Microsoft announced it is joining The Linux Foundation?

Sat Nov 19 01:31:06 UTC 2016

I tried not to respond again, but I failed... sorry.

On Sat, 19 Nov 2016 00:09:11 +0000, Frank Shute wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 11:44:07AM +0000, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> >
> > On 2016/11/18 10:32, Polytropon wrote:
> > > On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:35:36 -0300, SOUL_OF_ROOT 55 wrote:
> > >> Can this be?  Microsoft announced it is joining The Linux Foundation?
> > > 
> > > They are prividing a certain sum of money, and that amount
> > > makes them a platinum member, not more, not less. Basically
> > > anoyone who donates $500,000 annually can be a platinum member
> > > of The Linux Foundation. In case of MICROS~1, this is probably
> > > an attempt to re-gain "developers' share", a facet of "the
> > > new MICROS~1" thathopes people forget security nightmares,
> > > forced updates, patent extortion and vendor lock-in... but
> > > who really knows what happens inside MICROS~1... ;-)
> > 
> > Actually, Microsoft's motivation here is Microsoft Azure -- they've
> > spend a huge amount of money on datacentres and servers and all the
> > other infrastructure required for setting up a global cloud presence,
> > and now they are very keen to encourage lots of people to use it (and
> > pay them money for the privilege, of course.)
> 
> And where did they get that "huge amount of money"? The same place they got
> the money for XBox, Nokia, Skype, the Gates' Foundation etc. From abusing the
> hell out of their customers with their desktop monopoly.

It's not just desktops. MICROS~1 probably has (almost!) given
up on home consumer desktops. For example, "Windows 10" is
given away "for free" (haha). They care much more for the
corporate sector: business business numbers is it working. As
Matthew pointed out, the "cloud party" (where MICROS~1 arrived
quite late) gives businesses more than sufficient opportunity
_not_ to use MICROS~1 products (even though nobody got fired
for licensing MICROS~1 products, and licensing costs are a
nice thing for tax deduction anyway). That's why they are
forced (for now) for much more interoperability, compatibility
and connectivity to non-MICROS~1 things. They can afford it.

MICROS~1's primary cash cows are "Exchange" and enterprise
services, as far as I know. They also make more money from
Android sales than from their own smartphone division. (So
even if you declare you don't want support MICROS~1, so
you're going to buy an Android smartphone, you provide them
money.)

Accepting that kind of money could... well, some people might
actually feel bad about where this money comes from, and...
their role as a NSA strategic partner (!) might be something
to consider as well - it's not that they are helping for free.

Of course the key to success is having MICROS~1 products on
all levels of human life: gaming consoles for the kids,
smartphones for mom & dad, convertible tablets for hipsters,
ERP and reporting solutions for the businessman, cloud
services for the hospital, toolchains for the developer.
All of them want "the same pictures" at home as they know
them from work (or vice versa), and being told that they
get quality products. In many cases, the price isn't even
important as there are ways to "hand them down the chain"
by increasing prices or tax deduction - which of course
means that the final consumer has to pay the bill, but that
approach is not unique to software.

I think I don't have to mention how important advertising is,
as well as marketing and legal. And software quality can be
overruled. Nobody actually cares.

The less you can evade MICROS~1 ads, the harder it is not to
buy their products. Of course "buy" is the wrong word here;
you don't buy anything, you _license_ it, for a certain time,
for a fixed set of purposes, with specific restrictions, and
everything under control of somebody else. Again, this way
of "doing computing" also isn't unique to MICROS~1 products.
And again: Nobody actually cares.

> > Since their principle target market is the Enterprise, and they aim to
> > be able to migrate just about any Enterprise computing system from
> > dedicated hardware to their cloud, that means they need to support just
> > about all of the different OSes that a variety of different Enterprise
> > setups could be using.  So they now support a lot of OpenSource OSes.
> > Which includes both FreeBSD 10.x and pfsense by the way -- as well as
> > all the usual Linux suspects.
> > 
> > Oh, and when I say 'support' that means that you can phone up Microsoft
> > about your FreeBSD or pfsense related problems on your Azure VMs, and
> > Microsoft are contractually obliged to help you out.  
> 
> What if this wonderful "support" consists of some poor guy in India reading
> from a script? I am of course going to take Microsoft on in court for breach of
> contract...

First of all, you agreed to a certain kind of EULA or SLA that
probably has some clause like "If we mess up, it's your fault
and we're not responsible in any way."

(By the way, this "responsibility shifting" can be seen in
today's bluescreens where it basically says "Your PC has a
problem", not "Windows" or the MICROS~1 program that just
crashed.)

Not wanting to insult anyone in India, but in an attempt to
make this thread less harsh, here's an impression of how the
support could be:

	Hi Breeze, this is the fish calling from Microsoft
	Support Santro. This is regarding case uhhh, we
	tree walking on. Uh, I just wanted to know era
	jitters of yiff yiff?!? Are you still spacing the
	same problem or rock tool? Uhhh up to my physician.
	Uh, or changes what you made. Uhm... eh, is this
	problem is resolved or not, because in application
	log, honorable disease any father, error, or promoting
	me to uhm, to uh, replicate repetition problem.
	I just wanted to know like was this Judith's rag doll?
	If you uh... eh, unable to send a mail from both
	sides, or lazy eyed Rasputin on both sides or not.
	Please feel free call me, are send me emu... email.
	Okay? Tanks! Thank you very much! Bye, bye!

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-u9B6nouBo
Enjoy. :-)

> > They did a presentation about all this at the last BSDCan.  Plus there are
> > two FreeBSD src committers who work for Microsoft, and who are doing a lot
> > of work making sure the Hyper-V drivers etc. are all working and performant.
> > There have been reports of a FreeBSD VM on azure achieving 37 Gb/s on 40
> > Gb/s hardware for instance.
> 
> I'm glad to hear that FreeBSD is performing so well for them.
> 
> I remember reading somewhere of WhatsApp servicing over 2 million concurrent
> connections on one FreeBSD box; the app being written in some dialect of
> Erlang IIRC.
> 
> The guy who built WhatsApp bunged the FreeBSD Foundation a million bucks when
> he cashed out, by way of thanks.
> 
> Perhaps you could remind me of how much money Microsoft have given us?

Imagine that almost every "Windows" computer connected to the
Internet connects through a device that runs FreeBSD, NetBSD,
or Linux. Of course this doesn't imply any transfer of money,
but isn't it nice to know that it's UNIX that makes using
"Windows" possible? :-)

> The way I found out about it, was by reading an article on The Register
> quoting some delusional nonsense from some Microsoft manager who played fast
> and loose with the name: FreeBSD(tm).

Was it "FreeBSD 10.3 by Microsoft Corporation"?

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/partners/microsoft/freebsd103/

Yes, I know, context... ;-)

> > 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.
> 
> I disagree with you, Matthew. It's just another cheek of the same arse.

It's another division within the same corporation. While divisions
often fight for money, direction, or contribution _within_ the
corporation, the role they are allowed to take in the overall
business activities is probably limited by the overseeing elements
of the corporation (CEO and top level management). Some will always
be allowed to "play" in order to attract consumers and developers,
but those who milk the cash cows are under strict control. Their
primary goal is EEE (which is required for continuous growth and
rising profits, which is what the shareholders want and need),
and any division that may be helpful here will join. There may
be different plans on how to achieve the primary goal, the "game"
is being played on many fields at the same time.

I think this illustration helps a lot:

http://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011.06.27_organizational_charts.png

As I mentioned, MICROS~1 arrived late on the "cloud party" and
now does the only thing possible: throw money at the problem.
They can get mind share, usage share and market share spending
"peanuts", accompanied by the "play divisions" that release
code on Github or offer "free trials" of development software
to software developers.

> Their MO has always been "How can we make more money by abusing our
> monopoly?". Never like an honest company who say "Let's make life better for
> our existing & potential customers and profit is sure to follow".

"Better life" is a by-product, a "nice to have", while "customers
must be kept as customers" and "make more money next quarter" are
the goals. With the money MICROS~1 as a corporation (and Gates as
a person) have at hand, making life better for billions of people
would surely be easy to do, but that is _not_ what the shareholders
want: They want _their_ life to get better, by any means neccessary.

> IMO, if they can find their way to giving the Linux Foundation half a million
> then they should do the same for the FreeBSD Foundation.

If it pays (even if just on the long run), they will do that.

> Although, I'd prefer FreeBSD had nothing to do with a bunch of criminals, to
> be honest.

It's not criminal because everything they do conforms to the law.
This is not a problem because their lobbyists helped creating and
implementing the law. Even if taken to court and being fined, they
rather pay (because they can afford it) than change. It's a simple
business decision: Which way is the cheaper one?

-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...