MS buying GitHub?

[TWPonKubuntu]

Embrace, extend, and extinguish. It's a way of life for M$...

[jpenguin]

But not under jpenquin?

jpenguin on github
tux_peng on notabug

Sent from my E6810 using Tapatalk

[Annaleemarks]

Companies and governments around the world trust Microsoft with their data. You couldn’t find a more reliable or trustworthy provider in the enterprise space. But that doesn’t make for good meme material, I guess.

[SpecialEd]

Companies and governments around the world trust Microsoft with their data. You couldn’t find a more reliable or trustworthy provider in the enterprise space. But that doesn’t make for good meme material, I guess.

Citation(s) needed.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Companies and governments around the world trust Microsoft with their data. You couldn’t find a more reliable or trustworthy provider in the enterprise space. But that doesn’t make for good meme material, I guess.

That sounds like they were made an offer they "could not refuse"... A la "The Godfather"... That is not trust, but fear.

[GreyGeek]

Companies and governments around the world trust Microsoft with their data. You couldn’t find a more reliable or trustworthy provider in the enterprise space. But that doesn’t make for good meme material, I guess.

Trust? A better word would be captivity. Windows fan boys like to point to Munich without looking into how Microsoft bought their way back into control of the IT dept.

Ignoring the fact the Linux runs all 500 of the world's top supercomputers, Wikipedia gives a list of Linux adopters around the world. Here is the list of US adopters:

U.S.

• In July 2001,^[25] the White House started switching their web servers to an operating system based on Red Hat Linux and using the Apache HTTP Server.^[26] The installation was completed in February 2009.^[27][28] In October 2009, the White House servers adopted Drupal, an open-source content management system software distribution.^[29][30]
• The United States Department of Defense uses Linux - "the U.S. Army is the single largest installed base for Red Hat Linux"^[31] and the US Navy nuclear submarine fleet runs on Linux,^[32] including their sonar systems.^[33]
• In June 2012, the US Navy signed a US$27,883,883 contract with Raytheon to install Linux ground control software for its fleet of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) Northrup-Grumman MQ8B Fire Scout drones. The contract involves Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, which has already spent US$5,175,075 in preparation for the Linux systems.^[34]
• In April 2006, the US Federal Aviation Administration announced that it had completed a migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one third of the scheduled time and about US$15 million under budget. The switch saved a further US$15 million in datacenter operating costs.^[35][36]
• The US National Nuclear Security Administration operates the world's tenth fastest supercomputer, the IBM Roadrunner, which uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux along with Fedora as its operating systems.^[37]
• The city government of Largo, Florida uses Linux and has won international recognition for their implementation, indicating that it provides "extensive savings over more traditional alternatives in city-wide applications."^[38]

And that's not a recent list. All of the special effects you see on your Hollywood blockbuster movies are made by video editing software run on Linux servers and workstations. Most banks and retail businesses run Linux as their backend servers and some use Linux at the checkout stand. After getting their stealth RQ-170 drone hijacked by the Iranians the USAF switched to Linux because they determined that the hijackers hacked into the Windows software controlling the drone. Thanks to Microsoft Iran now has their own version of the RQ-170 for next to no research and development costs. How many have been or will be killed because of Microsoft's failure to maintain a secure OS remains to be counted.

Be sure and check out the Business and Scientific Institutions listings. For the last 10 years there has been a steady mass migration from Windows to Linux, primarily Ubuntu, Red Hat and SUSE. People, businesses and governments got tired of being on Microsoft's $$$ treadmill "upgrades" while being pilloried by blackhats at will. About the only field Windows still dominates is gaming, and PS4 and other gaming consoles are eating their lunch in that field as well. The IoT is powered by Linux.

Microsoft can see the handwriting on the wall. They used to own 95%+ of the OS space on personal computers. Latest estimates put that now less than half when including the latest small form, in which they own less than 1%. Microsoft used to call Linux a "cancer". Now, it is embracing Linux. It has installed Ubuntu's Bash in its OS, calling it "WSL". That doesn't stop people from setting up dual boot scenarios so they can play games on Win10 and do everything else on Linux. Microsoft purchased GitHub and moved their user development platform infrastructure to it. They have become a large contributor of GPL source code to the Linux kernel.

Microsoft is in business now ONLY because of the lock in they achieved ten+ years ago getting some businesses and governments to adopt their proprietary standards for documents and spreadsheets, just the way they coerced PC OEMs to install Windows on their products. Now they have so many historical documents using .doc and .xls, etc., that gov users can't drop Windows and still access some of their more complicated doc and xls files.

Forcing a consumer to purchase Windows as a condition for purchasing a DELL, HP or other PC is called "tying arrangements" by the Clayton Antitrust Act and is illegal. Microsoft successfully bypassed that illegality by negotiating with the DOJ about "bundling Explorer" with Windows, impeding the adoption of Netscape. In that trial Bill Gates was caught lying on the witness stand, using a doctored video which purported to show how to remove IE without breaking Windows, which wasn't possible at the time. MS was was convicted and appealed. Between the loss and the appeal they successfully used a political campaign to get Judge Jackson removed from the case and replaced by a Judge with a hyphenated last name, one who was MS friendly. She "negotiated" Microsoft's "punishment" (how often do you hear of a convicted felon negoiating his punishment with the judge?) which included installing 3 "monitors" on Microsoft's Redmond campus. Microsoft got to pick two of the three. Microsoft spent more time monitoring them than they did Microsoft because they were on Microsoft's LAN, Internet infrastructure and phone PBX. Microsoft probably knew how many squares of TP they used in their office bathrooms. Oh, part of the "punishment" included immunity from ALL other crimes they committed before the settlement in 2001. It worked. Microsoft's tying the purchase of PCs with the purchase of Windows was preserved, thus Microsoft dominated the PC market for the next 10-15 years.

But, hey, continue to enjoy your games, and when you have problems you can get help here. Many of us run Windows as well as Linux because we know that one does what one has to do in the face of criminal mischief.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Thank you GG, you said it well.