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Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

linuxfoundation.org

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Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#81

Post by wonks »

executesorder66 wrote: post #77
wmccullough wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not count SQL Server, VS Code, ASP.NET core running Linux as cooperation? They are genuinely trying here.

It is definitely a step in the right direction. But I'd argue that the most used microsoft product in the world (besides Windows) is MS Office. What holds a lot of people back from running Linux is that they don't like dealing with compatibility issues with LibreOffice and MS Office. Microsoft knows if they open source or port MS Office to Linux, they will lose a massive market share and millions of people will stop…

Well, it sounds like they're working with Linux in some markets and going their own way on others.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#82

Post by serge2k »

executesorder66 wrote: post #69
bomdo wrote: post #20

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 coop…

> and they are genuinely interested in cooperation. In my opinion, they are not at all interested in cooperation until they port Office and Visual Studio to Linux or open source them.

Not even when they are making huge investments into Azure, which pretty much requires linux to be a viable alternative to AWS?

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#83

Post by zanny »

paulddraper wrote: post #42
bomdo wrote: post #20

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 coop…

> being a platinum member entails donating $500k 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…

Linux is a kernel, not an OS, and Microsoft has been abjectly hostile to the OSes that use Linux and respect user freedoms.

If they weren't, they would have never pushed hostile proprietary vendor lock in tech like DirectX12 or Universal Windows Platform in recent years.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#84

Post by zanny »

winter_blue wrote: post #56
Roritharr wrote: post #52

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?

As the Mythical Man-Mnth says, you can't build software faster by adding more programmers. 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.

I can't imagine how much great software KDE could produce with another 50k, let alone 500k, in corporate sponsorship. It has fewer developers with a broader reach than Gnome and an even older legacy.

Just a really easy example is how they now have the Kirigami UI framework, and they released their software store redone in it a few months back (Discover) but the man hours and work required to port more of the collection to that toolkit would be immense. And even Discover is missing a lot of polish since its primarily a demo product at this point.

Throw another 10 developers in there (at 50k a pop?), and all those complaints about "it looks like Windows" with toolbars and dropdowns would be abated.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#85

Post by executesorder66 »

Zyst wrote: post #80
executesorder66 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely a step in the right direction. But I'd argue that the most used microsoft product in the world (besides Windows) is MS Office. What holds a lot of people back from running Linux is that they don't like dealing with compatibility issues with LibreOffice and MS Office. Microsoft knows if they open source or port MS Office to Linux, they will lose a massive market share and millions of people will stop…

>Microsoft knows if they open source or port MS Office to Linux, they will lose a massive market share and millions of people will stop using Windows. That's a huge assumption. There's no real indication that people would stop using Windows if Office existed in Linux. If that were the case, then porting Office to OS X would've had a similar effect, don't you think? Ultimately I believe the reason Microsoft doesn't bo…

> That's a huge assumption. There's no real indication that people would stop using Windows if Office existed in Linux.

Except for basically every thread I've seen about switching to Linux, where people say the only reason they won't switch is because they still want to use Office and Photoshop.

>If that were the case, then porting Office to OS X would've had a similar effect, don't you think?

No. Cost is a major reason people don't switch to OS X. But Linux is free.

> Ultimately I believe the reason Microsoft doesn't bother porting to Linux is that the market-share is just not worth the cost of re-writing for another platform, and keeping it updated.

That is a good point. But as I said, unless they port their main product to Linux, how can they claim to be cooperating when the ONE product that most people agree is a very good MS product is not available natively on Linux?

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#86

Post by jpalomaki »

thejj wrote: post #17

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extingui... Let's see how they'll try the next step.

I don't think this strategy would work anymore on these fields. Microsoft does not have dominant market share in cloud, server operating systems, development platforms or databases and it does not look like they could gain it. The dominating position is key for the embrace, extended, extinguish because that's the way to push your own stuff to market.

I believe Microsoft is doing these moves, because they have decided that the old business model where all products are required to support the sales of each other is too risky. It served them well, but now there are too many good alternatives on many areas. If Azure does not support Linux, customers are not going to migrate to Windows because of that, they just pick another cloud. The old way was risky, because it meant that if customers moved away from Windows, they also had to move away from .NET and SQL Server.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#87

Post by ss248 »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #67
ss248 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think they have changed? They got this "We are good guys now" talk going on recently and I'm not against it, but I have lost all trust in them, they have to gain it back and can only prove themselves with actions now. On a side note, I'm also displeased with microsoft's products I'm almost forced to use. Can you imagine that uninstallation of Visual Studio 2015 from SSD takes 20 minutes? And it doesn't…

Yes, I do think they changed. People come and go and corporate culture changes with them. > I have lost all trust in them, they have to gain it back and can only prove themselves with actions now Question: what actual actions could they take that would cause you to change your mind about them?

I think it's foolish to believe someone, who lied to you before, only based on words. I agree, people come and go, but if you are "new blood" you can only do so much.

But I not against Microsoft in particular. They are rich and powerful. It would be good, if they are really good guys now. I give them a chance to prove themselves. But i don't expect much.

>what actual actions could they take that would cause you to change your mind about them?

Maybe start making good products? What more can they do? And going back to "new blood" point again, do you think noone in Visual Studio devteam noticed that uninstallation taking 20 minutes? I'm 100% sure that there is guy who did, but he just cannot do anything. He have no power to change things. "It's working now somehow, so don't even think about touching it." And everything is like that at Microsoft.

And that whole telemetry stuff in win10. Every single option (telemetry/internet search/ads etc) is turned off, yet i open up wireshark and still see it calling home every time i type something in start menu. It's like they don't respect me and think that i'm stupid. Why it has to be this way?

"We are different now, but we are still the same." And nothing has changed. Pretty sad.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#88

Post by vidarh »

winter_blue wrote: post #56
Roritharr wrote: post #52

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?

As the Mythical Man-Mnth says, you can't build software faster by adding more programmers. 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.

The vast majority of the kernel code is a massive number of drivers and subsystems that can be worked on independendly.

A better funded Linux Foundation could also invest in better tooling (better compilers, better test rigs), and in research on speculative improvements to pretty much every subsystem.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#89

Post by paulddraper »

zanny wrote: post #83
paulddraper wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being a platinum member entails donating $500k 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…

Linux is a kernel, not an OS, and Microsoft has been abjectly hostile to the OSes that use Linux and respect user freedoms. If they weren't, they would have never pushed hostile proprietary vendor lock in tech like DirectX12 or Universal Windows Platform in recent years.

(1) That's hair splitting of common usage. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

"Linux was originally developed as a free operating system for personal computers based on the Intel x86 architecture"

"Linux has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems."

"Linux is not the only such operating system"

"Linux is also the leading operating system on servers and other big iron systems"

I'm surprised you didn't distinguish it as an OS kernel, instead of leaving it ambiguous as to what kind of kernel it is, e.g. popcorn.

(2) The opposite is true. For example, Ubuntu user-space (i.e. sans Linux kernel) is available on Windows.

Re: Microsoft Becomes Linux Foundation Platinum Member

#90

Post by finid »

bomdo wrote: post #20

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 coop…

I get the impression that he wants to leave the cloud to linux and try to position Windows as a user-facing client.

Is that why they're pushing the Azure cloud service - to benefit Linux?

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