high-usage vendors like hp (and dell, lenovo previously reported on) have to start paying-in to support the operating costs of the service.

they certainly aren't doing it because they want to.

Think about it. Right now, windows is a fucking hog of an OS. It takes up huge space, gas huge overhead, and needs huge amounts of ram. Ram and storage are expensive as hell right now.

Linux can run well on a laptop on decade old tech (One of my old laptops is literally from 2016 and runs Linux mint butter smooth).

So by promoting Linux, HP can sell a laptop with less ram and less storage, that doesn't run like shit. Saves them loads of money. They may not give a flying fuck about Linux. This still helps their bottom line.

me too but i don't think its a good idea to to trust their good gesture yet; their product lines are still hella closed and not allow for much customization. even in the rare instances they allow to they impose arbitrary limitation and/or require their software

What's the "BDS" list? Never heard of it.

Damn I just looked that up and WIX is on the list. WTF, WIX? Damnit

They've still got a pretty hefty server division and increasingly not using HP/UX, no?

Self preservation seems like a fairly obvious motivator

Hostile Printers

And Linux should not survive by altruism, but by actual dependency.

Revenue is not operational profit

Linux desktop marketshare is going up, though it's definitely not huge. Windows 11 is not particularly popular, and very resource-heavy in a time where those same resources are exploding in price. I'd imagine that hardware companies want to hedge their bets a bit and supporting Linux is this manner is pretty safe.

It's worth noting that HP is also one of the bigger hardware vendors and a lot of servers run Linux, so again firmware updates are probably a good thing you support.

HP uses fwupd on some models and 100k is cheaper than hiring a single engineer for in house contributions.