During a recent online event the current Microsoft President, Brad Smith, opened up a little bit about open source and their previous failures with it.
Sadly, their history with open source is a rather tumultuous one. Previous Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, famously said years ago how "Linux is a cancer" and no one really forgot. It's interesting now though because of how Microsoft has changed over the years, as they finally warmed up to open source.
In a chat hosted by MIT CSAIL, President Brad Smith mentioned:
Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source exploded at the beginning of the century and I can say that about me personally. The good news is that, if life is long enough, you can learn … that you need to change.
They now own GitHub, a website built around code sharing and their own Visual Studio Code editor is also open source under the MIT license. Expanding there, GitHub also recently acquired npm (the company behind Node package manager) too. That's merely scratching the surface, as they're even integrating Linux more and more into Windows itself with their Windows Subsystem for Linux. Heck, they're even going to put their own web browser Edge onto Linux which is now being built with the open source Chromium.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Mountain Man May 16, 2020
Quoting: randylThat is why Copy Left (GPL and the like) FOSS licensing is so important in my opinion. With FOSS they have to share improvements they use back with with the community and upstream projects. With Permissive OS (MIT and the like) licensing they do not.Of course if Microsoft does happen to "borrow" from Copy Left projects, we would never know it because they'll never let anybody outside of their headquarters take a peek at their code.
Last edited by Mountain Man on 16 May 2020 at 6:21 pm UTC
EagleDelta May 16, 2020
Quoting: RoosterFor me, actions speak louder than words. If they actually open source some of their most used applications, then I might raise an eyebrow, otherwise I'm past the point of caring.
As someone that has worked in tech for 10 years and currently working for a company that is working through open sourcing an application, I can say that open sourcing something that was originally closed source isn't just as simple as "Here's the code". There are legal, political, and business ramifications that have to be worked through. Additionally, time has to be made to work through such things and MGMT/The Board are unlikely to allow revenue generating work to stop just to open source something.
I have a family member with PTSD who was forced to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 recently and he's already smashed his keyboard to pieces twice because Windows 10 interrupted him during his PTSD therapy session. It's not a user-friendly OS.
They need to do a full 180-degree turn on the way they treat their users if they expect any love for the inclusion of Linux in their system. I'd much rather VM Windows in Linux and shut away all of its access to the internet at large than the other way around. There's no way M$ can be trusted with your data, as so many big companies right now.
With dotnet you will also have better c++,c and c# support under linux in the future :).
They support it now, but its a bit terrible at the moment.
also, WSL dont help linux desktop.
WSL makes windows have all the features of linux desktop, wich means no one would see an reason to use linux instead.
ElectricPrism May 17, 2020
Last edited by Shmerl on 17 May 2020 at 2:09 am UTC
Quoting: 14Quoting: F.UltraI don't think so. It's to make it easier to manage Linux services that run on Azure. Now, admins and developers don't have to run a VM. I don't think MS was "losing" anybody to Linux that is now satisfied with WSL.Quoting: LinasAnd I am sure that is why Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) exists. Not because they actually want their users to use Linux, but because they know that they lost to Linux in the server market, and cannot pull off a compelling Windows-proper alternative.
I'm quite sure that WSL only exists in order to keep Linux Server developers and Administrators using the Windows desktop, and not loosing them to a Linux desktop like they lost on the server side.
I also see developers use WSL instead of a Linux VM on their Windows machines. Since a lot of development stuff isn't available for Windows and since they deploy their work to Linux servers anyway, it was always a hassle to run a separate VM. But none of the WSL users I know would even consider using Linux on the desktop. My sample size is only 4 people but they all say the same: I use it to get rid of VMs.
Though with Docker and Kubernetes working on Windows, maybe that use case is going to disappear at some point.
Last edited by psy-q on 17 May 2020 at 8:37 am UTC
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me