Microsoft: The Unlikely Sponsor Of Linux

[randomizer]

wow this is really evil :-( damn you microsoft!

It's not evil, it makes total sense. Microsoft wants to kill off the old desktop, and the only way they are going to do that is to firmly push people into developing Metro applications. They aren't going to annoy their corporate customers who spend tens of thousands to millions in licensing fees, but the person who doesn't pay a cent to develop software is the perfect catalyst to get the ball rolling.

I don't see this is an attack on FOSS. I see this as Microsoft's only option if they don't want Windows 9 through 13 still having two completely different DEs bolted together.

[bigtoedsloth]

Dear Michael,

Please, grow up. Your article is so childish and pathetic. It just can't be taken seriously. Really.

"I think Windows 8 is mostly a crap wreck", "they got in bed with Microsoft", "I usually don't find myself at this Microsoft Lounge, since they don't have the openSUSE beer"

I mean, what? Is this really the best you have to offer? Then you're doing it wrong. And it's not funny. It's just embarrassing.

I completely agree. How can you possibly expect to retain any respect or gain readers by abusing your sponsors (you can't deny you're willing to take Microsoft's payments to help you get to these conferences) and writing such drivel. You're turning me off.

[kraftman]

I understand it's your opinion, but Phoronix is not some kind of blog, it's a prominent Linux news resource. Most likely Linux in the next 20 years will not reach a market share Windows 8 will being to occupy in 12 months

You've got to be kidding. This crap is worse than vista. Linux with games and specialized software will kill it very soon.

[Cyborg16]

I completely agree. How can you possibly expect to retain any respect or gain readers by abusing your sponsors (you can't deny you're willing to take Microsoft's payments to help you get to these conferences) and writing such drivel. You're turning me off.

Well, personally I think Michael has his right to free speech. Clearly he's not "professionally unopinionated", but most of the tech news sites aren't anyway. It makes for interesting reading, doesn't it?

As for Microsoft, they will... continue to be Microsoft. And while they continue to use licences like this, I'll continue to be wary of even their free offerings:

3. That Microsoft is granted back, without any restrictions or limitations, a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, assignable and sub-licensable license, to reproduce, publicly perform or display, install, use, modify, post, distribute, make and have made, sell and transfer your modifications to and/or derivative works of the Software source code or data, for any purpose.

[Jedibeeftrix]

Nokia's involvement should not be a surprise, especially not to phoronix.

They have been working on meltemi as a replacement for symbian in the mid range ever since the switch to wp7 from meego at the high end.

http://jedibeeftrix.wordpress.com/20...tood-platform/

Diablo, fremantle, (meego) harmattan, and meltemi all being "wind" based internal codenames for Nokia Linux platforms.

Nokia selling off the commercial arm of qt should be no surprise either, it was only a core business activity when it paid for development in an independent trolltech, and Nokia immediately lgpl'ed qt on buying trolltech and what do they care about managing a few million in commercial licenses?

[curaga]

I completely agree. How can you possibly expect to retain any respect or gain readers by abusing your sponsors (you can't deny you're willing to take Microsoft's payments to help you get to these conferences) and writing such drivel. You're turning me off.

I disagree, it's the complete opposite. Being a whore to however pays you results in sites like Anandtech, with clear bias in every piece.

Being able to criticize even your sponsors is the mark of objective writing.

[JanC]

No they won't. People that need to work on c++ desktop apps will just buy VC11. MinGW can't link to system libs, so you are stuck supporting all of your dependencies.

I thought linking against Windows libs is exactly the whole point of existence for MinGW... (It actually depends on several Windows system libraries.)

[yogi_berra]

I thought linking against Windows libs is exactly the whole point of existence for MinGW...

The point of MinGW is to give cheapskates UNIX tools. The fact that most people would rather use Cygwin, SFU, or any of a host of other commercial utilities doesn't speak too highly of MinGW's success in that department.

(It actually depends on several Windows system libraries.)

No, it doesn't. It depends on it's own bastardized lib versions, not Windows system libs because you can't link gpl3 code to incompatibly licensed libraries without violating copyright.

[LightBit]

No, it doesn't. It depends on it's own bastardized lib versions, not Windows system libs because you can't link gpl3 code to incompatibly licensed libraries without violating copyright.

MinGW makes native binaries, it depends on Windows libs.

[yogi_berra]

MinGW depends on Windows libs.

No, it doesn't. If it did it would require the Windows SDK to be installed to compile anything, which it does not. It depends on it's own libs, provides it's own headers, and cannot link against Windows System Libs.

Try it yourself, link hello world with msvcrt.lib instead of libmsvcrt.a