These Microsoft examples are 20 years old. The company has changed leadership to a team that embraces open source years ago and I think they've done a pretty good job demonstrating this embrace. They have adopted open source Java, they further open sourced .NET, they've embraced Linux containers in Azure and WSL on windows, etc. Might be about time to reconsider this perspective of 'hate Microsoft'. Full disclosure: I work at Microsoft and these things I listed are a big part of why I moved there this past year.
"they've embraced Linux containers in Azure and WSL on windows"
I am open to the possibility, that Microsoft changed, but this example is a classic "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" tactic by my understanding.
Linux is strong with developers and certain tech, but by incorporating Linux, Microsoft makes devs have many good sides of linux, but with all the nice proprietary windows extensions. So they stay on windows.
And that means less devs switching fully to linux to struggle with drivers and co. meaning less solutions there, so even more devs stay on windows and just use the Linux goodies.
Effect extingushing remaining linux users on the desktop.
But of course, they offset that very effectivly, by making me fight their system to not show me advertisement, track me or update at a very inconvinient time for example. Which is why I still love linux, aside from bugs, it does exactly what I want and when I want. I am in control.
With windows I feel like I am renting something, where the contract and services can (and sometimes will) change any moment.
> And that means less devs switching fully to linux to struggle with drivers and co. meaning less solutions there, so even more devs stay on windows and just use the Linux goodies.
Isn’t the fact that Linux is still more of a headache an argument for using a product from a company that has a profit motive to provide a good user experience?
Most of the hassle comes from picking a random computer full of parts whose OEMs explicitly and only support Windows and playing does this work with Linux wherein the answer ranges from yes, to yes with kernel version n+, yes with an out of kernel driver, yes with some manual configuration, to hell no.
If you dealt with an OEM that ships a computer with Linux they would iron out these issues for you. If you choose to be your own OEM you must do so. Most people complaining about Linux hardware support have decided that good support means working without issue on whatever they throw at it including the laptop they bought for $200 7 years ago from walmart and that any difficulty in installing or operating it is an indication that volunteers haven't donated enough infinite free labor on the off chance that someone wants to install linux on one of the 7 units of that model still in existence.
A more realistic expectation is that there are good range of products supporting Linux not that absolutely every machine be supported. Good support has been available including devices that ship with Linux installed for years.
> Most people complaining about Linux hardware support have decided that good support means working without issue on whatever they throw at it including the laptop they bought for $200 7 years ago from walmart and that any difficulty in installing or operating it is an indication that volunteers haven't donated enough infinite free labor
But you know who has thrown labor at getting that $200 laptop to work? Microsoft and Google (Chrome OS).
It’s amazing how many more people who are willing to work for money than to work for free.
Which illustrates my point about being willing to pay for a Linux specific OEM. Complainers almost always opted in to being OEMs then complained about the work they opted in to. Linux isn't free windows for every computer in the world.
if developers move from Linux to Windows + WSL as desktop, in my experience, is because Linux as desktop doesn't offer a great experience for everyone. In some terms, companies trying to sell Linux, did a bad work to get it done well.
Well yes, there are many reasons why linux has problems and people go ways to avoid them, but my point was, that Microsoft did not embrace linux for their new love of open source, but to eat its marketshare.
I mean, Linux was never significant on the desktop, but had and still has significant market share for developers. In University I was basically tought how to use Linux and despise Windows. Microsoft does not want that obviously.
edit: but according to this chart, linux is actually still gaining market share
Yeah, well pretty insignificant market share. Working many year in this market, Linux, Linux Desktops and etc, I can tell you: Microsoft isnt looking to the Linux desktop market share, but to the Mac OSX market share. Windows + WSL is a real contender to Mac OSX as development desktop.
Ok, that's a good point, that the real target is OSX.
Still, I don't think they are happy about SteamOS for example. I mean the absolute numbers are still very low, but if gamers start to see linux as a alternative, Windows might get a problem. And there is still a significant portion of linux only developers and not all of them are FOSS fanatics, but pragmatic, but still don't like the walled garden of OSX.
They embraced to fight Apple, and nowadays it makes more sense to be compatible with Linux than pure POSIX, even the surviving UNIXes have some form of Linux compatibility layer.
Do you know any linux users that have switched from linux desktop to Windows because of WSL? I think it's just leading to Windows devs embracing Linux.
I know it keeps me more on windows, when I do not have to switch to the linux partition to do something particular and I see new devs not making the switch to linux at all, when they can get the job done on windows.
> changed leadership to a team that embraces open source years ago
Before or after they were shaking down Android OEMs over FAT? Microsoft didn't change, they're just operating in a market where they can't get away with as much.
What about forcing Windows upgrades? What about endemic telemetry with no/constant-shifting off switches? What about dark patterns to all but force folks to create a online account? The first big tech co to jump in bed with the NSA?
To clarify my point, is that if we know where the priorities of MS lie... and as demonstrated we know from experience that the needs of MS come first. Then extrapolating to their open source telemetry is a no-brainer.
After. That was also closer to a decade ago now than not. (It was settled in October 2015. Microsoft released an Open Patent Agreement with Android manufacturers a few years after that and dropped licensing fees at that time.)
When Microsoft committed a whole host of criminal acts including funding a criminal pump and dump scheme targeting competitors with fraudulent lawsuits Satya Nadella had already been among MS leadership for years. If you were part of the MS leadership team in the 1990s and 2000s you were at least tacitly OK with profiting from crime. The only difference between then and now is deciding that open source can profitably be used and can't realistically be crushed.
It's like the mob boss deciding there is money to be made working together so he stops trying to have you whacked. It's certainly a better position to be in but not one that engenders trust nor should it.
Microsoft is certainly embracing open source. It looks like Mono is still with us after open sourcing .NET, though it's now sponsored by Microsoft. They bought GitHub and kept it running. Are they still doing the extend with useful features not found elsewhere part? I don't follow their stack closely enough to know.
How about the part where certain plugins and extensions which work with Azure and some other Microsoft assets are not permitted in the forks of VSCode?
I'm not sure I believe this. IME, the developer experience of .NET on Linux and Mac platforms is definitely subpar compared to Windows. I've tried to get started on F# several times and have always run into bugs and incomplete/inadequate documentation.
F# will always be a niche language compared to C#. The VSCode extension for F# is bad, while the C# extension for VSCode is just as good as Visual Studio for C#. I'm not apologizing for the .NET team, but if you want to be productive with F# then you really should stick to Visual Studio on Windows.
F# has been working on much better language servers for VS Code (building on top of the good parts of C#'s work and the larger Roslyn compiler infrastructure ecosystem), but also F# is much more a "community" project than much of the rest of .NET and a lot of it is "at the pace of open source" rather than "at the pace of corporate initiatives", for both good and bad.
