that, but MS still needs to fix several very major issues which stand in the way of such cooperation.
1. Stop the patent aggression.
2. More support for open standards. Especially in 3D graphics (DirectX lock-in), filesystems on removable media (exFAT lock-in), and so on and so forth.
3. Stop Windows tax / Windows bundling anti-competitive practices.
Once those are changed for the better, I'd say MS really changed. There is some progress with the above for example in case of the browser. MS joining Alliance for Open Media is one such case. But quite a lot still remains problematic.
Reading your comment, I was suddenly reminded of the days when the Windows vs. Linux TCO (=total cost of ownership) debacle was all aflame... ah the sad irony.
The new game is to use as much open source as possible to build a closed source ecosystem with vendor lock-in.
Microsoft was late to the game, but we gotta give them props for contributing back something more useful than "open core", platform onboarding or "hire me" piles of code.
I guess the other thread was the one that became the dupe:
I'm fairly certain all of 2016 is a mass-hallucination. Or something.
In all seriousness though, I don't think this is surprising. Visual Studio on macOS is more surprising to me. Azure runs on Linux and that's a really, really big business for Microsoft. And they've also built a Linux Subsystem into Windows.
Rock on Microsoft, rock on.
This thread is full of people making the familiar mistake of treating an organization with hundreds of thousands of employees as a single entity with a single mind instead of a vast organization with multiple departments and different teams.
So much has changed in 10 years! The old me would never believe how the future me moved more "Micro$oft sucks" to "wow another great product!"
I am happy to use Office in wine, as it gives me a very stable experience, full unicode supports even with my Xorg keymaps.
I use Visual Studio in wine - not as good as Office, but still very good.
I have a Windows phone, a priced relic since Microsoft abandoned them. Rock stable, last for a week in airplane mode.
I have a Windows 10 LTSB in a separate partition. Initially I just wanted to test it out. Now I consider running it in KVM for Visual Studio, in case I want more than what wine can now offer.
Hell, I am considering replacing my Thinkpad by one of Microsoft surfaces. As soon as it runs Linux as well as a Thinkpad, can get 32G of RAM, a user replacable SSD, wifi and lte module, I buy one. Seriously, even if the keyboard is not as good. And given Microsoft new focus on developpers, I wouldn't entirely dismiss the idea of a Surface Developper, bulkier but sturdier and user upgradable.
People say "hell froze over". I don't care. I look forward for more change from Microsoft. Because their tools are innovative again.
It'd be great if companies would support this sort of use if they're not going to bother creating native versions.
I used to play games using PlayOnLinux but the company, Origin (IIRC), updated their game manager software seemingly in order to break the Linux compatibility. The games were paid for and worked perfectly well.
Annoying as hell when companies appear to be actively hostile to you buying their product.
I also think the shift is genuine. The parallels with how IBM evolved from being the Prime Evil in the tech world to a large but relatively benign tech company are interesting.
The Linux Foundation troubles me a little. They have vested interest in making sure Linux's copyleft is not enforced. For example, VMWare is part of it, and has used its clout to refuse funding to Software Conservancy, due to the ongoing GPL lawsuit.
I guess the money from the LF is helping pay Linus' paycheque, but it has also become a bit of a lobbying group to steer Linux into more proprietary software.
Everytime I see a big corporation donate money to a software project, I like to imagine what the software project would do with 10 or 1000 times that amount. What would a Billion Dollar funded Linux Foundation do?
uh, well, redhat is worth $14B and i'd say at least $1B of that value has been dumped into its open source projects over the years (of which there are a LOT), so we already know what that looks like.
i think the frontier you are speculating about is currently at 2 or 3 times that magnitude. what does a $100B-$1T of market capitalization behind linux and its ecosystem look like?
i think the major players are aligning to answer that question... we'll find out soon enough.
Microsoft has $85B of revenue[0] and joining as a platinum member costs $500k. Even if Windows licences are the only ways Microsoft makes money (they're not, by a longshot), every copy would only account for 0.000008% of the donation.
Mono works really well. But, Mono's not the future. The future is Roslyn, CoreCLR, and CoreFX, basically the compiler, runtime and standard library for .NET applications.
They all work really well on Linux. They're part of the .NET foundation (https://github.com/dotnet).
Works fine for me in the server-side backend apps I've done. Telecom processing, routing/call records. Handled billions of messages a week. Code/debug/etc. on Windows, copy exes to Linux and run it. There's a few discrepancies here and there but overall it was fairly easy.
Microsoft are doing good by supporting Linux and shipping Ubuntu as an option in Windows 10 which is good for developers. In the past Microsoft has released a UNIX based operating system called Xenix and there has also been a subsystem for Unix in previous Windows NT versions.
MS is going all Oracle-y on us, they'll probably release a full fledged MS Linux distro soon.
(Social game: what will they call it? I'd say something like Unsinkable Linux ;-)
They should also have their own filesystem - ow, right, NTFS. I was thinking they could take another go at the database FS that stalled Vista a decade ago ...
Pride gets in the way of many things, especially progress and innovation, in Microsoft's case, it's holding on to the Window's O.S. If I were the new man at Microsoft, I would immediately set course to release two versions of Windows, and let people make the decision: One with the standard Window's filesystem and one built on the Unix/Linux kernel, like Apple has done. And above all lead with design. The possibilities of what they can do at that point would be endless. But you gotta let go of that pride first!!!
[+] [-] bomdo|9 years ago|reply
It's an important political gesture that Nadella goes in this direction. Since they also added a linux subsystem into the latest Windows release[4], I get the impression that he wants to leave the cloud to linux and try to position Windows as a user-facing client. This is a difficult decision to make, but it makes sense. Microsoft without Ballmer is seeing its position in the Corporate world as it is and I hope we will continue to see more openness as a result.
[1] http://www.slashgear.com/hp-pays-500000-for-linux-foundation...
[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2016-Q4...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12234735
[+] [-] nitrogen|9 years ago|reply
We can't forget about the bad MS is still doing: forced Win10 upgrades, Win10 spyware, Android patent extortion, FAT/VFAT/exFAT patent suits and licenses, etc.
The developer arm seems to be working hard, which is commendable. But looking at the rest of the org, this just seems like another Embrace round of the EEE cycle.
[+] [-] paulddraper|9 years ago|reply
HP's donation isn't necessary Microsoft's
> so it's not that big a deal for Microsoft
So what? It's a big deal for the Linux Foundation. And that's what matters. It's not about everyone paying "their fair share". It's about ensuring a good future for the high-quality very popular open source OS Linux. The circumstances of the donor doesn't affect the efficacy of their donation.
I hope we focus more on the outcome than the drama.
[+] [-] zekevermillion|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tn13|9 years ago|reply
The important thing about this news is not the title or the amount. The important thing to notice that Microsoft has moved from extreme hostility to active co-operation with general Linux community. This is a good move and it benefits Linux community lot more than Microsoft.
I always felt that it was needless to paint MS/Linux as some kind of zero some game to begin with. Sad that MS's top leadership fell prey to it in the initial years trying to hurt Linux.
[+] [-] simosx|9 years ago|reply
It makes financial sense for them to join the Linux Foundation. Joining the Linux Foundation does not make them to, for example, start contributing to WINE, since that does not make financial sense to them.
[+] [-] shmerl|9 years ago|reply
I'd welcome that, but MS still needs to fix several very major issues which stand in the way of such cooperation.
1. Stop the patent aggression.
2. More support for open standards. Especially in 3D graphics (DirectX lock-in), filesystems on removable media (exFAT lock-in), and so on and so forth.
3. Stop Windows tax / Windows bundling anti-competitive practices.
Once those are changed for the better, I'd say MS really changed. There is some progress with the above for example in case of the browser. MS joining Alliance for Open Media is one such case. But quite a lot still remains problematic.
[+] [-] finid|9 years ago|reply
Is that why they're pushing the Azure cloud service - to benefit Linux?
[+] [-] qplex|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2bitencryption|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] executesorder66|9 years ago|reply
In my opinion, they are not at all interested in cooperation until they port Office and Visual Studio to Linux or open source them.
[+] [-] forgottenpass|9 years ago|reply
Microsoft was late to the game, but we gotta give them props for contributing back something more useful than "open core", platform onboarding or "hire me" piles of code.
[+] [-] blackaspen|9 years ago|reply
I'm fairly certain all of 2016 is a mass-hallucination. Or something. In all seriousness though, I don't think this is surprising. Visual Studio on macOS is more surprising to me. Azure runs on Linux and that's a really, really big business for Microsoft. And they've also built a Linux Subsystem into Windows. Rock on Microsoft, rock on.
[+] [-] rufius|9 years ago|reply
Edit: clarifying
[+] [-] ekianjo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mevile|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devereaux|9 years ago|reply
I am happy to use Office in wine, as it gives me a very stable experience, full unicode supports even with my Xorg keymaps.
I use Visual Studio in wine - not as good as Office, but still very good.
I have a Windows phone, a priced relic since Microsoft abandoned them. Rock stable, last for a week in airplane mode.
I have a Windows 10 LTSB in a separate partition. Initially I just wanted to test it out. Now I consider running it in KVM for Visual Studio, in case I want more than what wine can now offer.
Hell, I am considering replacing my Thinkpad by one of Microsoft surfaces. As soon as it runs Linux as well as a Thinkpad, can get 32G of RAM, a user replacable SSD, wifi and lte module, I buy one. Seriously, even if the keyboard is not as good. And given Microsoft new focus on developpers, I wouldn't entirely dismiss the idea of a Surface Developper, bulkier but sturdier and user upgradable.
People say "hell froze over". I don't care. I look forward for more change from Microsoft. Because their tools are innovative again.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|9 years ago|reply
It'd be great if companies would support this sort of use if they're not going to bother creating native versions.
I used to play games using PlayOnLinux but the company, Origin (IIRC), updated their game manager software seemingly in order to break the Linux compatibility. The games were paid for and worked perfectly well.
Annoying as hell when companies appear to be actively hostile to you buying their product.
[+] [-] organsnyder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atomic77|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmdrfred|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jepler|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1281281918|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ascendantlogic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jordigh|9 years ago|reply
I guess the money from the LF is helping pay Linus' paycheque, but it has also become a bit of a lobbying group to steer Linux into more proprietary software.
[+] [-] thejj|9 years ago|reply
Let's see how they'll try the next step.
[+] [-] LyalinDotCom|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ekianjo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lagadu|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Roritharr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] winter_blue|9 years ago|reply
So not much, unless the work they have to do is highly parallelizable (i.e. can be broken up), and would truly benefit from more developers.
I can imagine KDE benefiting from this, because KDE is an umbrella organization with hundreds (if not thousands) of projects underneath it.
[+] [-] MikusR|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beachstartup|9 years ago|reply
i think the frontier you are speculating about is currently at 2 or 3 times that magnitude. what does a $100B-$1T of market capitalization behind linux and its ecosystem look like?
i think the major players are aligning to answer that question... we'll find out soon enough.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/rht?ltr=1
[+] [-] pksadiq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SEJeff|9 years ago|reply
Open Source != Free Software
[+] [-] shmerl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sterex|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chipperyman573|9 years ago|reply
[0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2016-Q4...
[+] [-] 0xmohit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pionar|9 years ago|reply
They all work really well on Linux. They're part of the .NET foundation (https://github.com/dotnet).
[+] [-] MichaelGG|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acd|9 years ago|reply
Windows subsystem for Linux https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/07/22/fun-with-t...
Xenix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix
Microsoft Interix, Windows services for Unix historic link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interix
[+] [-] thebspatrol|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] B1FF_PSUVM|9 years ago|reply
(Social game: what will they call it? I'd say something like Unsinkable Linux ;-)
They should also have their own filesystem - ow, right, NTFS. I was thinking they could take another go at the database FS that stalled Vista a decade ago ...
[+] [-] eevilspock|9 years ago|reply
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3042247/open-source-tools/b...
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5015
https://slashdot.org/story/04/07/11/1714235/gates-open-sourc...
[+] [-] native|9 years ago|reply