This looks to me like typical Microsoft strategy that they utilized a lot 25 years ago.
1. when not leader in given market, make your product fully compatible with competitor
2. start gaining momentum (e.g. why should I use Linux, when on Windows I can run both Linux and Windows applications)
3. once becoming leader break up compatibility
4. rinse and repeat
Happened with MS-DOS, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, and others.
Gave this a long look and my main beef is that I couldn't possibly do anything on a Windows Machine in its' current state. Linux isn't just about running apps - there's a philosophy behind the system. Users first!
As long as Microsoft continues to disrespect the rights of users in regard to privacy, data-collection, data-sharing with unnamed sources, tracking, uncontrollable OS operations (updates, etc) - I will never go near it.
I find it especially offensive that ex-open source and ex-Linux users (working for Microsoft) have the audacity to come on here and try to sell this as a 'Linux on Windows' system when most of what makes Linux special (respect for the user) has been stripped away.
It's like giving a man who is dying of thirst sea water.
Most comments here appear to be positive and that's fine... whatever. To anyone reading this... please don't sell your souls and the future of software technology for ease of use and abusive business practices. /rant
You are mixing them all and that's how the debate gets stuck into some neckbeard-limbo that nobody cares about.
Society made a lot of progress when religion and state got decoupled from each other. There are some things that should be handled separately.
What I have to say about this is:
Technology-wise, GNU/Linux software is separate from that of Windows at the binary level as well as dependencies. For them to extend such software means that they would need to build on that. That would extend the GNU/Linux ecosystem.
Legally-wise, open source software is protected by open source licensing that requires derived software to also be licensed as open source. It is challenging to achieve the "extend" part of the "embrace/extend/extinguish" loop if open source licenses are in place.
In terms of values, they're a for-profit corporation trying to reach out to developers. Same as every other company. They have open sourced .NET, they've released some of their actually important software on Linux (SQL Server), they have embraced the Linux platform on their cloud environments... everything possible to appeal to developers. It doesn't appeal to me, though.
RMS was foresighted enough to make licensing a core part of open source. I have a deep respect for the man.
The Achilles heel for open source software remains to be patents. In that regard I think many proprietary players still have the upper hand.
I think he would say what he has always said about secret software. He's fairly consistent in that regard.
> RMS was foresighted enough to make licensing a core part of open source. I have a deep respect for the man.
He founded the free software movement. The open source movement is based on different values (convenience above ethics) which Stallman doesn't agree with.
> The Achilles heel for open source software remains to be patents. In that regard I think many proprietary players still have the upper hand.
Both the GPLv3 and Apache solve this problem. The issue is that too many people are using permissive licenses where it's not appropriate.
Ignoring your insults toward RMS, you can always send him an email at rms@gnu.org. He responds within a few days most of the time.