# Microsoft Embrace, Extend, Extinguish FreeBSD?



## walterbyrd (Jun 10, 2016)

Slashdot article: Microsoft Has Created Its Own FreeBSD

https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/06/09/1827256/microsoft-has-created-its-own-freebsd

This is a comment I found on another forum. Interesting thought, IMO.


From TFA . . .

_Redmond is not keeping its work on FreeBSD to itself: Anderson says "the *MAJORITY* of the investments we make at the kernel level to enable network and storage performance were up-streamed into the FreeBSD 10.3 release, so anyone who downloads a FreeBSD 10.3 image from the FreeBSD Foundation will get those investments from Microsoft built in to the OS." _ 

Do you see that big word MAJORITY in there? That means there are parts of the kernel that Microsoft is keeping closed source to themselves. 

That is the classic, Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. We're to the Extend part right now. It has been extended with proprietary extensions that are not given back to the community.


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## zspider (Jun 10, 2016)

That's exactly what I thought of when I saw it. Embrace. Extend. Extinguish. 

Maybe it's that time again - to relocate.


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## SirDice (Jun 10, 2016)

You're reading way too much into it. 



> As the above screenshot illustrates, Microsoft is the publisher of the FreeBSD image in the marketplace rather than the FreeBSD Foundation. The FreeBSD Foundation is supported by donations from the FreeBSD community, including companies that build their solutions on FreeBSD. They are not a solution provider or an ISV with a support organization but rather rely on a very active community that support one another. In order to ensure our customers have an enterprise SLA for their FreeBSD VMs running in Azure, we took on the work of building, testing, releasing and maintaining the image in order to remove that burden from the Foundation. We will continue to partner closely with the Foundation as we make further investments in FreeBSD on Hyper-V and in Azure.





> The majority of the investments we make at the kernel level to enable network and storage performance were up-streamed into the FreeBSD 10.3 release, so anyone who downloads a FreeBSD 10.3 image from the FreeBSD Foundation will get those investments from Microsoft built in to the OS. *There are some exceptions where we included some important fixes that weren’t complete in time to make the FreeBSD 10.3 release* – you can get the details of those additional commits here.




https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/freebsd-now-available-in-azure-marketplace/


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 10, 2016)

```
font-family: 'Segoe UI','Segoe WP',Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;
```
Hmm. I find it interesting that, on the internet, Microsoft only specifies Microsoft fonts. Interesting.


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## Maelstorm (Jun 10, 2016)

The OP beat me to it.  Anyways, here's the link to the article that I read: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/09/microsoft_freebsd/  From what I can ascertain, Microsoft is making additions to FreeBSD to support their Azure cloud service.  In the article, Microsoft straight out said that they want everyone, no matter what operating system that they are using, to be able to use their Azure cloud service.  Embrace, extend, extinguish?  Not going to happen because FreeBSD is open source.  What they can do is do what Apple did: Fork it.  So instead of having the three big versions (Free, Open, Net), OSX, and the minor ones (Dragonfly, pico, and others), we could have an MS-BSD.  It could be commercially supported.  Who knows?  But I do know that one thing for certain is that they cannot extinguish FreeBSD because it is open source.  The community will adapt and thrive despite their attempts to kill it.

Any why FreeBSD?  I remember an article from way back when where Microsoft stated that they liked the BSD style license because it was compatible with closed source code.  They complained that the GPL is a cancer.  However, Microsoft has released SQL server for Linux, so that is interesting in and of itself.

EDIT:

The original article from 2001 on the Chicago-Times website, which quotes Steve Ballmer calling the GPL a cancer, is dead, but here's a link which describes it: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/


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## tomxor (Jun 10, 2016)

Actually I beat you to it  Thread 56541

I don't think this is any where as different as a fork, as others have now said, it's basically just another convenience image from a cloud provider, ready configured for their services, in addition they have however contributed some virtualisation drivers which I know nothing about but by definition shouldn't affect anything non azure based.

RE MS-BSD? they've pretty much already been there and done that, it was called xenix, not BSD but it did contain some BSD among other things.


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## ANOKNUSA (Jun 10, 2016)

How is it that, in 2016, folks still see every new thing Microsoft tries as an attempt to conquer the world? It seems rather obvious to me that they're working like mad to remain relevant in a rapidly changing ecosystem in which their products cannot be expected to remain dominant as a matter of course. One must either adapt to change and survive, or become extinct, but avoiding extinction through adaptation won't guarantee one remains at the top of the food chain. Especially if the food chain itself changes.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 10, 2016)

ANOKNUSA The new CEO seems to want to change Microsoft culture in a good way but he's only been in office for two years. Microsoft has only been out of US Federal oversight for six years (after having it extended for non-compliance). Ballmer was still CEO just two years ago in case anyone has forgotten. So it's almost as if some are expecting us to trust them overnight while Microsoft continues to sue open software elsewhere while trying to buddy up with us at the same time.

A harsh and, probably, bad example is the time one of my managers hired a guy who had gotten out of prison for theft, coincidentally just two years before. I was not aware of this till later but he seemed like a decent enough fellow. Did good work and everyone liked him till we noticed things disappearing on a regular basis and caught him on a security camera after hours.


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## tomxor (Jun 11, 2016)

ANOKNUSA said:


> How is it that, in 2016, folks still see every new thing Microsoft tries as an attempt to conquer the world? It seems rather obvious to me that they're working like mad to remain relevant in a rapidly changing ecosystem in which their products cannot be expected to remain dominant as a matter of course. One must either adapt to change and survive, or become extinct, but avoiding extinction through adaptation won't guarantee one remains at the top of the food chain. Especially if the food chain itself changes.



Yes it's obvious to me that's what they are doing too... but they have no real dedication to any of the new things they do, it's like a child pressing all of the buttons to see which one does what it wants without caring about the consequences. But more than that, there is this consistent underlying tone of mistrust in users and fairly reliable exploitation in nasty ways. Many of the things that come out of microsoft are well designed from well intentioned people, but that's always ruined because it's not enough to win by focusing on creating something good, the evil always seeps to the surface in new and ridiculous ways as they attempt to create new monopolies.

That turned into a rant but whatever, they can't be trusted... I thought _that_ was obvious.


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## protocelt (Jun 11, 2016)

I really can't see a downside to Microsoft supporting FreeBSD on their Azure platform and don't understand the misplaced animosity here. This isn't connected to their past or present behavior with Windows in any way and personally, I appreciate Microsoft's contributions to supporting FreeBSD in any capacity and hope it continues well into the future. It only benefits the project in my opinion.

Just a friendly reminder: Since this is a topic that can potentially attract a difference of strong opinion, lets keep in mind we need to adhere to the Forums' rules in order to continue discussion here.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 11, 2016)

protocelt said:


> don't understand the misplaced animosity here.


I don't think you really meant that. I mean, you do understand where it comes from, don't you?


protocelt said:


> This isn't connected to their past or present behavior


That remains to be seen. As the saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Those of us who went through those things "in the past" keep one eye on the lookout.


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## protocelt (Jun 11, 2016)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I mean, you do understand where it comes from, don't you?


Of course, which is why I used "misplaced" in my post.



drhowarddrfine said:


> Those of us who went through those things "in the past" keep one eye on the lookout.


I don't see an issue with that. I'm simply saying the worst that can happen out of this is Microsoft dropping support for FreeBSD on their Azure platform, so as I said earlier, I really don't see a downside. In fact, given they are supporting FreeBSD at all on their platform tells me there is enough demand for it. If anything, I'd call this quite a positive thing for the project.


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## Maelstorm (Jun 11, 2016)

After doing a bit of research, what is really going on is that Microsoft is providing drivers for FreeBSD that will enable it to run on their Hyper-V virtualization platform, and some additional software for their Azure Cloud Services (ACS) which runs on top of the kernel.  So as it stands, it is just code that allows FreeBSD to support ACS.  They did the same thing with Linux a few months ago with Debian (although I think Ubuntu has made the list as well) as the endorsed distribution.  They are doing this because they want ACS to run on all the major platforms so users can, well, use their cloud services.  So in other words, nothing to see here people.  Calm down and move along.

Users don't trust Microsoft, and based on past behavior, for good reason.  But with this new CEO, perhaps things will change.  Their code contributions are, as expected, profit motivated.  I am not sure what to think about the endorsement from Microsoft that FreeBSD is a major platform.  I'm sure there is a complement in there somewhere.  Some of the comments on other websites that I have seen go along the lines of "Install FreeBSD because it just works" and such.  I have also seen comments where people think that FreeBSD's network stack is superior  in security and performance when compared to other operating systems, including Linux.  So we may have an opportunity for advocacy here.


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## protocelt (Jun 11, 2016)

Maelstorm said:


> So we may have an opportunity for advocacy here.


Good post, and I agree - "Carpe opportunitatem"


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## tomxor (Jun 11, 2016)

Maelstorm That's as much as I could find too, and it's not unusual or more special than other OOS as you mention, my fear is that it was... or may become more than that:



protocelt said:


> ...I'm simply saying the worst that can happen out of this is Microsoft dropping support for FreeBSD on their Azure platform, so as I said earlier, I really don't see a downside. In fact, given they are supporting FreeBSD at all on their platform tells me there is enough demand for it. If anything, I'd call this quite a positive thing for the project.



Oh it is a positive thing, and as they are currently only fiddling with virtualisation drivers then like you said the worst that could happen is they drop support and those drivers go to waste.

I think the worst that could happen is if they want to contribute more than that, and how their PR was spun made it sound like a lot more than some drivers and a config - in such a case I don't think I would be alone in saying a LOT worse could happen.

Just to be clear I'm not concerned about this anymore, it's become clear what this is all about and that's simply supporting azure nothing more.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 11, 2016)

Dropping support is along the lines of my point about past behavior. Someone starts using Azure cause it supports FreeBSD. Then they drop FreeBSD while pointing you to IIS to buy. I've seen it. This is nothing new.


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## kpa (Jun 12, 2016)

Remember that Microsoft gets "no vote" on how their committed contributions are re-used. You can take them for your own use as you like without Microsoft's consent. That's the power of the BSD license.


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## obsigna (Jun 12, 2016)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Dropping support is along the lines of my point about past behavior. Someone starts using Azure cause it supports FreeBSD. Then they drop FreeBSD while pointing you to IIS to buy. I've seen it. This is nothing new.


Perhaps nothing new in a context free view on Microsoft.

The news is that you can move the whole FreeBSD installation quickly over to for example AWS. The real question is, why somebody might want to put a FreeBSD installation on Azure in the first place. AFAIK, AWS EC2 got more bang for the bucks.


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## Maelstorm (Jun 13, 2016)

I can think of several reasons why someone would want to run FreeBSD in Hyper-V.  The big one is to allow someone to install FreeBSD in a virtual machine to get a feel for it and decide if they like it or not before throwing dedicated hardware at it.


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## ShelLuser (Jun 13, 2016)

I really don't understand what the fuss is all about. Just because it's Microsoft we have to doubt all their motivations?

Microsoft using FreeBSD? I'd say the system simply works because, wasn't FreeBSD meant to be used in the first place? If you truly stand behind free software, if you truly value digital freedom (which FreeBSD does IMO, considering its license) then you'll also value parties who you may not particularly like for using it. In this case Microsoft. I'd say the system works.

As to that embrace, extent... comment. You guys _do_ realize that there was once a time where Microsoft made it into the list of top 20 contributers to the Linux kernel? Granted: their main goal was providing better compatibility for their own servers, but even so they did contribute. And this happened a long time ago.

And well.. Linux is still going strong, pretty much independent.


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## SirDice (Jun 13, 2016)

Maelstorm said:


> I can think of several reasons why someone would want to run FreeBSD in Hyper-V


I currently work for a SaaS company and a lot of their Microsoft services run on Azure. We also have around 500+ Linux servers, mostly on Xenserver. They would like to move everything to Azure/Hyper-V and get rid of Xen (one hypervisor platform). I very much applaud the possibility to migrate some stuff from Linux on Xen to FreeBSD on Azure.

I can think of several reasons why FreeBSD on Azure would, in certain cases, be the better choice.


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## obsigna (Jun 13, 2016)

Maelstorm said:


> I can think of several reasons why someone would want to run FreeBSD in Hyper-V.  The big one is to allow someone to install FreeBSD in a virtual machine to get a feel for it and decide if they like it or not before throwing dedicated hardware at it.


Perhaps, you misunderstood the question. It didn't want to question cloud computing using FreeBSD. The point was, if people question MS Azure, why not going straight to e.g. AWS.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 13, 2016)

ShelLuser said:


> Just because it's Microsoft we have to doubt all their motivations?


Absolutely! Their history shows why. Brought to court and fined billions on two continents and under US Justice Department oversight until 2010 is good enough reason.


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## ShelLuser (Jun 13, 2016)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Absolutely! Their history shows why. Brought to court and fined billions on two continents and under US Justice Department oversight until 2010 is good enough reason.


Guilty until proven innocent? Also: you're not exactly placing things within context. One of those fines was handed out by the EU for failing to present users with a choice screen of what browser they wanted to use. Even though the OS itself posed no limitations what so ever on picking whatever you wanted to use. To be honest I also somewhat question the EU's ruling there. Especially because it happened at a time when FireFox and Chrome were already very strongly present on the browser market, if not plain out dominating it.

Next Microsoft got fined for violating a patent in their Explorer browser. The ability to add extra functionality through plugins was patented by a small company in Chicago (Eolas) and the University of California. The US and their famous patents.. Can't really say I'm surprised there either, it would be more surprising if a company didn't get sued over a patent dispute.

Even so I still fail to understand the relevance with Microsoft using FreeBSD in their Azure cloud. And even more so how this would threaten FreeBSD in any way.


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## kpa (Jun 13, 2016)

ShelLuser said:


> Guilty until proven innocent? Also: you're not exactly placing things within context. One of those fines was handed out by the EU for failing to present users with a choice screen of what browser they wanted to use. Even though the OS itself posed no limitations what so ever on picking whatever you wanted to use. To be honest I also somewhat question the EU's ruling there. Especially because it happened at a time when FireFox and Chrome were already very strongly present on the browser market, if not plain out dominating it.



I have always been on Microsoft's side on this matter even though I don't really like any of their offerings on the operating system market. The whole matter was pure lunacy driven by ignorance of EU's lawmakers faced with new technology that they didn't understand at all and MS's competitors taking advantage of that ignorance. It was Microsoft's operating system and they had the right to bundle their own browser with it. They did nothing to hamper the ability to install other browsers so the whole point of the lawsuit was on very thin ice from the beginning.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 13, 2016)

ShelLuser said:


> Guilty until proven innocent?


Not at all. They were guilty twice. I hope people can avoid a third time.



ShelLuser said:


> One of those fines was handed out by the EU for failing to


Let's not try and downplay a $1.3 Billion dollar fine as if it was a silly little misunderstanding and oversight. This is serious business by serious people and Microsoft chose their own path.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 13, 2016)

kpa said:


> It was Microsoft's operating system and they had the right to bundle their own browser with it.


You are absolutely correct *except* when it comes to a monopoly position and Microsoft has a monopoly position on the desktop. Taking advantage of a monopoly position to harm competition is illegal in almost every country in the world.


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## protocelt (Jun 16, 2016)

Except that Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly in cloud computing and hasn't even on the desktop for some time now. Competition exists in both markets with some quite viable alternatives at present. Past market dominance and/or behavior by Microsoft doesn't make this any less of an opportunity for FreeBSD in the present.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 16, 2016)

Cloud computing has nothing to do with desktop computing and Microsoft has had dominance on the desktop since forever. That has not changed much, and was especially back in the late 90s and early 00s when this all took place.


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## Maelstorm (Jun 16, 2016)

Any of you guys remember DR-DOS?  It was a version of DOS that was published by Digital Research.  What they did was reverse engineer MS-DOS and write a very complete specification of it.  Then they took that specification and gave it to their programmers to come up with a new DOS that wasn't a copy of MS-DOS.  DR-DOS would run Windows 3.x, until Microsoft changed Windows to run only on MS-DOS or PC-DOS (Both were written by Microsoft back then).

Then when Windows 95 came out, Microsoft missed the boat on the WWW, so they bought a browser from someone (I don't remember who), rebranded it, and called it Internet Explorer.  This was when you had to pay for Netscape Navigator.  Microsoft found that they couldn't even give away IE, so when 1998 came around, Microsoft released Windows 98, with IE bundled in and set to default.  Netscape suddenly found that they could no longer complete and had to give their browser away, for free.  It was around this time that Apple was struggling and many people were questioning Apple's viability as a platform.  Microsoft forced Apple to adopt IE as their default browser by threatening Apple with cancellation of Microsoft Office for Macintosh.  If that had happened, then there most likely wouldn't be a Apple Computer today.  Another victim of Microsoft was the Opera browser.  However, during this time, Microsoft invested USD$400M in Apple to keep them afloat so Microsoft could say that they had a competitor.  Same or similar situation between Intel and AMD.

Then there was the issue with the OEMs.  Microsoft charged different OEMs differently depending on the OEM's cooperation in loading Microsoft software onto the machine and setting IE to the defaults.  OEMs that fully cooperated were given perks such as lower per copy pricing on Windows, rights to early deployments, etc....  Those OEMs who didn't cooperate fully, or loaded competitor's software such as Netscape, were forced to pay higher per copy fees for Windows.  In one case (I think it was Compaq), Microsoft threatened to denied new licenses until well into the Christmas season so the OEM wouldn't be able to get their machines to market on time for the Christmas Holiday.

So yeah, this is the behavior of the same Microsoft that we all know and love today.  Although there are many choices for desktop operating systems out there, Microsoft and Apple are the only two big ones out there.  Don't get me wrong, there are people who run Linux and *BSD, but they are few and far between as most of the planet runs Microsoft on the desktop.  Now for servers, that's a different story.  Most web servers today run some version of Unix, be it *BSD, Linux, Solaris, or something else.

As I mentioned before, this is all a ploy by Microsoft to push their cloud services to as many platforms as they can so they can make money now that cloud computing is taking off.  Microsoft is late to the game though because Apple, Google, and Amazon have beaten them to the punch.  Microsoft is smart in one way though: They will not invest in new technology (or a new market) until their is a viable market for it so they can get a return on investment.  That way, they let others work all the bugs out and develop the market so they can muscle in and try to take it over.  They did it with the browser wars, they did it with the Internet, they did it with the desktop (That last one is a bit of a stretch though.), they tried it with mobile (phones) and failed, they tried it with music players (remember Zune?) and failed, they are trying it with tablets, they are trying it with game consoles, and now they are going to try it with the cloud.  There is nothing altruistic about Microsoft's motives, as their motive is making money, and lots of it.  If you think otherwise, then you are deceiving yourself.

I know that some people wonder why Microsoft is not to be trusted.  Well, there's your answer.


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## ANOKNUSA (Jun 16, 2016)

Maelstorm said:


> As I mentioned before, this is all a ploy by Microsoft to push their cloud services to as many platforms as they can so they can make money now that cloud computing is taking off.



It's not a "ploy," it's a _plan_. They need to stay relevant, and they've learned over the last 15 years that no one's going to trust their overly complicated, resource-hogging, desktop-centered computing platform to run a reliable server. At the same time, large businesses aren't going to fork out huge stacks of cash to retrain their cubicle drones to use a new computing platform, because a huge percentage of the workforce are still people who only use computers out of necessity and consider what they already know and use to be an objective standard.

Change is necessary to remain competitive, but the degree of change differs between Microsoft and their enterprise clients: if Microsoft doesn't change greatly they'll be left behind;, if their enterprise clients change to much, they'll end up with an unhappy and inefficient workforce. The apparent solution is a virtualized platform that system administrators can rely on and mold to their hearts' content, coupled with middleware that makes that virtualized platform work with the same old garbage the office drones are used to using. They have a selection of virtualized platforms to choose from, two of them---Linux and FreeBSD--being free software projects that Microsoft can't possibly own and are available elsewhere, and so can't eliminate as "competitors." It's also worth noting that about 99.99999999% of Microsoft's customers have no idea FreeBSD even exists; the only people who are going to use this service are those who would have liked to find their own way to shoehorn FreeBSD into their workflow anyway.


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## wblock@ (Jun 16, 2016)

ODF versus OOXML.  That was in 2007, not that long ago.


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## SirDice (Jun 17, 2016)

> *Microsoft is not creating their own version of FreeBSD*, but instead upstreaming changes at the kernel level to enable network and storage performance enhancements.


https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/b...n-on-the-projects-partnership-with-microsoft/


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## ShelLuser (Jun 20, 2016)

Maelstorm said:


> Any of you guys remember DR-DOS?  It was a version of DOS that was published by Digital Research.  What they did was reverse engineer MS-DOS and write a very complete specification of it.  Then they took that specification and gave it to their programmers to come up with a new DOS that wasn't a copy of MS-DOS.  DR-DOS would run Windows 3.x, until Microsoft changed Windows to run only on MS-DOS or PC-DOS (Both were written by Microsoft back then).


Odd. I've used Novell DOS back then for most of the time (I started replacing command.com with NDos, then eventually replaced the whole OS with Novell DOS for its better networking capabilities) and never ran into this issue.

You're mixing up your facts a bit here: the beta release of Windows 3.1 had these issues but the final product ran just fine on alternative environments. It did give out a warning about possible compatibility issues but apart from that things ran normally.



Maelstorm said:


> This was when you had to pay for Netscape Navigator.


.
Uhm, no?  Navigator, based on the freely available Mosaic, was available free of charge as well and was even included with OS/2 back then. The usage policy was a bit twisted, but it remained free of charge for non-commercial usage. Licenses weren't a major issue back then.

Thing is: I'm not denying that Microsoft has done some pretty weird things, but the same can be said about most companies from that era. What I am saying though is that in my opinion it's a little narrow minded to keep holding the past against them. The Microsoft we had then is pretty different from the Microsoft we have now. Though some influences seem to be pretty much the same. When looking at the horror which was Windows 8 then I really think that Microsoft sometimes still believes it can dominate the market.

But that doesn't mean that nothing good can come out of their efforts at all. A little distrust will never hurt, but following plain out paranoia won't do anyone much good.

Which is another thing: if you truly believe that Microsoft can damage FreeBSD like this then I also think that you're not giving the FreeBSD foundation enough credit. It takes 2 parties for such a scheme to work: Microsoft trying to do some damage /  sabotage, but also the foundation who would eventually let it happen. 

I think the FreeBSD foundation has been through much worse than this already, so quite frankly I don't doubt that they'll be able to decide what's best for FreeBSD here. And if people become really distressed over the way things go then a mere fork() is all they'd need to preserve what they care for.


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## Murph (Jun 20, 2016)

Back when the 8086 was current tech, I used to quite like MS (and they were even a significant Unix OS vendor back then).  Then a long series of what I considered to be misdeeds or morally/ethically questionable behaviour turned me strongly against them.

While I'm still distrustful of them, I see this official support for FreeBSD on Azure as basically only good overall for FreeBSD.  The magic of the BSD license makes it impossible for them to do any real long term harm to *BSD.  I have considerable faith in the BSD developers and code-expert-level users, the vast and constant code review process, that I don't believe that they could get away with trying to slip in harmful code (and to do so would be a PR catastrophe for them when it inevitably was exposed).

There is a major benefit for FreeBSD in this.  The world seems to be charging forward into the virtualised / cloud infrastructure model, with no signs of slowing down.  Having FreeBSD easily available on all major VM platforms is essential for its future success.  That is what this move by MS achieves.

Sure, they might try to pull people across from FreeBSD to the dark side, but this doesn't really give them a whole lot of leverage in that regard.  Suppose they capture a large number of FreeBSD VM units, then try to throw spanners into the works to try to push those over to their OS.  It doesn't work as long as there are competitive alternative VM platforms for people to deploy FreeBSD VMs.  Such a move would be more likely to give them a net loss of customers than make any real dent in FreeBSD.  One great thing about the virtualised infrastructure model is that it makes it relatively easy to change infrastructure supplier if the current supplier goes bad.

So, overall, I say that it's no bad thing currently, but yes a careful eye needs to be kept on them.  Save the worrying about it for if/when there is actually something real to worry about.  Until then, enjoy the free marketing and endorsement they are providing for our OS.


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## Sevendogs (Dec 12, 2016)

Funny, I had an email conversation with a Gnome developer many years ago about this very thing: "embrace, extend, extinguish".  I used to be a mod on the now defunct "gnomesupport" web site and a Gnome HIG tester - we had a conversation about how Mono on Linux was a ".NET" reverse engineer if you will, and how Microsoft would quietly sit in the background until Mono was heavily used in Linux then step forward with "ahem, that belongs to us". Funny enough, Microsoft went and open sourced .NET. I never would have thought it would go in that direction.


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 12, 2016)

"Open source" does not mean you can do anything you want with it. It only means you can look at the source.


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## Sevendogs (Dec 12, 2016)

I am familiar with the term, thanks.


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## PacketMan (Dec 16, 2016)

All I am gonna say is if there is any "anything, what ever that may be" that MS wants to get inserted into FreeBSD, it comes with a transfer of the ownership, IP and all, and in a way that MS is not even allow to say something like "FreeBSD built with MS techology".  They contribute purely as a gift, nothing else.  Later if MS say "ahem" FreeBSD can say "yeah but". Frankly I would not let them insert a line of descriptive text in anything. 
Scope creep can in incredibly sly. Obviously my trust boundary excludes MS.


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## kpa (Dec 16, 2016)

BSD license is very straightforward when it comes to contributions. Whatever MS has contributed now to FreeBSD is already "lost" to them, their contributions haven't bought them any votes in the re-use terms of FreeBSD that includes their contributions. They can of course try to have their influence on the ongoing development work of FreeBSD but still all of the results of the development are going to stay within the BSD license that allows anyone to take the source and run with it and do whatever they want to do with it.


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## kpa (Dec 16, 2016)

There's the other side of the coin as well and this is probably not what you have thought about or don't want to hear (at least some people here certainly don't). MS could easily make their own fork of FreeBSD and promote that as their own creation as long as they acknowledge the original license and copyright as it is required by the BSD license. This is pretty much what Sony did with FreeBSD on PS4, if MS has similar plans it could easily happen but who knows.


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