What does Microsoft want with Linux and Open Source?

Visit http://linode.com/linuxexperiment for a 20$ credit on your new Linode account! Microsoft has made openings towards the open source and Linux communities lately. They’ve started acknowledging Linux as something that actually exists and that people want to use. But is this strategy really a turning point for Microsoft, or do they want to apply their usual embrace, extend, extinguish strategy? I don’t know, but here is my opinion on the matter.

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Ok, so MS doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to open source, and Linux users. They’ve been the champion of proprietary software for a long time, and some of their previous CEOs have been opposed to Linux, with comments like “Linux is a cancer”. They have not been friendly to our platforms, have generally avoided porting any of their important software to Linux, and have shied away from open source.

They are also known for their embrace, extend extinguish strategy. This basically means they had an internal policy of embracing new technologies that they don’t possess, add their own stuff to it to make sure people are locked down with MS products, and then extinguish the competition by just preventing them from accessing these bits that everyone got used to.

This paints a very dark picture of that company, one that can probably never be redeemed. And still, today’s Microsoft seems different somehow.

First, they are now focused on selling their services: Office 365, Azure, and, to an extent, Windows 10, which has a rolling release model and is sold like an always updated service, that you have little control over. They’re not just pushing windows and some apps, they’re pushing for people to use microsoft services, any of them, and try to extend their reach by integrating these services tightly with one another.

Microsoft is also making some openings towards Linux and the open source community, although they are small ones. They open sourced some very small applications, like their terminal and their calculator, and they started offering some of their programs on Linux, like MS teams, VS Code, or in the near future, their chromium based Edge browser. They have ported their exFAT driver to the Linux kernel as well.

But then came WSL. The badly names Windows subsystem for Linux allows developers to run a linux distro inside of a VM in Windows, and use its command line to run any Linux program they want, without even having to leave windows 10 itself. Microsoft ships a Linux kernel, that they update throu ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VowHByyLqYs