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Microsoft Software IT Linux

Microsoft Warms Up to Linux 298

Posted by Zonk from the snuggle-snuggle dept.
prostoalex writes "InfoWorld reports that despite warming to the OS, Microsoft won't be releasing its own distribution of Linux any time soon. From the article: "Hilf acknowledged that Microsoft's commitment to Windows does not preclude the company from continuing a strategy he has led in his 19 months at the software vendor: To see how Microsoft's proprietary technologies can better interoperate with Linux and a host of other open-source software. In fact, that is exactly what will be the focus of a discussion the long-time open-source proponent will lead at this year's upcoming Linuxworld Conference & Expo next month in San Francisco. In a session entitled, 'Managing Linux in a Mixed Environment ... at Microsoft?' Hilf, who polished his open-source evangelism skills working on Linux deployments at IBM Corp., will talk about how he and the team at the Linux/Open Source lab run open source technologies in "the most Microsoft-centric IT environment on the planet." "
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Microsoft Warms Up to Linux More

Microsoft Warms Up to Linux

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  • Quick! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ucahg ( 898110 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @09:56AM (#13185766)
    Somebody prove this wrong. Microsoft can't like Linux, it must all be talk, right? *head explodes*

    • Re:Quick! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaiBLUEl.com minus berry> on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:17AM (#13185988) Homepage Journal
      It's just the same Embrace and Extend tactics that Microsoft has always used. When Windows 2000 came out, Microsoft promised perfect Unix interoperability. Of course, they subtly changed the Kerberos protocol and several other protocols to favor Microsoft's OS in the domain controller position, allowing them to later push Unix as legacy stuff Microsoft is helping you get rid of.

      The fun part is that I asked a Microsoft rep about the Kerberos problem and he lied to my face.

      You've heard of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?"
      For Microsoft it's, "If you can't beat 'em, pretend to join 'em, then stab them in the back when they're not looking."

      • Re:Quick! (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The fun part is that I asked a Microsoft rep about the Kerberos problem and he lied to my face.

        Are you sure he wasn't just plain ignorant (representatives tend to be)?

        • Re:Quick! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaiBLUEl.com minus berry> on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:45AM (#13186264) Homepage Journal
          Are you sure he wasn't just plain ignorant (representatives tend to be)?

          Quite possibly. But he was one of those training-a-roomful-of-people-on-the-advantages-of- Win2K guys. Microsoft played him off as an engineer type who knew the system. When he got to the training on Kerberos, I got up and asked him point-blank about it only working one way. He told me that Windows 2000 would absolutely work with a Unix Kerberos Domain controller. I pressed him on it and he insisted. I let it go, but it proved to me that the reps will either run with misinformation or outright lie if they feel it will help their case.

          A very amusing example of this was the incident where a rep argued with David Korn [wikipedia.org] on Microsoft's version of the Korn Shell. I'll bet Mr. Sullivan felt a bit sheepish after that. ;-)

      • Re:Quick! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:58AM (#13186400) Homepage
        One thing is sure in this: If microsoft would make a linux distro it would be less stable (on purpose), lack all kinds of compatibility so your enterprise applications will not run on it, and be completely incompatible with your current MS documents.

        For them it will just be a showcase to customers with doubts about their MS environment to show that Linux together with all other helpfull opensource applications is no help to them.
    • The title of this article immediately makes me think of that old saying -- what was it? Oh yeah:

      Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

  • Warms up? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Magada ( 741361 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @09:56AM (#13185770) Journal
    You know what they say ... if you can't beat them ... embrace and extend.
    • It's more likely to be "Embrace, assimilate then dump the lifeless remains"
    • The term should be "Extend and Embrace." How do you embrace something without reaching out to it first?

      • Re:Warms up? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Enigma_Man ( 756516 )
        You embrace it, and then extend what you embraced in your own image. IE: Microsoft: Oh we love C++, now it's Visual C++! (embrace, extend), in order to help maintain vendor lock-in.

        -Jesse
        • Microsoft: Oh we love C++, now it's Visual C++! (embrace, extend), in order to help maintain vendor lock-in.

          Would this be the wrong moment to point out that Visual C++ is currently one of Microsoft's most standards-compliant products?

          Compare Microsoft's extensions [microsoft.com] with GCC's [gnu.org]. Quiz: which of Microsoft and GNU do you think are introducing more portability problems by embracing and extending the C and C++ languages?

          • Re:Warms up? (Score:3, Informative)

            by nihilogos ( 87025 )
            Compare Microsoft's extensions with GCC's. Quiz: which of Microsoft and GNU do you think are introducing more portability problems by embracing and extending the C and C++ languages?

            Who uses compiler specific language extensions when they're trying to write portable code? Nobody. So long as it compiles standards compliant code, it doesn't really matter how many extensions are available. Nobody's forcing you to use them. Most of the extensions for both compilers you mention are useful and valid when you are

      • Re:Warms up? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by interiot ( 50685 )
        Embrace -- pretend you warm up to a standard because you actually like it

        Extend -- Make some Microsoft-specific tweaks to the standard, and encourage others to use them. Make sure those tweaks lock-in users into your software. Bundle it with your OS and Office Suite to give your tweaks an edge. If it's too easy for others interoperate with your modified version of the standard, keep modifying it until others lose relevance, and you have 90% of the market share.

      • You don't understand what the term means. It's a reference to the way Microsoft pretends to accept a standard (embracing), then it quietly modifies it until it's no longer compatible with the original standard anymore (extending). Meanwhile the "microsoft standard" has collected critical mass of people developing towards it, since after all it is "standard" and should work with everything. By the time it turns out that no, it only works with Microsoft software (surprise, surprise) it's too late to get peopl

    • Re:Warms up? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by NotFamous ( 827147 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:34AM (#13186153) Homepage Journal
      It's actually three E's:
      • Embrace
      • Extend
      • Extinguish
    • I wonder how many lines of dead code or megabytes of jpg's of the development team, pets etc. the "MS distro" will include.

      I talked with someone that had worked on a military implementation of Win2000 where they stripped out stuff they didn't need for their application. There were vast amounts of pure junk....to the point that one wonders if they used to do that so people felt they were getting a good value ($'s/MB if you will).

    • Well, they are welcome to do that, and charge a lot of money for their modified version, as long as they releases all the changes under GPL.

  • Tinfoil (Score:4, Insightful)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @09:56AM (#13185771)
    Best way for Microsoft to kill Linux is to embrace it.
    • How exactly ?

      For anyone who modded Parent insightful think about it for a second....

      They can't kill linux, in the hobbiest circle for obvious reason, unless people start getting jailed for not using a mircosoft branded OS, I can't see geeks all over the world giving up linux, or BSD etc.

      And guess what, the IT literacy is probably much higher now, than it was in the early 90s, so not all bosses/decission makeres are PHBs.

      And even the PHPs can not argue against cost cutting which is something linux has bee

      • Step one: port some server apps to Linux

        Step two: Release MS-Linux. It will have lots of features that work really well with other MS servers.

        Step three: Release MS-Linux 2.0 that contains a few improvements for networking and performance. Oh, by the way, these improvements are inpcompatible with the old open source versions.

        Done. MS-Linux is now being sold into MS shops as a low cost server solution, but using enough "improved" technology that using a "free, unsupported" Linux like Debian will be dif

        • step four:
          When everybody sees that MS-Linux 2.0 is shit just download a FREE copy of any other better linux from the internet...

          • Re:yaaaaawn (Score:3, Interesting)

            by jarich ( 733129 )
            When everybody sees that MS-Linux 2.0 is shit just download a FREE copy of any other better linux from the internet...

            The shops with the technical expertise to do this have already done so. The target market for MS-Linux would be shops that aren't Linux saavy. They need a simple, drop in distro. And I know that ~you~ think these distros already exist, but the lack of Linux market penetration says otherwise. Technical issues that you and I would take for granted are large hurdles to someone whose never bee

          • Re:yaaaaawn (Score:2, Insightful)

            by wlan0 ( 871397 )
            Step five: MS-Linux needs to be GPLed anyway.
        • That's assuming that most people will buy and use MS-Linux exclusively.

          As soon as Step Three happened, people would start migrating to a different version of Linux-- or forking the existing MS Linux project into something else.

          When RedHat stopped releasing free versions of RedHat Linux after RH9 (Not talking about Fedora here), several organizations (such as CentOS) immediately started to maintain identical, free versions of RedHat Enterprise Linux.
        • I'm obviously missing something here, so please enlighten me...

          Is it not the case that, if Microsoft extend Linux, they must do so in accordance with the GPL? (all of this is moot if you're suggesting they actually create their own version of Linux *from scratch*!).

          In accordance with the GPL, if Microsoft 'extend' Linux and distribute that version, they must also make available the full source code to it? In which case, somebody could compile and release a free version too?

          • Re:Tinfoil (Score:4, Insightful)

            by jarich ( 733129 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @11:35AM (#13186827) Homepage Journal
            A Linux distro is not a single program. It's thousands of programs, some GPL, some not. MS can write (or rewrite) a few core networking applications. Even if they release the changes required to the included GPL libraries, they can still hold the tool itself back.

      • Funny, not insightful (Score:4, Funny)

        by gosand ( 234100 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @11:26AM (#13186720)
        How exactly ?

        I was going to mod it funny. I think that the only way for Microsoft to kill or drag something down into the dregs is to get involved with it. Maybe MS just knows that inherently, whatever they touch turns to anti-innovative technology goo.

  • Microsoft will eventually distribute Linux. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by base3 ( 539820 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @09:57AM (#13185777)
    They'll have to provide a version of Linux signed with the endorsement key for the Palladium/TCPA/NGCSB platform so they can pretend that it's not about DRM and vendor lock-in.
    • I don't think so. If Microsoft blocks out even a single other vendor, they are very likely to find themselves in court. If they block out a whole swath of other vendors, they will find themselves in court AND on many newspapers.

      (as a semi-related note... I bet it wouldn't be illegal for the Intel Macs to block out everything but OSX... but only because Apple isn't in a monopoly position, and doesn't have a chance to change the majortiy of computer suppliers to have Apple lock-in. On the other hand, M

    • And that will KILL Linux, because the fundamental thing is being able to change, recompile, and run the software. It's completely inherently incompatible with DRM. I just hope the government (who will ultimately be the ones who would have to stop this) will be able to see that. : /

  • sure (Score:3, Funny)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @09:58AM (#13185784) Homepage Journal
    the same way that a robber warms up to his victim warms up to when the 'victim' pulls out a .45 caliber.

  • No Linux from MSFT? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by takeya ( 825259 ) *
    "Microsoft won't be releasing its own distribution of Linux any time soon."

    I've got to admit, if they were, Windows running on the Linux kernel with some gnu apps and a bash shell (without cygwin of course), would be pretty snazzy.
    • Certainly the amount of low-level hardware control a user has through the Windows GUI far exceeds that in the Linux world. Usually it's impossible to update the video card drivers in Linux without using the command line.

      • Re:No Linux from MSFT? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by malkavian ( 9512 )
        Errr.. Am I missing something here?
        Low level hardware control is performed via the kernel, not the user. If you really want a graphical front end to the linux installer, it's a stroke of simplicity to add in a quick GUI wrapper.
        Really, it's awfully simple to do without the command line.
        I take it you're really referring to configuration management for the driver when you talk about 'low level hardware control'.
        Again, a simple script will do the job nicely, and you can add a graphical front end at a pinch.

        I
        • The problem with these kind' a "hacks" is that they're "hacks".

          It's an inelegant solution. The script introduces too many dependencies (shell version, paths, etc...) and the whole idea of a gui front end to scripts, is bad design, in my opinion.

          An elegant design would be to have X or something, expose an API for video hardware configuration, that way the gui calls the api programmatically, and everything's much more robust.

          Linux is too disorganized and has too many developers with different opinions that it
          • None of what you describe is of any real consequence to people who actually do his for a living working in far more serious environments where screwups of that sort could cost you millions per hour or per minute. A little programming discipline is all that's required to avoid all the problems described by your vague fear mongering.

            There is no functional difference between an API and a script or an application. They're all just abstractions that expose some interface.

            Also, in practice none of this has been
      • Usually it's impossible to update the video card drivers in Linux without using the command line.

        Usually it's impossible to update just the video card drivers in Windows, period. So many of these vendors now, bundle their drivers in a installation exe, which without giving me a choice install all kinds of auto-update crap , and utility *cough*spyware*cough* crap. Do I really need a s/w which phones home every 1/2 hour to check for a update for a display dirver.

  • Old saying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Thursday July 28, 2005 @09:58AM (#13185788) Journal
    Keep your enemies closer?

  • MS will wait to get their Linux right (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28, 2005 @09:58AM (#13185796)
    Personally, I'd wait for Xenix 3.1.
    • You know, if you didn't make this joke I was going to.

      Unfortunately, all rights for making a UNIX like OS were owned by the original SCO and have since transferred to new SCO. So if this were to happen, guess who would be making the OS for Microsoft?

      I wonder if Darl would be a nicer task master than Bill and Steve.
  • we've all seen this [mslinux.org] now, right?

  • It's like gravity (Score:5, Funny)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:02AM (#13185829)
    The big planet-sized MS is starting to feel the Linux moon's effects. Oh wait, that's no moon!

  • Iinteroperation with Linux ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:05AM (#13185867) Homepage
    a strategy...to see how Microsoft's proprietary technologies can better interoperate with Linux and a host of other open-source software.

    If Microsoft wants better interoperation with linux, they do not need to create a Linux/Open Source lab to ïnvestigate interoperability.

    All they need to do is release specifications or source-available implementations of their network protocols and file formats.

    Is this really so hard to understand?

  • In fact, that is exactly what will be the focus of a discussion the long-time open-source proponent will lead at this year's upcoming Linuxworld Conference & Expo next month in San Francisco

    I am sure you all agree that this is not too strong a statement:

    What the fuck?? ....
    Bill Gates: We have always been about open source, heck, we invented Linux, just before the Internet, and I have always said that people like Linus Torvalds who says the GPL license is a disease, a cancerous growth are really bad peo

  • A likely story... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by keesh ( 202812 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:10AM (#13185916) Homepage
    Why else do you think they've hired four Gentoo people over the past six months?

    • Re:A likely story... (Score:5, Funny)

      by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @11:19AM (#13186643)
      Why else do you think they've hired four Gentoo people over the past six months?


      To work shifts to watch over the build they started at the same time?

    • Re:A likely story... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Hey, Gentoo Guy, welcome to Microsoft, we're glad to have you on board. Please step into this closet."

      *SLAM*

      "Thank God. Another Linux coder off the street where he can't do us any harm."

  • Flip Flop (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is surprisingly soon after this article in which M$ repeatedly bashed Linux:
    http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/07/21/1218247.s html?tid=109&tid=187&tid=106 [slashdot.org]

    Microsoft: "Oh shit, that last statement hurt our PR right before the Vista Beta release...guess we'd better warm up now!"
  • Mean, nasty, peoples... Act like Smegal's friend..

    Must run Smegal, must run... They are after the precious... Bill Gatesy is tricksy.... Yes, my precious... Yes...

  • Heh, heh, and China is still a Communist country. I don't know what MS Linux will be called or exactly how the interoperability efforts will come out. But my guess is that 5 to 10 years down the line, it will be pretty hard to distinguish Windows from Linux. In the meantime, I would guess as the interoperability specs become known, we'll start seeing groups roll out Linux distros that are amazingly friendly with Windows, wink wink.

  • Big problems ahead (Score:3, Interesting)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:15AM (#13185976)
    Ok, the deal is that Microsoft has deicded that they can't beat Linux in the market place if they attack it head on, so instead they have decided to co-opt it. The problem is that sooner or later Linux and FOSS alternatives are going to be eating into every one of Microsotfs main revenue streams and the pressure for Microsoft to "do something" about it will be insane. I doubt they will sit there and happily get along as billions in revenue streams are slowly chocked off.

  • Babelfish translation (Score:5, Funny)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:17AM (#13185994) Journal
    To see how Microsoft's proprietary technologies can better interoperate with Linux and a host of other open-source software.

    Find ways of maximising the effect of all this money spent on brute forcing patents into the EU. Find ways that Linux is interoperable and quash them.

    Hilf (wasn't this the nick name for Adolf?) is an open source evangelist, from IBM, working at Microsoft... erm... whats that Master Yoda? You sense great fear and anger in this one yes hmmmm? *cough*dark side*cough*

    In fact, he boasted in rather geeky fashion that he has attended every single Linuxworld in the U.S. since the show was first held in 1999. "I should get some kind of medal for that," Hilf joked.

    Yeah, one that says 'in medical emergencies call this number ### #######'. Mentalist.

    "Microsoft has now gotten to a point that they're accepting the fact that there's enough Linux in their customer environments that they need to interoperate with Linux in the same way they interoperated with Unix in the past," Goulde said.

    Erm - don't drop us yet, we are compatible with Linux!

    Microsoft Windows ShortNose 2017: A Linux compatible operating system with FREE smileys!

    "The attitude is more, 'Tell me more about this,' versus, 'God, don't touch this, it's going to explode if we look at it.' Polarization is starting to be less and less."

    Yes, because open source is explosive... like those bomb terrorists use!! MSNBC.com:

    Linux Officially a New Terrorist Threat!

    This is all just a curtain of distraction while Microsoft rape the EU to get patents, and then land linux in a nice vat of steaming 'Yes we love linux, and interoperability, which is why they can license these 1838390 patents if they want to continue breathing!'.
    • Who are they again: Look at their Firefox / Greasemonkey article:

      This time there was no Microsoft (Profile, Products, Articles) to blame. The open source underdogs had done this to themselves.

      Yeah, that was such a relevant way of outlining the story.

      And while some would argue it wasn't Firefox's fault -- since Greasemonkey is a user-installed extension -- Firefox took its share of the blame, just as Internet Explorer does when its add-ins cause trouble.

      Two birds with one back hander, well done Bill!

      OK, lets
      • The open source and Microsoft cultures can complement one another. I hope they will. If we're going to safely enjoy the benefits of AJAX-style computing, we'll need all the help we can get.

        Ridiculous!! thank goodness for Microsoft, who can step up and bail out the plucky open source projects like Firefox, and pat them on the head.

        Waste of time website. You know, Microsoft may release its own Linux Distribution, bundled with Windows no doubt... put enough resources in that it keeps them at the top.

        Mental.
    • Hilf (wasn't this the nick name for Adolf?) is an open source evangelist, from IBM, working at Microsoft... erm... whats that Master Yoda? You sense great fear and anger in this one yes hmmmm? *cough*dark side*cough*

      Worst.

      Comment.

      Ever.

  • Obligatory. . . (Score:3, Funny)

    by TripleE78 ( 883800 ) <triplee@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:30AM (#13186110) Homepage
    It's a trap!

    ~EEE~

  • Favorite Quote (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DrugCheese ( 266151 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:31AM (#13186119)
    Hilf said that Microsoft now has a far better understanding of how technologically diverse customer environments are than it did several years ago, and is more open-minded than ever about making sure its products interoperate with competitive ones such as Linux

    Yea because Microsoft has a great history of being open-minded about other products competing with it's own. From my understanding they have two tools they use with any competing product, they either buy it, or break it.

    • From my understanding they have two tools they use with any competing product, they either buy it, or break it.

      That strategy can't work on Linux though. Linux can't be bought (because it's not owned by anybody), and it can't really be broken. If they try to break Linux, all they can do is fork and make MS-Linux, and then break *that*... MS-Linux will then become nothing but one of so many distros out there, and the current non-broken distros will continue to exist.

      What they could possibly do though is m

  • But Will the Microsoft Distro Come With Clippy? (Score:3, Funny)

    by jac1962 ( 822171 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @10:38AM (#13186193) Homepage
    Oh God I hope so.
  • "There's a ton of stuff we can do to innovate. We don't see that level of innovation [in Linux] that makes us say there's [anything] out there that's better than or more effective than what we can do."

    Emote icons are sooooo fucking innovative.

  • I dunno why you're all so down on Microsoft. Its a kick arse company with excellent products, visionary leadership and massive amounts of talent. No Microsoft didn't invent the internet but they did capture and popularise the platform that allows millions of people to access the internet everyday. They made a mistake. They accepted they made a mistake. They changed course and once again ate the competition. All this nonsense about being "first" is hooey. Theres no good being first if you cant hold onto wh
  • All you have to do is remember 4 letters, MSFT, an remember that these are the stock market ticker symbols for Microsoft. When ever you see or hear anything from Microsoft, remember that what is shown or said has nothing to do with advancing tech and/or solving your problems. It is all about keeping Microsoft Windows in a monopoly position and maximizing moving money from your pocket into theirs.

    They don't have a lab to help make their products work better with Open Source Software. They most likely use tha
  • MS is warming up to Linux like a wolf warms up to a lamb.
  • I been saying this for YEARS. Windows will have a Linux core by 2015. It's the Microsoft way. Can't beat 'em? Consume them.

  • the battle for management is just warming up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rapiddescent ( 572442 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @11:04AM (#13186468)
    I think the Microsoft understand that the battle of the OS is not where the real money is - the real money spinner is beating HP OpenView in the server/desktop management space and also owning the signing-in credentials (Active Directory) - these two things are FAR more important than old wars against Linux and open source. They know that Linux boxes are always going to be in the enterprise so they've thought up a strategy to make sure that they are within the MS management pool. A caring & sharing attitude will also fix some of the perception of arrogance that MS have with the Office of Government Commerce in the UK and similar procurement organisations outside the USA.

    for example: In most places I've been to, the customer has MS Active Directory in place. (I'm an enterprise TA specialising in Linux). That makes MS in a very strong position to be first choice for single sign on content management systems, document management platform and also system monitoring & management. The usual BS I hear is that AD makes it easier for the helpdesk to manage users and groups and so on.

    MS have been quietly making big investments in enterprise management. remember SCO, how could you forget!, there was one product that SCO sold off to a management buy-out and was rumoured to have been heavily funded by MS - this is Vintela [vintela.com]. Vintela sells a single sign on solution for multiple OS (including Linux) that will allow Linux users to sign in as AD citizens into Linux and be managed just like the MS users.

    Another example is the new drive for MOM. MOM is essentially where HP Openview was some years ago. HP OpenView has never got the pervasive coverage in organisations because it costs a bloody fortune and HP have been too stupid to commodotise the HPOV server infrastructure into something cheaper. Also, having an enterprise OpenView system takes manpower to setup correctly. The result is a catch 22 - the companies that actually need it; don't have spare manpower - hence the reason they need an enterprise monitoring/management suite! MS MOM is a big step in the direction of Windows simple click (and break!) user interface that is convincing to management who will sign off procurement decisions. The MOM interface is surprisingly better than HPOV - plus MOM will also support Linux and Solaris boxes in the enterprise. I don't think it will be long before MS provides management hooks for JBoss, MySQL, Apache etc into MOM.

    By entering the enterprise market like this; MS is targetting products at the areas that control the whole strategy or an organisation: authentication/authorisation and systems management. It is a way of taking control and ensuring that any Linux/otherNix server has MS branding on it because that's how it is looked after...

    essentially; Microsoft *have* to include Linux in their plans for their big step into Enterprise domination - Linux is actually helping them in a way because the rapid growth of Linux servers has forced them to consider enterprise platforms that they have not really been competing against in the past.

    rd

    • Umm...

      I am currently logged into this FC3 box using my AD username and password.
      When I go out to the DFS servers (from this box) I continue to use that authentication.
      When another user views the shares on this box they always see their home folder as an available share based on their auth info. (Did I mention it automatically uses their Windows auth info to allow them to view the shares and their home folder?)
      If I log into the box with a user that did not previously have a home folder, it is automatically c

  • excuse me, but microsoft (at least the last time i checked) HAS a distro of linux and has for many years

    mslinux.org [mslinux.org]

    and quite frankly, with the amount of technoweenies here spouting all their opinions, i'm very disappointed that this escaped everyone's attention!

    like, how could you not know?!

  • MS "warms up" to something that's open source ?! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by silviuc ( 676999 ) on Thursday July 28, 2005 @11:19AM (#13186637) Homepage

    I'm afraid there's something very wrong here. And I'm sure many of the /. crowd have this gut feeling too.

    In one of the Halloween Documents http://www.opensource.org/halloween/ [opensource.org] ESR talks about Microsoft being asleep at the switch. They are waking up it seems.

    Just embrace and extend? That too.

    They're cooking something alright. This time it won't be just FUD campaigns.

  • This is not unexpected. Quote from the article here: Linux sales help Oracle [infoworld.com]

    Oracle has been heavily marketing Linux as a way for its customers to reduce costs, and the strategy appeared to pay off: Much of Oracle's 15 percent growth came from sales of its database on Linux, Gartner said. The Linux database segment remains relatively small overall, accounting for just $654.8 million of new license sales, but it more than doubled from 2003.

    Oracle on Linux doubled, Microsoft sees that. If the trend continues l
  • Since you folks are our friends now, would you mind documenting and publishing -- unencumbered, of course -- the parts of MAPI that will allow Outlook to connect to third-party groupware servers? The rest of the world is getting a little tired of trying to reverse-engineer it.

    Sincerely,
    random members [citadel.org] of the open source community

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