Gave this a long look and my main beef is that I couldn't possibly do anything on a Windows Machine in its' current state. Linux isn't just about running apps - there's a philosophy behind the system. Users first!

As long as Microsoft continues to disrespect the rights of users in regard to privacy, data-collection, data-sharing with unnamed sources, tracking, uncontrollable OS operations (updates, etc) - I will never go near it.

I find it especially offensive that ex-open source and ex-Linux users (working for Microsoft) have the audacity to come on here and try to sell this as a 'Linux on Windows' system when most of what makes Linux special (respect for the user) has been stripped away.

It's like giving a man who is dying of thirst sea water.

Most comments here appear to be positive and that's fine... whatever. To anyone reading this... please don't sell your souls and the future of software technology for ease of use and abusive business practices. /rant

Apple is just as proprietary, commercial and anti-competitive as Microsoft here.

FWIW, this excites me because it potentially means I can go from two machines to one, and always have IE/Edge at my fingertips. It will greatly improve my dev workflow if it pans out like people are hoping it does.

I respectfully disagree. The OSX kernel XNU is open source, as are a ton of its components. That's huge in a lot of situations. Some things - not a lot, granted, but some, like FreeBSD's C++ stack and compiler - are even upstreamed back to mainstream open source projects by Apple employees.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission#Si...

^ Citation need.

They have identified the core of their business and they feel comfortable there. They get a 30% royalty for each App Store transaction, they make large profits selling iPhones and Macs. They monetize their software indirectly as a part of a larger end-to-end solution.

Microsoft during their monopolic era was much more beyond that, they were going for all.

Yes, absolutely. Bill Gates was not a "nice" man. These days many people fawn over him "oh he's so lovey dovey, he's going to save the world with all his money as a philanthropist". LOL -- how many have actually sat at the same table (behind closed doors) with Billy boy pounding the table telling everyone attending (ISPs, major telecoms) how Microsoft was going to run the show, run the world. Microsoft is a ruthless company. Satya Nadella was part of this ruthless culture when he first joined MSFT 25 years ago. Why would the ruthless culture of Microsoft suddenly change because they've figured out how to peg Ubuntu Linux to the kernel? Ever hear of a Trojan Horse? This announcement today sure smells like horse manure.

There's also a logical fallacy that because Nadella worked for MS for the past twenty five years, he's as power hungry as Gates. This reeks of the type of elitist nonsense the keeps people from wanting to adopt Linux.

EDIT: Removed insult, came with arguments instead.

Like with their SMB support? When, given the choice of complying with the GPL or re-writing an SMB client from scratch, Apple chose the latter and subjected users to utterly broken SMB support for several releases just so they did not have to open source their pitiful collection of patches?

Try changing the battery in your Lumia.

Yeah I'm sure all those celebs that had all their nude photos stolen from icloud would totally agree that Apple takes great care with personal data.

Are you trying to justify needlessly spending 600$ on a phone every year? That's your prerogative, you don't have to convince strangers on the internet.

All systems have had and still have security flaws. There is a world of difference between having a unknown vulnerability (which affects and will affect all platforms) and intentionally spying on users and stealing their information.

You are mixing them all and that's how the debate gets stuck into some neckbeard-limbo that nobody cares about.

Society made a lot of progress when religion and state got decoupled from each other. There are some things that should be handled separately.

What I have to say about this is:

Technology-wise, GNU/Linux software is separate from that of Windows at the binary level as well as dependencies. For them to extend such software means that they would need to build on that. That would extend the GNU/Linux ecosystem.

Legally-wise, open source software is protected by open source licensing that requires derived software to also be licensed as open source. It is challenging to achieve the "extend" part of the "embrace/extend/extinguish" loop if open source licenses are in place.

In terms of values, they're a for-profit corporation trying to reach out to developers. Same as every other company. They have open sourced .NET, they've released some of their actually important software on Linux (SQL Server), they have embraced the Linux platform on their cloud environments... everything possible to appeal to developers. It doesn't appeal to me, though.

But as to your point, not all free software licenses are copyleft. The MIT and BSD and Apache licenses are all proprietary-friendly licenses.

And as for requiring to extend the GNU/Linux ecosystem, I don't think that's true. It just looks like they've implemented syscall compatibility with Linux (something that FreeBSD has had for donkey's years and SmartOS has been working on for the past few years). Neither of those technologies resulted in more software specifically for GNU/Linux.

RMS was foresighted enough to make licensing a core part of open source. I have a deep respect for the man.

The Achilles heel for open source software remains to be patents. In that regard I think many proprietary players still have the upper hand.

> RMS was foresighted enough to make licensing a core part of open source. I have a deep respect for the man.

He founded the free software movement. The open source movement is based on different values (convenience above ethics) which Stallman doesn't agree with.

> The Achilles heel for open source software remains to be patents. In that regard I think many proprietary players still have the upper hand.

Both the GPLv3 and Apache solve this problem. The issue is that too many people are using permissive licenses where it's not appropriate.

I think he would say what he has always said about secret software. He's fairly consistent in that regard.

Ignoring your insults toward RMS, you can always send him an email at [email protected]. He responds within a few days most of the time.

I dual boot my laptop b/w Windows and Linux because the WiFi network at my school has issues with Linux...so I'm forced to use Windows, also for games, but it's such a pain. Today it updated forcefully while I was trying to study; I tried to postpone the update but the option was grayed out. The Windows philosophy through and through is to treat users as ignorant and incompetent idiots for whom even the most basic of tasks must be performed, and who cannot make important decisions. This, IMHO, is the epitome of disrespect, and the reason I look forward with great anticipation to the day when I am able to solely operate within computing environments that afford me the same dignity as the cars I drive.

That said, for most development work I prefer Linux, and run a Linux home server as well as various VMs, so this announcement sounds great to me.

And as a final aside: basically all of the information gathering that people complain about with Windows can very easily be turned off. In fact, for the most part the installation wizard actually leads you through how to turn it off. For me that makes it a non-issue, although I understand that some feel differently.

It's absolutely not a non-issue when I was helping my mother set up her new Win10 laptop.

She doesn't want to be tracked, I don't want her to be tracked.

But currently she is being tracked by Microsoft very much.

As are millions of other people that REALLY do not want to, if they had the choice.

There was no wizard when I got there to help her. Obviously she had set up most of the laptop herself because she's not intimidated by computers and really pretty good with them (at age 66). Except she couldn't get email to work.

And neither could I, btw. She wanted two accounts in the windows 10 default mail client, one from the ISP and a very old hotmail account. Somehow this just wouldn't work and the stupid mail client was actively hiding the information I (or she) needed to troubleshoot the problem (not just a bit, I got like zero information. and a numerical error code. it's beyond me why MS would want to translate standard error messages from IMAP and SMTP into something even more cryptic). I ended up installing Thunderbird, which works.

But I digress. My mom is not a HN-reader, so she hadn't quite heard about Win10's totalitarian surveillance features, and when first setting up her laptop she wasn't quite sitting there in the adversarial position of "I'd rather brick my system than let it spy on me" that any of us would need to assume in order to later claim "the information gathering that people complain about with Windows can very easily be turned off". She doesn't want to be tracked, so I'm sure she ticked off a couple of the checkboxes that were clear about it.

But maybe not the ones that popped up warnings about your system. Or the ones that were misleadingly worded as if they are something beneficial ("just like the US government does" is not really a bar for good intentions) that you need to Google to figure out what they really mean. Or the tiny checkboxed that only explain their maliciousness in a very tiny font next to the big friendly letters that just want to steam you through the wizard. (I didn't see any wizard, but this is the deliberately misleading I remember from win8, obviously intending to grab as much private info from users while pretending to give them a choice).

During the afternoon I helped her, I only had time to set up the email and do a few other things. In addition of having to wait through 45 minutes of some giant update, which upset her a bit because it was a brand-new laptop, high-end thingy, why did we have to wait for things to happen? Damn right. The longer I'm on Linux, the more and more ridiculous it seems to have the OS yank control from you at what are probably the most inopportune moments (boot-up and shutdown ... really?!)

So I didn't have time to help her, Google for all the privacy options in Win10 and disable them.

What you probably don't know, because you "easily" disabled them right away, is that after this initial setup phase, Win10's remote surveillance features are as quiet as they can possibly be. (until you try to disable them of course at which point they'll scream bloody modal murder)

And with her, that situation is by no means unique. There are millions upon millions of sufficiently able people running Windows that are currently being tracked, against their wishes, because the options are misleading and/or hidden. And they even pay Microsoft for the privilege ...

So yeah no. Just like computer security in general isn't about you being safe and protected from criminals, that's easy enough, unless you're being targeted, if you are clever and paying attention, don't click the shady popups/emails and you're mostly fine.

Criminal phishers or ransomware peddlers would be out of a job (or be more clever) if everybody has the knowledge like that.

Just like Microsoft wouldn't have even bothered doing all that work on their surveillance tracking systems if the features would have been as "easily turned off" for everyone that doesn't want to be tracked.

Just like any whitehat hackers, on the rare occasions I hear them about the fundamental moral reasons why they do what they do, in addition to "hacking is fun" (also goes for grey/blackhat), is every time not because they and their tech-savvy friends need their protection, no we're catching the bad guys and fixing the vulnerabilities because our mother, grandfather, neighbour, partner, nephew and that friendly man at the cigar/magazine cornershop need the protection because they don't want to be hacked just as much as we don't, but not everyone has the time to dig into computers as deeply as us to protect ourselves.

And you know, those very same people also don't want to be tracked, given the choice. At the very most they'll shrug and admit defeatedly "well, yeah, ... I don't mind so much, I guess" -- because to them it seems to be price to pay for not having to really dig deep into their system and just be able to use that laptop for email and web-browsing.

But no, they don't really want to be tracked. It's NOT a choice, for them, it factors as an additional cost of being able to use a computer.

Source: I teach people (of all ages, but mostly children 8-18y) general computer usage. None of them want to be tracked. None. The ones that even claim they do, I haven't met a single one that, after sitting down and talking for a while, didn't just boast "oh, I don't care" because the alternative would be admitting that they don't have the skill/knowledge to fix the situation, or because simply not using Facebook because it's creepy as fuck, would be social suicide. That's not a choice. It's not a choice!

Just because we (hackernewserpeoples) are clever enough to opt to not pay that cost because it's technically optional, doesn't make it a "non-issue".

http://www.winprivacy.de/english-home/

And also the requirement of specialist tools to do non-specialist jobs like set the engine timing, and then charging a lot for purchase of the tool. It will be interesting to see how serviceable electric cars become once they are old enough to start being parted out and the used market expands to those who 'just need something to go from A to B'.

The thing is, from an "open source" perspective, what they're doing is great and totally legit. From a free software perspective, it has a lot of potential to be suspicious and troubling. If all you care about is "the best technology; yay" rather than user freedoms, your concerns are moot.

There's a stereotype that the open source people are practical but don't care about political issues and the free software people hate everything proprietary with a passion, but of course that's not always the case. Big companies like Microsoft aren't monocultures. They have some really amazing people, even if not everyone is perfectly enlightened. The path to more user freedom is allowing those good people to continue to push technology in the right direction. This is a step toward more freedom.

Many of us don't just use one computer. I use every OS on different desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, servers, and consoles. They might not all be equally free, but I only need one to be fully free to know that I have freedom that can't be taken away. Even for those who don't have a fully free system, the most important thing in my opinion is that the option always exists. If they aren't served by proprietary software, they have somewhere to go.

GNU won against all odds. It's here to stay, proliferating across so many devices. I'm happy to welcome people who might not have ventured outside Windows into the family!

That's a good point. Its all about having real options (freedom to move) and minimal switching costs. That said, I'm still concerned about a possible Trojan Horse scenario here whereby Linux on Windows is the hook to try and get people into the proprietary Windows dev tools (Visual Studio etc.) and checked into the Azure "roach motel" cloud (easy to check into, hard to check out).

> Big companies like Microsoft aren't monocultures. They have some really amazing people, even if not everyone is perfectly enlightened.

Microsoft most definitely has some amazing and talented people, but I disagree with you about culture: the culture of any company is undoubtedly set from the top down (the founders or directors). Please do not be so naive to think Satya Nadella does not set the culture at Microsoft, (hierarchical in nature). This isn't to say there may not be some fiefdoms within a company as large as Microsoft, but there is an overarching culture and it comes from the top.

> Many of us don't just use one computer.

This is probably true for some, but some people might only be able to afford one computer. One scenario I can see which might be appealing to a developer, as of this announcement yesterday, is using a MacBook with Apple's Boot Camp to partition the internal drive such that one could have as many options as possible (OS X on one partition, and Windows 10 with Linux on the other).

> GNU won against all odds. It's here to stay, proliferating across so many devices. I'm happy to welcome people who might not have ventured outside Windows into the family!

It would be really cool to hear what RMS (Richard Stallman) thinks about this. I wonder if he's be up for an AMA on Reddit to address this seemingly earth shaking announcement by MSFT?

Are they? When did Microsoft's EEE strategy benefit the user and lead to the best technology? IE6? JScript? ActiveX? J/Direct? MSN Messenger?

You've taken the words right out of my mouth. At first blush, Linux interop on Windows seems like the best of both worlds, but in reality you're giving up a lot more than you gain.

It isn't just about the philosophy either. Not to me.

Linux offers a stellar scheduler, phenomenal file systems such as ext4 and XFS (soon ZFS!), cgroups… the list goes on.

This is true for a certain type of users (developers deploying on Linux).

For a different class of users (desktop/laptop users, or developers developing on Linux), Linux has a documented history of "Fuck you very much".

Microsoft has recognized that there is a large overlap between these two classes.

In my context as a software engineer or as a private individual I didn't find your argument convincing from the point of view that it would expose any specific problems that are of my concern. If I was responsible for confidential data my views might align more with yours.

"As long as Microsoft continues to disrespect the rights of users in regard to privacy, data-collection, data-sharing with unnamed sources..."

I'm already giving up most of my privacy in the general context when using an off-the-shelf cellphone (in the sense that I have no idea how much data leak my daily cell phone use causes and I'm fine with it since I have no time to implement a personal data safety plan).

If I wanted privacy I would stop using technology altogether. I just want things that a) work with b) minimal financial risk.

"when most of what makes Linux special (respect for the user) has been stripped away."

Sorry, for me it's the "Linux the technology stack", that make it special, not the "Linux the philosophy".

"please don't sell your souls and the future of software technology for ease of use"

For me personally, 'ease of use' is the single most important optimization parameter when choosing technology. Although, in my definition, this encompasses things not only directly related to daily use, but include license cost, security and data loss prevention. The most important thing I care very much for is retaining copy right to my own data.

Why 'ease of use'? Because the only thing that truly constrains me in this world, is time. As in, how long I have to live, and how much effort I need to reach my goals. When put in this context, I don't care of the philosophical implications of the way I solve problems and implement things - I just want them done.

I.e. if the product does what I want, I don't really care of the philosophy. Perhaps I have too much faith in market forces and jurisdiction prohibiting monopoly but I fail to see much personal benefit in an all encompassing "platform philosophy" as to me, technology platforms should focus on solving real life problems.

"please don't sell your souls"

I don't pour my soul into the technology platform I use. I pour my soul on the design itself - the implementation on the platform is just the implementation of the design that could very well live in an abstract turing machine. Although the implementation running in live hardware is much, much more fun (and exposes the bugs).

It falls on Developers - moreso than any other group - to be aware of the dangers the work they perform produces and for whom their work benefits. They must all be aware of the abuses of our basic rights and human dignity modern Private Enterprise engage in.

When these same Enterprises pull developers from a system (or systems) that value our individual rights to one that tramples all over them... it angers me. It begins to limit the Philosophically, user-empowering, alternatives we have. When developers rejoice over the actions of an abusive Enterprise, it disheartens me. It feels like the bigger picture is somehow being missed.

To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin: 'Those who give up their freedoms for temporary ease of use deserve neither and will lose both.'

I do not mean this to sound harsh. You can both work within the current technological framework (as we all do) and, at the same time, rail against a future that runs counter to our core beliefs. It's ok to do both. It's ok to work within a Microsoft-produced framework and at the same time let them know that some of what they're doing is counter to your belief system as a private, law-abiding individual.

What we must not do is defend the Police State we're currently building. It runs counter to everything we hold dear as a democratic and free society. Counter to the best kind of future we can envision for ourselves and future generations.

The chasm between the 'haves'' and the 'have-nots'* is only getting wider. The very concept of a fair society where all men are created equal diminishes. Enterprise OSes produced by Microsoft, for example, have privacy-enabled features the common man does not have access to. The common man - you and I - are now constant targets whereas Corporations, those in Government, those in law enforcement and many others accustomed to living above the law continue live under a different set of rules. This is the emerging new standard.

China will soon get a special build of Windows 10 without telemetry, without "phoning home". I am certain that this special build will contain the same kind of malware and abusive spyware that benefits the Chinese Government over it's own citizens. So... we, possibly have, an American software company building and deploying tools for repressive regimes. Yet we have become so complacent, there isn't even a discussion about it. That's how bad things have gotten.

We shouldn't pretend that this philosophical disconnect is not the biggest change in development. It is essentially the only real difference between Operating Systems/Working Frameworks. As good people... I'm saying that we should never, ever defend it, accept it and be complacent about it.

The few hours of recreational computing I perform daily have no effect on how the world works. To imagine otherwise would be hubris verging on insanity.

The software I write at work cannot be used to invade anyone's privacy.

I see what your point is but totally fail to connect it to my personal daily reality.

I think this is the third time I'm writing this reply on HN. Seems to be a common misconception.

And as you said, there is nothing new in this. The whole "hell freezes over" thing gets a bit old because Microsoft has done this same routine countless times before. When they are the underdog, seeing a fleeing userbase, etc, they pragmatically veer towards open and integrated. When they aren't, they close off and exploit. (see Microsoft's arrogance and hubris as they exalted in their success with the Xbox 360 -- early initiatives like XNA, their unloved community gaming thing...abandoned and left to die -- and now that they're losing with the Xbox One, once again that wonderfully open and accommodating company returns again. People pretend it's new.

Another example I would give is MSN Messenger -- Microsoft did a loud, public campaign, including taking out ads in newspapers, pushing an open messaging platform, interoperations, etc. Microsoft had just started to get into the messenger game, so of course they didn't want to be kept out via the network effect.

Then, of course, MSN gained users (being pushed on users, automatically configured, tends to do that). Microsoft made a complete 180 in approach. Soon they incorporated an expensive licensing program that third party apps had to use to interoperate with MSN Messenger, endlessly doing technical fixes to block third party access.

What happened to that gregarious, open and cooperative Microsoft that was taking out ads to implore AOL for blocking access? The situation changed, and suddenly it wasn't in their interest anymore.

I remember this clearly as if it was yesterday, because I tried and failed to build a Messenger-compatible client. They defended exclusive access to the API fiercely.

Their attitude seems so petty now in retrospect.

You take risks and bets in life and business. Use the tools that give you the greatest flexibility and build a robust business. In this case, these announcements increase that flexibility.

While everyone here keeps complaining and debating Embrace/Extend/Extinguish, someone is embracing the changes and out-executing them. I know which I'd rather be.

But if we really need to be juvenile and discuss everything to discuss anything, Apple is a greedy, voracious company. They are never presented otherwise, and cynicism meets all of their activities. But it's open and honest, and Apple doesn't try to be who they aren't, and users don't treat their actions as selfless gifts to the world. We all expect almost everything Google does to somehow pull in more ad data, to pull people to the fold, etc.

It's only with Microsoft where this naive "oooh, whole new company. So good" nonsense appears, and it grows incredibly tiring and seems more like a bad astroturfing campaign.

Remember OS/2 2.x? It could run Windows 3.x binaries, including GUI programs. The result was that noone wrote programs for OS/2. Windows programs would run both on Windows and on OS/2, so why write another one for OS/2?

Why should anyone port Linux programs to Windows now? Just write for Linux and it will work both on Windows and on Linux. So now you actually have more reason to target Linux.

Not that I am against WINE. I think it allows me to just ditch Windows entirely.

I run StarCraft II on WINE 1.9 at a higher framerate than what Windows provides. That was probably the only reason I would use Windows for.

It's a lose-lose situation in cases like this.

Thanks to TransGaming and Cider, a lot of Mac "ports" are just a Windows executable running in their proprietary fork of Wine. To predictably awful result.

Except in CAD, academic tools, analytics, mod/sim, graphics, industrial automation... basically anything that used to run on Unix or might use a fortran library somewhere.

But perhaps at this point it's important for Windows to stay relevant in an open source world.

Let's not call it Embrace, Extend, Extinguish until we see the Extend & Extinguish. Microsoft is a very different company than it used to be.

You could certainly say that none of that matters and what we should care about is the actual actions that each company makes, but I can definitely see how people would read more intent into things like this when Microsoft does it compared to other companies.

Apple took KHTML and when it started to fail, forked it into WebKit. Google took WebKit and when it started to fail, forked it into Blink.

When IE6 started to fail, the whole industry suffered. (And is now suffering again as Apple refuses to allow any other rendering engine but their failing WebKit port on iOS.)

Based on what, exactly? That they opened part of .NET, except that it's only the web stack, and not the part everyone wants (WinForms)? That they released a reskinned version of the Atom editor? That they announced the release of a Linux version of SQL Server, except that it will be a simplified version, absent of the enterprise features? That they submitted C# to ECMA, as though this allowed anyone to port a realistic application to another platform, or that the world has any use for a closed-source language and compiler today? That they allow you to run Linux VM's in Azure, as though Azure could be competitive if they didn't?

Now this? I mean, sure, there are times I'm working in Visual Studio, and it would be convenient to use some shell commands like "cut" and "sort" without having to use Excel, but the implication of this announcement is that I'm going to do serious work with GNU tools under Windows? Like, I'm going to do Linux-type development work while being hamstrung by reboot every couple of days for the next someone-can-take-over-your-computer-by-looking-at-it-cross-eyed patch?

Maybe you haven't been in this business for 23 years, and haven't seen how many products Microsoft bought and spiked to make sure to keep their stranglehold on the ecosystem. (I'm still bitter about Groove.) Now Microsoft is on the precipice of being as irrelevant as the IBM they mocked 20 years ago, and these moves are only at attempt to extend their relevancy a little longer, but which don't actually mean anything.

You say Microsoft is different. If, by that, you mean that they're making a lot of moves that seem like desperate attempts to make people remember they exist in the post-PC era, then, yes, I agree. Until Microsoft releases Office and Exchange for Linux, they will never been seen as anything other than Gates'/Ballmer's Microsoft in my eyes. Office suites are hardly important any more, and lots of companies are just using Google apps instead of Exchange and AD, but that's the kind of move they'd have to make for me to take their "Microsoft Loves Linux" campaign seriously.

Now, I would be glad if they open source WPF, which is very well designed GUI framework that could be great for cross platform apps, but it seems like they've kinda abandoned the XAML front. Even releasing existing code to open source takes resources, and Microsoft is not charity.

I'd say the same thing about porting Microsoft Office to Linux. Microsoft has, in fact, released Office apps for Android, and they would definitely rush to release office for desktop Linux if it had a non-negligible number of users. Maybe next year - after all 2017 is poised to be the year of the Linux desktop!

So Yeah, I think Microsoft has really changed. Of course it's all because they're not the market leader anymore and they need to survive! Yes, they can no longer succeed just by making a buggier version of tech X and pimping it on MSDN Magazine and have flocks of developers run to implement their latest version of COM++. So what? It doesn't make it any less real.

You should be suspicious about Microsoft's motive as much as I'm suspicious about Google or Apple or any other large company. But bringing up Embrace, Extend and Extinguish every time Microsoft does something makes you sound only a little less anachronistic than writing their name with a dollar sign.

The year of the Linux desktop is the year that "the desktop" no longer matters. With all the smartphones and tablets, and single-board computers making embedded products, we're juuuust about there. ;-)

A solid majority of the people on the day side of the planet who are looking at a computer right now are looking at an Excel or Word document.

MS Office has 1.2 billion users [0] (and that probably doesn't include unlicensed users). That's pretty important.

[0] http://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/planet-office

Over half of my 25-year career has been involved with making applications to actually address the business need that people were working AROUND with Word and Excel. I can't complain; it's been a pretty good deal. I'm doing 2 side projects to replace Excel sheets with Rails apps right now. But with more and more "apps" on smartphones and web sites, on the low end, and gargantuan cloud apps like Evernote and Google apps, this space is going to continue to shrink.

The thing that probably won't die is friggin' PowerPoint. If I had a nickel for every slide I've had to look at...

So far they get better in communication with open source community, but their business practices are all the same and Windows 10 only prove it.

Apple was notorious for suing Samsung of using the patented shape of a rectangle and while this was a misrepresentation of the way design patents work, most the patents they've used in their lawsuits were frivolous as well.

Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.

No it doesn't.

Apple + Microsoft "collaborating" on Macintosh software = Windows

IBM + Microsoft "collaborating" on OS/2 = the NT kernel, Windows NT

Sybase + Microsoft "collaborating" on Sybase SQL server = MS SQL Server

Sun + Microsoft "embracing" Java = .NET Framework

There's lots of layers within the Windows kernel. They give a lot of functionality, and from many perspectives are superior to unix. For example, it would be far easier to write a massive and robust and sensible init system on top of Executive Services than it is on top of unix. But, I can't see how they get the extra functionality except by introducing larger overhead for things like forking. And certainly in my previous experience of NT, forking has been incredibly slow.

Everything-is-a-file is much talked about with regard to unix. But fast forking is far more significant. Apache happened because of fast forking. Shell pipes assume fast forking. The way that you write shell scripts assumes fast forking. One of the reasons that cygwin has never felt right to me is because the forking is sluggish. I don't think that's cygwin's fault, I think it comes from the design of the Cutter kernel.

The hybrid they're offering here is probably the sweet spot - getting the strenghts of Windows, but getting access to a full unix layer.

They also tried to do this with Java, but people were alert.

[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/sun-microsoft-settle-java-suit/

Sun argued that Microsoft was intentionally breaking compatibility, but the other side was that Microsoft was actually exposing more developers to the fledgling language and providing a GUI that felt native to the rest of the OS. When Swing finally came out, it felt like you were running under CDE. That made me avoid running or writing Java applications for years.

In a lot of ways, Android repeated the exact same thing. Dalvik applications won't run in the Oracle JVM.

No, because Android is not a JVM, was never presented as an alternative to Oracle JVM... and never intended to replace existing Java VMs anywhere.

Plus, Windows is still the leader in the desktop and laptop market until today. They are facing some tough competition but "not leader in given market" is not true.

I think your argument actually supports parent's position, so this "plus" in the next sentence seems out of place :)

> Plus, Windows is still the leader in the desktop and laptop market until today. They are facing some tough competition but "not leader in given market" is not true.

Their position in the server world is not nearly so secure, which is quite possibly what this move is meant to address.

Without thinking much I can come up with a list of instances where Apple did exactly follow where they think the market is. Example include making phones with bigger screens [0], using a stylus with tablets [1], smart watches, small screen tablets [2], the the list goes on and on.

[0]: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/16/jobs-no-ones-going-to-buy...

[1]: http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/jobs-if-you-see-a-stylus-...

[2]: http://fortune.com/2012/04/17/what-steve-jobs-said-about-an-...

> Their position in the server world is not nearly so secure, which is quite possibly what this move is meant to address.

Microsoft never had the lead in server operating systems. So they're not doing this just because they are no longer the leader. This is a proof that Microsoft is just changing how they handle competition and FOSS under Nadella.

You chose literally two of the worst examples out there to try and prove your point.

SMS to iMessage?

I'm not sure which OS this helps/hurts more in the long run, but I know I'm happy.

Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft (double disclaimer: but I'm almost fresh out of university)

I think this is a great move by Microsoft to be able to EXEC a competitor's binary files natively. But, I think it risks being an admission that Win32/64 syscalls and Windows file system semantics are a crufty boat anchor holding developers back. To admit that risks inviting more developers to bail on Windows.

If MS's marketing department has half a brain at all, they will accidentally leak such a memo fairly soon.

We've actually even seen this before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem

(EDIT: To nitpick, I think the MS POSIX subsystem actually implemented the POSIXy standards as native code, as opposed to the translation layer that's mentioned here).

And reminescent of Cooperative Linux, although that worked at the driver level and allowed the actual Linux kernel to be used.

It might in theory tempt developers to migrate from Linux to Windows more comfortably, with both userlands now available at once, but this doesn't really attempt to make that process easier, other than that.

Besides, I don't feel like Windows is a that attractive platform to develop for nowadays with the cesspool that is Windows Store, the pointless new Universal Windows Platform when your apps need to follow a weakest link due to an almost non-existing Windows Phone market, combined with their lack of leading position on the web.

I think all this is what's bothering Microsoft, because with no development steam, the whole platform suffers a lot. I think the transition at Microsoft lately is happening because they are transitioning from a comfortable leader to a competitor, not because they are trying to squash the competition. They probably long for the days when they were in a position to still have that luxury.

Isn't it far more likely that this is simply another execution in their recent opening up of their platforms to developers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

This is well known and I think it would be really hard to pull off the same trick again.

Now some here would respond to this as - well - what they've done just shows how big the conspiracy is and how far it extends! There's never a full comeback to that. But I think there's a more straightforward explanation.

The straightforward explanation would be this. Windows is no longer relevant in the way it once was - the cloud is the new platform, and people use tablets and phones. And - a lot of developers hate Windows. OSX has emerged as the dominant developer desktop.

They've realised some combination of this, and formed a company directive, "make developers love us".

Even if it means giving developers non-Windows platforms to work with. Like dot net for linux. Or MSSQL for linux. Or free Visual Studio for linux. Or linux that runs on a Windows kernel. Making a solid effort to do linux for azure. And basically giving away Windows as a desktop. Whatever. The things developers need, they're trying to do that. They want to be where the developer are. They're putting their back into it.

The business case is the kind of vague thing that startups take - find some users, make them love us, and then we'll work out how to make money from it.

Imagine the first reaction in the Redmond office when someone read out the feedback post asking for vi and apt-get. Groans all around. But someone in that room responded to the laughter with an "I know, I know" smile and asked, "OK, but what would it take?" And then everyone perked up, and had some fun with the conversation. And they came up with this. And someone saying "shit, we /could/ do that, and it would be amazing!" The people who were in that room will remember that as a career event.

I think it's cool. I want to play with it.

What Microsoft has created is binary translation for Linux system calls, like Wine but allowing Linux to run on Windows instead. FreeBSD, among many other OSs, has done something similar for a long time, precisely because Linux is the most popular Unix-like OS. In addition, Microsoft doesn't care about the drivers -- everyone still writes drivers for Windows.

> utilized a lot 25 years ago.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm not gonna hold onto that grudge forever without good reason. The world's changed a lot since gif's of Calvin pissing on bill gates were all the rage.