1. Linux won in the embedded (ARM devices), mobile (Android) and server spaces, and this is Microsoft bowing to that.

2. This is Microsoft's embrace, extend and extinguish strategy from the 1990s in a new wrapper. They just had to do it to an operating system this time.

Not sure if these perspectives are correct, but I'm just throwing them out there as food for thought.

We're all right to be cautious about trusting large companies' motives when they embrace an open standard. But I don't think there's any reason to invoke EEE! until they have introduced a proprietary (i.e. closed-source) implementation of something and then added non-standard extensions.

Since much of Microsoft's recent activity has been released as open source (MIT licensed, no less), I have a hard time believing Microsoft would go down that road again any time soon.

Rather, I think they're building their business on providing the best and easiest-to-use hosting and cloud services provided you're using their excellent and free developer tooling. And I'm OK with that, since they're not doing anything that is unfairly competitive. (Even AWS could start providing VSCode extensions and they'd be on equal footing with Microsoft, though to win they'd have to compete with MS's cloud directly.)

That would be WSL wouldn't it? Their goal is clearly to avoid having people moving to Linux as a development platform, and keep them on Windows.

The extensions are the ability for Linux processes to integrate with Windows software running on the same machine. In a way, they're extending Linux with Windows services.

I think it's the opposite. There's little danger that Windows shops are going to move to Linux. However, I know a bunch of devs currently using Macs that would probably switch to Windows with nice devices like the Surface Pro and access to real gaming and such, if only Windows was a suitable Unix environment for their work.

They want devs using Macs and such to move to Windows, and I think it's going to work.

For WSL 2, they're taking the Linux kernel whosesale and dropping it into a VM in Hyper-V. If anything, they're backing away from anything that could be construed as a possible EEE.

I like when a company wins by just being superior (and hopefully in a way where they aren't deliberately building a moat)

What good? All that open source code.

The constant goalpost moving here is ridiculous. “Oh, Microsoft released n projects as Free Software? Well by god they should have released n+1.”

Either way, because C#/.NET and Roslyn are open-source, the likelihood of .NET shops being left high-and-dry without a debugger is very slim, since it wouldn’t be all that hard for an experienced developer to build another one.

Now, ASP.NET can be developed in OSX/Linux/Windows and they've cut out layers involved so that developers can work within Linux on their Windows machine.

Is the goal to upsell you on Azure? Most likely. Nothing wrong with that though: every company that intends to make a profit wants you to use the thing that gives them said profit. The fact you can use the two previously mentioned things without any requirement to use Azure is probably what they should be measured on in regards to those two things. On the bright side, Azure is a pretty diverse setup whereas it could've been Windows Server w/ IIS and Windows Server w/ SQL Server instances as far as the eye can see.

Another possible perspective is that Apple has more or less given a passing interest to OSX in recent years and Microsoft felt they could make inroads with developers using Mac products (that weren't there for iOS development. ie web). It's worked to some degree (anecdotally. Though the substantial enhancements to the OS on the Windows side have been at a higher clip than on the OSX side for a bit though) and been a driver for a bit of good faith with development audiences so they probably view it as a win-win. But they're not doing a great job of extinguishing (if that were indeed the goal) because Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code have both found their way onto OSX (VSCode on Linux too). Would seem nutty to bolster OSX's appeal if this were the same old Microsoft just under new management.

They seem to be embracing openshift as a prominent k8s distro on their cloud, which I think is interesting. Instead of attempting to create their own EKS type service, they're providing an openshift platform.

Nope it seems their target is not linux but the whole dev(millenials)community

MS thank you for VS Code - I never thought I would replace my Vim.

I also love how Azure products work so seamlessly with it. Almost magical.

I then spent an hour researching it, trying to find out what the catch was. Was the wikipedia page entry a prank? Was I getting some kind of malware masquerading as a pro development tool? Was is a temporary trial before big licensing fees were demanded of me? Does it need some sort expensive companion server that only runs on Windows Server? What's the catch?

But no, no catch. It's free, and it's open, and it works great. But every time I launch it I feel like I've walked into some weird alternate dimension. I have to remind myself that yes, this is reality: I'm using a native-Linux, fast, reliable, extensible, MIT-licensed editor made by freakin' Microsoft. So strange, man. So strange.

To quote user ilaksh in this thread: "They will set it up so that it will _seem_ like your are developing for Linux, but due to some extensions or technicality it will only work on _Linux inside of Windows_.

So from my perspective it is amazing that people think this is a good thing for Linux."

There are good historic reasons to distrust M$.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18209082

I know Microsoft tried to kill Linuxfest Northwest a few years back, sponsoring it and taking control of 1/3 of the floor space, both approved afterpartys, etc. This year they had a small booth that was staffed for one of the two days...

Most of the people I know stopped going to LFNW after the shitshow that was that year, they still attend SeaGL and other conventions.

The exploding can of WD-40 that MS handed out that year was the cherry on top of the hijacking of the main space, fake Azure credits, and poorly run afterparty that MS put on.

Frankly, MS should not have been allowed to hijack LFNW that year. This year MS was the only booth to not staff on Sunday, I'd hope LFNW doesn't waste table space next year.

I, however, don't see him doing anything to that "broken model." Since Ballmer left, Microsoft actually got even more dependent on plumpy "corporate" clients. It just people who once self hosted AD now got upsold on running their AD and other corporate software on Azure.

Well, as it did under Ballmer, under same circumstances. He also did pretty much the same — doubling down on milking plumpy corporate clients while streamlining the business in overall + doing some disasterous acquisitions which were nevertheless welcomed by Wall street analysts

>He also did pretty much the same — doubling down on milking plumpy corporate clients while streamlining the business in overall

I take it you think that this is a bad thing?

  * security   
  * source to image builds     
  * a well designed ui for monitoring and configuration   
  * advanced routing techniques such as a/b deployments ect  
  * liveness probes, readiness probes and other needs  
  * metrics via a prometheus plugin

It felt like one guy saw kubernetes and decided to make a GUI for it, hence openshift. Felt like it was a true open source project, not bad, but not production ready for end users yet. This was early 2018.

I used to be an MS developer many years ago. I will say one positive thing -- MS makes a lot of very useful development tools.

However, I'm amazed that people think it's not MS anymore. They have not gained my confidence in any way in terms of this supposed altruism or whatever.

Linux in some ways has been one of very few possible Windows competitors on the desktop. The fact they they essentially decided to just swallow Linux into Windows does not make me think they are more friendly to Linux.

They will set it up so that it will _seem_ like your are developing for Linux, but due to some extensions or technicality it will only work on _Linux inside of Windows_.

So from my perspective it is amazing that people think this is a good thing for Linux.

And desktop apps developed for WSL will simply never be Linux-compatible out of the box at this rate, given that WSL does not contain any graphical or UI functions; MSFT has been pretty clear about this right from the start, and so I really can't see a scenario where people mistakenly believe just developing user-facing applications for WSL will make them "just work" on Linux, given that all the UI code is on the Windows side.

I mean, if you're against cloud hosting that's fine, but what is wrong with Azure specifically?