Microsoft Counted As Key Linux Contributor 305
alphadogg writes "For the first time ever, Microsoft can be counted as a key contributor to Linux. The company, which once portrayed the open-source OS kernel as a form of cancer, has been ranked 17th on a tally of the largest code contributors to Linux. The Linux Foundation's Linux Development Report, released Tuesday, summarizes who has contributed to the Linux kernel, from versions 2.6.36 to 3.2. The 10 largest contributors listed in the report are familiar names: Red Hat, Intel, Novell, IBM, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Nokia, Samsung, Oracle and Google. But the appearance of Microsoft is a new one for the list, compiled annually."
Re:that's for virtualization. (Score:-1, Interesting)
It's a juicier narrative to portray it in the way the summary did--that even though Microsoft once depicted Linux as a "cancer", Linux must now be so awesome that Microsoft is one of its key contributors. Providing context buffs out some of that luster.
I find it far more intriguing that the key contributors to Linux are companies and not independent individuals, since the old storyline used to be that devoted hobbyists were gathering on the internet to do a better job than commercial companies, back when the "year of Linux on the desktop" was always right around the corner.
Re:I call B.S. (Score:0, Interesting)
Red Hat's involvement is also self-serving.
Your point?
What happened to the borg graphic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is this news to anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit. MacOS existed LONG before Windows was anything more than a glorified DOS shell. The internet was in full swing on UNIX boxes and Macs before crappy Windows machines flooded the net via AOL. Most PC users were late to the party and saddled with a shitty IP stack (remember Trumpet Winsock?) and buggy software. And DOS wasn't even REALLY "their" innovation. They bought a half-assed CP/M clone from some guy named Tim Patterson and claimed they had an OS the whole time to IBM.
We existed just fine before Win95. We had slick GUI-based machines like the Atari ST, the Amiga, and the Macintosh that were ALL superior to MS's offerings. And not in a small way.....we're talking LEAPS AND BOUNDS more advanced. And all were capable of online connectivity. All had more capable graphics and sound than PC's of the same time period.
The ONLY thing MS brought to the table was "Good Ol' Boy" predatory business tactics, manipulation and extortion. They INVENTED absolutely NOTHING and forced an industry into shoving unreliable cheap PC clones down our throats with their software bundled. I hope Gates and Ballmer choke on their breakfast. F**k them.
Re:Is this news to anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
In all seriousness, there's some cool stuff coming out from Microsoft Research. Everything else, if it can be considered innovative, is half-baked. The dimwits who specified and documented winapi had no clue how to formally specify stuff. Thus all the undocumented behavior that applications exploit in light of no documentation and no clear direction as to the rationale and intended uses behind various APIs. Thus we have stuff that MS had to work around over and over to maintain compatibility with broken applications; stuff that wine people have to deal with as well. As far as MS complaining that app writers are getting things wrong: well duh idiots, you can't write the docs, you'll pay for it. Yeah, I've been consistently pissed about that, even back in the times of 16 bit winapi -- even as a kid back then I realized that they were not saying things that should have been said.
Of course with various non-standard Linux APIs, you're entirely on your own. But at least there's no pretense of documentation, and you can look at the code.
Wow, you've really managed to piss off an AC today, huh?
As a fun example of winapi, I happen to have an MSDN page open right now on the GetDIBits function. It copys bitmap pixels around, and it returns:
on success: nonzero or "the number of scan lines copied from the bitmap." (because that's very helpful)
on failure: 0
Then it also says "This function can return the following value: ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER"
And what is the value of ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER? 87
How does someone sit down a design an API that returns a positive value on succes, and also on failure?
Re:Is this news to anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Example: Microsoft during Windows 95 release was adamant about not producing a TCP/IP stack for Windows claiming that the Internet was a waste of time and there is nobody in their right mind that would use it. Microsoft released and poured cash into their own proprietary network protocol (NetBUI).
Funfact: When I was working on my A+ back around 2004, the course material we used indicated that "one" of the communications protocols was TCPIP, but it was esoteric and of course everyone used NetBEUI.
I think I still have the book talking about how the future is NetBEUI and how TCP/IP is some backwoods protocol that noone uses.