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Thank you for your reply. Yes. I understand that that's the message here in the HN comments, but my question is why. In what way does this mean that MS is embr

Thank you for your reply. Yes. I understand that that's the message here in the HN comments, but my question is why. In what way does this mean that MS is embracing open source? Many replies to that question (including yours) have been along the lines of "Remember when they were saboteurs? They just took an action that wasn't overt malice!" Again, I assume I'm missing something, but it all sounds like "Hitler doesn't spend all of his time engaging in acts of genocide; Sometimes, he eats cereal." (BTW, no, I don't think of MS as inherently evil. I make my own living on closed-source software.) I'm not seeing the "complete reversal" people are talking about, nor even a partial reversal. Nor do I see the opposite. These things appear orthogonal. Is this all because their new Azure-specific tooling is open source? Or is it simply because they're shaking hands (harder) with an organization that has OSS street credit? Or something else entirely?

krylon 11y ago
Microsoft used to be very hostile towards open source in general and Linux in particular. These days, the publish some core parts of their software stack - the new Javascript engine, for example, the core CLR .Net runtime, including the JIT and GC - as open source and actively support running Linux instances in Azure. That still does not mean, of course, that Microsoft is an "open source company" now, but I think it shows their attitude has changed significantly. Given their past, I think this is at least a very good sign. Of course, they still engage in plenty of lock-in, and their baroque licensing terms can drive a poor sysadmin insane. But there is some progress, and a lot of people are happy to see that. Of course, the main reason for this is that the world has changed, and Microsoft can no longer exploit their monopoly on the desktop when a fair amount of people have - at least at home - ditched laptops or desktops completely in favor of smartphones and tablets (rarely running Windows). Developers like to build web services and web apps on Linux, and if Microsoft just refused to support any non-Windows systems on Azure, they would lose a fair amount of business. So they seem to look for ways to make money in a world where Windows and Microsoft's conventional software stack can coexist with other software and operating systems. So if, for example, they open source the .Net framework, that means they can win over developers on other systems. Developers who then might want to use, say, Visual Studio, so they still can make money of those. (Alas, with regards to Windows and Office, their cash cows, nothing has changed.)

krylon 11y ago

Microsoft used to be very hostile towards open source in general and Linux in particular. These days, the publish some core parts of their software stack - the new Javascript engine, for example, the core CLR .Net runtime, including the JIT and GC - as open source and actively support running Linux instances in Azure. That still does not mean, of course, that Microsoft is an "open source company" now, but I think it shows their attitude has changed significantly. Given their past, I think this is at least a very good sign. Of course, they still engage in plenty of lock-in, and their baroque licensing terms can drive a poor sysadmin insane. But there is some progress, and a lot of people are happy to see that. Of course, the main reason for this is that the world has changed, and Microsoft can no longer exploit their monopoly on the desktop when a fair amount of people have - at least at home - ditched laptops or desktops completely in favor of smartphones and tablets (rarely running Windows). Developers like to build web services and web apps on Linux, and if Microsoft just refused to support any non-Windows systems on Azure, they would lose a fair amount of business. So they seem to look for ways to make money in a world where Windows and Microsoft's conventional software stack can coexist with other software and operating systems. So if, for example, they open source the .Net framework, that means they can win over developers on other systems. Developers who then might want to use, say, Visual Studio, so they still can make money of those. (Alas, with regards to Windows and Office, their cash cows, nothing has changed.)