On Mon, 25 Sep 2017 12:18:58 +1300, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'Stallman "believes that Microsoft's decision to build a Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) amounts to an attempt to extinguish software that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve."'
Whatever you might say about RMS as a person, he has rarely been wrong about this sort of thing. Having said that, I don’t think Microsoft has quite the sheer marketing power it used to have. It has very rarely been in such a position of playing catch-up, and in none of those previous instances that I recall has it been in that position for long. Whereas when you look at its competitiveness vis-à-vis Linux and Open Source, its complacency goes back decades, and its realization of the situation has been very slow and grudging. As an example, look at its attempts to port PowerShell to Linux, which haven’t exactly been a big success <https://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/wlug/2016-August/014394.html>. Overall, it still can’t get the hang of this whole command-line thing <https://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/wlug/2015-June/013590.html>.