How a once unthinkable alliance shows Microsoft cares about you - CNET

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At its Build conference on Wednesday, Microsoft did something that made my jaw drop.

It wasn't the HoloLens augmented reality demonstration. Or the Cortana digital assistant and the push to build other bots. It was the aouncement that Microsoft is bringing to Windows a developer-oriented tool that's central to two rival operating systems, Linux and Apple's OS X.

You needn't give a fig about that tool, called the Boue Again Shell, or Bash. You should care, though, that Microsoft is bringing Bash to Windows because it demonstrates how profoundly Microsoft has changed -- for the better. In short, Microsoft is showing its old feisty spirit now that it's an underdog again. And that should bring iovation that benefits us all.

Microsoft in the 1990s built a robust business selling Windows, which still powers the vast majority of personal computers, and its Office suite of productivity apps. Then came the era of Inteet access and smartphones, which gave Google and Apple the opportunity to show how complacent Microsoft had become.

Last decade, that plodding Microsoft responded to the competitive challenge of Linux with rhetoric and legal attacks, not through iovation. Linux is open-source software, meaning that anyone can look at its underlying code, modify it and use it in their own products for free. And it was a hit with programmers. No wonder Linux now powers everything from Facebook's data centers to Google Android phones.