Linux, Open Source, & anti Microsoft news

After pledging to slash its greenhouse gas emissions, Microsoft’s climate pollution has grown by 30 percent as the company prioritizes AI.

Today is Microsoft’s May 2024 Patch Tuesday, which includes security updates for 61 flaws and three actively exploited or publicly disclosed zero days. This Patch Tuesday only fixes one critical vulnerability, a Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability.

Open-sourcing large language models (LLMs) isn’t easy. Just ask the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which has been working on an AI-compatible open-source definition for nearly two years. Some companies — Meta, for example — claim to have open-sourced their LLMs. (They haven’t.) But, now IBM has gone ahead and done it.

The European Commission is readying antitrust objections for Microsoft in a probe into how the software giant bundles its video platform Teams with its must-have office software products, according to two people with direct knowledge of the case.

Today, the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, is excited to announce the launch of the High Performance Software Foundation (HPSF). Through a series of technical projects, HPSF aims to build, promote, and advance a portable core software stack for high performance computing (HPC) by increasing adoption, lowering barriers to contribution, and supporting development efforts.

Microsoft, the $3 trillion tech company that recently spent $68.7 billion to acquire sprawling conglomerate Activision Blizzard and prior to that nabbed ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion, will likely continue cutting jobs within its first-party Xbox Game Studios to become a leaner operation.

Vodafone Business signed-up to the Linux Foundation’s group focused on creating open frameworks for edge computing, joining the likes of AT&T, Arm, Samsung, Huawei and Intel in the project focused on driving the industrial internet.

Microsoft has confirmed that the April 2024 Windows security updates break VPN connections across client and server platforms. The company explains on the Windows health dashboard that “Windows devices might face VPN connection failures after installing the April 2024 security update or the April 2024 non-security preview update.”

According to Statcounter, in April 2024, Windows 11 lost 0.97 points, going down from 26.68% to 25.65%. All those users seemingly went for Windows 10 since the OS, which will soon turn nine, crossed the 70% mark for the first time since September 2023, gaining 0.96 points.

Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 because it was “very worried” that Google was years ahead in scaling up its AI efforts. An internal email, titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” between Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, CEO Satya Nadella, and co-founder Bill Gates reveals some of the high-level discussions around an investment opportunity in the months before Microsoft revealed the partnership. Microsoft has now invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI, adding its models to Office apps, its Bing search engine, Edge, and even inside its Windows operating system. It has helped Microsoft be seen as more of a leader in AI, instead of falling behind as it once feared five years ago.