back to article Microsoft just got its Linux Foundation platinum card, becomes top level member

Microsoft has joined The Linux Foundation as a Platinum member, the highest level of membership. The news was announced at the company's Connect developer event in New York. The Linux Foundation is a non-profit trade association which supports and promotes the Linux operating system and related projects, including Node.js, Xen …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Now one-third of the virtual machines (VMs) in Microsoft's Azure cloud run Linux, according to director of program management Corey Saunders."

    Cutting down on eating their own dogsh*t^H^H^H^Hfood then?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Would someone like to point out how VM's work to the AC?

      1. Red Bren

        @Lost all faith...

        AC may have been referring to this venerable article...

        http://m.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/ms_paper_touts_unix/

  2. CAPS LOCK

    'More Linux love' - I think I preferred the old Miscrosoft that said what it believed...

    ...'Linux is cancer'...

    1. Daniel von Asmuth
      Windows

      Mcirosoft wants world domination too.

      They may interoperate with Linux, but they haven't joined the Free Software Foundation.

  3. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    Great news!

    It is wonderful that Microsoft is finally embracing Linux, and shows their faith in Linux as a competent operating system worthy of sharing rack space with Windows.

    I'm sure as things progress, Microsoft will gladly assist Linus and the rest of the fine folks working on the kernel to improve interoperability between the two systems - possibly by extending things in the kernel to work better under Azure.

    And as things continue moving forward, we'll come to a future where problems and conflict between Microsoft and the Linux community will be extinguished.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Great news!

      "...embracing Linux"

      Linux didn't set out to destroy any 1 OS, it set out to provide a free alternative (RedHat sort of mutated that). Now what part of that has Microsofy embraced? Embrace like a loan shark.

      1. Mikel

        Re: Great news!

        "Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." - Linus

        Bonus: "If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won." - Linus

    2. Planty Bronze badge

      Re: Great news!

      Until they fork it, and make an incompatible version of "Microsoft Linux". The evil Microsoft is still there right at the heart.

      1. GrapeBunch

        Re: Great news!

        "Until they fork it". I'd be more concerned about poisoning the well.

        1. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Great news!

          >I'd be more concerned about poisoning the well.

          Systemd got there first.

      2. Captain Badmouth
        Coat

        Re: Great news!

        "Until they f**k it"

        FTFY.

        Mines the one with the full SCO manual set in the pocket, thanks.

        Ooof!

    3. billium
      Happy

      Re: Great news!

      very good.

    4. Steven Raith

      Re: Great news!

      Have an upvote for hiding 'embrace, extend, extinguish' in there.

      Which turns your post from a piece of apparent well meaning simpering, to something rather more dripping in sarcasm.

      Steven R

      1. Pirate Dave Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Great news!

        I'm glad somebody finally got it...I was beginning to worry that I'd been too subtle.

        1. Alan J. Wylie

          Re: Great news!

          I'm glad somebody finally got it...I was beginning to worry that I'd been too subtle.

          I went to the comments and immediately searched for "embrace". Well played, Sir.

    5. kryptylomese

      Re: Great news!

      Er.... In the real world, Linux sometimes shares rack space with a Windows server (but his is becoming more and more rare).

      Why would any company want to use WIndows and who cares about interoperability - Windows is dead!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Great news!

        "Why would any company want to use WIndows and who cares about interoperability - Windows is dead!"

        Well in a sense you're right and in a sense you're also wrong.

        It's just my opinion and many will probably disagree with it, but yes windows is fucked beyond repair and in that sense dead.

        BUT..

        That won't stop it meandering about trying to chew lumps out of the competition and trying to poison / infest it with the same rancid shit that brought about it's own demise (the if I'm going I'm taking as many as I can with me type mentality).

        In my humble opinion it is best to think of Microsoft as you would zombie from the walking dead and you won't go far wrong.

    6. nematoad
      Windows

      Re: Great news!

      A good start would be if MS would accept that NTFS is not the only FS out there.

    7. Dr Fidget

      Re: Great news!

      Did I miss the <sarcasm> tags?

    8. FuzzyWuzzys

      Re: Great news!

      I can almost smell the sarcasm coming out of my screen reading this! Ha ha!

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    The Linux Foundation is a vendor's club. It may fund development but it doesn't do it.

    1. Mikel

      Apparently Microsoft is a top Linux vendor. Who knew?

      1. Daniel von Asmuth
        Windows

        Buy Microsoft Linux

        Around the new year, there will be 400,000,000 copies of Windows 10 Ubuntu Linux. However, Redmond makes a lot of money by hosting Linux VMs in its Azure cloud.

    2. phuzz Silver badge
      Linux

      If you're running a recent linux kernel there's probably Microsoft code in there, they put a lot of effort into making sure linux would run well on HyperV.

  5. TonyJ

    Embrace...

    ...what's next? I forget.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Embrace...

      Embrace...Extend....Android?

      1. Mr Flibble
        Devil

        Re: Embrace...

        • Embrace:: choosing to support Linux-based OSes on Azure.
        • Extend: the Hyper-V client code in the kernel.
        • Extinguish: have they given up?

        1. Teiwaz

          Re: Embrace...

          .... have they given up?

          Maybe, it'd be like pissing on a large forest fire.

          My response at the moment is 'mummy, mummy, Microsoft is trying to ingratiate themselves.'

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Embrace...

      Darn, I just came here to collect those up votes.

      Next time I tell you... next time...

  6. Updraft102

    "The Linux Foundation is a non-profit trade association which supports and promotes the Linux operating system and related projects..."

    Supports and promotes?

    Is that anything like embrace and extend?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      So just to get this straight, has Linux embraced and extended Windows? The next step may administer the coup de grace.

      I'm working on my exit strategy to one of the BSDs.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think it's clear we have to watch out for ..

    .. Microsoft Windows & services being a cancer.

    After all, cancer cells start off as benign as well. I don't believe in sudden changes to DNA..

  8. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Linux Desktops

    ...many areas where Windows and Linux are in competition, such as in the on-premises desktop...

    I'm no Linux hater, but is Linux on the desktop really much of a competition to Windows?

    1. jaywin

      Re: Linux Desktops

      > I'm no Linux hater, but is Linux on the desktop really much of a competition to Windows?

      Well we do seem to start each year with an announcement of this being the year of Linux on the desktop...

      1. kryptylomese

        Re: Linux Desktops

        Boring!

        Google insist that their users use their own version of Ubuntu called Gubuntu and they really don't like WIndows being used at all.

        Just about every company I work out now uses Linux on the desktop. It is so tiresome to have to use a WIndows PC that is SO limited in what it can do.

        Any modern company realises that you don't need WIndows any more.

    2. Paul Chambers

      Re: Linux Desktops

      Have you heard of Chromebooks?

      Google's recent moves around it's 'linux' have put it very much in the enterprise market, along with google apps. They've put clear water between what they do for google architecture and what they do for the linux ecosystem.

      Microsoft is perhaps trying to have a position via "my enemies, enemy" strategy.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Linux Desktops

        Google's recent moves around it's 'linux' have put it very much in the enterprise market, along with google apps. They've put clear water between what they do for google architecture and what they do for the linux ecosystem.

        The only problem is that I wouldn't want anything made or done by Google handling confidential business data, so that's out. We'll stick with Debian, thanks.

        As for the Year of the Linux Desktop, given that they have had more Years of the Desktop than Microsoft I'd call it a success :). On a more serious note, it's a bit of chicken and egg issue: applications do not arrive because it's not an oft used desktop, and it's not an oft used desktop because few business quality applications exist.

        On servers, however, Linux has definitely deserved a place. If it's really big, web based and absolutely has to work even under load, Linux seems to be an easy default to pick..

        1. Mark 110

          Re: Linux Desktops

          "On servers, however, Linux has definitely deserved a place. If it's really big, web based and absolutely has to work even under load, Linux seems to be an easy default to pick.."

          I think theres a chicken and egg thing there too:

          - Windows used to be really unreliable, unstable and not fit for puurpose so all the architects that build big scale must work solutions do it on linux

          - No-one knows how to (or ever does) do that stuff on Windows because all the people who 'know what they are doing' insist it must be done on linux

          Having worked on two 'Digital Transformation' projects in the last three years its funny that:

          - the small/medium sized one built on Windows was very stable having its 1st downtime 6 months in and that was taken down on purpose as a weird security issue with the app reared its head at year end.

          - the big volume one built on Linux had 6 unplanned outages in the first 3 months all technical all due to architectural stability issues.

          It wasn't actually a Linux issue with the big one. Crap architects rushed a solution live that hadn't been OAT'd properly and issues with the JVMs falling over in certain conditions, DB falling over in certain conditions, etc caused various outages. In both cases the servers were rock solid.

          Anyway, I am agnostic server wise (not a techie). Just relaying experience. Just because its built on Linux doesn't mean its stable in my experience. Same for Windows but the historic inherent stability issues with Windows servers I haven't seen for a long time.

    3. Number6

      Re: Linux Desktops

      Have you tried Windows 10? I put it on a VM here and after trying it out, only fire it up when I really have to. The Win7 VM gets way more use, and the Linux host way more than that.

      The only thing stopping Linux from really making inroads is the poor support from providers of commercial software (and hardware - lack of decent drivers). If they produced Linux versions of their products then I suspect quite a few people would switch from Win7 to Linux once they'd experienced Win10.

  9. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Geoffrey W

      Re: Microsoft is a Business

      RE: "Since Microsoft is a business - then i would be rather sceptical or suspicious of the fox joining the Chicken Management, Security, Policy, and Processes Board"

      I heard that HP, IBM, Fujitsu, Oracle, Samsung, Qualcomm, et al were also businesses, and also members of the Linux Foundation. Lot of foxes in that hen house, huh. Those poor little penguin chicks must be trembling in their nests with all those predators sneaking round at night.

      1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

        Re: Lot of foxes in that hen house, huh.

        The company names mentioned do not write Operating systems (not at least to remotely the same degree as Microsoft does).

        Each of those names benefits their own business strategy by making their product work with Linux, without there being any conflict of interest.

        We know Microsoft's game of old. I would guess that we will see Linux apps being produced by Microsoft, which will initially work atop any flavour of Linux, but then they will become less and less compatible the more and more that they develop their own flavour of Linux, which they will then charge for. And/Or their apps will be developed to only run on Microsoft hardware. I'm thinking Surface here - Microsoft seem to be developing that side of their empire. Now how many times would that prediction have to be spouted annually before it becomes true?

        1. Mark 110

          Re: Lot of foxes in that hen house, huh.

          "And/Or their apps will be developed to only run on Microsoft hardware."

          And no-one else does that do they? Actually Microsoft don't do they? Didn't they make all their money by making an OS that would run on any x86 hardware . . .

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. toughluck

          Re: Lot of foxes in that hen house, huh.

          The company names mentioned do not write Operating systems (not at least to remotely the same degree as Microsoft does).

          Um, HP-UX, IBM AIX, IBM z/OS, Solaris -- all of these are operating systems to me (and I only mentioned the major ones in active development, there are others).

          And about Surface and app exclusivity, okay, but there are two sides to that coin. Why would Microsoft be persuaded to offer some functionality if they don't control the hardware? Think about Surface Studio and its special flavor of Windows 10. There is special functionality to the puck and the stylus along with special applications that only work on the Studio. Who's complaining? I don't see any other company offering anything remotely similar to the Studio that would now complain they were left out by Microsoft. They will only have a valid reason to complain if they agree with Microsoft to make Windows 10 studio edition to work on their hardware and then have Microsoft renege.

        3. Geoffrey W

          Re: Lot of foxes in that hen house, huh.

          The quoted paragraph called microsoft a fox because it was a business, not because it wrote operating systems. I stopped reading there because I've read my quota of anti microsoft rants for the current month. I already know they're evil and only want to extinguish Linux with their embrace of death. Now microsoft is on the inside and close enough to embrace perhaps Linux can extinguish them. Small is agile, big is lumbering...a swift peck to the eyes...

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

            1. Geoffrey W

              Re: Lot of foxes in that hen house, huh.

              I never said Microsoft wasn't evil incarnate, far above and beyond all the other evil big corps on the planet or that they don't recycle starving Ethiopian babies to end their miserable misery and power their Surface laptops in board meetings; just that I'd read quite enough about it for this month. I like to rinse my mental palette occasionally so I can return to the attack invigorated and eager for corporate blood. Where is Mr. Robot in these troubled times when we need him the most?

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Microsoft is a Business

        "I heard that HP, IBM, Fujitsu, Oracle, Samsung, Qualcomm, et al were also businesses, and also members of the Linux Foundation."

        All of those offer or depend on Linux in some way. Samsung & Qualcomm? What do you think all those Android gadgets run as their kernel.

        Microsoft also offers Linux on Azure. Not, I suspect, because they particularly want to but because they have to. The market tells them to.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Terminator

    Software developers are a one-night stand

    "It's like you're going out with a girl; forgive me, it goes the other way also. You're going out with a girl, what you really want to do is have a deep, close and intimate relationship, at least for one night. And, you know, you just can't let her feel like that, because if you do, it ain't going to happen, right. So you have to talk long term and white picket fence and all these other wonderful things, or else you're never going to get what you're really looking for." ref

  11. Captain Badmouth
    Paris Hilton

    Surely not?

    My chemistry education tells me that Platinum is highly tarnish resistant.

    Paris : Not so easily tarnished either?

  12. JLV
    Paris Hilton

    Funny thing (I'll withhold any opinion on embrace/e/e...) is that, on one hand, MS seems to have finally started growing up on the backend/tooling and is willing to play with others. If done well, and not just self-servingly, this should restore some goodwill from at least some IT pros.

    (I realize there are folks who just say no to MS and that's fine, but they are not whom I am talking about).

    On the front end however, which is where the vast majority of users see them, they act way more stubborn and aloof than they ever did before, even in the monopoly days. Win 10 forced upgrade/telemetry/ribbons, etc... The same type of people who would never have understood why IT pros bitched about MS in the 90s are now badmouthing MS themselves.

    Or voting with their wallet. Many Joe Schmoe users that can afford it are buying Macs, savvy ones are on Linux and their mobile market share is a rounding error.

    Why is it that this 'new MS' can do deep tooling changes, but can't be bothered to act nicely towards its end users and actually listen to what they want?

    If they have the level of humility and practicality to join the Linux Foundation, why not bring back menus? Or stop telemetry? How much of a 'development effort' would that be???

    1. Mark 110

      Do you really want the menus back? I'd kind of forgotten all that faffing about in endless menu trees looking for what I wanted was ever a thing. I hated the change at first (in Office) and was baffled by the design decisiions in Win8 (not intuitiive - had to invent ways to avoid the weird bits) but I have never had an issue with the Windows 10 GUI. They did listen and fixed it in Win10. It even works reasonably well when I switch to Tablet mode.

      The Office GUI is quicker and easier than the old one. Just works. Ribbons are better than menu trees. Hated them at first, as I say, but these days I appreciate the ease of accessing certain things that used to be buried 4 menus deep from the task bar.

      Agree on the telemetry. There should have been a clear opt in/out menu on install.

      1. Norman Nescio Silver badge

        Ribbons and Menu Trees have different use-cases, and each can be the best choice in different circumstances. So I would not say one is 'better' than the other without qualifying the context within which it is better.

        That said, what is bad is foisting one those methods on users who are habituated to the other. Providing a choice is good, then people can decide what works best for them; or explicitly give permission for someone else to make the decision for them. Taking things that they are used to away from people is often unpopular.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "If they have the level of humility and practicality to join the Linux Foundation"

      Humility? Linux Foundation? Look at the names of the other members and tell me who's humble in there. OK, Samsung might have been humbled a bit recently, but the others?

  13. Norman Nescio Silver badge

    "It's a trap!"

    Microsoft have a history when it comes to joining organisations. While Microsoft may well say that it is different this time, I would advise anyone dealing with Microsoft, whether in a committee, or via a contractual relationship to be very, very careful. When one sups with the Devil, one is advised to use a very long spoon.

    As Microsoft are not a charitable philanthropic organisation, somebody in Microsoft has a sound business case for Microsoft becoming a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation. We can only speculate what the business case is, but one thing is sure: it is for the benefit of Microsoft, and any benefits for the Linux Foundation are a side-effect. The question I would ask is whether it is in Microsoft's interest that the Linux Foundation thrives, and what are the consequences of Microsoft having influence in a thriving Linux Foundation?

  14. skydome

    systemd

    Great, now Microsoft can contribute to systemd to speed up making it feature complete clone of svchost.

  15. Dr Fidget

    So Microshaft is also going to show its love for Linux by ending the threat to sue over patent infringements when it won't say what those infringements are?

    When words and actions disagree - believe the actions

  16. adam payne

    Microsoft has joined The Linux Foundation.

    Never though that would happen.

  17. Adair Silver badge

    The Linux Foundation - it's done!

    Somebody, stick a fork in it.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Why do I hear....

    The Doors playing the opening lines of "The End" ?

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