Posted by baomike at 6/8/07 9:42 a.m.

Money talked and somebody walked.
Time will tell if MSFT is sincere.
My guess is this is window dressing.
I can't convieve of MSFT having anything but fear and loathing
for linux.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/8/07 9:49 a.m.

More and more I see moves by MS to work with Linux and Linux users charging every move as being evil or corrupt. I am a Linux user. I don't have MS anywhere on any of my machines, but it seems these iterop attempts could be the best thing to ever happen to Linux as it legitimizes it in the eyes of many prospective users. I think MS sees GNU/Linux rising as an OS and merely wants to make sure that they can get a big chunk of the market by building software that works with it rather than driving itself away from good technology and innovation. I don't think they are trying to ruin the OSS community.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/8/07 10:27 a.m.

The thing is, yes they have been paying a lot of face time to linux and open source, but where are the results? I haven't seen anything come out of MS that has made working in a mixed environment any easier. All I've seen so far is MS putting up barriers to interoperability and groups like Samba and Wine working around those barriers.

I'm not saying MS is evil or that this isn't going to EVENTUALLY result in some sort of interoperability benefit from MS, but I am saying that until that concrete result happens, it's all just worthless lip-service.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/8/07 10:46 a.m.

With Microsoft's recent Linux patent threats it's hard to feel warm and fuzzy about anything they do, but I think that all of the open source folks they've hired can't help but start having an effect on the company, no matter how much resistance there is from the part of microsoft everyone loves to hate.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/8/07 11:05 a.m.

An early poster correctly points out Microsoft keeps seemingly making these moves and it's all considered juts another evil machination by most. True but firstly it's hard to give them trust after the decades of abuse and even whilst seemingly being good with one hand they still do bad with the other (like misleading over ODF, claims of patent infringement)

Me I wouldn't be surprised if they are most interested in the best ways to make things run together but with huge built in deliberate penalties in terms of overhead if you are not running Windows.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/8/07 12:38 p.m.

If I put myself in Balmer's chair, I see the following scrolling across my screen: "Know thine enemy." MSFT is doing everything it can to look closely for flaws in OSS strategy and find chinks in the armour of goodwill and free software. When it comes to interoperability, the biggest issues are file systems and server hooks. The thought that MSFT might deliberately be changing aspects of these two core pieces of software to make one-way connectivity more difficult should seem intuitive.

Having an OSS guru on board can only make the job of obfuscation easier: suck his brain dry then drop him.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/8/07 3:30 p.m.

Looks to me like Microsoft is switching to Linux. They must have realised that Linux is going to outpace anything they can do themselves, and are trying to jump on the Linux bandwagon like everybody else has, but in their own unique monopoly abusive way.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/8/07 8:47 p.m.

I think MS's recent and not so recent moves indicate that MS wants to kill the GPL and free software. They have an obligation to their shareholders (Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer) to maintain their monopoly, and they will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. So a little dime dancing with a linux foundation sellout doesn't mean much of anything.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/8/07 9:07 p.m.

"More and more I see moves by MS to work with Linux and Linux users charging every move as being evil or corrupt."

Oh please!! MSFT has hired Martin Taylor (OSDL guy I believe), Bill Hilf, and Daniel Robbins (Gentoo founder) in the past 10 years. Nothing changed. Google to know who they were.

In fact, Bill Hilf as "Director of Linux Labs" said that "The Free Software movement is dead. Linux doesn't exist in 2007". Google it. There's yer interoperability!

Posted by unregistered user at 6/9/07 5:17 a.m.

While there may be some genuine advantage in this to Microsoft I cant help but wonder if this isnt just another example of MS's decapitation strategy. This is something they have discussed before: the underlying idea is that there is only so much Linux talent out there and that networks and social standing within the Linux community can be disrupted by taking out a few key players. Some like RMS and Linus simply cannot be bought. Others might be more susceptible to the lure of cold hard cash.

Thier real problem is who to approach. They need to find key players who might take the money and whose change of position will disrupt the 'business' of Linux. This is a fairy short list. Novell clearly fitted the profile: second biggest Linux distributor and in need of cash. Im not as sure how much effect the other high profile hires have actually had.

--

MadScientist

Posted by unregistered user at 6/9/07 6:45 a.m.

Instead of a "Director of Linux Interoperability", Microsoft should hire a "Director of Adhering to Industry Standards". Then maybe we'd have that interoperability.

The problem isn't "sharing intellectual property", its the fact that Microsoft's business model is putting as many roadblocks as they can in front of file formats and network protocols so that competitors can't interoperate with them.

This is really just a PR move so that Microsoft can say, "see, we're working with the Linux Community", when clearly they are still trying to destroy it with every new patent racketeering move.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/9/07 12:12 p.m.

he won't be there this time next year -

if vista took them five years and was considered an important project image how long it will take for this inter-operability thingy to come about.

Posted by unregistered user at 6/9/07 2:05 p.m.

Patent litigation threats from one side, European Parliament legislation from the other, Divide-and-Rule from a third (those who buy protection v/s those who do not and these "old-hand" cash-seduced converts), lobbying everywhere, DRM, Vista's locks and simultaneously $3 licenses for students in poor nations.

What's with these guys? Do they want to rule the world beyond 96% desktops? Why? what's the idea? That 96% isn't going up to 200%. If they do things like this, most likely it's going down to 50% after it sinks in.

What's so bad with 96% market share?

Posted by unregistered user at 6/10/07 7:07 p.m.

They're not as worried about the last 4% of desktops as about the server market, where Linux keeps having MS's lunch.

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