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by zapzupnz 2788 days ago
That's because people have weirdly unrealistic expectations when you put 'Microsoft' and 'Linux' in the same sentence. The biggest thread on this post seems to be about the prospect that Microsoft should/must/will (circle as applies) completely abandon Windows in favour of Linux, based on very little evidence, almost certainly because people don't know what to make of … well, any of it. Microsoft have been contributing to open source projects, the Linux environment, and so on for years (at least since Ballmer's left), and yet people are still coming to terms with it because it still messes with their world view — and quite rightly, too; forty-odd years of precedent in the other direction is hard to scrub from one's mind.
1 comments

"Microsoft Linux" would be the most EEE thing they could do and I don't think anyone here expects that. However, it would be nice if there has been a bit less fuss about Microsoft going open-source. They should do just what everyone else does: extract useful software from your software stack, release it as free software and make the community a bit greater in doing that. Get your praise from the software you release, not from the fact that you do.

(To be fair, I think Microsoft engineers are actually staying low-key and just release stuff, while the management, marketing and fan groups are talking about how great Microsoft has become for FLOSS)