Microsoft is fucking up. I thought Linux or the GPL was their antichrist. Their job is to maintain and sustain their own genetic variability in the computing genepool, without going extinct or exterminating others completely. Microsoft is fucking up on both fronts. All they have to do to compete with Linux (that used to run google.com) or BSD (that used to run yahoo.com) is to drop that fucking stupid ass client access license from Windows Server. People hate and despise getting screwed like that. Client access license? Are you kidding me? Sell me a server that takes up to 10 connections, up to 100, up to 1000, or up to 10,000, or up to 100,000, or up to 1,000,000 concurrently, and don't fucking make me hoard a pile or these certificates per seat with the woven thread and funky official holier than thou humbug about them. All people wanna do with those CAL certificates is wipe their shitty asses. That's Microsoft's only problem on the server front. Their job is not to accept Linux, because now they can no longer attack it like they used to, once they give it their blessing, but to push their own shit, and push it in balance and harmony with the rest of the ecosystem.
Your job is
1. to survive, or go down fighting for something that you care about to survive
2. to not exterminate other varieties in your vehement competition against them
Microsoft has and still is fucking up royally on both fronts. We don't want them running Linux. We don't want them to give their blessing to Linux. And especially we don't want no fucking cloud with blackmailed monthly access fees to our data held hostage. What we want is something better than a "Vista sucks" on the desktop, a better and improved Win2K or XP, leaner and meaner, with less garbage and snooping piled on into it.
Intellectual property rights were erected during the founding father's days out of nothing, to create a better world, to create and enhance creativity, but intellectual property, unlike, say, land or chattel property, was always meant to be temporary, and ultimately enter the public domain, where all human knowledge and information ultimately belongs, including all GPL stuff after copyright expiration should enter public domain. Initially the terms were 14 years renewable to 28. These days we have temporary intellectual property, but it just got extended to 90 years from 70 around 1999. Why stop there? Why not have a 547 year and 6 month term? What's fair? Just how much more extra incentive did Walt Disney have to create Mickey Mouse if he knew that in 1999 the terms on his property were gonna be 90 years not 70?
Intellectual property was not erected to create a world of extorting or hogging property then blackmailing everybody for access to it. Such as music artists that get paid 3 cents out of a dollar for a song, the rest goes to the labels or publishers that extorted a signature to sign the property rights over. Yes, marketing, distribution, being a merchant is hard work that does deserve a fair cut. But fair is all a matter of price. Yes, sometimes people throw stuff away for peanuts because that's their perceived value, and then whoever buys it and resells it, to someone who values that item much more, yes, there is this winning, or lottery effect, or money for free effect in the world, because perceived values are allowed to fluctuate widely. But there are situations like music artists, who would like a bigger cut of the price, but they are strongarmed into deals, and there are consumers who want a lower price on the music, and both these tendencies tend to cut into the profit of the middle man, the publisher, or intellectual property right hogger. Just cuz the rules on intellectual property have artifacts that can be technically abused, you should not forget about the good will or good intentions of why they were erected in the first place: to spur creation of new material. How is the richest guy on the planet fit in with this picture? Obviously he carries a lot of bad will, just like Carnegie and Rockefeller did, but not because people are petty and jealous, but they have this sense of fairness or fair cut. Like, instead of making 50 billion for yourself with something that started out as MS DOS (copying CP/M almost the same exact way as ReactOS copies Windows, or as Windows copied the look and feel of Apple), why isn't 500 million enough for a family? Instead of paying 80K for top programmers fresh out of college and run them like a slave til they burn out, because by that time it's time to hire the latest experts, and in computing a 22 year old is a greater expert than a 55 year old, or at least used to be, in the 90's, why not create a stable world, with a career for a lifetime, and pay these kids 300K instead of 80K, and make them compete for the jobs internally, whether old or young, like HP had various units during the HP way days, often duplicating each other's work, but those that did a better job made it, and those that did not, got disbanded, and always fresh seed, fresh teams started.
What's with this fucking cloud and even more power mongering, then wondering why games like Kill Bill are made, whack-a-mole style? They create a lot of bad will with their power mongering to where people who have half a brain of an intellect and some sense of fairness and justice will do anything not to have to work for Microsoft, or even deal with it. You can make all that money but you can't take it to the grave. Yes, you can give it to your tribe, and that's important too, but somehow, some, at least 50/50 deals between workers and owners sound more fair than 97% owners and 3% creators, or even 3% owners and 97% creators is much better, and spurs creativity, spurs a better world, the reason why intellectual property was erected and created out of nothing, not for setting up a world where people blackmail each other for basic access to knowledge, where even all public domain is endangered, and where terms are temporary, but practically infinite. Otherwise it may be necessary to go back to the no intellectual property whatsoever world. It all comes down to overly arrogant, aggressive, exterminating others behaviro or overly lame, overly pussy, overly self exterminating behavior, neither of which strike a good balance.
Microsoft's job is to create good products, not the "bless the GPL." If they wanna go about it the way Novell Suse went, that the Linux manager, Yast, is copyrighted, while the rest of the stuff is GPL, and the system won't run right without the manager, or won't run at all, I think even Stallman would accept that, as long as improvements to the GPL sourcecode are also released.
When selling a server or operating system, the true price is not the embodied intellectual property, but the guarantee, or the insurance policy, that it will function. So the same product, like Windows Server, could be sold to a small business of 50 people, for $200, for a company of 500 for $5000, and to a company of 20,000 or a bank, military or hospital, for $1 million, and in that, the idea is that should the product fail, that purchase price is actually an insurance policy, if the 200 dollar version fails, there is a 50,000 compensation, but if the $1 million fails catastrophically, there is an insurance policy with the upper limit near $1 billion, such as stock losses, etc. This way companies that pay 1 million for a server every 10 years or 20 years know that the people who sold it to them have a strong incentive to make sure it does not fail, or will go to the end of the world and move mountains to fix a problem instead of having to shell out a billion. It's not really Linux or Windows that matters when you sell Server versions at high cost, but the insurance policy that tags along with it. And a small business of 50 should not be stuck paying exorbitant licenses, including per seat client access licenses, or even a large business should be able to choose the risks they assume, so even a 30 billion dollar business full of cheap asses who want to buy Windows Server for $50, they can, and they get a good product, but when they have an issue and call tech support, they get put on hold for 30 minutes before someone talks to them, and be told to please wait while tech supports finishes masturbating, before they can explain their problem, all based on the kind of insurance policy they carry, and the amount at stake from tech supports perspective. Even the military does not want communist linux with nobody to chase or be responsible for it. Who wrote that piece of code in linux? Who knows? Somebody! When Microsoft sells Linux Novell Suse Yast style, if they so choose to, to the military, what they mean is that they reinspected the code and they are underwriting it, to a certain amount of insurance policy coverage limit. That's what military leaders want to see. I want somebody responsible for the software I'm running, I don't want it for free and I have to be the expert myself, I'd rather pay somebody, but I don't wanna get raped in the ass on price constantly, nor have to put up with the Vista sucks bullshit, or put all my military data on some private cloud.
But for the sake of computing genetic variability, we'd much prefer a leaner and meaner and improved version of Microsoft Windows from Microsoft, not some Microsoft Linux, maybe a Microsoft BSD like OS-XYZ, that they own as private property, pay their programmers right and give a good price to their customers. And all that stuff should run on x86, arm, mips, etc, etc, all for the sake of genetic variability. Last time NT ran on anything but x86 was NT4 on DEC alpha. Just cuz Microsoft and Intel become winners of some competitive race, and they are good at exterminating others and undercutting price and giving a higher quality product, that still does not mean there is no need for genetic variability in computing. And everybody jumping on the Linux bandwagon, sell stuff where other people do the work for free, is not really the answer, even if you reinspect their work and underwrite it with a high coverage limit insurance policy.