The truth comes out: Microsoft needs Linux | Hacker News Reader

The truth comes out: Microsoft needs Linux

techrepublic.com

63 pointsargorain108 comments

There is a large group of people on the internet who never let the Microsoft of the 90s go.

How does every single one of their business decisions get linked to some nefarious goal? The author doesn't even know what it could be, BUT DON'T FORGET! This company tried to patent everything decades ago! Don't forget they're not bringing bash to Windows out of the goodness in their hearts!

Here's an example:

http://techrights.org/2016/03/10/charm-offensives-distract/

So, Microsoft signed two deals related to Android/Linux with two companies, the content of those deals are undisclosed. That's pretty much all the facts we have, and this article is trying to tell us that this is an unequivocal proof of MS racketeering the open source community, seriously? Did I miss something?

How you think you're buying Android, but you're actually still paying for bits of Windows.

That's not fun for a lot of people.

Are you suggesting MS has legitimate claims to IP used in android? Patent trolling isn't something new to MS, so why would anyone reasonably assume MS isn't patent trolling in the absence of all the facts when we have plenty of information and historical data to make reasonable presumptions?

> Are you suggesting MS has legitimate claims to IP used in android?

Are you suggesting that MS has no legitimate claims to IP used in android? It seems to me that companies wouldn't do thee deals if there was no case to answer. It's not as though (for example) Samsung was a stranger to court action, and it's a much bigger company than Microsoft.

It's also a fact that Microsoft pioneered Unix on PCs in the early 1980s, and that Xenix was the most popular Unix of its day....

"Long before Linus Torvalds was able to write anything useful in C, there was a version of Unix from Microsoft called XENIX that was based on the seventh edition and BSD 4.1 with some interesting enhancements (multiple virtual consoles accessible via Alt-F1, Alt-F2,... Alt-F10 -- later inherited by Linux, record-locking facilities for database programming, etc) and an amazing level of PC friendliness that Linus will try emulate much later by essentially replicating all major design decisions that Microsoft put into XENIX for PC but using an independent codebase." http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/Finland_period/x...

> It seems to me that companies wouldn't do these deals if there was no case to answer.

That is not the way the system works. For many companies it i s better to pay up for bogus IP claims rather than risk fighting it out in the courts and paying millions in legal fees.

Arguably, Microsoft is known to be leveraging about 310 patents for this. There's a decent likelihood that at least a decent number of them are legitimate under current law (your views on where software patents should be aside). They may be able to defeat specific patents, individually, but that burden would be on them. Whereas the wholesale deal from Microsoft covers them from the legit ones and the illegit ones in the pile for probably an overall bargain.

It's probably pretty unlikely even most of the 310 claims would be seen as "bogus". Under current law.

Techrights is an anti-Microsoft hate site, and would never let actual facts -- or the lack of them -- get in the way of its bigotry....

I like your approach sometimes. When dealing with people, I find it best to take positive changes in behavior at face value. I'm sure people could hang their past behavior over their head and treat them as though nothing has changed, but that seems sociopathic. Judging people more harshly based on past behavior is a pretty good way to keep yourself from harm, though. If it weren't unfair to others I would consider doing it.

With companies, I have no need to weigh their positive behavior more heavily. No one's feelings are at risk of being hurt; no friendships are on the line. If a company burns me with bad practices, it's safe and prudent to hold their mistakes against them. It should take a very long time for companies to build back goodwill, once lost.

well the thing is - Microsoft isn't a person, it's a company - as a general rule it is reasonable to assume that companies don't do anything out of the goodness of their hearts, when you also have a good deal of bad behavior in the past ( and 20 years ago can be the recent past for a company) it might make sense to keep an increase sense of skepticism.

Twenty years ago isn't "recent history" for anything in the tech industry. People who were at Microsoft back when they were "really evil" in the 90s have since WORKED AT GOOGLE (or any number of other companies you might be a fan of), and even left Google, since then.

Very few people who made decisions you may be holding over them today, actually work at Microsoft today. You can legitimately hold a decision against a person for a long time... they're still the same person, more than likely. But a company is an amalgamation of it's employees. And employees come and go.

In companies, this is not as important as the general policy and vision of the group. The entity is an autonomous system greater than its parts.

I'm not a fan of any company. But a company is an amalgamation of its employees, and employees when they come in absorb the company culture ( that's why everyone says the culture is important) and that's why you don't change the company culture unless a significant number of high level employees all leave at once.

and my second point is - Steve Ballmer left in 2014.

That's exactly my point. With people, assume they can change for the better; with companies, judge them primarily by their bad actions.

That abomination of a system called win10 came out just a few years ago, not in 90s.

Is spying on everyone and constantly sending telemetry even when disabled (to the extent people actually wrote a tool to go to every corner and forcefully disable it and even then it didn't work) not nefarious?

What are you even talking about here, they haven't changed a slightest bit.

Maybe I want to have updates that cannot be disabled? No, I want my machine to do what I want, not what MS wants.

Maybe I want to know that pic browsing app can't run without UAC (win8, looking at you)? I don't either, I just want to launch it.

They are still pounding that close-minded philosophy just like before. Their reputation is well-deserved.

I'm patiently awaiting another move in EEE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish) direction from them, this time with our last bastion - Linux.

I came from the gamedev side of things.

In there Microsoft now is perfectly still the 90s Microsoft.

From my point of view, the Linux on Win10 is a strategic move to incentive people use Windows as their sole desktop (since with this move many people won't have any reason whatsoever to use Linux at all).

I tried to convince lots of people on the Linux community that they need to react... of course, not blocking Microsoft (that would be silly, and unfree), but by fixing stuff that people wants fixed for years: Audio, driver support in general, ease of use, not having to edit text config files, and so on...

But instead I got EXTREMELY negative reactions, some people even told me they are against AMDGPU driver efforts because it would make Linux more accessible to stupid people that will need help.

What do you think of the Steam work on this?

IMO they're doing it as a means of keeping their options open against the day when Microsoft decides not to allow a third-party app store on Windows and cuts off their air supply.

That's definitely why they're doing it, and it's a good idea for a business to hedge it's bets this way. (Zynga would be sunk if Facebook ever blocked them, being dependent on one platform is a huge risk.)

But the likelihood that Microsoft would ever fully disallow third party install on Windows is nonexistent.

> But the likelihood that Microsoft would ever fully disallow third party install on Windows is nonexistent.

Unless you can predict the future for as long as Microsoft exists, you can't say that.

I'm pretty sure that before the iPhone there were people saying Nokia was too big to fail, same for IBM before Windows probably.

I'm still on the fence about car companies. I sure have heard people very convincingly say that oil is a risk-free investment, that there never will be a time when oil isn't needed anymore. I have good reasons to disagree with that today.

Then again, Nokia still exists today, so I suppose a pedant could get technical about oil still filling a much diminished market in the future.

This is, honestly, why Microsoft doesn't need to "incentivize" using Windows as their sole desktop: The reasons are already there: People have wanted things fixed for years like audio, driver support in general, ease of use, not having to edit text config files, and so on...

Linux isn't really much of a threat to Windows because Linux hasn't even really tried to successfully reach consumer product quality. Linux developers need to focus on this.

Having configuration files provides a superior experience to the Windows registry.

You forgot to use the $ in micro$oft.

I'm waiting for the proprietary extensions to the bash shell that requires you to license your software because it was created with windows bash. MSVCRT.dll ftw

I know this is touch-in-cheek, but my understanding is the subsystems are completely separate and can't talk with each other, so that means no msvcrt.dll.

Parts of Microsoft haven't let the 90s go, why should we?

There seems to be a lot of conspiracy theories going on, on what I personally believe to be a really straight forward and logical reaction.

From my perspective, "Bash on Windows" is a reaction to the wide adoption of OSX for development (In particularly web development seemed to have a mass migration).

For obligatory anecdote:

I'm a longtime and loyal Windows user. Windows has been my primary development platform even though parts or all of our stack ran on some flavor of -nix. I've always encouraged my team to do the same, primary motivated by the better UX on Windows.

But, like many in the past few years, I jumped the OSX bandwagon and moved the entire department over. This wasn't a fun transition, and came with many pains. But ultimately it was a necessary transition as the tools we needed just weren't supported on Windows.

Development became more complex, tooling became mandatory at every stage of development and only OSX offered us a reasonable balance between a -nix-like environment that ran the tools with decent UX.

Microsoft's move to bring Bash to Windows will likely motivate me to migrate back in due time.

While some may be spinning conspiracy theories, I'm personally just really glad Microsoft is moving in this direction.

Yeah, there's a development tool I was watching that worked entirely the same on Linux and OS X, but then it has to have a special sidebar for 'if on Windows, do this'. And this will likely be able to go away with Bash for Windows.

I agree with you 100%. The only thing I worry about, with "BASH on Windows" is how separate the subsystems are. On OS X I can interact with the desktop using osascript. Is there anything like this in the new Windows stuff? I fear there will not, based on what I've read so far.

More anecdata of that: we all have Macs for doing Java web server development at my job, which is for the UC (Davis), rather than some startup.

You talk like developing on Linux means doing everything in the command line. *nix UX is nothing to be ashamed of, and I personally prefer it over Windows and OS X (especially OS X).

Personally, the reason I like OS X over a random linux distribution is the sane keyboard shortcut defaults - CMD+C and CMD+V just work everywhere, as well as things like CMD+W.

Well, almost everywhere. And CTRL+F is still a little wonky depending on the app you're in.

Where on Linux do Ctrl-c, v, and x not work? I haven't had a problem with them anywhere in a decade. I have largely stuck to Gnome2, MATE, and XFCE, though.

The problem with Ctrl C is that it is also the shortcut for SIGINT when the terminal is focused.

Also most terminal emulators will forward all Ctrl combinations directly over the TTY rather than capturing them in the windowing system, so in practice Ctrl-V rarely works in a terminal either. Likewise for Ctrl-W, which is typically bound to backwards-kill-word, etc.

The way it ends up in practice, shortcuts involving the Command key on OSX end up being clearly defined and consistent, because apps typically can't override them.

As a die hard Linux fan, I'll admit that it'd be nice if ctrl+left/right worked the same everywhere.

On most editors it moves me one word, on the command line it inserts the control characters.

Same story for ctrl+backspace and ctrl+a.

You need ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v, etc. in a terminal.

Ctrl-v doesn't work in lxterminal.

("Paste" is on the right-click menu though.)

For me it's the other way.

In Linux there's a clear separation of CTRL for sending messages to the app --ALT for commands-- and SUPER for messaging the OS.

I found OSX very confusing trying to mix everything into a single key.

Oh, that's an insight I've never thought about. It never occurred to me that they had different purposes.

From an IT and "just works" perspective, Linux was a no-go for us.

It wasn't particularly about the UX on Linux desktops, but rather they don't fit in our company culture when it comes to how assets and IT are managed.

Which is why I wrote it from my own perspective as an anecdote.

As usual, YMMV

Last time I checked Microsoft was threatening Android phone makers with patents, many of those being related to Linux itself, collecting billions in patent royalties, being in essence a patents troll for the whole mobile industry. From where I'm standing, this seems no different than the Microsoft that funded the SCO lawsuit or that has spread FUD about Linux and open-source for years.

So do tell me, how did Microsoft change?

Maybe part of this deal is MS agreeing not to patent-troll Canonical?

And yet they still extort companies with their secret Android "patents". Perhaps people will treat them differently when they start acting like it. Nadella is getting there, but still has a lot of work ahead of him before hardcore Linux people (like myself) really trust the motives.

There's almost nothing "secret" about how Microsoft handles patents (you know about it, so do I). What'd be really interesting is actually seeing what Google does with patents. While I've got no paper to prove it, Samsung changed directions in Google's favor massively when Samsung agreed to a long-term patent sharing agreement with them. (Previously, Samsung had been looking more and more like they were going to fork or leave Android entirely.)

I suspect some patent hijinks happened there, and you and I just don't know the details.

You want to talk about secret, ask Google for a copy of the secret contracts every Android OEM is bound to.

Ummmm the list of patents they assert Android violates are secret, hence the term "secret".

The list of 310 patents Microsoft's asserted Android violates has been available for... almost two years now.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/chinese-govt-reve...

Hardly secret anymore. Meanwhile, the last copy of one of Google's secret contracts we have is five years old.

I am holding them to the same standard I would any other business. Very few play nice when there is a motive to milk customers for a larger profit each quarter. We've seen how "Don't be evil" worked out.

They are a public traded company. They are beholden to shareholders not consumers, their customers or myself.

It is profitable to entice users into your ecosystem and trap them there. Apple, Google and Microsoft all do it.

I do have to ask, though: After being slighted for years, why should they be given an immediate pass because of very recent events that make nerds happy?

When I first read your comment, I though you meant there is a large population who still think it is the Microsoft 90s when it comes to technology. Oh wait, I work for state government...

(SQL Server is the BEST! Outlook is the BEST! Everything can be done in Excel! Visual Source Safe is the BEST! Oh wait, TFS with a SQL Server back end is the BEST! )

Mm? I don't see how one could think Microsoft has become any less nefarious than the past. Windows 10 is the prime example of this. If anything, I'm getting more worried.

> There is a large group of people on the internet who never let the Microsoft of the 90s go.

Those people should have a look at research.microsoft.com, and compare their (public) research output to that of companies like Apple or even Google.

Their recent overtures toward open source are heartening, and for me did start to overcome the reputation of the old Microsoft. I was disappointed that they squandered that good will with the Windows 10 telemetry debacle.

Yeah, unfortunately I feel like in their rush to catch up to other modern tech companies, they picked up a few of other companies' bad habits. Insisting on constant telemetry feels like it's plucked from the Google playbook, and I really hope Microsoft changes their stance on it at some point.

Microsoft was also fined $2 billion dollars by the EU in 2004 for anti-trust violations so it's not just the 1990s.

In addition, Microsoft was under US Federal oversight until 2011, but then had it extended another two years for failure to comply with the original court order. So let's not forget that.

The EU fined Microsoft for bundling the Windows Media Player, and forced it provide a version of Windows without the Media Player. Nobody bought it, so apart from providing the EU with some cash, it was completely irrelevant.

It was also characteristic of anti-trust suits in general. They are much less about whether you committed a crime, and more about whether what you did can be redefined as a crime many years later.

The DoJ supervision was extended over the readability of Microsoft's enforced documentation of communications protocols, which it was ordered to rewrite.

In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly blamed Microsoft. "Although the technical documentation project is complex and novel, it is clear, at least to the Court, that Microsoft is culpable for this inexcusable delay," she wrote.

But she also wrote that the company had been "overwhelmingly cooperative" in the years after the antitrust settlement, and that this latest extension should not be viewed as a sanction. http://www.pcworld.com/article/142004/article.html

Common theme: build an empire by whatever means necessary, "why you bringing up old shit?" when asked about it

The author quoted Shuttleworth:

> The native availability of a full Ubuntu environment on Windows, without virtualization or emulation, is a milestone that defies convention and a gateway to fascinatingly unfamiliar territory.

"Ubuntu environment" is the key there. Microsoft doesn't need "Linux" unless they're planning on replacing their own kernel with it. Microsoft here is depending on the software running atop of the kernel: in this case, the GNU operating system---which is more than just a set of GNU programs[0]---which brings all of this software together.

Granted, all the talk has been primarily about GNU Bash and other GNU software.[1]

Yes, they're running software compiled for the kernel Linux by providing translating system calls; they could also do that for any other kernel that hackers want to compile their software for, should it become immensely popular. But the rest of the Unix stuff is separate.

[0]: https://gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/

If we end up with fully comatible gnu/linux and gnu/windows, that's still awesome, maybe even better than ending up with only linux variants.

Not if it's harmful to the development of a fully Free ecosystem. Unless Windows becomes fully Free - which would be a huge, unprecedented change - its users are forced to accept whatever compromises Microsoft makes on their behalf.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend_and_extingui...

Count me as being trapped in the 90s.

GNU is like Leonardo DiCaprio few years ago; never getting the Oscar. Microsoft did not bring Linux to Windows, it brought GNU. Linux is a kernel and there is not even a single bit of it in what microsoft brought to windows. It's technically GNU/Windows.

No. Just no. GNU on Windows has existed for a long time in several forms, for one thing. For another, by bringing a compatibility layer for the Linux kernel they have opened the door to much more than just GNU, and it remains incredibly reductivist to claim that that's all the Linux kernel does. You can use the Linux kernel (or this linux-compatible layer) to use a GNU system or a completely non-GNU system if you so choose.

What they bring by default as a user-land is Ubuntu, which is actually a complete OS that happens to include both GNU and Linux and many many other things, including essential components that are not part of either project. I say actually a complete OS because, in spite of RMS' protestations to the contrary in the famous "It's GNU/Linux, stupid!" editorial, the GNU system was not "almost finished" when the Linux kernel came along and is still not "almost finished" even today.

And the reason it's not almost finished is because the GNU project considers the kernel unimportant, which they prove wrong every year HURD remains a mess that moves forward with the pace of a snail.

You are wrong in so many ways. First of all, you are confusing "Microsoft bringing GNU to Windows" with "this is the first time GNU is brought to Windows." Then you go on to make it seem like if the GNU/Linux debate is just the craziness of some guy called RMS: wrong, many people support this distinction. Then you go off-topic talking about why GNU hurd is a mess. None of this contributes to the key topic here: Microsoft only brought GNU, not Linux and not Ubuntu. A topic where you were wrong again. Please read https://mikegerwitz.com/2016/04/GNU-kWindows

... as discussed extensively on Hacker News on its own page, including threads such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11459025 .

> many people support this distinction

Really? Maybe I travel in the wrong circles, but most of the time this comes up most people just roll their eyes.

Also, that blog post is terrible, and highlights why the FSF fails so miserably at it's mission. Referring to Windows as "freedom-denying, user-controlling, surveillance system" ignores the fact that most people don't care because it works.

again, you only seem to want to discuss the off-topic subject related to GNU and the FSF positions in general. the thing is, no matter what your position on the GNU/Linux debate is, it doesnt change the fact microsoft brought GNU to windows and not Linux, nor ubuntu. It's just a fact, not an opinion.

> Also, that blog post is terrible, and highlights why the FSF fails so miserably at it's mission. Referring to Windows as "freedom-denying, user-controlling, surveillance system" ignores the fact that most people don't care because it works.

These users do not value freedom. And that's their right, however much we disagree with it.

It doesn't make those statements false, and doesn't change the situation. I wrote that article to focus on software freedom, its purpose, and GNU.

We don't ignore the fact that "most people don't care because it works"; that doesn't make sense, because that works against our ideals.

I suspect those users do care about freedom. The issue is that most people view a computer as just a tool to do work, not a political statement. The concept of software freedom make little sense to most people, and for good reason. The FSF would do well to focus less on the ideology, and more on providing a better user experience for non technical people.

The other issue is the concept of "free software". No matter the claims, when the term free is applied to a product (or product class) like software, the immediate implication that the price is free. The "free as in free speech" doesn't work too well because speech is not a product. Also, Windows doesn't exactly stop me from doing questionable activities, like authoring documents that would be considered subversive.

Telling people that Windows takes away their right to view and modify the source code will at best give lukewarm response, because most people have other concerns.

> I suspect those users do care about freedom.

I meant software freedom in this context; I should have been more clear.

> The FSF would do well to focus less on the ideology, and more on providing a better user experience for non technical people.

There are plenty of organizations that do that. The FSF exists for very specific reasons---ideology is essential.

> The "free as in free speech" doesn't work too well because speech is not a product

I don't follow.

By "free as in free speech" we mean the same thing as when we say "free as in freedom".

> Also, Windows doesn't exactly stop me from doing questionable activities, like authoring documents that would be considered subversive.

You're not setting a very high bar there ;)

> By "free as in free speech" we mean the same thing as when we say "free as in freedom".

If it's freedom, why does the GPL need copyright law?

> If it's freedom, why does the GPL need copyright law?

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say.

The free software definition specifies four specific freedoms:

  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

It is essential that the user be able to exercise those freedoms no matter what, which means ensuring that certain conditions on the distribution of the program are met, and that all derivative works are also free. This hack on copyright is called Copyleft, and it uses copyright to grant rights _back_ to the user.

  https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/

Copyright needs to be used because, in many countries, works are proprietary by default; there is no choice; in the US, if you do not explicitly grant rights to others, then all rights are reserved.

If you need copyright law, you need men with guns to enforce the law. If you need men with guns to enforce the GPL, is that really freedom?

The public domain and licenses that approximate it (3-BSD) do not suffer from this problem. Eliminate copyright law, and everything still functions like a permissive license.

I want to abolish copyright because I think it gets in the way of creativity. Generally speaking I also want less dependence on men with guns. Since I want to abolish copyright, I do not like the GPL. The best way to abolish copyright in practice is to use a permissive license.

I do not mind offering my work under a dual choice. If you agree on a contract to never enforce any copyright or patents, for eternity, in legal and technical form, you may distribute my work without honoring the terms of GPL.

I have yet to find a person or company who would prefer those terms over the GPL. As such, I find people to be a bit dishonest when they proclaim a desire to abolish copyright but still prefer permissive licenses.

It's a bit of a one-sided contract (I'm giving up way more than you). And signing a contract just means more unnecessary men with guns, whereas we could just make and share and use creative works and that would be that. If you agreed to do the same, then maybe. If the contract pertained only to my changes to your software, then certainly, but it would have to be as free as 3-BSD. It's not like I ever intend to sue over IP.

The only reason to prefer 3-BSD is because public domain isn't recognized worldwide. I'll agree that there should probably be something about software patents in there, those are stupid.

The contract would pertain to any work ever made by the contracte. You said you wanted to abolish copyright, and that mean you can't pick and choose to keep copyright around when its suitable. It would also work indiscriminate, cover any past or future work in software, pictures, music and so on.

If you never intend to sue over IP, then the contract should be an no-issue. All it does is to write down that specific aspect into an enforceable contract. Contract don't need to use men with guns if everyone choose to honor it, which was the historically method used back when people lived in tribes and villages made out of a handful houses. No one would dare to break their word, risking that others would start to do the same.

Your contract is worse than marriage (no divorce), and a terrible strawman. Lifelong written contract with a stranger? Ugh. What if I change my mind? I'll just continue releasing things permissively, and gradually abolish copyright in the process. (I don't really care about attribution which is generally all that's left.) You're free to use what I make in your copyleft projects!!

A deal is a deal. If you want to retain the option to change your mind and sue people over IP, then that is your decision. I won't be enabling that kind of behavior, nor will I donate code to it.

The best option would of course be that the law was changed and IP abolished by political change. Copyleft and permissive licenses would go away, artist could stand on the shoulders of giants without fear, and compensation would be addressed before the art was made rather than afterward. A fitting end to the flame wars.

Out of curiosity, in this hypothetical "never ever" license, are you also agreeing never to enforce copyright or patents in eternity?

Because otherwise, agreeing to it would not be in any way a step towards abolishment of copyright. It would, in fact, be something more akin to creating a free labour pool you are not willing to opt into yourself. You create a situation where you can profit from their work and they cannot. There's a word for this arrangement.

> If you need men with guns to enforce the GPL, is that really freedom?

Do you not need men with guns to enforce your other freedoms, like the freedom of speech under the First Amendment? (I don't know if you're a US citizen.)

We're focusing on a very specific set of freedoms---a subset of all freedoms that individuals should have.

> I want to abolish copyright

We have to work within the system we have, and abolishing copyright is unlikely to happen any time soon. There's things that work now.

In the case of the GPL, we still need copyright to ensure that we can enforce the right for the users' to have their freedoms; otherwise, public domain works can be used in proprietary software.

Freedom is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society.

Anarchy is the lack of laws, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.

Freedom need laws, because the alternative is the law of nature.

> GNU on Windows has existed for a long time in several forms, for one thing

This is a legitimate question, since I am not a Windows user: has it really? Or are you referring to GNU software[0], which is not what we are referring to when we say GNU is a fully free Unix replacement; GNU software is only a part of that.[1]

[0]: https://gnu.org/software/

[1]: https://gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html

> For another, by bringing a compatibility layer for the Linux kernel they have opened the door to much more than just GNU, and it remains incredibly reductivist to claim that that's all the Linux kernel does. You can use the Linux kernel (or this linux-compatible layer) to use a GNU system or a completely non-GNU system if you so choose.

Sure they have. But that's not what the conversation is focused on: it's focused on being able to use GNU Bash and all the other Unix (mostly GNU) utilities that hackers are used to using.

> And the reason it's not almost finished is because the GNU project considers the kernel unimportant

Linux completed a major missing piece of GNU, which we refer to as GNU/Linux.[2]

[2]: https://gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html

Specifically:

"Once Torvalds freed Linux in 1992, it fit into the last major gap in the GNU system. People could then combine Linux with the GNU system to make a complete free system — a version of the GNU system which also contained Linux. The GNU/Linux system, in other words."[2]

> This is a legitimate question, since I am not a Windows user: has it really? Or are you referring to GNU software[0], which is not what we are referring to when we say GNU is a fully free Unix replacement; GNU software is only a part of that.[1]

As far as I can tell this subsystem does nothing that cygwin hasn't done in terms of 'bringing gnu to windows' since 1995, except that it does it technically better and allows for you to use software that does not depend on already ported components without recompilation. This means, for example, that you can use a libc other than glibc without porting that libc to windows first (ie. you could use musl, which is absolutely not part of the gnu system and even implements its own dynamic linker). You couldn't do that with cygwin. At least not trivially.

> Sure they have. But that's not what the conversation is focused on: it's focused on being able to use GNU Bash and all the other Unix (mostly GNU) utilities that hackers are used to using.

Even if I concede that GNU constitutes a 'system' in the way that RMS insists (which I don't, at all. His claims are political, not technical, imo), I would not agree that using this layer constitutes using that system for precisely this reason. Using bash or even gcc is not sufficient to consider a system 'gnu', even by RMS' own statements, else OSX and the other BSD systems would be gnu systems as well. For the most part, use of "bash on windows" is literally just that. You run bash and it exists in a space that is like but not exactly the same as linux, but that part is largely artifice. You don't even get a complete /proc filesystem.

[Note: Considering I am literally referring to those RMS screeds in my posts, I'd appreciate it if you at least pretended to believe I've read them.]

> Even if I concede that GNU constitutes a 'system' in the way that RMS insists

Remember: back in the day, there was no way to run a free Unix-like operating system. GNU provided a way, and nothing else existed at the time, though BSD also emerged as free.

The distros that followed are derivatives of GNU. Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian GNU/Linux, which actually recognizes this fact.

> sing bash or even gcc is not sufficient to consider a system 'gnu', even by RMS' own statements

The article mentioned Shuttleworth describing an "Ubuntu environment"; this seems to imply more far-reaching goals.

I can't say what the result will be. I hope that others will explain it to me, or that there are many useful articles on the topic, because I can only watch and listen to what others are doing.

> [Note: I have read those links many times, you can stop linking to them in every level of this conversation you engage in now, I think]

I link to them in many threads because they will not otherwise be seen by the person I'm responding to.

First, the whole GNU/Linux "debate" is nothing more than RMS's ideology getting in the way. Linux refers to a class of operating systems that are mostly POSIX compliant. The fact that the GNU project has implemented a lot of the tools used in most distribution does not mean is has the right to lay claim to the title anymore than the Apache Foundation or Python Software Foundation.

Second, the GNU project will never get the Oscar because the FSF is incredibly inept at spreading it's message.

> The fact that the GNU project has implemented a lot of the tools used in most distribution does not mean is has the right to lay claim to the title anymore than the Apache Foundation or Python Software Foundation.

GNU is a fully free Unix replacement---an operating system; it is more than a bunch of GNU software:

https://gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html

This is where there is a division between the way the FSF presents itself, and the way the software is used. Without a kernel, the claims that GNU is a replacement for UNIX is disingenuous. GNU Hurd is not production ready. It is a series of tools, some of where adhere (mostly) to the POSIX standard, and some of which provide other functionality.

If we're going to start naming systems based on the tools, then I use a ZSH/MS/VIM/PSF/Linux distro. There are other providers than GNU.

> Without a kernel, the claims that GNU is a replacement for UNIX is disingenuous.

GNU/Linux has a kernel---Linux. It forms a fully free operating system.

No free replacement for Unix existed until GNU provided one---that involves much more than just writing utilities. I encourage you to read about the history of the project to understand why:

Summary: https://gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

More detailed: https://gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

Did the author post this having entirely ignored all of the news and discussion about this last week?

This just seems like a seriously tardy "me-too" piece.

There's just no content in that article at all.

Ubuntu on Windows does more to destroy OS X. It's about developers choosing Macbooks over Surface Tablets and traditional laptops with a Win10 license.

If you're an enterprise running SQL Server now on Windows. You're not going to ditch your cluster to have it re-installed on Linux just to save a couple dollars on an OS license. But if you're a newbie developer fresh out of college and been doing development in a Unix-style environment (because they bought a Macbook instead of a Win8 laptop four years ago), you've probably never been exposed to a Microsoft development environment. These efforts are to capture the next generation of developers who haven't ever touched a Windows desktop and feel comfortable with writing Python on Linux and using MySQL or Oracle. Want proof? Quick, name one unicorn startup who has a Microsoft technology stack. Heck, just name anybody that's using a Microsoft development stack in Silicon Valley...

Now those developers can be targeted with .NET, SQL Server, and Ubuntu on Windows. Now instead of buying the same version of that Macbook, those folks can go buy a Surface Tablet clone with the pen and touch screen (and a Windows 10 license!), and still do all of their development on a Unix-style environment. Better yet some will transition to C#, and some will even take advantage of the free-license-for-Oracle-users to switch to SQL Server.

How is it the truth if the author specifically mentions that he his speculating?

To me Microsoft has been evil long enough, instead of welcoming they "join" open source world, I'm 1000x more concerned they become a tumour and hurt the booming open source at large. Just leave OSS alone Microsoft!

Why do I keep rolling my eyes everytime I go on hacker news?

Microsoft providing more free tools in their suite is nothing but nice. It certainly won't do any harm to OSS.

The Greeks providing us with this free giant horse statue is nothing but nice!

Microsoft has acted unethically from it's inception until just recently when they've been backed into a corner. For decades they've repeated shown that they're willing to damage the entire industry if it means that they end up with more control over it.

Why would you trust that this recent change of heart is permanent given that their hand was forced? When they start acting ethically when they don't have to - that's when I'll reconsider my position.

I did some recon at their office in cambridge last night, and it was just too funny to listen to the words out of their evangelists/devs/data scientists mouths, its like they are trying to appeal a caricature of what they think people on the FOS(software/silicon) community want to work on/for lol Sadly they'll attract a lot of desperate college students just chomping at the bit to work for them lol

note: (behavior not unique to $msft, same is true of $aapl, $goog, $fb and those who want to emulate such…)

I can't believe you don't see the evil. Open your eyes. Just because a company pays 400 million for Xamarin and then open sources the Xamarin SDKs for Android, iOS, and Mac shouldn't fool you. People everywhere... revolt!

If you can't tell, I am being sarcastic. I love Microsoft. People just believe what they want to believe. I'm sure they will never change.

Sometimes it's a virtue to hold a grudge.

If people and companies are forgiven the instant they stop being abusive, then what's the disincentive to being abusive again? Microsoft did what they did because they had a monopoly position; they've changed now that they've lost it. There's absolutely nothing to say that they won't go right back to the way they were if they get a monopoly again.

If someone has been hitting you with a stick for years, and then all the sudden shows up with a big smile because they've lost their stick and they think you could help them get it back, what kind of fool would help them?

Yes, it does. Not so much on servers or desktops, but on phones. The mobile ecosystem is in danger of becoming a iOS/Android duopoly (or already is, depending on which X you want in 9X% to say it is)

I love Windows Phones. No so many apps, which is good as I don't have that much time to tweak stuff. Sensitive defaults like a black theme (!!!), a click to enable reading aloud SMS (!!), crazy battery features.

They are liquidating the current WP8 line, so it's like $30 if you want to get a Lumia 640 LTE to play with for a weekend (and free unlock code if you want to keep it but don't want AT&T). It's just sad to see something that had so many good things for it go the way of the Dodo.

I don't think MS is "embracing open source" (or even necessarily rejecting it), so much as they are acknowledging that Linux servers are here to stay for a while, and simply grabbing a piece of the pie instead of ignoring it. Much like Oracle having its own Linux distro.

Perhaps enough shareholders complained about a market segment simply being given to OSX (development environment for work intended for a POSIX server) that they simply had to act. No more, no less. Not benevolent or malevolent, just picking up some loose cash :-)

Maybe they are too late, though. I still like my Mac better than Windows version N, and have largely switched from Ubuntu (formerly RedHat, formerly Slackware) to OSX at home for the family.

The UI on the last few Windows versions has really confused me as to WTH they think they are doing.

I remember when my kids got the version of MS Office at school that came with Vista/Win7. All the complaining about Open Office / Linux stopped, as they learned that the Win XP layout was NOT God's Own User Interface.

Linux servers are here to stay for a while? Linux, and Unix and BSD, run 75 to 85% of the internet so that kind of thinking is just so wrong.

Is it too hard to imagine that "something else" might be popular in 2030? Or perhaps not.

But at some point, you and I will retire (etc), and the next generation might have other preferences, or discover something insanely great that we simply aren't used to.

A possible reason for bringing MSSQL to Linux that was not mentioned in TFA at all: customers requesting it.

I wonder what Ballmer thinks, after all he was the one who called Linux a "cancer".

It may well be a cancer buts it's won the battle. Better to accept the mutation to the business model while you still can before the cancer kills it

Yes and it's metastasizing.

I realize you are likely being rhetorical, but in case you aren't, Ballmer recently said that Linux is not a threat, and likely has not been a threat, even if he thinks that Microsoft did what it needed to do to survive at the time he called Linux a "cancer". [1]

More importantly, Ballmer was not wrong in saying that Microsoft's focus as a company has been and should always be "Developers, Developers, Developers" and everything about this Ubuntu on Windows effort is for Developers.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-ballmer-linux-id...

Click bait title and speculation

in other words, just installing cygwin.

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