My personal opinion is that it is indeed little concern, but a little concern to many parts of MS, which compared to many other companies may well look like a dedicated anti-linux corporation that outnumbers them.
Quite the opposite in fact. MS has been rather blunt that they haven't been pleased with Linux's use of what they believed was patented technology and that they'd take action. IMO, the real question is what took them so long, since the first threats were made years ago.
With that said MS has never threatened anything beyond Linux, at least that I can recall. Linux appears to have a special place in their heart.
That's not paranoid at all. MS goal is to declare Linux a "legacy" environment, like they tried to do with UNIX in the 80s (the so called POSIX subsystem).
"82% of open source software runs on Windows"
I suspect this should worry them more than Linux.
Without the Office monopoly and the Server+SQLServer+IIS or exchange licence fees MS doesn't look so good.
It doesn't really matter about linux's 10% of the desktop market if the EOM copy of windows that came with your machine is the last bit of MS software you (or your company) ever buys.
Same. I guess it is because Microsoft is a relatively smaller company established in rural Washington and focusing its efforts on FOSS. Nothing to be worried about there.
I don't think it's a particularly good thing for Microsoft to cozy up with Linux, let alone any of the larger tech firms. In particular, I don't think it's great that Microsoft is such a heavy contributor to the Linux foundation.
If the people who work on Linux become financially dependent on large tech firms, this creates potential conflict-of-interest. For instance, is it impossible to imagine that as Proton becomes more capable of making the Windows gaming experience portable, there couldn't be pressure to kneecap it in some way at the kernel level? If Ubuntu had dropped 32 bit app support as planned, it would have done just that.
Oh, lots of us care. It's just that the people who care the most arent using Windows much anymore. They are using linux. That choice, that freedom to install a competator OS, has empowered microsoft to do such things without fear of regulators.
Generally agree with you, but those of us who knew Microsoft in the 90s are also cautious about the company getting too cozy with the Linux ecosystem, or any competing technology in general.
MS pulled some shady shit, no doubt about it, but I don't think MS has ever been the serious threat to freedom that other companies have. The PC has always been an incredibly open platform. That openness was taken advantage of by many competing operating systems, especially linux, over the years. And remember that the "PC" in this case extends to the server market as well. It's always been possible to build PCs from parts and put whatever OS you wanted on them, and MS has always been a part of that phenomenon while Apple and other companies preferred much more closed ecosystems. We should remember that, and give credit where it's due.
For better or for worse, I'm not sure the aggregate direction Microsoft takes as a company is either altruistic or malicious, I'm pretty sure it's ultimately profit driven.
I expect there are MS engineers who see this as altruistic and executives that see this as a way to keep developers from moving off Windows and ultimately as customers. In the end, I'm not sure what this will mean for "desktop Linux". I've already had one colleague dump "bare metal Linux" in favor of Win10 + WSL2.
Linux is a big threat, given how they have destroyed a lot of Windows Server's market. And I'm pretty sure Microsoft has a few patents on operating systems, that they could sting Linux for.
However, there are too many developers who would riot (i.e. advise their boss not to go MS) if MS started playing too dirty.
Perhaps you think that but I don't think they are or their shareholders see it that way. Microsoft tends to only deal with Linux or the open source world in an effort to avoid criticism. In fact, that's just too ironic of a statement and I think needs a little justification.
Oh I didn't realize that. Maybe similar teeth, different dragon. I'm cautious about Microsoft, but recently I'd have to say they've been a reasonable Linux community member - though if there are fewer larger balancing orgs - who knows.
This is one of the more sane comments on this thread. There is a lot of paranoia about MS wanting to somehow "corrupt" Linux because some web developers are having IE6 flashbacks. Sure if it was still 1999 I'd be scared of that, but now Microsoft's biggest growth business is Azure, so this move is largely about supporting Azure usage, not about creating a weird Linux Windows hybrid to lock developers out of proper Linux distros. The rest all comes from MS being developer friendly, which has always been a part of their culture on the tools side
The only part of this I disagree with is mocking Linux users for being paranoid. I will mock Linux users for many things, but paranoia about Microsoft is not one of them.
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