After years of battling Linux as a competitive threat, Microsoft is now offering Linux-based operating systems on its Windows Azure cloud service. The Linux services will go live on Azure at 4 a.m. EDT on Thursday. At that time, the Azure portal will offer a number of Linux distributions, including Suse Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2, OpenSuse 12.01, CentOS 6.2 and Canonical Ubuntu 12.04. Azure users will be able to choose and deploy a Linux distribution from the Microsoft Windows Azure Image Gallery and be charged on an hourly pay-as-you-go basis.
Microsoft has been known to use Linux before, but this, I think, is one of those major milestones in accepting that Linux ain’t that bad after all. All these years, Open Source advocates have been known to quote Gandi (arguably):
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
And they were right. I hope now we can close that chapter and move on to the next holy war. Vim vs. emacs anyone?