First Phone Out of Microsoft-Nokia -- and It's an Android 193
An anonymous reader writes BBC reports that the first phone resulting from the Microsoft-Nokia merger has been announced: the Nokia X2. And foiling everybody's ability to guess what OS it would run on, the answer is Android. But this being Microsoft, do expect some embrace-and-extend — the user interface is similar to the Windows phone. And it is being offered as a way to hook users into its cloud-based services, several of which come pre-installed as apps. Is this the first Linux product being offered by Microsoft? Can we upgrade Microsoft's social rating from CCC to CCC+?
Re:Microsoft has been selling Linux for years (Score:4, Informative)
various (Score:5, Informative)
Can we upgrade Microsoft's social rating from CCC to CCC+?
For the benefit of those, such as myself, who did not get the reference, CCC is a low bond credit rating. [wikipedia.org]
Also, a couple of things to keep in mind here about the history of MS corporate strategy. First, MS has a record of adopting (e. g. Kerberos) or imposing (e.g. OpenXML) open standards for the purpose of corrupting or abusing those standards. A record of unscrupulous behavior breeds distrust and it would be reasonable to suspect that MS could have something similar on mind for the Android platform. Good summary of the Kerberos episode here: [vanwensveen.nl]
Secondly, and more innocuously, someone at MS might have wised up and realized that profits from their Android patent licensing [zdnet.com] would be better than losses from another round of failed MS OS phone investment.
Re:Microsoft has been selling Linux for years (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Microsoft has been selling Linux for years (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft has a long and interesting Linux/FOSS history.
I remember in the late 90s, Microsoft actually released a Front Page Server Extensions module for Apache on Linux, so people using FP could publish sites to Linux servers.
During the early 2000s, MS shipped a bunch of GPL'd stuff via the Interix/SFU product.
Currently, System Center (enterprise management tool) can also monitor and manage Linux machines along side windows (and Mac) machines.
As noted elsewhere, Microsoft has made Linux a 1st class scenario for Hyper-V on-premise and Azure hosted uses.
Microsoft has opened some its internal projects to the external community, with acceptable licenses, and Microsoft has also contributed to existing FOSS projects where it has made sense. Internally, "should we use existing FOSS" or "should we open source this?" are questions that are coming up now where in the past, they never did, and asking them would get you some funny looks.
In the future, you're going to see Microsoft doing a better job of meeting customers in mixed/heterogenous settings. We've got a new CEO that has provided this guidance to the entire company. The market changes have certainly become too large to ignore, but the bottom line is that we're adapting.
On the business side, getting some of a customer's business is better than getting none of their business.
As always, we partner with everybody and we compete against everybody. For example, I sit in a building where most of the developers here work on Microsoft's own ERP products, yet I worked on features that let Visual Studio talk to SAP.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Informative)
You are an idiot. All Android devices can access and use apps from the Amazon store.
It's funny how you go around shilling for Apple and condemning Android when it's extremely clear that you haven't even used an Android device to be able to make any judgements. You are exactly the unthinking, prejudiced type of customer Apple enjoys raping.