Personally, I like the direction Microsoft is heading with open source software, here are a few reasons why:
For example, they already showed how commercial development can make Linux suck less.
Take code-editors: For a long time we had well written libre software that had not so nice UIs.
If you wanted a fun to use editor there was stuff like Sublime or the JetBrains stack, but neither of those were free. My favorite editor currently is Visual Studio Code (yes, Electron is arguable) which feels as refined as a commercial software but ticks the open source checkbox and already got a lot noticeable community contributions. Maybe theres hope that we will see a LibreOffice competitor some day.
dotnet core, the acquisition of Xamarin and the official sponsorship of mono will make it easier for developers to bring their C# software to Linux in the same way that Java already does, now that we have officially supported .net runtime enviroments and a cool new GUI framework (looking foreward to this: https://github.com/xamarin/Xamarin.Forms/pull/1174). The mono project was already great before it became a .net product, but wouldnât have happend without Microsoft in the first place.
Open source projects influenced by bad company dicisions usually die, with some community driven forks gaining traction quickly. Oracle has shown this a couple of times now, so I am not too concerned with Microsofts ability to buy influence in projects and foundations.
JetBrains has free and open source versions of several editors. And âbetterâ is highly subjective here anyways; many users are perfectly content with vim/emacs and a sluggish UI is the last thing they want.
Iâm wary of Microsoftâs actions and doubt they legitimately âlikeâ Linux the way they claim.
I think we have discussed this before in this forum and it is a old discussion.
Unfortunately the Linux foundation is such a corporate haven at this point that MS might be the least dangerous premium supporter. In a better world MS trying to gain control in the linux ecosystem would be a headline. As things are now with the foundation it does not really matter that much.
Do you know of an example, especially an open source piece of software? They killed a couple of good programs, but the ones i know of were mostly companies they bought.
The problem also applies to LibreOffice. It is a perfect replacement for Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint anyway), but the dated UI scares many users awayâŚ
Companies often spend more time refining the user experience, because this is what âsellsâ in the end. Suse for example also comes with YaST which does nothing you couldnât do on other distributions, but it does it in a more user friendly way.
Odd, I see this exactly the other way around: LibreOffice lacks functionality and is buggy, however Iâll take its UI over Microsoftâs ribbons any day.
Anyway, you are right of course in that companies can invest more money in polishing their products. But along with a shiny experience come corporate tactics, as @anon37371794 noted. Microsoft is not known for openness and it doesnât look like they are changing very much either. They open up as little as possible in areas they have to (canât compete with the JVM without having .NET run on the linux-dominated server world; containers are coming - good luck staying relevant without a unix subsystem on windows) but keep everything else restricted (Whereâs Visual Studio? DirectX? Vulkan on the XBox?)
Weâve done this subject several times on these forums I think. Lunduke must be getting on, he is starting sound like a stuck record regurgitating the same old story about Balmers spittle (which probably would have scarred anyone). He has a point, Microsoft is a corporation, and no matter how well meaning a corporation is (coughcough Donât be evil) it exists for one purpose only; to expand and increase profit. Iâm not sure why we should be anymore afraid of MS, than Oracle, IBM, Google or Amazon though.
Still IMO SatNad is a very different man compared to Balmer and has a proper technical background, likewise he has some really great chief techies working for him like Jeffery Snover and Mark Rusinovich. Both of which will sometimes pop up answering questions on forums etc. This was on the msdn forum a few years back when WSL was announced;
So do Oracle and IBM, but they started pouring money into supporting their products on Linux years ago and even produced their own distros for Enterprise customers. Microsoft is very much a Johnny-come-lately to this party.
Solaris and AIX have already shown their strengths and their weaknesses vs Linux, and overall, theyâre no match for Linux. Solaris and AIX are not going to get better by leaps and bounds any time soon, and there arenât droves of people looking to learn Solaris and AIX.
Windows, on the other hand, has been getting better in many ways. Microsoft has taken an active interest in paring down Windows to be as slim as Linux, to be as fast as Linux, to be as secure as Linux. Windows and Linux are actively competing with one another.
Not as much as you would think, most shops are firmly in one camp or the other and unlikely to change. The real need for MS to embrace Linux is cloud, Linux is the default OS of choice for VMâs running in AWS etc. For Azure to compete MS have to offer Linux support, the Windows Server vs. Linux war was won - by Linux. Itâs unlikely that any new features added to Windows Server will offer anything to tempt Linux shops, and some of the features are actually very good and easy to setup and administer.
I agree. Since they are not really gaining any new market share in the desktop; only losing it, and they lost the server space.
There hand was forced to support linux to stay relevant; that or hike the prices up on everything which is against their plans for world domination.
Silver lining is that once windows supports something it will be in place for like 20 years. So at least theyâll be supporting linux for a good while.
Linux has taken over almost everywhere except the place it was meant to take over. The desktop. Its managed its way into everything from your car, dvd player, your phone, and even your internet of shit camera.
Everybody who actually knows and cares about the interworkings of linux is already on it or stuck on another OS because reasons. I worry about M$ bringing in the normal people and forcing themselves as a middle person for all of the normie people
The companies put money in, the GPL ensures the code remains free, I just canât see how they can subvert the core kernel to make it disappear. Proper FOSS has never won in the home/consumer market and I doubt it will, if in 10 years MSâ share has greatly shrunk my bet will be that it is because Andriod (or something based on it) will be some much larger - you could argue Linux will have won there too, but it wonât be a FOSS GNU/Linux.
Up to you if you think that is something to worry about or not, Iâm not going to lose too much sleep, no one listens to me already when I suggest using Linux outside of work (apart from my daughter, but only because she loves the MATE GUI).
