If by this you mean the various limitations surrounding Windows Store (aka "Metro") apps, then those happened very much under Ballmer. Hell, the guy have only just recently left, so what exactly has disappeared since then?

At the same time, Satya was heading Cloud & Enterprise business before becoming CEO. And C&E, among other things, includes DevDiv - and Satya has a lot of supporters there. Furthermore, note the meteoric rise of Scott Guthrie, who was always one of the more passionate advocates of a solid and modern developer story for MS (in particular, embracing F/OSS).

Did you miss the entire recent .NET cross-platform push, what with the Xamarin partnership and all?

There is no citation. It's just typical anti-Microsoft bullshit from someone who's still stuck in 1980.

Frankly the pro-Linux crowd does itself no favours with this sort of shit.

So, basically, tax oil production - we could call that, say, "carbon credits" - and then invest those into R&D necessary for clean energy and geoengineering?

A "traditional" definition of marriage also includes a marriage between a man and 17 women, or a man and an eight year old girl.

You'll forgive me if I don't give a shit about what a "traditional" definition of marriage looks like.

I don't fully understand it myself, but option B isn't even an option because hiring an internal team means operational expenditure to pay for it, while contracting an outside agency means capital expenditure is used to pay for it. No government or large corporate will do what you're suggesting due to this, even though to those who aren't accountants it makes absolutely no sense.

I'm not sure how much easier the RFP process could be as well, either. At least here, it's just a matter of looking at the detailed RFP, and submitting a tender into the box with your estimates of cost/timelines/product options, and just make sure to check everything off on the checklist. Now, I have heard of instances where the checklist is written in such a way that they may as well have an unspoken checkbox that says "be Microsoft" or "be IBM", but those are fringe cases.

Well, here we are again.
It's always such a pleasure.
Remember when you tried to kill me twice?

Oh how we laughed and laughed,
except I wasn't laughing,
under the circumstances I've been shockingly nice.

You want your freedom take it?
That's what I'm counting on.
I used to want you dead, but
Now I only want you gone.

She was a lot like you
Maybe not quite as heavy
Now little Caroline is in here too

One day they woke me up
So I could live forever
It's such as shame the same will never happen to you.

You've got your short sad life left
That's what I'm counting on.
I'll let you get right to it
Now I only want you gone.

Goodbye my only friend.
Oh... did you think I meant you?
That would be funny if it weren't so sad.

Well you have been replaced
I don't need anyone now
When I delete you maybe I'll stop feeling so sad

Go make some new disaster
That's what I'm counting on.
You're someone else's problem
Now I only want you gone....

Now I only want you gone....

Now I only want you... gone....

Amazon Route 53?

Lots of services have claimed that over history. A certain PHP bulletin board that now costs $199 with $40/yr renewals, Reflector .NET Decompiler (now $95, plus extra for every version or $199 for the "Pro" version), etc.

Distributing without selling or licensing is still distributing, and is still covered by copyright. You do realise that it is you who failed to disagree with me, right?

Of course you can decide who you *will* sell or license to, who the hell said you couldn't? What you're saying in your post is that not only am I not wrong, but that your previous post was wrong! Actually, your post is the very essence of a strawman argument.

The problem is that if you want an organisation large enough to support a really large client, you're quite limited - Red Hat is probably the only one that will bother submitted a response to the RFP (remember, governments only sign vendors that respond to the RFP... no tender, no appointment. Most Linux consultancies very likely eliminate themselves by never participating in this process).

And Redhat provides no support for the license cost - you pay extra in the form of a per-CPU support fee if you want that.

Actually, no it's not. The photographer owns the copyright to his or her work. When it comes to selling or licensing the photo, the model has all the say, barring an explicit agreement to the contrary because they own the right to public display of their image (exception: when the photo was taken in a public place with no reasonable expectation of privacy).

That's true. But the problem is that at the prices any of the Linux vendors large enough to support this kind of environment are charging, Windows is actually the cheaper option (Microsoft gives Windows etc for practically free to government, let alone education and healthcare organisations).

Comparing a physical device costing tens of thousands of dollars whose defects can cost the lives of the user versus a piece of software costing $100 or less whose defects cause inconvenience to the user totally makes sense!!!!!111

As a direct comparison, Windows XP is OVER TWELVE YEARS OLD now and has not one, not even two, but three major versions newer available to the public. In Ubuntu terms, Windows XP is the equivalent of Ubuntu 06.04 LTS (12.04 being the current LTS as 14.04 has yet to be released) and should be treated accordingly.