Microsoft Issues First Production Release Of Its CBL-Mariner 2.0 Linux Distribution

[JMB9]

Provided someone finds oil in free software developers backyards.

Well ... apparently ... they have.
But they may try to get around GPL ... like LLVM ... and may pay some companies which have some IP in it ...
So making it more difficult to see and to take counter actions.
The monopolists are gathering around Linux - and it all started as GNU/Linux ...
And a lot of money is being paid to make most forget of the past.
Why ... just take a look above ... sometimes it is that easy ...

What happened with the FSF lately ... and why? Who was taking which side?
Someone still remember the definitions of free SW by RMS - and the spirit behind it?
One may look at some talks of RMS - and think where we are standing right now.

Or is anyone thinking that Microsoft will change to a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation?
The big companies being in monopoly position are not there because of IP ...
... or robust and fitting software/service solutions - but due to dominating the market.
THIS is NOT ALLOWED to change - otherwise jobs may vanish ... an argument good enough for politicians to care for monopolies.
But in reality monopolies tend to cost lots of jobs, not the other way around - but one can pay politicians - for consulting services, right?

Currently several new players gain monopoly status in their business niche - created (at least in part) by basing their business on ... Linux.
What would be to change that no more companies can get their shares of the market ... guess what?

[JMB9]

Wow, I didn't know that, so Microsoft developers contribute to systemd now? The systemd/RH/MS/IBM/Poettering conspiracy truthers' heads are going to explode. For the rest of us who like popcorn that's Christmas come early.

One may easily think bigger ... much bigger ... and not even needing conspiracy theories - just
old behavior of monopoly companies in the past.
And those news were not 1st April jokes - I wished they were ... so the picture gets clearer really fast ...
Welcome to the shiny new dystopian IT world ... resistance is futile ... privacy is bad ... money is everything ...
Buy our products ... All of them ... NOW!!!
And additionally pay for every second of usage ...
Your souls BELONG TO US!

[F.Ultra]

One may easily think bigger ... much bigger ... and not even needing conspiracy theories - just
old behavior of monopoly companies in the past.
And those news were not 1st April jokes - I wished they were ... so the picture gets clearer really fast ...
Welcome to the shiny new dystopian IT world ... resistance is futile ... privacy is bad ... money is everything ...
Buy our products ... All of them ... NOW!!!
And additionally pay for every second of usage ...
Your souls BELONG TO US!

Have you gotten rid of your pet bird yet?

[jacob]

One may easily think bigger ... much bigger ... and not even needing conspiracy theories - just
old behavior of monopoly companies in the past.
And those news were not 1st April jokes - I wished they were ... so the picture gets clearer really fast ...
Welcome to the shiny new dystopian IT world ... resistance is futile ... privacy is bad ... money is everything ...
Buy our products ... All of them ... NOW!!!
And additionally pay for every second of usage ...
Your souls BELONG TO US!

I for one much prefer to see Microsoft contribute to free, GPL/LGPL software like Linux and systemd than try to destroy it like a "communist cancer". No privacy compromising antifeatures have ever been found in their contributions and in the hypothetical case they tried to push some through, it would be trivial to remove them since the code is all in the open and everyone has the 4 freedoms pertaining to it. So chill down, there is really no big conspiracy going on, although for some people that seems to be next to impossible to accept.

[jacob]

Well ... apparently ... they have.
But they may try to get around GPL ... like LLVM ... and may pay some companies which have some IP in it ...
So making it more difficult to see and to take counter actions.
The monopolists are gathering around Linux - and it all started as GNU/Linux ...
And a lot of money is being paid to make most forget of the past.
Why ... just take a look above ... sometimes it is that easy ...

What happened with the FSF lately ... and why? Who was taking which side?
Someone still remember the definitions of free SW by RMS - and the spirit behind it?
One may look at some talks of RMS - and think where we are standing right now.

Or is anyone thinking that Microsoft will change to a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation?
The big companies being in monopoly position are not there because of IP ...
... or robust and fitting software/service solutions - but due to dominating the market.
THIS is NOT ALLOWED to change - otherwise jobs may vanish ... an argument good enough for politicians to care for monopolies.
But in reality monopolies tend to cost lots of jobs, not the other way around - but one can pay politicians - for consulting services, right?

Currently several new players gain monopoly status in their business niche - created (at least in part) by basing their business on ... Linux.
What would be to change that no more companies can get their shares of the market ... guess what?

Why would or should Microsoft change to a nonprofit organisation? Free software has never been anti-business, it's anti-monopoly and pro-competition. Stallman once famously said that he doesn't want to stop people making millions developing software, he wants them to make millions by developing free software. And by the way, that some software is FOSS doesn't mean that the basic principles of economics don't apply to it. There will always be dominant players, smaller challengers and many failed also-rans. Why would you expect it to be any different, and why SHOULD it be different?

[JMB9]

Why would or should Microsoft change to a nonprofit organisation? ...

Your arguments are my arguments. MS does participate to gain something - to foster their monopoly.
So is this positive for users - or should one have a closer look?
The ones saying that MS participate appear to be happy and glad to have MS on board.
As if they have common interests as main goal - as a nonprofit organization.
Tomorrow Nvidia will finally release necessary code to make Nouveau reaching at least 90%
of their proprietary driver with current Nvidia HW and gain customers who needs qualified support
for Linux - and no longer struggling with fresh kernel versions. This would be a big win for Nvidia,
or at least - it should be one.
Why is this not really expected - or even have happened several years ago?
Why could this be done by Intel and AMD ... with AMD even in the lead for some time now.
I thought that my arguments were clear - and for me these news sums up to be a huge joke.
And conspiracy is absolutely nearer to the truth - as in secret agreements between
monopoly/oligopoly companies.

MS finding bugs ... as if they had finished their work on their products ... cough ...
And found it in the binary systemd which was suspiciously looked at by Unix veterans
who never had real problems with init scripts (and the laughter about Devuan - maybe this
laughter may stop due to rethinking the situation; and I know several different init script types
and have changed such scripts a lot - without problem - but I admit I have not looked into
details concerning systemd ... as I am no longer in Unix business but just use those systems -
and I think I am not the only one who have other things to look at ... while this component may
need a lot more eyes than are currently engaged - and yes, I am aware of possible advantages
due to systemd - but have not spotted them yet ...).

You say it - FOSS is not against making money - but for participation and thus against
monopoly power - typically misused to keep out users and make them their slaves (FSF!) -
stripping them from their privacy which is worth a lot (FSF!) - not only for users (who typically
vote for comfort only these days) - but especially for big business!
So MS is not engaged in FOSS - if it is engaged, it may no longer be FOSS ...
That is the alarming point I want to make.

MS teaming with Canonical [WSL] - and with Read Hat [systemd, ...] - what could go possibly wrong?
And as I referred to IBM which made experience with teaming up with MS - two times getting a bloody nose.
So we can now wait for number three - and echo: "I knew it right from the start".
Or nothing will happen at all ... and it is just Open Source in the interest of monopoly companies ...
well, except Nvidia - but they may soon no longer be in that position at all ... so ...

[jacob]

Your arguments are my arguments. MS does participate to gain something - to foster their monopoly.
So is this positive for users - or should one have a closer look?
The ones saying that MS participate appear to be happy and glad to have MS on board.
As if they have common interests as main goal - as a nonprofit organization.
Tomorrow Nvidia will finally release necessary code to make Nouveau reaching at least 90%
of their proprietary driver with current Nvidia HW and gain customers who needs qualified support
for Linux - and no longer struggling with fresh kernel versions. This would be a big win for Nvidia,
or at least - it should be one.
Why is this not really expected - or even have happened several years ago?
Why could this be done by Intel and AMD ... with AMD even in the lead for some time now.
I thought that my arguments were clear - and for me these news sums up to be a huge joke.
And conspiracy is absolutely nearer to the truth - as in secret agreements between
monopoly/oligopoly companies.

MS finding bugs ... as if they had finished their work on their products ... cough ...
And found it in the binary systemd which was suspiciously looked at by Unix veterans
who never had real problems with init scripts (and the laughter about Devuan - maybe this
laughter may stop due to rethinking the situation; and I know several different init script types
and have changed such scripts a lot - without problem - but I admit I have not looked into
details concerning systemd ... as I am no longer in Unix business but just use those systems -
and I think I am not the only one who have other things to look at ... while this component may
need a lot more eyes than are currently engaged - and yes, I am aware of possible advantages
due to systemd - but have not spotted them yet ...).

You say it - FOSS is not against making money - but for participation and thus against
monopoly power - typically misused to keep out users and make them their slaves (FSF!) -
stripping them from their privacy which is worth a lot (FSF!) - not only for users (who typically
vote for comfort only these days) - but especially for big business!
So MS is not engaged in FOSS - if it is engaged, it may no longer be FOSS ...
That is the alarming point I want to make.

MS teaming with Canonical [WSL] - and with Read Hat [systemd, ...] - what could go possibly wrong?
And as I referred to IBM which made experience with teaming up with MS - two times getting a bloody nose.
So we can now wait for number three - and echo: "I knew it right from the start".
Or nothing will happen at all ... and it is just Open Source in the interest of monopoly companies ...
well, except Nvidia - but they may soon no longer be in that position at all ... so ...

Of course MS engages with FOSS projects because they have something to gain from it. Just like.... everyone. Linus Torvalds created Linux initially for himself, RedHat and IBM fund a lot of Linux development because they make money with it, Intel, AMD and ARM contribute massively because they would never be able to sell their CPUs without good Linux support, Google, Facebook, Amazon etc contribute because they need an OS to run their data centers, etc. Even the individual spare time hacker who patches something does it to suit his or her personal needs. The important point here is that while they all usually are monopolistic companies in some aspects, the copyleft nature of the (L)GPL ensures that here, if they want to benefit from Linux and other GPL/LGPL products, they have to play by the rules. And because they really need Linux, they do it and everyone benefits.

By the same token, the AOMedia consortium wasn't formed and didn't develop AV1 out of some selfless idealism, they did it so that they could make megabucks with digital video without having to pay royalties for MPEG-LA's patents. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a valuable piece of technology and a much appreciated contribution to the FOSS ecosystem.

[JMB9]

I for one much prefer to see Microsoft contribute to free, GPL/LGPL software like Linux and systemd than try to destroy it like a "communist cancer". No privacy compromising antifeatures have ever been found in their contributions and in the hypothetical case they tried to push some through, it would be trivial to remove them since the code is all in the open and everyone has the 4 freedoms pertaining to it. So chill down, there is really no big conspiracy going on, although for some people that seems to be next to impossible to accept.

You are absolutely right - but I did not make an argument about ill code entering FOSS code ...
my argument is about fostering monopoly power and about conspiracy about monopolies/oligopolies
working together to destroy new competitors.
Well, this is MS term (cancer) - I would prefer to use "changing the company as was done with AT&T" -
no communism, no cancer, just for competition! And this was a good thing, right?
What would happen if this would be done with MS, Apple, Google, Facebook, ... you name it.
So my argument is along the line: could "FOSS is good for monopolies" be the truth - which would
not be a good thing after the FSF (at least in the founding state - but not sure right now; as FSF is
dominated by ... guess what).
So the GPL may end to no longer be a free license if it was not a fixed GPL version - so not a big
problem for Linux, which is in fact open source and not free software as the freedom part is typically
not fought in court - and if only to get derived code as open source.
And this may get a trend - so monopolies can easily use such SW to enslave customers - this is
possible with open source - only free software is fighting this.
And "Embrace, Extent, Extinguish" is well known ... what was the name of the company using it ...
yes, the same which got famous by "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" (like in 'free software' is cancer) or
"Vapoware" or "Piracy" (double sense - calling children thieves and stealing code/IP from competitors).
But fortunately this company is not involved here ... oh, wait!

[sinepgib]

Of course MS engages with FOSS projects because they have something to gain from it. Just like.... everyone. Linus Torvalds created Linux initially for himself, RedHat and IBM fund a lot of Linux development because they make money with it, Intel, AMD and ARM contribute massively because they would never be able to sell their CPUs without good Linux support, Google, Facebook, Amazon etc contribute because they need an OS to run their data centers, etc. Even the individual spare time hacker who patches something does it to suit his or her personal needs. The important point here is that while they all usually are monopolistic companies in some aspects, the copyleft nature of the (L)GPL ensures that here, if they want to benefit from Linux and other GPL/LGPL products, they have to play by the rules. And because they really need Linux, they do it and everyone benefits.

By the same token, the AOMedia consortium wasn't formed and didn't develop AV1 out of some selfless idealism, they did it so that they could make megabucks with digital video without having to pay royalties for MPEG-LA's patents. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a valuable piece of technology and a much appreciated contribution to the FOSS ecosystem.

Couldn't be said better.

I should add that also most of these conspiracy theorists tend to complain but not really be active members of the community, i.e. fix the issue by actually contributing.
If the community is as powerful and healthy and selfless as we'd like to believe whatever MS attempts to close would be fruitless, as they may change direction of institutions, but they can't change our hearts. Except, our hearts were never in it really, as we're never willing to put the hours and the bucks, we just expect for profits to somehow be selfless.

[RahulSundaram]

By the way - is systemd already shared source?

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/b...ICENSE.LGPL2.1 Unless you consider LGPL shared source, no and it won't be since it has no centralized copyright just like the Linux kernel itself remains GPL despite ongoing contributions from Microsoft. Btw, the Linux stable series is co-maintained by Microsoft and uses Microsoft's machine learning systems to select which patches to backport. Here is a write up of it. More popcorn.