Microsoft Promises Docker Open Source App Virtualization on Windows

As far as I understood, a Docker container contains a full Linux install running in virtualized mode. If a company sells such a container to run their services, MS would repeat the same racketeering technique as it does with Android mobile OEMS : claim that they are selling software containing MS patents and cash in shamelessly ! I may be mistaken. Any thoughts ?

I don't think this is a case of MS patent trolling. Microsoft lost the "Internet Server" war [meaning holding the top of the pile by a large margin] a long time ago. However, if Microsoft can insert itself as the base layer under a plethora of GNU/Linux servers - then they've effectively played themselves back into the game.

Proof? Maybe here: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/04/02/april-2014-web-...

Yeah, this is not about patents. This is about renting out cloud space like Amazon EC2 or RH Openshift.

And Docker, as best i can tell, do not hold a full Linux install.

What it does it wrap up the programs and their lib dependencies into a portable "chroot", so that it can be dropped on top of and run within any Linux install.

One such Linux install is CoreOS, a minimal "distro" derived from ChromeOS.

In essence MS could not care what people choose to run on their Azure service, and the more options they can offer the better for them. What they are looking for is rent, basically.