Microsoft Teams Is Coming To Linux

[dovla091]

How can you be sure that a closed source program isn't leaking (intentionally or unintentionally through bugs) info to third parties? Opensource is much easier to audit and test.
How can you or a third party you hire fix a problem in a closed source program if it is not "stable" for you (which is not uncommon)? Opensource can be fixed faster.

Exceptions to that can be accepted to an extent, especially for applications, where it would be hard to monetize otherwise (let's ignore piracy for a moment), and it won't have a massive community so it won't benefit much from being opensource anyway.

The only thing that truly needs to be opensource is the OS (kernel and base stuff), if the rest (drivers and applications) is compartmentalized and run with as little privilege as possible it's good enough for many even if closed source.

Hi again. I am quite sure that there are lot of quite competent people who can spot that somethig is wrong, to give you an answer, I will ask you the same question: how come security companies detect malware on closed source OS called windows? And they are doing it for 3 decades now. Also, there is nothing that cannot be detected with only 1 simple program called wireshark. Don't you agree. As I said before, I grow up and I don't care anymore if something is open source or now as long as couple of things are satisfied:
1. Program is stable
2. Company does not leak my personal data
3. Program/firmware/driver is safe
4. I don't need to waste my time of finding a solution for something that should work out of the box.

When I was younger, I was thrilled to do as much digging and investigating possible to provide a solution for let's say WiFi card, or fingerprint reader, etc. Now I don't have time for waste to do that, so even though I use CentOS for my servers and Fedora for my laptop, I fully support and have special feeling towards Ubuntu as they did a lot to include as much additional 3rd party support for hardware so their OS can work out of the box in comparison to other distributions...

[k1e0x]

Bullshit, support for many Wifi ac chipsets that Linux supported for years is still missing in BSDs.

Meh, different niches. People needing the average MacOS device (a laptop) won't be looking at using FreeBSD.

That's beyond stretching it. These consoles are using a BSD-based firmware with significant changes.

Actually it's pretty much using the vanilla kernel with a custom closed source graphics driver. They have upstreamd patches.

[k1e0x]

Because of you "the opensource talibans", linux support is progressing slowly. "We need open source...." No we don't, we need a fully functional stable PC/Server with full hardware support, and more companies which would back linux community, so who cares if HP, Intel, Nvidia or whoever write those drivers which code is not released for public... If they are following ethics, I don't care, and I am quite sure that most of people does not either. If you need pure opensource, then move on to BSD, and be as limited as fck! That so called "I wanna see the code" shit is becoming boring. No one reads the code except developers who develop modules and other features. And I can guarantee that 99,9% of Phoronix users does not read each and every code (if any)... So please spare us that bull shit. Microsoft is slowly moving towards Linux and that is good, but until they release something for mass productivity such as Office suit, I am not that impressed.

Wow, what a viewpoint.

Linux is just fine. It's the most used OS in the world.. It's not going slowly. It's biggest problem is influence and control. The largest threats to Linux and open source in general are currently in my eyes. IBM/RedHat in influence, Microsoft with WSL and Google with Android.

You don't want or need commercial software at all. If you have this mindset maybe you should just get a Mac.. Pretty much the Commercial version of FreeBSD. I'll just be "limited as fck" over here on my BSD Workstation playing all the same wine games on the same desktop and you are.

[dovla091]

Wow, what a viewpoint.

Linux is just fine. It's the most used OS in the world.. It's not going slowly. It's biggest problem is influence and control. The largest threats to Linux and open source in general are currently in my eyes. IBM/RedHat in influence, Microsoft with WSL and Google with Android.

You don't want or need commercial software at all. If you have this mindset maybe you should just get a Mac.. Pretty much the Commercial version of FreeBSD. I'll just be "limited as fck" over here on my BSD Workstation playing all the same wine games on the same desktop and you are.

This is exactly why I mock you with that "open source Talibans". You go from one extreme to another. So on your logic is, if something is not 100% open source, it is not good enough for snowflakes. Talking about weird logic, almost like sect... 2nd, I totally agree with you. If I would like to use a crappy OS, I would go for the BSD. For the same reason Apple has chosen to be their default OS for their crapware...

[Guest]

You aren't using Windows, that's your main problem

It is not suitable for any serious development work.

[Azrael5]

This article is not about a Microsoft Linux distro, but about providing a cilent application for Microsoft Teams, which is a teamworking suite (message and filesharing).

They are just steps towards a Microsoft operating system based on Linux.

[starshipeleven]

It is not suitable for any serious development work.

You have just been using the wrong applications I guess.

[k1e0x]

This is exactly why I mock you with that "open source Talibans". You go from one extreme to another. So on your logic is, if something is not 100% open source, it is not good enough for snowflakes. Talking about weird logic, almost like sect... 2nd, I totally agree with you. If I would like to use a crappy OS, I would go for the BSD. For the same reason Apple has chosen to be their default OS for their crapware...

LOL!

I enjoy my crapware. Specially the things it can do that Linux can not. Like boot environments, encrypted snapshots, ports builds and putting my browser and mail client in a transparent jail where it can't go after sensitive documents or my ssh keys. : shh : don't tell anyone tho, we wouldn't want ppl to "use crap". haha

[oiaohm]

1. Program is stable
2. Company does not leak my personal data
3. Program/firmware/driver is safe
4. I don't need to waste my time of finding a solution for something that should work out of the box.

There is a problem here. There is a reason why Nvidia and other closed source drivers are coming trouble on Linux with secureboot. Without source code third party review that firmware/driver is safe cannot be done properly by distributions.

Its a hard reality that governments have access to Microsoft windows source code to audit it. Unfortunately we have found that governments with Microsoft NDA to access source are very naughty as in audit the source code of windows find flaws and stock pile them to use in cyberwar instead of fixing them.

So your point 3 in fact requires that source code is released to researchers. Also it requires source code released in ways that many parties can cooperative do patches this was documented in the spectre vs meltdown. Yes better more secure patches against meltdown appears for Linux faster because AMD did not NDA access to the fault but Intel did with spectre so meltdown patches all the possible developers were able to work with each other peer reviewing their ideas. Yes NDA the fault resulted in developers not being able to peer review each others work so lower quality of patches to the point that everything for Intel spectre had to be scrapped and started again once the spectre fault came public knowledge.

History of faults really say they only way to truly do program/firmware/driver that is safe as possible is open source on copyleft license. Once you go closed source or restricted access source or massive librial like BSD there are more issues that cause faults not to be fixed. Yes BSD license you can fix something in your binaries and keep the fault as a secret to attack your enemies with and have no legal risk.

It not that we read the source code or not. It if those who can read the source code have it under a license where they can operate effectively for everyone security.

[skeevy420]

Uhm... no you did not make grammar mistakes, that's a correct word and I think you used correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics

I was actually commenting that "ethical" or "moral" programming is a weird concept for me.

My cow happens to be a Nazi so I get where he was coming from

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