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Comment by SQueeeeeL | Hacker News Reader

It probably means they want to leverage out the existing open source VM software so they can make one with proprietary Windows support (at some point down the line). There is a long history of this in the past with Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Everyone should be afraid of this, even the Microsoft employees commenting here. Look at the 737 MAX post on the front page for another example of management corrupting engineering

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>Everyone should be afraid

Please don't FUD like this. Proprietary systems on top of Linux are nothing new and Microsoft certainly isn't the first company to have done it. If you have some real proof of their business plans then let's hear that rather than encouraging speculation and fearmongering.

I had to look up what FUD was (it stands for Fear Uncertainty Doubt for anyone else who didn't know)

I feel like taking an extremely cautious stance in regards to Microsoft is very fair, given that they were actually hauled in front of Congress for bad practices multiple times in the past...

> I feel like taking an extremely cautious stance in regards to Microsoft is very fair

As someone who wrote their first code for Linux in 1998 (a research project, not upstreamed), the whole "Microsoft loves Linux" thing is almost exactly like "Magneto loves the X-Men". I mean, I'm glad they're not calling us a cancer anymore, but I don't believe for a second they're a fundamentally different company; and I don't trust them one bit.

But the great thing about open-source is that bitter enemies can collaborate when it makes sense to do so.

Cautious is fine. Always read the fine print with any company, not just Microsoft. But that's different from being afraid.

It's not FUD. It's the Microsoft's never-changing strategy. I don't know how many times people need to experience it to remember this.

To be clear, the GP wasn’t making a claim about Microsoft’s strategy; what they’re claiming is that Linux is robust against such threats. Linux is constantly “Embraced” and “Extended” by all sorts of people, but it’s far too large a tent at this point for any entity, no matter how large, to gain the control necessary to “Extinguish” it.

(In this specific case, it’s because Linux has many in-kernel hypervisor systems, not just Microsoft’s. And at no point would they get rid of any of them, even if Microsoft’s is “better” in some sense. That’s not how Linux works: those systems are there to allow various groups to scratch their own itches, not as some central ideologically-driven top-down design. Microsoft can certainly add to Linux—anyone can—but nobody can force Linux to take away alternatives until it becomes dependent in some way on their particular code.)

Whatever Embrace Extend Extinguish is Microsoft doing, all the patch were open source and licensed under GPL. If VMWare's patch to make Linux run in VMWare closed source hypervisor getting mainlined, why not this one?

That strategy has also failed them numerous times and resulted in complete flops. Sorry I am just really sick of the senseless Microsoft bashing that tends to pervade Linux communities. If you have some real reason to criticize them based on current behavior then let's hear that. Anything else is speculation.

There is no MS lovehate anymore from Linux community in my experience since the rise of the greater evils went under the radar as hipp. Sadly MS is on the course joining the Google and Facebook in this regard.

I think it is uncharitable to assert that a company that is 45 years old has a strategy that is "never-changing". There is no denying that Microsoft has been hostile to Linux and open source efforts before, but it doesn't mean that this would never change. Last I checked, Microsoft was the largest contributor to open source projects, and Satya Nadella seems to embrace FOSS

I don't see what they've done to earn your trust. You just want to believe theyre different, just like the parent wants to believe theyre not. The truth is probably in the middle.

> Everyone should be afraid of this

> It's not FUD.

I'm sorry, but the sentence "every should be afraid of this" is literally Fear.

Yes, Microsoft has a history and yes, we should be cautious. But that's very different than calling for every person to be afraid.

How are you seeing this perceived strategy in LinkedIn, GitHub, Azure, .NET Core, Docker, Surface, etc?

These are all things that Microsoft is either owner or a strong participant. They aren't the same company as they used to be. They don't have one single product (Windows) that everything revolves around. They were losing too much (things like Mobile) to keep that strategy.

Generally proprietary systems aren't merged into the kernel though. That's not the same as shipping a closed-source, proprietary user space application.

Just because it's happening already doesn't justify it. Stealing and murder is also happening and shouldn't.

Or maybe the Hyper-V team sees that Windows as the only host that Hyper-V support as a liability. Look at [0], you need 16 hours to compile Windows in 64 bit superfast workstation w/ hundreds of GB memory, which would be frustrating and annoying, if they just want to improve Hyper-V and testing, working w/ Linux would be much faster since it compiles within minutes on standard dev machine with adequate RAM.

[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-do-you-think-about-open-sourcing-...

Windows contains not only kernel but also many components like stdlibs, daemons, graphics, basic apps, and so on. So you should compare compiling time for Linux, glibc, systemd, X/Wayland, GNOME, wpa_supplicant, PulseAudio and so on.

Linking policies from decades ago isn't helpful.

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