Originally posted by Yfrwlf
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Yes; Microsoft is US-based. That alone is enough to get it sneered at (or actively set against) in some places (take a trip to DistroWatch sometime, and simply count the number of Linux distributions either partially or completely backed by a local/regional/national government that have seen new or recent development; to make it easier, I'll ask that you restrict the count to the past year *and* each distribution that fits the criteria counts once). Why do these local/regional/national governments do this? Because Microsoft is *not* based in their country; therefore, they see Microsoft as a threat to their national interests. (Even if Microsoft has many local offices, their headquarters is in the US.)
However, the heterogenous nature of overall FOSS development means that it's not just these governments that partially or entirely support development of Linux distributions that respresent FOSS advances; have we forgotten that SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux, which has been, for the past two years, of Linux-distribution security framework going forward) was driven primarily *by* the United States government (specifically, the National Security Agency)? The very reality that, for any reason, that an arm of the United States would contribute to the development of a no-cost operating system that competes with a commercial operating-system originating *in the same country* indicates that the United States government does NOT see computer software in general (and PC operating systems in particular) as a linchpin of the country's interests. Who's right - the United States or, say, Argentina?
A "defined national interest" is often not logical, rational, or even remotely sensible; if they were, war would not happen and ambassadors would have very little work to do. Why would the reasons behind decisions on computer operating systems in general (and even Linux distributions in particular) be any different?
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