The WSL looks a lot like the embrace step of an embrace-extend-extinguish doctrine. I'll believe them more when I can write user-facing apps against their posix subsystem instead of requiring people to jump through many many hoops to actually install it.

Right now it just looks like something they were forced into doing because they were losing on the devtools market.

WSL 2 foregoes the system call translation approach in favor of virtualization, you get a Linux kernel: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/

>instead of requiring people to jump through many many hoops to actually install it

Yeah the hoops of going to the Store, searching for "ubuntu" and clicking Install

Are they not still requiring this?

    Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

I admit I haven't used WSL in a while.

You still need to enable the subsystem, but I don't see why most users need it on by default. It seems like an easy enough feature to prompt the user to enable (or enable for them automatically) if your application calls for it.

Programs and features control panel, then add/remove windows features, or through command line.

The exact same thing they require to enable or disable any optional windows feature like ie 11, windows media player, I is, ...

> Stop shitting on them. We won the war. They’re mending their ways.

It aligns with the current management that they're doing what they're doing. They had "terminal services for Unix" for some time, then there was war on Linux, now it's open standards again, and it may change again in the future.

"We" didn't "win" annoying. It's just a happy period. Let's be happy about it and not take it for more than it is - liking what the current MS management does.

Didn't we just have a post complaining that the Microsoft Skype web client rejects Firefox, for no obvious reason? Yes, it was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20818750.

Maybe their interests have just shifted higher on the protocol stack.

No, we are losing the war.

Open Source is not an impediment to Microsoft's attacks on users' freedom.

You can get a job on LinkedIn to write code on GitHub that runs on Windows and talks to a server deployed to Azure with a single click from within the README.md .

In that ecosystem, permissively licensed Open Source software just helps Microsoft exploit you.

Which is why Microsoft unironically love Open Source and are very happy to see paid and unpaid shills shout that from the rooftops.

Dumping soon-to-expire patents to get goodwill from people they need to encourage into or prevent leaving that ecosystem is a strategic move that is designed to make sure you don't escape in the long term.

Pointing this out isn't shitting on the poor, defenceless corporation.

It's just not being fooled by their attempts to fleshmask Open Source.

They still hate Free Software.

This is not just a dump of soon to expire patent. The patent grant and their support and commitment to indemnify anyone who uses it through OIN proves to me, that at least when it comes to this, they are acting in good faith.

Listen, my first job outta high school was at Red Hat. For the majority of my life I hated Microsoft and everything they stood for. The bottom line is, money talks (the virtues or lack thereof of that are for a different debate) and they realized that people became familiar with Linux which was superior for most non-desktop use cases, enabled innovation at a greater pace and also was a path around all the Microsoft bullshit and customers were abandoning ship. Eventually they had NO CHOICE but to evolve or die.

> Eventually they had NO CHOICE > but to evolve or die.

So, really they haven't done anyone any favours then?

Why do you think so many people look upon their acts as something with good intentions?

Just better marketing spin?

I'm not so sure "we" won the war. If anything it's more like they mostly won the war (for the Enterprise Desktop, which is where the real money continues to be for them) and ALSO found a new SAAS/cloud empire and now they need to win the peace.

"now they need to win the peace."

Or the next war

So if you're not party to the OIN, are you allowed to use / implement exFAT? Or are you still blocked by the patent?

> Stop shitting on them.

.... no?

> We won the war. They’re mending their ways.

"We" (?) are either there or not. The half-measures of mending continue at the pace of their choosing.

> Even 10 years ago this would have sounded like science fiction.

A strong point in favor of continued skepticism.

Nobody is calling Red Hat's Ansible Tower or other closed-source products some change of heart in the company and this is no exception in the reverse.

edit: Always good to be downvoted when responding to a comment poisoning the well (and cursing) with a comment that does neither.