The hidden face of the love story between M$ and Gnu/Linux

[Danielsan]

Despite all the pompous announces about its loves for Linux, Microsoft still continues to be the same, just a bit discreet as Balmer used to be.
So it has changed its strategy from E.E.E. to E.E.E.E., then now is Embrace, Enlarge, Extinguish and Extort.

Please read carefully this article and leave a comment:

http://techrights.org/2016/03/10/charm- ... -distract/

[edbarx]

Commercial proprietary software and free open source software have conflicting business models. Just look where the money is and you will find why GNU/Linux in undergoing such questionable business oriented changes.

[Wheelerof4te]

Windows 10 incorporated many things from GNU/Linux, so it isn't surprising. Just look at the new taskbar and start menu. It also has the dash from Ubuntu...

File explorer looks almost like Nautilus. Even updates have shifted to be rolling-release like in Arch. So you tell me, who is stealing from who?

But tell you what? If failure of Windows 8 (some people liked it, though) didn't force Windows fans to run to Linux, why would stolen but proven things force them?

[tomazzi]

I may be wrong, but my point of view is like this:
1. MS have totally and painfully lost the battle of mobile devices market, mostly due to decisions made by themselves (a monkey known under the name Steve Ballmer - what a moron...)
2. MS have stopped the patent wars since the Google have purchased few critical patents from Motorola (among others)
3. MS is still loosing the markets, because the market is beeing dominated by Google (mobile, personal devices), and the "problems with spying" which were recently revealed are not helping...

Microshit is now trying to find reasons and ways to keep their existence - but because they have nothing special to offer, they must start the patent war again.
Of course, they're stupid - that battle is already lost - but, instead of finding the solution, they're still thinking about the late 90's, where their strategy was working... At best, they can become another "intellectual ventures" clone now - but this solution has short legs...

Regards.

[BowCatShot]

3. MS is still loosing the markets
Of course, they're stupid

Nuff said.

[Danielsan]

Unfortunately in a legal war often the winner is the richest one and M$ still has a tons of money to pursuit the strategy of patents' trolling, the slightly difference with the previous management is the duality of their actions: under the sun only claims of true love for Linux, while hidden in the shades has begun a legal war to try to keep control of the GNU patents through threatenings. The using of GNU softwares is not guarantee of libre softwares for the final user, two bigs of internet (Big G and Big F) started in a open source environment and after they built above a closed one. The powerful of the rebranding is exceptional in few years M$ might be delivering a GNU or BSD OS with a closed environment erasing completely the memories of its history.

[tomazzi]

Nuff said.

In fact numbers are speaking for themself:
Only in 2015 the PC market sales have dropped by 8.0% and 18.1% in last 3 years.

[Innovate]

They already made a move about accquired Xamarin.
If they seize Monodevelop & seal mono away from opensource
Wine will be disastrous for wine users & wine developers since they rely on mono dependencies.

[tomazzi]

They already made a move about accquired Xamarin.
If they seize Monodevelop & seal mono away from opensource
Wine will be disastrous for wine users & wine developers since they rely on mono dependencies.

For me the solutions like CLI (.net, c#) or Java are faulty by design (*), so I just don't care.

However, i think that two things must be said here:
1. Wine does not need Mono. It is required only for .NET applications, which are minority (yet)
2. Microsoft just started to abandon their flagship OS - by giving it for free. The question is: WHY
...and the answer is: because they predicting that in few years PC market will collapse. So, at least for the last 5-6 years Microsoft is working hard to replicate the Google business model: Cloud services. Google Android is basing on Java and MS solution will be based on .NET.
Taking the above into account, it would be totally stupid to fight with multi-platform version of their framework, because this is exactly what they need: the ability to run their cloud services on all possible target devices. And it would be hard-to-impossible to write runtime environments for all the platforms, without the help of Xamarin and thousands of volunteers.

(*)
For at least 15 years there are existing solutions which allows to easily and efficiently write portable software, like wxWidgets, QT, OpenGL (i.e. SDL library), openMP and recently openCL. Those solutions are milion times faster and are using 1000 times less resources than .NET or Java runtime environments.

There are 3 reasons why Java and then .NET were created:
1. Money: education of programmers costs money, so it's better to have one way to write ALL the software and to have lots of cheap programmers, who additionally are easily replaceable.

2. Money: testing of the software takes a lot of time and money: theoretically, Java and .NET are reducing that costs, by offering ready to use functions for every possible task one could ever imagine. Of course in reality this is bullshit - there are tons of bugs in both Java and .NET, but who cares about customers or users today?.

3. Money: Currently, 3-4 years old PC or Tablet or a Smartphone is able to run 90% of the most commonly used software without problems. This is very bad - we have already too fast computers - money could stop flowing. Both Java and .Net are solving this problem -. How? I think the following sentence will explain this in a shortest possible way: No computer is fast enough for newer version of Java or .NET and every new corporate shitware which is targeted for end-users is working slower than previous version.
Buy a new device.

Regards.

[Danielsan]

I agree with you however I don't believe there are people so smart leading these big corporations, what you are talking is just a secondary effect that those people learned how to use for their profit. I mean, employees always less paid, people hired without enough experience and always shorter dead lines produce inaccurate code and all the side effects you described above.

I am thinking for example to my smartphone, I bought the cheapest one of a famous brand, at the beginning was very smooth and now after few updates is slower than a snail.

By the way returning in topic I found a new interesting article which explains why Microsoft need to be "open":

http://techrights.org/2016/03/23/micros ... -strategy/

Summarizing it need to be open for the sake to participate to public tenders in order to have the prerequisites requested. Very clear is a comment on the social I found and that I want share:

In the 90ies Microsoft managed to get Windows NT certified as Posix compliant. The reason was to "fullfill" a regulatory requirement. The Posix in NT was a totally isolated system component and virtually not supported.
The same story happen with support for Oasis OpenDocument standard a decade ago. Today's Office does not support ODT, but Microsoft succeeded again in securing to tap taxpayers pockets.

Obviously a so cheap trick can't be working without a massive operation of lobbing but the media are surely helping M$ and Apple (Swift) to perform a change of image in public opinion.

[ljones0]

There is no "love-in" beween Gnu/Linux and M$. It is all handwaving and gestures in the same way a magician works. "Look at this hand over here, while I'm doing something different with the other one that you're missing".

Should point out btw that it has just been announced that ubuntu (note: ubuntu, not linux) now can run on MS Windows 10 natively. Though not gui, just some command line tools.

Sticking with this point though I guess that, patent attacks, MS Win 10 and soforth I'm wondering in which direction things are running. Are things about to improve or get a whole lot worse? Here's two opposite cases though I cannot tell which one is closer to what we'll end up in.

Bad
MS has no love of gnu/linux of any type. So they decide to use patents to try to kill off gnu/linux, presumably either making it prohibitively expensive to use (due to patents) or simply sue it out of existance. The next string of the bow? Get "linux" to run on MS Win10 (it dosen't - it's ubuntu, not linux) so you can try tool developers to use Win10 and get them "used" to using your propietary tools in the process. Later once they're more used to it, you can kill off the native "linux" and you've locked everyone in.

It's that old Embrace, Extend, Extinguish all over again.

Now add in the fact that MS Win 10 supports advertising; a dash of other things such as data mining, economic rents via software, the NSA and you have what might amount to a marriage made in hell.

Good
MS or at least windows is in reality although it does not publically appear to be so is in much more trouble than anyone thinks. Of course this is a private, for-profit company with lots of $$$$s so they can make it look as everything is ok, even to those relatively "close in". The reality could be that Win10 is doing far worse than anyone thought -- lots of negative press, forced upgrades, adverts, spyware; the fact that people are choosing to stick to (if they really want to use MS) older versions and that Win10 has been forced on or come preinstalled could mean that MS has big problems.

That and they are allowing you to download that OS for zero cost - MS windows is not free as in freedom! In the past MS required you to pay lots of money for that OS (remember when software was charged "per seat"?). The reality though could be that nobody truly wants Win10, that and the advancement of the mobile phone and ARM could mean that those patent attacks are more in desperation rather than anything else.

--------------------------------------

I know I'm not very good at stating all this but either things are about to improve or get a whole lot worse. Mark shuttleworth (aka Canonical) has also depending on where we are going to be going either made a very clever or extremely stupid decision in accepting MS as one of his companies' (Canonical) partners. It's clever because if MS is in trouble it could have the effect of getting more people to move to Gnu/Linux OSes and thereby assisting in putting down the miserable old beast that is MS windows finally once and for all.

If it is the other way round though he just made a massive blunder of biblical proportions at least for canonical. If we're about to fall into that bad state I wrote about above anything could happen -- maybe MS buys them in a year or twos' time? Or uses patents to weaken/kill off canonical and thereby ubuntu with knock-on effects to other distros.

I really hope we aren't going to end up in the bad state. Isn't it mildly depressing - if that is where we are heading - that RMS has been talking about things such as patents, propietary software and copyrights and their problems for several decades, and almost nobody listened. Reaction out there ranged from a shoulder-shrug and a meh to outright hostility.

I do not trust MS at all and I see no sign of them changing. As I said in my opening statement I think that part of it and a "linux-love in" is nothing but a deception; it's like the magician concentrating your attention in one place on one hand while the other does something completely different.....

Or maybe I'm wrong and MS' real intentions is to make MS Windows "cloud-only" and take us into a world where you own nothing (you rent your 'terminal'; all your data is on someone elses' propietary/corporate server), always pay, have 0 rights and someone owns everything. What I'd call the dream of 1960s computing but that's for another time and thread.

Just thinking aloud, thank you.

ljones

[ljones0]

Commercial proprietary software and free open source software have conflicting business models. Just look where the money is and you will find why GNU/Linux in undergoing such questionable business oriented changes.

Agreed but it isn't the only reason. Some people in the same way some out there swoon over pictures of cute kittens or babies get the same effect with technology. "Look at this new device! It's so thin, it looks amazing, look at what you can do! It's fantastic". Ok, sure it's locked down, propietary and will kill your freedoms but never mind because *"Shiny!"* x.x

ljones

[capricorny]

I really hope we aren't going to end up in the bad state. Isn't it mildly depressing - if that is where we are heading - that RMS has been talking about things such as patents, propietary software and copyrights and their problems for several decades, and almost nobody listened. Reaction out there ranged from a shoulder-shrug and a meh to outright hostility.

I can't agree. There has been lots of attention to this over the years. But from the corporate viewpoint, as soon as a certain size is reached, this is something that may be used to own advantage. I think that may be an important reason why the Linux, or more generally, Open Source community hasn't done terribly much about it. For it may be extremely resource-consuming, so individuals or interest groups may not be up to it, resource-wise.

This has got important implications for the "MS love" question: In a couple of years, a Microsoft-sourced Linux distro may well be the only juridically safe one, because all others have issues with MS patent infringement. There may be something to the old saying "To deserve freedom, you have to conquer it every day".

[montagdude]

I think a lot of these worries are mostly FUD. Linux isn't going away; the GPL will protect any corporation from suing it out of existence. Now, maybe in the future there will be some Windows/Ubuntu distro with proprietary stuff that can only be used on Windows/Ubuntu, but who cares. Most of us wouldn't want to use it anyway.

Speaking of the GPL, how does this "bash for Windows" thing work in terms of licensing? There's a lot of GPL code in it, so they should be required to keep the whole thing open source.

[ljones0]

I can't agree. There has been lots of attention to this over the years....

I must confess I was thinking more in terms of people than corporations. I still find all these years later if I even try to discuss free software, linux, distros et al let alone even plain old freedom to people I get the sort of "What are you talking about? I'm not intrested" sort of look. Most people - and it's a worry - seem to be content to either gorp at stupid cat videos, search for p0rn or worship the latest shiny thing (TM).

In a couple of years, a Microsoft-sourced Linux distro may well be the only juridically safe one, because all others have issues with MS patent infringement.

A marriage truly made in hell. Not looking forward to that day and long it may not happen!

I think a lot of these worries are mostly FUD. Linux isn't going away; the GPL will protect any corporation from suing it out of existence. Now, maybe in the future there will be some Windows/Ubuntu distro with proprietary stuff that can only be used on Windows/Ubuntu, but who cares. Most of us wouldn't want to use it anyway.

It is likely a portion of it is all FUD. Though I do wonder what happens when you put together stuff ..... let's say a big ugly corp like MS - plus patents, copyrights, the potential of a disasterous political leadership (a trump win in the US elections) and what policies become of it; it dosen't look quite so good.

I might be wrong though and this might be MS' attempt to try to "buy" linux and kill it as they have done with others in the past.

Random fuzzy thought: MS fortunatly isn't doing so well on ARM based devices, so would a desktop based ARM system be a useful idea? I am thinking not something like a rasberry pi or phone working like a PC, but an actual full-sized motherboard that goes in a PC case but is ARM based. *fuzzy thought over...

ljones