Re: [Trisquel-users] The Ubuntu Userspace for Windows Developers -- A Project by Canonical and Microsoft. What is your idea?

[dguthrie]

> One thing that must be noted is the possibility that Microsoft won't  
actually tell the end-user that he's using free software.
I suspect this also. They call it running the "Ubuntu Linux userspace"  
because if they referenced GNU project, some people might investigate  
further. They will most likely talk about "open source".
Personally, I think what Microsoft have done here is really not very amazing.  
They have made NT kernel (so we should really say GNU/NT) binary compatible  
with programs compiled against glibc and the Linux kernel, by adding support  
for various system calls to the NT kernel. So basically, it just runs  
binaries that Ubuntu (or whichever distribution) build. Therefore they can  
avoid GPL by just downloading the binaries from Ubuntu's website just like  
how Mint provides a tool to download Nvidia's driver. All the good programs  
have Windows ports anyway, so this is really just PR for tech journalists.