Microsoft and Linux together?

[BrownieCat]

Do any of you think that someday, Windows and Linux OS's will be able to work together peacefully?
It may sound silly right now (I mean, MS's biggest enemy is Mac, and after that Linux) but it may be likely. For the following reasons:

1. Linux is growing in popularity very gradually; it may be that one day, Linux is too big a force for Microsoft to ignore. That may trigger two actions: either MS makes a new, whizz-bang amazing OS to compete (which is almost impossible ), or MS agrees to work with Linux (I know that won't be very good for Linux )

2. Although this is a bit too far-fetched, it might happen: Since Microsoft loses hundreds of customers to Linux due to their EULA's restrictions, Windows might become open source. I'm not saying this'll happen overnight, it'll take a lot of time. Windows becoming open source might make Linux and MS work together. Not as if I'm going to trust Microsoft even then; Microsoft is completely unpredictable.

Well, those are my reasons. Any comments?

[hendersj]

On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:16:01 +0000, BrownieCat wrote:

> Do any of you think that someday, Windows and Linux OS's will be able to
> work together peacefully?

Thanks in large part to the SAMBA project, they do already....

Jim



--
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Moderator

[microchip8]

Doubtful that Win will become at any point open source. There are lots of legal issues MS has to work out before this. It's more likely for MS to bring out its own Linux distro than make Win fully open source

[pontke]

Novell (the company backing openSUSE) and Microsoft are supposedly already working jointly in making Linux and Windows work together nicely on a server. I do not know of any such cooperation for the desktop, but we do have wine and samba.

However, as a person gets more used to Linux software, you find that you rely on Microsoft less and less.

[hendersj]

On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:36:02 +0000, microchip8 wrote:

> Doubtful that Win will become at any point open source.

True, but that doesn't mean Windows and Linux can't (and don't)
interoperate. :-)

Jim
--
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Moderator

[Nburnes]

I don't see Windows becoming Open Source anytime soon. They have done so much to keep it closed.

[Akoellh]

Originally Posted by BrownieCat

2. Although this is a bit too far-fetched, it might happen: Since Microsoft loses hundreds of customers to Linux

Made my day

[Confuseling]

Originally Posted by BrownieCat

...
2. Although this is a bit too far-fetched, it might happen: Since Microsoft loses hundreds of customers to Linux due to their EULA's restrictions, Windows might become open source. I'm not saying this'll happen overnight, it'll take a lot of time. Windows becoming open source might make Linux and MS work together. Not as if I'm going to trust Microsoft even then; Microsoft is completely unpredictable.
...

I suspect if you'd asked people on a Mac forum a few years ago whether they would end up running a BSD kernel in a few years they'd mostly have laughed at you.

These things do progress in surprising directions. But personally, I think the 'many eyes, many hands' approach is fundamentally better for anything that is likely to motivate examination and experimentation by lots of people, and that includes the underlying basis of an operating system.

I guess the long run trend will be for high level languages to develop to the point where people can knock together end user software without really understanding much about the underlying system at all - arguably this is already true to an extent.

And once you get an explosion of userspace free software, the users will come across to the (already technically superior) open source base systems.

There will still be space for closed source providers to sell desktops and office suites and such things (and indeed games) to stick on top of the common base, but the idea of making your own, proprietary operating system (except in very marginal roles, like the odd embedded system) will die out.

I'm no futurologist, but that's my guess.

Originally Posted by Akoellh

Made my day

2147 - Year of the Linux Desktop!!!!11!!!1!!!!

[microchip8]

Originally Posted by hendersj

On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:36:02 +0000, microchip8 wrote:

> Doubtful that Win will become at any point open source.

True, but that doesn't mean Windows and Linux can't (and don't)
interoperate. :-)

Jim
--
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Moderator

Where did I say that? I *specifically* only talked about him asking if MS will ever likely release Win as open source. There is no mention whatsoever in my previous reply about interoperability. Why? Because I didn't talk about that. You're making wrong conclusions and assumptions from my post

[BenderBendingRodriguez]

Microsoft will NEVER make their system open source, too many backdoors, too many tools sending probably all possible information about a user. For every company there comes a moment they become too big to be ignored and after that moment CIA/FBI/God knows who/what else must have a way to spy on users. If they wouldn't agree they wouldn't be allowed to grow so BIG, so i suspect google already made such deal in order to be allowed to become so BIG, every company faces that. I don't care since i got nothing to hide (yet ), think about it, most of the projects from google are open source BUT we don't know what happens on their servers when we use gmail or their other tools.

If you search for Martin Armstrong and his Economic Pi Theory you will find out that he IIRC has been approached by CIA and refused to cooperate and then not a long after that he has been framed and is in prison right now.

I guess Microsoft made too many bad moves and has been slated to DIE so a new company emerges this time with a slogan "don't do evil" or whatever but this time when we will become completely dependable on their services it will be VERY VERY hard to change it in case their motto changes.

Also notice that the biggest growing companies are companies that manage some informations about us, twitter, facebook etc. coincidence?