Microsoft announced it is joining The Linux Foundation?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 18 Nov 2016 12:07:40 +0000, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>On Fri, 18 Nov 2016 11:44:07 +0000 Matthew Seaman wrote:
>
>> Microsoft in its aspect as the global cloud computing company is
>> really quite different from Microsoft in its aspect as the PC
>> desktop operating system company.  
>
>	Yes instead of trying to ensure that every computer you can buy
>runs Windows, that every corporate email system runs on Exchange etc.
>and everybody has to pay to stay up to date, they want to ensure that
>as much of your data as possible lives on their servers so you have to
>keep paying to get at it with rented applications. It's still a
>lock-in strategy.

I'm still less an advocate for Windows or clouds, than already not an
advocate for systemd. However, why should a company provide something
for free as in beer to other companies, who will use the service to
make money? You dislike Microsoft? So do I. I dislike this company for
several reasons, but I wouldn't blame them for a valid business model.
They need to provide customer support to those who pay for their cloud
service. To ensure that issues aren't caused by third party software,
part of the service is software. Isn't it good, if they try to provide
this software for different operating systems? Customer connectivity is
done by reliability. Most customers aren't idealists, they want
something commercial doing its job.

Regards,
Ralf