https://arstechnica.com/information-...sider-program/

I heard about this on the Linux Action News podcast. Above is the linked article.

Q: What's the heck with microsoft?

First, it was the ubuntu bash shell in windows 10, secondly bringing SUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora to the Windows Store and now the linux subsystem in the windows serer.

A: Microsoft <3 linux!

Microsoft may be lovey-dovey to linux but I still despite microsoft and everything about them.

We don't need your love M$!

I remember people predicting years ago that MS would end up selling Linux software, and it makes sense - with Linux use growing across the industry, MS must eventually calculate that they can make more money by working with it than by working against it. At which point, history tells us, they'll immediately sit on their hands for 5 years or so, and then start working with it.

Presumably they'll try to extend & extinguish, but Linux is robust, and if the community sticks to its guns then MS might eventually do an IBM, and actually learn to play nicely with the community. But even if they do, I think Linux users will be using long spoons for a long time.

In my opinion it is the cloud (virtual machines, big data, virtual networks, backups...), It is where money is now.

They needed something to compete with AWS, and needed it fast, so, m$ took a lot of apache software, add it a fancy blue ribbon and voila! Azure.

Then they can sell their services even with linux servers inside their machines.

Despite the "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" commercials, Microsoft was an early supporter of Apple and remains a major shareholder. To support the MS-Office rewrite project (which mad "Word for Mac" and "Word for PC" the same thing), Microsoft fairly-perfected cross platform technology. (And yet, they never published MS-Access for Mac – go figger.)

Nonetheless: Microsoft's product is software, not just the Windows operating system. Linux does represent a major potential market for them, and I have no idea why Microsoft did not embrace it decades ago.

Well, maybe I do know why: "Bill, and The Other Steve.™" I think that Microsoft has had a big problem with the "Not Invented Here" Syndrome. I think that it has cost them a lot of profits.

If you didn't know, Microsoft sold Unix OS for a few years, long before there was a linux.

Prediction? Here's mine. This is evolution and also economics and just as "bad money" drives out "good money" (Inflation, among other phenomena) this is just a step toward the end of Cathedral operating systems. I predict that at some point Operating Systems will be utterly ubiquitous and homogenized. The only software being sold will be firmware and applications as computing becomes involved in virtually everything.

And I've never quite understood why the company has done nothing with Xenix.®

It's even a good trade-name . . .

I've just never understood why Microsoft Corporation so-doggedly pursued: "Windows, Windows, über alles!"

Maybe, now that "the other Steve" is officially gone, the company will start broadening its sights. (And if they do, "watch out!") Microsoft makes good software and they know how to be a formidable business competitor. Plus, they've got cash.

Personally, I'd love to see them enter this market.

There's money and there's software\thought\evolution\*; the optimist 1/2... yada-yada,,, the capitalist: F THEM ALL!

Only borders need be executed, no pun.

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Because it was sold off to the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) and wasn't really theirs in the first place (it was licensed from AT&T and initially based on V7 Research UNIX). SCO did most of the work, including the porting work (e.g. to i386) anyway. Which is partially why they ultimately inherited it (and in later years acquired UNIX itself from Novell). SCO were bought out by the now infamous Caldera Systems and the rest is history...

A whole history of lawsuits against open source OS from Caldera, Microsoft and others in fact...

This is what Microsoft did and have done historically - leach off others and take the credit and conduct business in a nasty anti-competitive way. The tactics might have changed slightly, but the nastiness continues, while Microsoft does not get too much involved in patent trolling these days, Intellectual Ventures certainly does.

A Federal Court ruled that Novell did not sell UNIX to SCO and that SCO did not own UNIX. At that point the whole Microsoft financed SCO scam fell apart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Gr...v._Novell,_Inc.

------------------------
Steve Stites

In other words: "the entirety of: "http://www.groklaw.net"

"Uh huh, that would do it!"

Nevertheless ... Linux remains "a major-market worth exploiting by a known-powerhouse software company!!"

True Dat.

Things are written that way. As long as Windows supplies a source tar ball for what they grab and sell I think. I aint real hip on this issue.

I don't relish the thought as much as other members here do though. I'm kinda funny that way.

Micro$oft don't have faith in their products.

They don't admit that stability and security is linux's strength. As always, linux has to rescue poor little windows server.

Yes. Hence: "the rest is history". "Scam" is a good word for it.

Beware of Bill Gates bearing gifts....

Remember the modus operandi of Microsoft in the past has been:

1. Embrace
2. Extend
3. Extinguish

That's all folks!