Didier Kryn <kryn@???> wrote:

>    It's absolutely amazing that one can be a Debian developper and a member of Microsoft in the same time. Yes, that's an ethical break down of the whole Debian project.

I think some people are reading more into this than they should.
There is no reason whatsoever that someone can not have a foot in both camps without there being any conflict. Microsoft isn't a single person, it's not even one "group" - there are different activities going on in there (and the same applies to Debian). So it's quite feasible that they would have people working on "open source" stuff without that compromising on those same people working on FOSS projects.

As to why Microsoft would support Debian, and why they'd only support Debian 8 ?
Simple economics. If people are looking to run Debian in the cloud, then Microsoft can support that, or they can watch as potential customers go to someone else. And if Microsoft can't host it and the customer goes elsewhere, then that customer may well decide to take their other (Windows) stuff elsewhere as well rather than deal with multiple cloud providers.
As to why only Debian 8 and not anything else - well it's logical that they'd only add support for the currently supported stable version. Had they added support for Debian (say) a year or so ago then they might have started with Debian 7 as that was then the currently supported stable version. It would be a hard sell to say "hey guys, lets put investment into an old version that's almost out of support" :-/

That really is something that anyone with a few brain cells switched on should be capable of understanding. It doesn't require any underlying conspiracy theory, it doesn't require any assumption that they are trying their usual "embrace, extend, and extinguish" tactics, just that some of the managers there actually have some clue about doing business in the real world.
That extends to their apparent epiphany in now supporting what they used to call a cancer. It's simply a realisation on the part of those who actually do understand, that FOSS is here to stay and they can either accept that or lock themselves out of an increasing part of the IT world.

I'm not saying that there is no element within MS still trying to embrace, extend, and extinguish - just that you don't need to assume that to understand why they might support things like Debian.


Turning this around a bit, suppose someone from MS came along and asked one or more of your guys "some of our clients are demanding Devuan support on Azure, will you come and work part time on making that happen ?" - what would your response be ?

Would it be "hell no, I'm not working for MS *because* it's MS"
Or would it be, "yes - it's MS, but it's getting Devuan to a wider user base ?"


I have to say that some of what I see written on this list plays right into the "bunch of hippies with an axe to grind" stereotype some people like to bash GNU/Linux/FOSS with.
I realise some people have strong views on some things. I can't help getting the feeling that some people are letting prejudice and hatred for certain people or projects cloud their judgement. Yes there are real technical reasons for wanting to avoid SystemD, there are no real technical reasons for believing that someone can't work for Microsoft and on Debian while also having integrity.


As an aside, someone I know works for Redhat - I didn't realise he'd changed jobs until recently (he used to work for a private company that was a spinout from a university project). He's a nice guy, and very clever I might add. Should I think less of him because Redhat pays his wages ? He's not involved with systemd, nor anything else contentious AFAIK - he works on virtualisation, something many of us use. As it happens, as an Apple user I used to rely heavily on a (hidden in the OS) technology his previous employer came up with.