Linux Software on Windows?
Reuters is reporting that Microsoft is entering into an agreement with Novell Inc. that will allow open source Linux software to run on Microsoft Windows platforms. This could bring big changes to the open source community in a lot of ways. I personally think its a smart move by Microsoft, being that it could poetically drive users away from switching to Linux for particular software reasons and keep them on Windows. Now we need Microsoft to agree to allow their products to be used on Linux, but we all know there is too much greed on their end to open their products source code to the public. Besides, Microsoft going open source would just unveil a ton of more security flaws and exploits, making the product more prone to attacks then it already is.
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Tagged with: Applications • Linux • Microsoft • software • Windows
Filed under: Linux • News • Windows
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That is an agreement beneficial to Novell and to MS, not necessarily to Linux.
1) Because MS is locking Novell patents (and it already did something similar with Sun), so other Linux companies cannot get any help in eventual litigations… Dividi et impera…
2) Because the porting effort is not bilateral. You have OS-A which has its own applications plus the ones of OS-B, and OS-B that has its own application but none of OS-A. Which one do you want to use?
This is a very poorly written article. A lot of Linux software already runs on Windows, since most Linux devs have the sense to let users run their apps on the OS of their choice. Their source code wouldn’t need to be released to be used on Linux, and opening it up won’t make it any less secure, in fact, it would probably make it more secure.