Linus Torvalds Shares His Thoughts on Microsoft’s New-Found Love for Linux

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/linus-torvalds-doesnt-think-microsoft-is-out-to-hijack-linux

by Alupis • 7 years ago

52 59 7 years ago

omgubuntu.co.uk

Found this a while back and thought it was an interesting perspective vis a vis some of the collective (mine included) perceptions of Microsoft based on their past behavior, illegal and unethical business practices and such. Not to necessarily excuse or erase that, but Nadella-era MSFT is very different than Gates- or Ballmer-era

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/MicrosoftKilledMyPappy.aspx

Analemma_• 7 years ago

(disclaimer: I used to work at Microsoft)

There's an important lesson here: while reasonable skepticism is always good, it's important to remember that a policy of "never forgive, never forget" actually creates moral hazard. If people/companies think they will never be forgiven for current misdeeds even if they get better, then there's no incentive to get better and they might as well keep being horrible. Allowing people (or companies) to turn over a new leaf incentivizes good behavior.

zarkov992• 7 years ago

One could also argue a policy of always forget/always forgive creates its own set of moral hazards by reducing the deterrence against bad behaviours.

lotsofpulp• 7 years ago

I don't think it is reasonable to expect people completely disconnected from the negative effects of their actions to "turn over a new leaf", especially when they stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

From all the examples I can see, "ask for forgiveness, not permission" is how many of the largest companies have become economically successful.

ekianjo• 7 years ago

At least you would like to see such companies publicly admit they did wrong in the past if they expect any kind of forgiveness.

oska2• 7 years ago

This is flawed reasoning when you understand that some people and some companies are sociopathic. They will never 'turn over a new leaf' because they are incapable of doing so.

giomasce• 7 years ago

Nadella-era MSFT is different from Gates- or Ballmer-era, and this is very good, but, as a Linux user and free software contributor, I wouldn't say I feel "loved". I'd say I feel MSFT is trying to somehow get advantage of my work (which is fine, given that it is free software) while holding back what I would like to have from them (specifications for MSFT interfaces and file systems, if not code, so that better interoperability can be implemented). Which is also fine, of course, they do not owe me anything, but still I do not feel "loved".

(BTW, I already have more editors and code hosting platforms than I need, so they are not good points for me)

pdonis5• 7 years ago

The claim that MS is "putting the Linux kernel at the heart of Windows 10 as part of WSL 2" is an overstatement. If they really wanted to put the Linux kernel at the heart of Windows, they would ditch the Windows kernel, which would be no great loss, and make Windows a GUI over the Linux kernel.

nullbyte• 7 years ago

The only problem with this is that there are thousands of business-critical applications that are designed for the Windows NT kernel... Many of them have deep integrations with the operating system.

Just think of all the Steam games that are only available on Windows!

pdonis5• 7 years ago

And yet programming languages ever since C were supposed to be cross platform. If you have to call on specific features of a particular OS when writing business application code, that's a problem with the OS.

Koshkin• 7 years ago

designed for the Windows NT kernel

I am sure you mean "designed for Win32 API."

cosmojg• 7 years ago

Any examples? I'm genuinely curious what kinds of "deep integrations" make NT a more attractive development target than Linux.

lame-robot-hoax• 7 years ago

Funny, I run Windows because I find the NT kernel to be superior.

zadler• 7 years ago

What in particular do you find to be lacking in the linux kernel?

meddlepal• 7 years ago

In what ways do you find the kernel superior or better?

monocasa• 7 years ago

Interestingly at least one NT kernel engineer disagrees with you.

http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-w...

jiggawatts• 7 years ago

no great loss

You instantly lost all credibility by saying such an obvious Linux fanboy statement, ignoring reality and business constraints.

The value of the NT kernel is absolutely enormous, probably on the order of a trillion dollars.

Remind me: Which year was the year of the Linux desktop?

berbec• 7 years ago

echo "$(($(date +%Y)+1)) is the year of the Linux desktop."

pdonis5• 7 years ago

The value of the NT kernel is absolutely enormous, probably on the order of a trillion dollars

No, the value of the Windows installed base is enormous. But that does not mean the NT kernel is the reason for that value. People, and more importantly large corporations that are the primary customers for Windows, don't buy it because it has a technically superior kernel. They buy it because MS has had lock-in on the PC OS market for several decades now, due not to technical superiority but to IBM making two bonehead decisions that handed that market to MS, and MS has used its market position to force PC manufacturers into bundling agreements that increase the cost of using any other OS to the point where corporations can't justify doing it.

In other words, the value of the Windows installed base is that, because of historical events that I would much rather had gone another way but that's water under the bridge now, to a first approximation, Windows is the interface that everybody knows how to use to use a PC. The point of my comment was that it would be an improvement to put that known interface that has huge market lock-in on top of an OS kernel that didn't have all the known security and other technical flaws of Windows.

sliken• 7 years ago

Linux (the kernel) has a decent desktop marketshare.... if you include chrome OS, which uses the Linux kernel.

Of course linux (the kernel) also has a pretty huge phone marketshare, with android which uses the Linux Kernel.

yamato2022• 7 years ago

They pay a good chunk of his salary, I assume?

CaliforniaKarl• 7 years ago

As per https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/, the Linux Foundation pays the salaries of Linux and Greg K-H. So Microsoft do indeed indirectly pay for a part of their salaries; along with AT&T, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NEC, VMware, Accenture, Juniper Networks, Toyota (the list of corporate members is at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/), plus all of the non-student Individual supporters (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/individual/).

sys_64738• 7 years ago

I think Linus will end up working at Microsoft some day.

chambo622• 7 years ago

This is a hot take and I like it

jimbob45• 7 years ago

For those questioning the math like me, he's currently 49.

newnewpdro• 7 years ago

I think Linus will retire.

nine_k• 7 years ago

I don't think Linus is currently working because he desperately needs money.

I suppose that Linus might continue working to further a case he cares about.

corford• 7 years ago

I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out (https://images.app.goo.gl/Tqj5xPmgueJotQuN7) but I agree with Linus. The landscape has changed and the money today is in SaaS and Cloud.

MS missed the mobile revolution but they appear intent on ensuring their slice of the "cloud" pie through Azure. Making sure they support the linux ecosystem is a no brainer (and I think they're far too late to embrace and extend).

Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too.

cure• 7 years ago

I'm old enough to remember Bill Gates appearing as a borg on Slashdot and the infamous mutating linux ads MS ran when Win2K came out

And XBill, don't forget about XBill!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBill

lbotos• 7 years ago

Yes, but now Microsoft owns:

- VSCode

- GitHub

As well. They are fighting for the hearts and minds of the next generation of developers. They might win.

basch• 7 years ago

I think they're far too late to embrace and extend

Isnt that exactly what their new android phone will become? Android that also runs Windows apps?

Having already lost browser, mobile and search; they'd be dead if they fucked up cloud too.

In this case, Cloud is saas and iaas/paas. On the saas side, they have a huge industry lead with exchange/sharepoint, and transitioned with a similar playbook to Adobe. Theres too many customers that wont leave Outlook/Excel, and having hosted Outlook/Excel storage native to the programs themselves, is enough for many companies to make an overall vendor choice. Because of Ballmers licensing genius, once you buy Outlook/Excel, bundle pricing makes piecemealing with competitors products prohibitivly more expensive. Winning iaas is mostly just about how much money they dump into capital. Winning paas, if one can win and become the defacto api standard, isnt something Microsoft needs to survive. They could "lose" to aws, adopt all its conventions, and be a drop in replacement. I dont think that would happen, but winning the paas battle, as the only survivor isnt essential to Microsofts survival.

Microsoft also has one other push that few others have brought a challenge against, and that is corporate identity. With AD transitioning to AzureAD, and Office 365 being that gateway drug, companies will be invested into Microsoft's Identity services for decades to come. Transitioning to a higher priced product would net nearly zero gain. Okta might be nice if you dont already have anything, but it wont outgrow msft. At least second place and thrown into a bundle is the msft motto. Time will tell if that model translates to Azure paas pricing.

bbanyc• 7 years ago

Microsoft wants to compete with Amazon and Google, and god bless them if they've been humbled by their recent failures and want to play fair now. I'd be more concerned about IBM, which through its acquisition of Red Hat now controls or funds most of the software in the "traditional" Linux environment.

pnutjam• 7 years ago

Don't forget about Suse, they support alot of the opensource ecosystem.

You can actually buy RedHat support from them also.

https://www.suse.com/c/know-suse-supporting-rhat-years/

iamwil• 7 years ago

Whether Microsoft will stay like this just depends largely on their current strategic positioning and how their organization is set up to make money now, rather than how they acted in the past.

If the incentives are aligned, they'll be well behaved. If not, then they'll do whatever they can.

TheSpiceIsLife• 7 years ago

Almost.

Whether Microsoft will stay like this depends on how they respond to the changing landscape moving forward.

peterwwillis2• 7 years ago

I remember when everyone was a Google, Facebook and Apple fanboy, and those tunes sure changed. I also remember when the whole Open Source/Free Software community loathed Microsoft. Maybe the lesson in all this is, don't assume what a ginormous capitalist corporation will do based on your feelings about their brand.

BuckRogers2• 7 years ago

Apple is still good. But their business model is aligned to be good stewards of the user unlike Facebook or Google. Microsoft and Apple products are irreplaceable today as well, while Google and Facebook offer convenience but no necessary value.

peterwwillis2• 7 years ago

Apple is still good

I think you miss my point... an entire company can't be "good". "Apple" is a brand. You may like a lot of their products, but they also have some products with shit features, and they sometimes do "things" that are not so much "good" for "the users" as they are good for the company.

Their MacBook Pro keyboards are the worst in the industry. They make it so a user can't repair a product that they own. They censor application platforms based on the country a user is in. The majority of their products are a "captive market", often impossible to use with anything but another Apple product. There's many things Apple does that are against the users. But here you are, enjoying some of their products, so you call their entire brand, and presumably their entire product line, "good".

How does one define "good", then? Good enough for all? For some? For you? Good in quality? Good morally or ethically, and if so, based on whose morals/ethics? Do the people and places they effect outside of their immediate users matter? I don't think it's useful to think of an entire brand in such a simplistic way.

BTW, Google and Facebook offer necessary value. Facebook is used to keep up with people's lives (without it, many grandparents would know next to nothing of the lives of their grandchildren, for example) and encompasses two of the largest instant messaging platforms. Google is probably the biggest provider of e-mail, an absolutely essential component of having an online life (which is increasingly necessary for more of regular life, from getting a ride somewhere, to accessing government services, to transferring funds), to say nothing of search, maps, docs. And many of these services would be pointless without the Apple/Google/Microsoft platforms, but many of those platforms would be pointless without the services. So what's "necessary" is a bit subjective.

(Caveat to all of the above: Fuck Oracle.)

oska2• 7 years ago

Can we redirect to the original article [1] please (linked in the submitted article).

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-isnt-worried-ab...

jupp0r• 7 years ago

The article leaves out the minor detail that through sponsoring the Linux Foundation, Microsoft is paying Linus' paycheck.

That being said, I'm really excited about the apparent culture shift inside Microsoft. Let's forget about the ugly past and judge them by their recent actions.

AlexCoventry• 7 years ago

Such as their imposition of extensive telemetry in windows 10?

peterangular• 7 years ago

Right? You're using a piece of adware/spyware if you're not on the LTSC/B version. Even the Enterprise copies are atrocious now.

They're arguably worse than they were 10-20 years ago IMO... throwing some Linux support on top of stuff just makes me scoff.

smitty1e• 7 years ago

I appreciate that Torvalds is no ideologue, and that his "tit for tat" approach extends to Redmond.

The relatively more purist views of the FSF are of value, as well.

A spectrum of opinion keeps any Towers of Babel from getting too tall.

yaris• 7 years ago

Funny how some people still fear MS controlling Linux (with intent to kill of course), although RedHat/IBM is much more real danger.

jitl• 7 years ago

RedHat/IBM already won now that SystemD is everywhere because Gnome requires it.

Linus Torvalds Shares His Thoughts on Microsoft’s New-Found Love for Linux

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