Microsoft’s reaction to open
It’s interesting to follow what Microsoft has been doing, especially in relation to their reactions to the open world.
The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project was always interesting. It ships with Linux as a default, and it didn’t take long for Microsoft to offer Windows on this device. Though its likely that there were never any large deployments for this.
Now, you find that Microsoft Windows 10 is basically a free upgrade for users from the days of Windows 7. And it looks like upgrades are going to be free going forward. This follows what Apple has done with OSX, and if you look back even a decade, this seemed like an odd choice – there was money to be made with the OS. This will adjust some TCO calculations for sure.
Now there’s the Raspberry Pi 2. It is also the first Raspberry Pi to be able to run Windows for IoT devices. Apparently this will also be free (for makers; whatever that means). You’re buying a $35 computer, and using the SD card as an easily swappable OS.
I should probably also mention that you can run Linux on Azure, their cloud platform.
So all in, it’s interesting to watch Microsoft, the company once the epitome of being proprietary, now learning to embrace open.
