What a difference (nearly) 20 years makes

In the late 90s, when I was just starting out in the industry, there was a certain climate developing in the industry.  Anyone remember "Embrace, extend, extinguish"?  It was Microsoft's competition strategy, only revealed later during the Netscape trial focusing on Big Bill's anti-competitive stance.  I cut my teeth in the infrastructure space, and specifically with Windows NT, but I was never really cool with the degree of aggression in that strategy.

Forward to 2016, and how different the world is.  Not only is open source all the rage, but also instrumental in a lot of the innovation around digital, agile, IOT, big data, the list goes on.

But also, how different Microsoft is.  From Bill Gates (who turns out to be a big philanthropist now that he's not squashing competitors), to Steve "chair throwing" Ballmer, and now Satya Nadella, the industry giant has gone through some struggles to stay relevant.  Sure, the staples aren't going away anytime soon (Windows, Office, SQL, Exchange, Dynamics etc), but they struggled with bringing innovation to market for years, despite the R&D bunch demonstrating some very cool stuff.  Satya's far more open approach to the industry is good for everyone.  The Surface Pro devices are great, and I like how branding from Halo has trickled down to other products (Spartan, Cortana etc).

Following the announcement of Hyper-V support for Linux guests, I worked on a project where we deployed VMs in that way.  We received a few raised eyebrows, but actually, the challenges we did encounter were not insurmountable.  MS even provide open source SCOM agents to ensure management visibility of the x86 virtual landscape in one pane of glass, regardless of the guest OS.  Rumours have been around for a while now that Windows 10 might go open source - it was a free upgrade from 8 for licensed users.  Then recently, I was surprised to hear about SQL Server running on Linux.  Finally, this week I heard that Ubuntu will run natively on Windows 10!  No VM, no cygwin, native.  According to this blog post, it's aimed at developers and intended to extend the innovation and development flexibility.  Sounds great!

On reflection though, I'm wondering what exactly people will use it for (possibly not the same thing as what MSFT intend it to be used for).  Docker?  Some dev tools or frameworks that are Linux-first?  Perhaps you could run ubuntu on Windows, then install WINE, then add a some old-school Windows games that won't run on Win 10!  Notwithstanding that the concept would make the world implode (or the system overheads would slow everything to a crawl).

So, what does everyone think?  What will/would you see it being used for?  Is the co-operation too little too late?  Is everyone too focused on cloud-first, FOSS and other disruptive innovations to make the most of this?  I know I dropped Windows ages ago after having a strop over the various editions and the different license tiers.  I use AWS Linux for anything not on my Mac.

Regardless, let's just hope that "embrace, extend, extinguish" is truly dead and buried.