Summary: Countering the ludicrous suggestion that running GNU/Linux under proprietary environments is a worthwhile compromise

ONE of the clear advantages of GNU/Linux is that it improves security through transparency and empowers the user (or administrator, not the same as host) by giving full control to the user. A lot of this control, security and more broadly freedom get lost when people host in so-called 'clouds' which are proprietary and remotely managed, even spied on. Examples include Amazon (quite famously), but Microsoft too wants a piece of the pie. A lot of media deception, echoing lies from Microsoft representatives, lulls various people and lures them into a dangerous trap.

"A lot of media deception, echoing lies from Microsoft representatives, lulls various people and lures them into a dangerous trap."This rather bizarre new piece which compares ancient Rome to software ends with troubling words. "The moral of the story," it says, is that ganging up against common enemies is a possibility. "In today's tech world," the author says, "Athens is Open Source; Sparta is traditional commercial vendors; and Rome is... well, it depends on where you stand. When I first wrote this piece, I had Microsoft in mind. Today, perhaps Amazon is a better fit. Will the outcome be the same? Or will Athens and Sparta realize they have a common enemy?"

By "commercial" the author means proprietary. Some want us to believe that a liaison between Free/libre software and proprietary is a necessary thing.

The proprietary Hyper-V, which is NSA-friendly by definition (it runs on Windows), is advertised for hosting of GNU/Linux virtual instances (VMs) over at IDG, which does a lot to promote Microsoft's agenda these days, including dissemination of lies about the cost of Vista 10 [1, 2, 3].

Microsoft already monitors (PRISM style) VMs that run GNU/Linux if administrators are dumb enough to choose Microsoft as a host, but Simon Sharwood and others [1, 2] insist that Microsoft wants to 'help' GNU/Linux by providing monitoring tools:

Microsoft is finally noticing that most for the workloads on Virtual Machines on Azure are actually Linux-powered, and they are finally releasing the necessary tools to monitor those workloads.

Microsoft openwasher Maria Deutscher [1, 2, 3] went as far calling it an "open-source push". Well, it is proprietary, not "open source", but let's imagine otherwise, at least for Microsoft's PR department (Deutscher has been doing a lot to help it this year).

There is no wisdom in joining hands with Microsoft and no point to it in general. People who somehow were led to believe that "Microsoft loves Linux" (inside Azure only) surely delude themselves, as Microsoft would always hope. True quotes from Microsoft are laid out below; click to read the revealing document in full. Microsoft is no ally of GNU/Linux. It's dangerous to even think that it is. ⬆