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Comment by avodonosov | Hacker News Reader

I already asked this in the past, and want to ask again. Is Microsoft a corporation of goodness now?

Asking if a publicly traded company this big is good or bad is pointless. A corporation is psychopathic; if it goes Patrick Bateman or Dexter Morgan depends on the environment.

The current environment incentivizes expanding the developer ecosystem, hence DX investments.

In my opinion, this is actually a question of values. My position: absolutely not, but I take it as axiomatic that Microsoft (et al.) are incapable of any actual "good."

This is simply Window's attempt to build a new walled garden. If they were actually serious about advancing the state of civil computing, they'd make the NT core available as a microkernel that can be modularly placed into the Linux ecosystem. That is the _one_ thing I can think of which might raise my opinion of them (and I'm sure they lose sleep at night, knowing they haven't got my endorsement).

I'm of a similar opinion. If they want to prove that they heart Linux, that's what they're going to have to do. Or, at the very least, document everything (including DX) so that the Wine devs can do their thing even if MS don't care to help. Until then, "MS <3 Linux" is nothing more than PR speak in my mind.

Absolutely agreed. Microsoft is not a pleasure to develop with, which is (in my opinion) a losing position with time. They see what Linux makes a pleasure, so they pursue the trappings of the community while damning the spirit of cooperation. Cynically, I see their moves as nothing more than an attempt to capture social capital.

Hopefully, nobody is having the wool pulled over their eyes. Don't get me wrong: their incorporation of a TTY-like interface into CMD, and the Linuxification of Powershell, demonstrate the craftsmanship that Microsoft pride themselves on. It's good tech, but tainted. I will never trust Microsoft after the RDP fiasco.

Why this should be exactly microkernel?

Perhaps it needn't be; I, with my negligible OS dev experience, just like microkernel architectures better. It seems more sensible to have microkernels managed by a microkernel loader. This might be an opinion I come to recant in time. The core of my position is that Microsoft needs to stop doing Microsoft things if they want to be taken seriously as a good faith actor, but I'm not holding my breath.

Until they make moves to break down the walls of their garden, they're just another barrier.

Providing POSIX and Linux-specific APIs does actually place them into Linux ecosystem.

Programs bult for Linux suddenly can be run for Windows users. That's a boost in adoption potential for Linux programs (large part of the ecosystem). And adoption is very impotant for further development and success of software.

On the other hand, for Linux users this makes Windows more attractive - why not choose Windows for your next laptop, if all your Linux software runs there. That undermines Linux userbase.

But overall, I feel WSL is good for Linux.

Yeah, that's what gets me: it's obviously engineered to drive traffic one way without giving anything back to the community. I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in APIs to interact with a black box. Until Microsoft makes Windows user-controllable, I will never treat it with respect.

I do see your point, however, and I hadn't thought it of that way; do you see anywhere the community might pick up on this for some benefit?

Many ways. For example, it is more compelling to choose Linux as the target platform for new programs, because that way the program works both on Winoows an Linux. Therefore, more software for Linux world.

WSL is winning people over who had left Windows simply because the dev experience outside of the VS IDE is sub-par. We'll see what this means for Linux.

It could mean that people start realizing that there's gaps between Windows and Linux that need to be closed to make Linux more attractive to users. Alternatively it could mean that people don't acknowledge those gaps and instead gripe about EEE.

I know which outcome I'd put my money on.

Microsoft is a group of 180,000 people, it's too big to be classified like that. A small subset of them are making this cool thing, and you can debate whether or not their intentions are good, but that's about as far as you can go in making a broad moral judgement.

Microsoft has just shifted to being what IBM was in that late 90s for all intents and purposes. IBM didn't care what you ran on their platforms, even at the OS level. They just wanted that sweet sweet support contract and computer leasing money. "You want to run Linux on our mainframes? Hell yeah, sign here." Now with Azure, Microsoft gets money of the same shape, and correspondingly makes some of the same strategic choices.

Balmer was their wake up call. A lot of destructive policies that ensure short term benefits destroy long term sustainability.

They are good, just as any public can be good company. IE. Just a little bit more sensible about cooperation instead of demolition.

Embrace

Extend <-- you are here

Extinguish

What are they extending? What functionality does this add to Linux that is only available on Windows?

One is their DirectX extension that only works on WSL2. It allows you to access the DX API through a shim driver. You can now have a Linux application that needs access to /dev/xdg which is only available in WSL2.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-linux/

Hmm probably closer to true neutral.

Please define what is good.

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