I love it how Microsoft flip-flops about trying to find their way. At one time according to Microsoft there was no future in the internet and they decided to put all their effort into their own closed content dial-up information service (anyone remember the first MSN?). We know what happened after that with the reversal in strategic direction that followed shortly.
This week’s change in direction is the announcement that Microsoft are releasing 20,000 lines of code to Linux to help Linux run on Windows on Hyper-V, and take advantage on optimizations to help Linux run faster when running in a VM on Linux.
Huh? Err, Earth to Ballmer – you were intent on killing Linux, and I’m sure you don’t need reminding about that Open Source stuff that you referred to as a cancer to the software industry – you appear to now be helping Linux run on Windows? What on earth is going on up in Redmond! Are they planning a Microsoft classic ‘embrace, extend, extinguish‘ attack on Linux? If I were running Linux servers commercially I would be massively suspicious of running this Microsoft code on my Linux servers and would avoid it like the plague. I imagine others would have the same feelings too.