Microsoft Becomes A "Premium Sponsor" To The Open Source Initiative

[pal666]

Microsoft has no vested interest in Linux.

1. osi is not linux, but open source licenses
2. microsoft is selling linux instances on azure. microsoft is selling office for android. microsoft is selling sql server for linux
of course microsoft prefers to sell windows instead, but it can't. so it has to work with linux

[pal666]

And yet, Google is looking to replace Linux with its Magenta kernel, eliminating over 2B devices running Linux - in response to Oracle and Microsoft.

and yet people are posting shit
oracle had issues with java, not with kernel
microsoft extorts money for patents, not for licenses. and those patents have nothing to do with linux kernel. and microsoft pays money for patents btw because not only microsoft has patents

[eydee]

You like then:
- Download 3GB installer instead of 400MB Debian net installer
- to boot several times during install and wait a long time instead of single boot and fast install
- install drivers to get virus hoover to work instead of running operating system out of the box.
- watch blue and black screens instead of reading clear logs.
- install and remove software one by one instead of using Synaptic that allows you to choose like 1000 applications to install and remove at one time.
- Use your time to figure software dependencies instead of using Debian packaging.
- Install software from unsecured sources with viruses instead of using fast and virus free Debian servers around the world.
- Use time to virus protection and slow ui instead of using fast and virus free Debian testing Xfce
- Not to change anything and use defragmenting and old file systems where is not even symbolic links.

You could replace every instance of "debian" with "windows 95" and stay relevant. Only windows 95 is more modern and has more features. Cut the debian crap already.

[duby229]

How exactly has Microsoft created stagnation? They introduce new features - and security holes to go with them - in pretty much everything they release, which is the opposite of stagnation. If anything, you should be shouting at them to slow the fuck down and figure out where they want to go in a safe manner. You can argue that dominance is a bad thing, but Microsoft uses standards in their software - something Linux won't do - so shit works pretty well with Windows from where I've been sitting for the last 30-something years.

No, He was meaning stagnating alternatives available on linux. Just look at all those years of MS funded SCO lawsuits. Look at what they did to Nokia.

[TheLexMachine]

How exactly has Microsoft created stagnation? They introduce new features - and security holes to go with them - in pretty much everything they release, which is the opposite of stagnation. If anything, you should be shouting at them to slow the fuck down and figure out where they want to go in a safe manner. You can argue that dominance is a bad thing, but Microsoft uses standards in their software - something Linux won't do - so shit works pretty well with Windows from where I've been sitting for the last 30-something years.

[kpedersen]

Just came to check if the first comment is something like this. No surprises.

And hopefully for ever more. Otherwise when we old luddites log off, the new kids won't have experienced this before and will walk straight into Microsoft's same old traps and history will repeat itself.

We are still suffering from the stagnation that Microsoft and their Window's dominance forced upon us. It would be a shame for this same thing to happen again and again every 30 odd years.

After all, these big ol companies have such an impact on our lives. Kids should be taught this stuff in history. It would be so much more beneficial to society than learning about crap like Henry VIII and his abnormal amount of failed marriages.

[nanonyme]

No, you totally misunderstand, the reason webkit is dying is because it is absolutely gigantic. It performs badly on even the fastest hardware. It does render web interfaces beautifully, but stupidly slow. It is not something an end user is going to need, it's something web app developers need, and they already know how bad it performs. Khtml is in the same boat, but worse because it is horribly bugged. If you are considering either of them, then you are probably better off with qtwebengine. That's the honest truth and most people already know it. It has nothing to do with eee, it has everything to do with usability and the preferences of web app developers that need it.

EDIT: It seems to me, if you had your preferences, then we'd all be stuck with one app in every category. And there would be no choice. That would horribly suck.

QWebEngine has a horrible memory footprint and startup speed compared to Webkit though

[duby229]

Great... which solves what exactly? Let's say someone was taking these tarballs, extracting them into a public git repo and keeping up with the snapshots, if this is a large project and Microsoft is pulling in the patches from upstream, and let's say has 100 developers working on it on top of that who release a tarball once a month, we're talking hundreds of thousand of lines of changes in a single massive diff per release. Microsoft would be complying with the license and having their code open, but their changes are going to be kept to themselves. Heck if Microsoft really wanted to there's no rule saying that they can't run their repo through a source obfuscater that they then build the binaries from and then release the code in obfuscated form to comply with the license.

Your objection to BSD in this case is based on ability to withhold changes which in the context of EEE means others can't make use of it rather than whether the code is out there. The described case is certainly one where your argument falls flat.



Because your objection states that Microsoft can make software X incompatible and with-hold changes. as your objection to BSD, these three projects are all incompatible forks with Apple and then Google taking their code and making their own project with blackjack and hookers, withholding (upstreaming effort) from their originators and running under their own management. Could Apple and KDE take the code and try to merge it into Webkit and KHTML? Oh certainly, but the projects are so distant from each other that at this point... good luck with that... and KHTML and Webkit have kinda died other than for Apple. There's still a few non-safari webkit browsers out there, but seems most of them have joined Google with Blink.

No, you totally misunderstand, the reason webkit is dying is because it is absolutely gigantic. It performs badly on even the fastest hardware. It does render web interfaces beautifully, but stupidly slow. It is not something an end user is going to need, it's something web app developers need, and they already know how bad it performs. Khtml is in the same boat, but worse because it is horribly bugged. If you are considering either of them, then you are probably better off with qtwebengine. That's the honest truth and most people already know it. It has nothing to do with eee, it has everything to do with usability and the preferences of web app developers that need it.

EDIT: It seems to me, if you had your preferences, then we'd all be stuck with one app in every category. And there would be no choice. That would horribly suck.

[Luke_Wolf]

I'm absolutely convinced somebody from the OSS community would host it on their own repository. We aren't talking about some little mom and pop shop that nobody is aware of their project we're talking about MS.

Great... which solves what exactly? Let's say someone was taking these tarballs, extracting them into a public git repo and keeping up with the snapshots, if this is a large project and Microsoft is pulling in the patches from upstream, and let's say has 100 developers working on it on top of that who release a tarball once a month, we're talking hundreds of thousand of lines of changes in a single massive diff per release. Microsoft would be complying with the license and having their code open, but their changes are going to be kept to themselves. Heck if Microsoft really wanted to there's no rule saying that they can't run their repo through a source obfuscater that they then build the binaries from and then release the code in obfuscated form to comply with the license.

Your objection to BSD in this case is based on ability to withhold changes which in the context of EEE means others can't make use of it rather than whether the code is out there. The described case is certainly one where your argument falls flat.

You mention 3 web toolkits that are all open source, and were all forked with the best intentions of open source in mind. And all share their code publicly on huge industry repositories. I don't see in any way how they are the same situation.

Because your objection states that Microsoft can make software X incompatible and with-hold changes. as your objection to BSD, these three projects are all incompatible forks with Apple and then Google taking their code and making their own project with blackjack and hookers, withholding (upstreaming effort) from their originators and running under their own management. Could Apple and KDE take the code and try to merge it into Webkit and KHTML? Oh certainly, but the projects are so distant from each other that at this point... good luck with that... and KHTML and Webkit have kinda died other than for Apple. There's still a few non-safari webkit browsers out there, but seems most of them have joined Google with Blink.

[nanonyme]

Oh great, so instead of 300 binary updates, totaling no more than 200MB, that take more than 6 hours to install while thrashing the drive the entire time, it'll be thousands of them..... I can't imagine how much worse windows updates are gonna be. MS is going to have to do something about BITS.....

EDIT: I mean really, those updates are generally tiny and yet they thrash the drive horribly and take hours. wtf?

Bandwidth costs for Microsoft whereas your CPU and disks are free resources. Guess how they'll optimize their update system