> If the NT Kernel is "Doing Linux better than Linux", that's a fascinating statement, because the NT Kernel is also running Win32, UWP, and all of its own chores at the same time. What's the Linux kernel doing? ;P
Microsoft, the former juggernaut, would say "Linux, who?", and then proceed to throw their sales and marketing weight around.
> a testament to the underlying NT kernel, because the NT kernel doesn't care, it's still chugging along doing its thing and doing it well.
It must be advantageous for Microsoft, at least in the short-term, to open themselves up and decrease friction between themselves and the Linux community, especially on the server-side where Linux won, than to innovate and compete on Microsoft-centric features and functions - to create something new that's more compelling.
Also, Microsoft risks seeding their own destruction when they create compelling new technologies like XMLHttpRequest that, once appropriated by their competition, reduces the compelling nature of any other technologies Microsoft created for platform lock-in. I can understand innovation fatigue setting in for management when they have enough institutional XMLHttpRequest stories to go along with the endless failed software project investments and evaporating markets.
I assign meaning to the decisions and directions that individuals and companies take. Microsoft paved a gilded path for application development that points AWAY from the Windows platform. Yes, there is novelty and a definite technical achievement there that one can appreciate. But I choose to focus on the motives rather than the technical achievement, and I am disturbed by what I perceive is Microsoft's capitulation in the consumer software/platform arena.
If Microsoft is soon to be the SAAS and Cloud company and not the Windows/Office company, then the software world is worse-off because competition is good.